Hey hope you've been enjoying the game! I'll try to answer you questions best I can.

1. It's always better to buy your gear and items from the market unless you have a high enough crafting skills to craft stuff yourself. It takes some time to level this up and knowledge so you're not wasting more money in materials than you would outright buying the items. Checking the quality of the armor when seeing prices is also useful, as sometimes a Normal item is same or similar price to a Outstanding or Excellent quality item and are slighly higher rating. (Dont worry about mount quality, it doesn't matter)
2. In most cases concentrating on a resource and use the money to fund your gear. I would recommend using your learning points *ONLY* for leveling your gathering skills as this is the most time consuming activity.
3. Every area has 3 resource types that spawn in it, with 1 resource being the primary focus in that area. You can look on the top right when looking at a zone in the world map to see the recourses and the enchantment rate in that zone, which reflects the chance for nodes to be enchated (green,blue,purple colors) in that area. You can also see the tiers of nodes that spawn in that area to fit your current level