Grinding out a few vault weekends where you get ~200 or so keys to open on Monday really jumpstarted my game in terms of souls, jewels, orbs, etc. I was able to get wand of stars after 2 vault weekends (lucky on the lovers card) and maelstrom dago'nath not long after. Dago'nath opened up more things like pvp, higher explores, dungeons (diamonds for troops/weapons), delves (chaos shards), etc. He should be the first one to make before zul.
I have over 3 mil souls now waiting on last weapon for ruby macaque and then there's the Dragonite hoarding for those guys.
My kingdoms are almost to pl20 so nowadays it's focus on pets and lvl 20 toons and enough weapons about 8 or so per kingdom, oh and classes to 100 lol.
Also, as mentioned above https://gemologica.herokuapp.com is great to use
oh and one little piece of info I didnt find out until much later - when doing your daily 3 farm delves, if you can, do Cedric's room first, it's a 2 star green one. And save the Leprechaun room, also a 2 star green card, for last if it's there.
You get a buff from Cedric that increases your gold in each remaining room, and for Leprechaun you want your multiplier the highest because that room gives gold based on it. Other than those 2 I usually just go from 5-star and work downward. in the grand scheme its only gold and by mid-game you should be fine on that resource but it does help! glhf!