This is not my area of expertise so I can’t be of much help.

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Because they’re tangent space normals, and where there are seams, tangent space changes sharply. It is not that the normals (world space or object space) are discontinuous; it is that the tangent space is discontinuous, and so the tangent space normals are discontinuous, even though the world space normals are not. (Tangent space is a space where the +Z vector points in the direction of the sampled normal and the +X vector points in the direction of increasing U, from your UV map. The normal map color is a remapped vector intended to be interpreted in this tangent space. The direction of increasing U changes sharply across seams. Which is okay.)

Seems different on this case where normal map is continuous but tangent normal is not. I guess you can unwrap the ring in one piece to have only one seam and hide it somehow.

People can help figuring out quicker if you share blend file. Remove anything that is unrelated or not sharable, purge unused data blocks, pack resources, upload somewhere.

It’s reusing very few nodes for many connections, no node group nesting so it looks messy. Unless it is modular and I can reuse it in other scenario, no point in spending more time on it just to make it look better or save few milliseconds per run.

If you definitely need it to be bitmap texture…

A. Boolean
Make a shallow hole punch and boolean. Then bake the hole, or not. You can set material of the hole in boolean modifier.

B. Knife project
Make a shape of the hole then project onto the spear. Then extrude in to make shallow hole.

Finally you can bevel the hole to make it not look like a cheap CNC cut and bake the hole onto the non-hole version of the spear or keep the boolean mesh as is.

With this level of detail, I’d just use vertex paint or multiple materials on different faces. It’s cheap, it’s fast, no unwrapping.

edit:
Forgot to mention that if you planned to keep sub-d in final, you need pay attention to unwrapping strategy as it can shift seams and distort the texture at different sub-d level.

not allow you access to updates on addons, materials, tutorials, etc. a year after you bought them

Oh dang. Totally missed the news as I don’t follow community side of blender very closely compare to developer side.

Usually run blender very lean, no addons unless absolutely necessary, almost exclusively from official extension platform. So, near zero reasons for me to ever visit marketplace.

Almost hundred addons here, haven’t tried any of them so I can’t give recommendation.
https://superhivemarket.com/search?search[q]=hair&search[category_id]=6

Don’t know what kind of look you are going for.

The $0 way, sculpt separated blobs of hair and retopo?

For animation, Mikassa is made that way. May be same for Storm too, not really sure.

If not animation heavy then either curve -> convert to mesh -> sculpt. Or hi-poly sculpt then just remesh.