23 Year old, looking for first cookware set with longevity, suggestions?
Buying piece by piece is generally a better option than buying a set, because you can get higher quality individual pieces versus spending money on things you need.

Nonstick doesn't last forever, so spending a lot of money on nonstick doesn't make a lot of sense.

The Food Lab and America's Test Kitchen both have lists of pots and pans you want to have (as well as recommendations(+reviews in the latter case) for brands easily found in the US). They're smaller than a cookware set you'd buy, but may still be too much depending on what you do. Buy what you need -- I cook almost everything I eat in a stainless steel skillet and my other pans don't really get all that much use (and you can always buy them later; I don't need a dutch oven for example). I think the Food Lab list is a bit more reasonable (but some of the stuff is clearly dependent on cooking style, e.g. woks).

Also, note that you can re-use a lot of pots and pans or work around having specific ones on a list -- for example, a rimmed baking sheet + wire rack takes up less space than a roasting pan (and works fine for roasting birds or whatever; it doesn't do everything a roasting pan does, but its way cheaper for good quality stuff).