Using gold to skip those steps is an option....but not for alot of players. Since gold is scarcer to acquire these days not everyone has a lot and I'm pretty sure they'd rather use it for better things than skipping breeding when a common should be easily breedable.
No, there are serious flaws in the games or should I say serious manipulations by S8 . It's a shame and sad and seems like there's little players can do to get it changed. Myself, unless the end dragons are super duper grand ones, I will not use gold to skip, I'd rather miss out.
On the subject of being short points for Drake, and I was in this boat too, S8 again messes with players by changing the amount of points you could possibly get. In past months a player could skip part of tales and still get the monthly dragon. Based on that, I felt I had opportunities to get points, especially when the stars stored say collect throughout Nov... So they change the rules, oh well. Actually as mentioned above, I really suspect they messed up with not doing a tourney but will never admit that. No, S8 never admits anything. Sadly.