Hey Clayton,
I would recommend watching this course: https://cgcookie.com/course/rig-and-animate-a-treasure-chest-in-blender-2-8 it goes over the rigging process on a simple treasure chest. No shape keys are used in the game, all the animations can export with the mesh and rig of the character.
Unity will do the triangulation, but you still need to ensure proper topology within Blender otherwise you’ll get weird deformities in the mesh when animating. For more human based rigging you can also watch this: https://cgcookie.com/course/fundamentals-of-rigging
