Sounds like quite the adventure. The main thing is that by doing all this, you learn about the game and you figure out how best to do things – trial and error, that's how I work things out, little by little.
As for the moonstones, I have no idea where to get them. I have never yet seen one. I've wondered about that myself and just assumed that it was a feature that hadn't been introduced into the game yet (but I may be wrong).