Originally Posted by Unregistered

1. This is correct. Once unlocked, abilities are available indefinitely.
2. Yes, only a single purchase is required to unlock each ability for all suitable girls.
3. Yes, upgrades are personal.
4. Yes, only one ability can be active at a time for each girl (but abilities are party-based you can set a different ability to the same girl under a different party spot).
5. The general consensus is taunt on dodge girls (as well as guts, if/when Nutaku gets the second defensive ability revamp) and attack up on first turn to the rest for most maps.

Extra damage on weakness and taunt on non-dodgers (especially girls like Victoria, who have a "2x skill rate top party if you were attacked last turn" ability after blooming) have seen use in certain specialist maps, like Kodaibana #2 and Re: Ume & Sakura, but Nutaku will get these in 2053 at this rate so you can safely ignore these edge cases.

I agree, but I will add this:
I waited before buying the Recovery Boost because of the price, but in the end I bought it for 1 unit: Kerria.
In bloomed form, she becomes a crazy Raid Boss destroyer.

my teams can smash most content outside whaleship (nation battles is the exception until I get ALL the girls in my arsenal leveled).


at that point, I tend to manipulate speeds of teams so I can just blaze through stages....


in the case of the whaleship though, I have atk up and crit up cause I will need the damage increases. I don't have weakness up yet though....

For the mains I use
Recovery boost for Alpinia and Kerria.
Taunt for Saffron
Atk up first turn for trigger squad
Speed adjustments as necessary

For Whale I use ATK up first turn for everyone not on team 1

For nations I use Recovery boost for all that have life steal and Defense and/or speed adjustments on most of the rest

Recovery boost is worth it. I don't have or plan to get the Critical up anytime soon until all girls on all teams are leveled up on the rest.

I use attack up for most of my Knights with Kerria being the exception (she gets Taunt to take advantage of her 50/80% evasion). I still haven't gotten around to learning recovery boost, critical up, weakness damage up and defense activation up.