Waystones question for a noob in PoE 2

So i'm trying to understand the system.. the Waystones barely drop on most of the maps I did. Right now I'm at do 4/10 level 4+ Waystones to keep progressing in the quest but I have 0 maps.

5k gold for each level 1 is really expensive if I want to craft level 4 maps.. so what's the solution for me? How can I get more maps without spending all my gold in this expensive level 1 maps from the npc?

Map sustain is very bad early on. Your best bet is to invest all your atlas points in “waystone chance to be a higher tier” and “waystone quantity drop in your maps”. Then you just gotta get lucky.

I was on tier 7 maps at one point and had to drop back down to running tier 4 maps simply because there were no maps dropping. Now I was on tier 10 and I’m back doing tier 7 for the same reason. Feels real bad.

Yeah is bad but what can I do or am I just stuck without maps? Cheching the site are people really asking for 1 EX for a single common level 4 map?