To answer a few of your questions:
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You can get training points for free from doing the training dojo. Farm the “last stand - 1st battle” for 1.5 training points + 60exp each time. It’s just one skill use to do the battle so you can do it over and over very quickly.
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Ingredients missions you get 1 guaranteed each time you do it plus some chances to get extra ones from capturing them (I think - it’s been a couple of years since I did it myself). There’s also a more efficient mission you can do in the rare ingredients missions that comes every 4 in 16 days and doesn’t take keys to enter. You will get 3 random ingredients of the element you pick.
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You can view the skills of enemies by clicking on their icon in the time bar (in the middle of the screen in a battle).
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There are a number of free monsters available to players for free, including 2 legendaries and many super epics. You can find out about them here: KD's New Players Guide
Progression in this game is not behind any paywall. As a free player it just takes a bit longer to get going. What holds you back most at the beginning I think is your tickets. You need tickets for EVERYTHING and with all the ingredients, silver and youth fruit you need to get your monsters into proper shape it’s hard to find the right balance between that and progressing in the content. Your max tickets are low too, so you have to come back to the game frequently.
Things settle down after a bit and you won’t feel quite so pressured to keep logging back in or desperate to spend your tickets on so many things. Over this time you’ll also have accumulated a number of gems and they will in turn give you more monsters. You build a collection over time and manage to progress further. Playing for free simply means things take longer, but they’re far from unfair.
At one point in your rant you say “It’s simply but fun” but you started by complaining there’s no guidance for team building and you’re finding it tricky. This game has incredibly deep and engaging combat. This combat, and the team building it encourages you to do, are part of what make this game a lot better than its competition in this genre. I hope you start to get to grips with it and enjoy it. Maybe what you need is a larger collection of monsters so you can get some synergy going on that feels more powerful… which should happen with time.
To begin with I recommend you focus on getting the free stuff available and evolving all your good monsters. Try to find some combinations of your monsters that work well together and experiment to learn more. See how far you can get in the various parts of the game and don’t stress over something if it’s too hard. The limited-time events are a place to get gems for yourself which will ultimately get you better monsters with time.