I nearly always have beginners buy VD 3 blue box. I’ve found softer reeds help a bit (2.5) but only for the first couple weeks, and that if you don’t move them up relatively quickly they will be playing on soft reeds forever. I buy 2-3 boxes of 2.5s and hand them out to kids to start and then move them to 3s once they’re consistently making a good tone on the G# on mpc/barrel.