2) Eh, the gear I can still get not only costs MILLIONS per piece but is quite rare. I'm 0/26 attempting to get HQ heca feet crafted with 3 breaks. Hecatomb+1 and then Cerby mantle +1 (cause those are sold so often...) are pretty much the only non-rare/ex gear left for my thief.
4) My NM is blm/whm/brd, someone told me that means he's really hard but I'd imagine mnk/drk/sam/war/nin/smn would be much harder ones, much like other Dynamis mobs. I've been really lucky on windy currency and windy runs lately, I've gotten nearly 900 windy in the past 3 weeks lol...