Randy,
1. I haven't messed with patterns much, see above post.
2. Pricing, see above post.
3. There are no tutorials (yet!), and I'm not sure how much of Z3TA is covered in the synth book. But Zeta is a fairly straightforward synth. Try initializing it, and you have a blank slate. The AMP Envelope is hardwired, so you just have to import a wave and start tweaking the amp to get a tone. From there, just keep adding - Filter, another envelope, LFO. The effects are on a separate page you open. There is a lot of new stuff that makes Z3TA 2 easier, tho it still has the 16 modulation routings which is where the real fun starts. but wait until you can crawl a sound before you get too involved in it.
@