My quick route for farming the best weapons and gear in apartments avoiding the apartment blocks. It's better than outpost and not as scary as I originally thought when I first started playing.
I avoided Vostok early on since it seemed super scary and mysterious with BTR spawns and soldiers, but it's not too bad once you learn the AI system and the fact that BTRs spawning is pretty rare. Bring a decent rifle, food, drinks and ideally armor, a helmet and 2 medkits if possible.
So once I got the courage to go to apartments and learned the map somewhat, I found a decent route to hit military and special crates quickly. When you first go to the apartments head right (east) up the dirt path and you'll see an antenna. In that little area (1 on the map) you'll see 2 military sheds with 3 military crates in each and 4 on the outside for a total of 10 military crates. Both of the sheds and outside of the shed have a chance to spawn special crates.
Keep going east and hit the construction site marked 2 on the map. Be careful since this path can spawn enemies. There's 2 trash bags here and two spots where special crates can spawn. From here head north and hit the other construction area marked 3 on the map. There's a special crate that can spawn here and 2 military crates in one of the little concrete tubes. Go a bit more north and you'll see 3 red tents. You can loot the tents for general loot and also have a chance to see a special crate here too.
Now you can head to the terminal straight north of the tents and back to apartments to reset the loot for a shorter run and all you have to do is loop back and forth between the antenna and terminal or for a bit more risk, you can finish the apartment loop from the red tents.
From the terminal entrance you go west until you hit some sheds. Those are 5 on the map and those 2 sheds have industrial ground loot for the oil filter and they also have a chance to spawn a special crate inside. Keep going to the other sheds (6 on the map) and you have 4 more industrial sheds, with no special crate spawns and two more military sheds for 6 more military crates and a chance to spawn a special crate in either shed.
Now go south on the main road and keep an eye out since this is the riskiest part of the loop. Enemies can shoot from windows, the roof and patrol the roads. You'll see a statue in the middle of the road. If you look to the right of the road, you'll see a small hut with a chance to spawn a special crate. Come back to the other side of the road and you'll see the last military shed for 3 more military crates and a special crate spawn area. Outside in the parking lot near the tank is another special crate spawn area where the half circle things are. Now from here you run like hell back to the minefield entrance to close the loop and reset the loot.
This is just my quick military gear run without having to go through the apartment blocks which is very time consuming. Feels like you'll hit more crates doing 2 loops of this run than going through all 7 buildings. This is mostly in and out. Also going through the map transitions back and forth with use up 20 hunger and 40 thirst so bring a ton of food and drinks, or loot the apartments every now and again to top up.
Edit: Added map of a screenshot from https://roadtovostok.wiki of the route I take
Edit 2: Rewrote this whole thing and broke it up some so it's a bit easier to digest.
