1. Tbh, you don't have to spend a lot of money to build a farming arcanist. Especially if you're just gonna move on to something else. At bare minimum, all you need is maybe a baku staff with int diamonds (or IA runes, if you want better damage output). Int/PvE/IA with a little touch of speed to help collect mobs faster. More mobs mean more drops.
2. Arcanist need int, but a touch of sta would help you, especially at the beginning when you can't tank damage well.
3. I don't have personal experience with this, but if you're talking about boss hunting, then probably not the best. 1v1 classes tend to be the better choice for boss hunting. BUT, if you're planning on farming cove for CES, I suppose arcanists would be ideal for AoE-ing those mobs.
1. Trin/Titan gear. You can find them in the Item Mall listed under Faction System.
2. You could donate to get the gear faster, but it's doable to get them in-game for faction points. However, unless you are willing to camp Faction bosses, it's gonna be a long journey for that route.
3. There are two different shops for Red and Blue Chips. Red chips are dropped from all mobs lvl 120(?)+. You can check out the shop in-game, but mostly people use them to buy consumables. Blue chips are a recent replacement for boss drops. Instead of random drops, bosses (all except blue meteo in cove) drop various amounts of blue chips. The harder the boss, the more they supposedly drop. In the blue chip shop, you can buy armor and weapons which used to drop from those bosses. Basically, instead of getting randoms, you can save up and choose to get the drops you actually want. And now, they've recently added the Rarity scrolls in there, so there's also that.
I hope that helps a little.
Edit: I'll be your friend.
