Quantum materials host a large variety of emergent phenomena including magnetism, superconductivity, and many more (Tokura and Nagaosa in Science 288:462, 2000 [1]; Keimer and Moore in Nat Phys 13:1045, 2017 [2]). Understanding these unique and often interconnected phases requires probes for the charge, orbital, and spin configurations in these systems. Resonant elastic X-ray scattering (REXS) has emerged as a powerful tool to extract these details which are essential to building a clear picture of the underlying physics as presented in detail in several excellent reviews (Subías et al. in J Phys Conf Ser 190, 2009 [3]; Beale in Eur Phys J Spec Top 208:89, 2012 [4]; Vettier in Eur Phys J Spec Top 208:3, 2012 [5]). In order to make this approach more accessible to the non-expert, the goal of this chapter is to use examples of REXS as the basis for a more practical tutorial about common pitfalls and how to harness the power of this technique to explore electronic and magnetic order in quantum materials. While we focus on hard X-rays we note that soft X-ray resonant scattering is also highly useful and versatile (Fink et al. in Rep Prog Phys 76, 2013 [6]). This chapter does not consider inelastic interactions between the samples and X-ray photons, for example as in inelastic X-ray scattering (RIXS) (Ament et al. in Rev Mod Phys 83:705, 2011 [7]). The interested reader is encouraged to explore two excellent reviews focused on those techniques (Fink et al. in Rep Prog Phys 76, 2013 [6]; Ament et al. in Rev Mod Phys 83:705, 2011 [7]).