6* (in case you get one): Nerine, Cherry, Sakura.
5*: Edel, Orchid, Nameless Evening Primrose.
New ones will be added every 2 weeks.
Use your 40 strongest girls and then change out the ones at the bottom until you have 16 girls of the type you want your ship to be.
Stages consist of two different fight types.
- Raid Boss Ship Battles: You attack the ancient pest until you deal ~50% damage and then the pest will flee. You in total fight the ancient pest up to 3 times.
- Deck Battles: Just like normal fights, if all your units in a squad die, then the next squad will take the deck and continue fighting.
If either your ship or all 9 squads (8+helper) die, you lose. Chances are your ship will die before all 9 squads will.
This is a known bug, it will be fixed in the future. Although I cannot give a date as this is not a priority to them at the minute.
Do not use forge until all your girls have 100% max affection. Then sure, why not. And yes, second affection can make a big difference.
Get only the rainbow skillbloom, you can ignore everything else really. Only buy petals when you need them. No reason to stockpile petals.
Also, because of whale, getting life crystals is very hard now. You can get the gold skillblooms if you need but I would only do that if you have a gold unit that has 4 equipment slots already at this point.
The blue crystals are for the current event going on, you use them to vote on which girl you think will win the race and you get event currency based on if you were right or not.