I’m glad to try to help. As many of the other community members will chime in as well. We each play a little differently depending on our style. But we are all willing to share knowledge. Best part about the forum.
Keys - if your guild completes half of the regular tasks (I would guess) each week, that’s a lot of keys for a beginner. At the very least use all your keys before spending gold. I don’t have the best luck when it comes to mythic weeks. I spend tons of resources and don’t get the troop I’m hoping for. These numbers are quite low for some but - 1800 gems, 3K various keys and 27K glory spent - no Champion of Anu. It’s all luck if you get anything at all.
Traitstones - doing explore is the best way of getting stones. It’s repetitive and can be a bit boring but it is the best way. Some times you’ll get 2 stones in 30 battles or less. Sometimes you’ll do 100 battles and get none. Again - RNG luck determines what you get. There are quite a few different explore teams that make a battle 2 or 3 moves to get the win. Here’s a link for a thread that has a lot of options for you depending on what you have :
I’m running Sunbird / Forest Guardian / Ogryn / Fire Bomb - Abyssal banner for my explores. It’s one of the best teams going. You might not have all those troops or the traits that make the team so effective but the linked thread may have something that you can work with. Good luck.