Anything that'll boost your power

For Group Shop obviously Medium Refinement Runes, Rank Shop, Basic Refinement Runes (only if you need a lot of them) Otherwise Hinata as she is one of the best tanks for a F2P. Summon Shop, Runes or a Gold Summon you absolutely need for your end game team, if neither go for King of Hell frags. Space Time Shop, obviously Adv. Threads for when you do need them. Otherwise Tactics Pack.

Gaara is a tanky damage dealer which is amazing with wind teams, Hinata is a very good tank early game as she can deflect all damage done to her on the 1st round (more or less). Even after you get hinata to 5 star (which you 100% should) you should keep buying her fragments as they can be used in the refine fragment system that comes into play later on into the game. Do this for kabuto too

Hope this helped, anymore questions just ask

Unbound runes, collecting them is fine, gnw isnt that important in higher stars so unless you're close to getting her 5 stars (and i mean really close) i suggest you swap to unbound runes. Kabuto yes, keep getting him up, i still use him now at level 80, Summon/Space time when they do open just save everything, no need to spend. And is gaara better than hinata? Well if you're finding that you gaara dies turn one, then hinata would be better yes. Hinata also provides acupuncture which can stop your enemy from casting a mystery skill (unless it is removed by a healer or something) which is very good.

I mean right now you can get away with

Water main, Hinata, Sasuke and Kabuto or something like that! feel free to ask forums for advice by posting your list of ninja

Here is the difference between Gaara and Hinata

Gaara has super armor in which he won't let enemy ninjas cause combos on him. However he doesn't mitigate damage, he does however when you get his barrier up, he can do massive damage. It'll also be awhile before you 5 star him. Ultimately Hinata will be a better choice as she is great early to semi late game. While Gaara falls off the map for a bit til you have a team built around him.

Also to get an idea of how good GNW Sakura is

Sailor Sakura > Breakthrough Normal Sakura > GNW Sakura > Non Breakthrough Normal Sakura

Kabuto is the 3rd best healer in the game (I would have to compare Tsunade Sannin War though which I can't do atm).

what main are you using?

If you're really patient, you can aim for 5 Star Iruka through fragment refining, by collecting all the 2 Star Ninja frags (They're worth the most in fragment refine) in each shop until all those characters are 5 stars and then keep collecting them to turn them into points for Iruka Fragments & Scrolls.

All as a free player, it adds up pretty nicely but takes a long time, having 5 star basic characters has been pretty nice.

But when starting out I recommend focusing on refines and getting your team to level 4/5 refine asap. And then jumping to 7 from there, all during rebates.

Up to you. You can either piece other ninjas just to get them for collection purposes (and coupon recruitment bonus/ ranking) or keep on getting frags over 5* to get more iruka/scrolls faster. After a certain time, you will end up getting all those ninjas to 5* (eventually, some might take a lot of time) but there's no bad option there. Check if there's any pain/akatsuki member you would like to use in the future (check if they have future skillbooks that could fit your future team), if not you can just as well focus on getting more fragments for refining.

You will get almost all free ninjas from survival over time, all those that drop 30/80 frags. It just takes time. Also in black market, I tend to buy all 3 gold items, doesnt matter what they are. The longest time will take genins (ino, shikamaru, naruto etc) since they drop only 5frag tops. But, in time you will also get their frags without sweeping. Most of us played for 6months, some even since release and we simply have all elite instance and shop ninjas (survival/ranked) at 5*, because at some point you simply have nothing to spend your coins on. Buying certain ninja frags/sweeping their instance only speeds up the process.

Already answered your question: if you dont need anything else from survival/ranked shop, sweep hinata/kabuto/sai/lee, because they give 10pts when refined and cost only 500coins in their respective shop.

As for sweeping- I sweep ninjas, that i want to have skillbroken in the future- deidara, shikamaru, ino, sasuku, tobi, tsunade or want them 5* and sweeping is the easiest option- ningendo, tobi/deidara before i 5* them. If iI have spare stamina and still choose to sweep elite instances, i go for any 10pts ninja, doesnt matter which one.

Anything that'll boost your power

For Group Shop obviously Medium Refinement Runes, Rank Shop, Basic Refinement Runes (only if you need a lot of them) Otherwise Hinata as she is one of the best tanks for a F2P. Summon Shop, Runes or a Gold Summon you absolutely need for your end game team, if neither go for King of Hell frags. Space Time Shop, obviously Adv. Threads for when you do need them. Otherwise Tactics Pack.

If you want power- runes, if summon- koh. Drawing super rare from summon treasure takes about a year+ of saving scrolls. Koh requires 288 000 coins (if you dont get any frags in the meantime) and Kirin as another super rare can be slowly pieced in lucky board and events, since he's been put there pretty often recently. If you start selling every rune and save every summon coin you get, thats still about 8 months of saving for that ammount of coins. After you pull super rare, 80frags are converted the same way as normal yellow summon, that is 4k coins. It's your call if you want to invest nearly 300k coins with a 50/50 possibility to get a huge disappointment later on (when dupe is drawn). That being said, koh is a really good summon that helps a lot in current high combo chase meta. Plenty of future ninjas have 30+ chases as well, so koh can be used there.

Propably the best thing you can do, is to get your runes to lv7, then save coins. If you pull koh, good, spend saved coins on either kirin (if u want) or runes. If u pull kirin, u can get missing koh fragments. This way if you pull koh, you wont waste ~300k coins.

ok i understand but what about my other question?

should i sell all of my lv1,2 and 3 runes to buy the level 5 runes?