Took me an hour to finish the vanishing journey questline on my, at the time, newly-200/5th job night lord. Took me about 30 minutes to finish the arcana questline on my now dual blade. 30-60 minutes per area isn't really that bad when you consider how long you're going to be spending in that area before moving on to the next.
You can hunt Platoon Chronos which have a fairly decent droprate for familiars that heal slightly less than Mutant Snails, but also heal your entire party for hp/mp, so they're a good choice as well.
@Mawg: if you go the platoon chronos route, they're located in the two areas I've highlighted in this screenshot
The first one is "the path of time 1", the second is "lost time 1", and this is in the ludirbium clocktower, which is the portal in the middle of the map.
Sometimes I get ten nodes and two symbols in an hour of grinding. Sometimes I don't get anything for three days. My gear or perceived droprate bonuses never change.
Firstly, edit button. Cog wheel top right corner of your posts. Please use it.
Secondly, for your first question: jr boogie for mana regen(15% every 10 seconds), big spider for drop rate. You can get a mutant snail for healing/party healing as well, but the drop rate is pretty crap and it's fairly expensive to buy from others.
As to your second question: no, none at all.
Familiars aren't really a must-have. They're a convenience item more than anything else.
Every single thing they've done thus far has had zero effect on the bots and has instead piled negative impact after negative impact upon players. Look at the ban waves that have happened in the past six months, they've all ended in the same way, with nexon coming out and going "oh it was because we changed what our automated system checks for to ban bots, we've changed it back", and that's after support stonewalls and chastises the unfortunate players who've been caught up in it for weeks on-end.
At this point, I really wish you'd just stop trying, you'd make people a lot happier if you did.