Hello,
For better gear you need to kill bosses for that, they drop blue and yellow stuff that how its work in every servers.
Second, for AP you have two things you can do first killing monster in core (red ball in abyss4) they give 50ap or you need to kill your enemy race so if you are elyos you kill asmo if you are asmo you kill elyos. For this you need to find a rift there are eveywhere in heiron(elyos)/morhein(asmo).
Have fun playing