Fine! I'm going to answer your questions orderly. But firstly, allow me to explain what kind of glitch is it.
It's a usually error provoked by the variation between max HP and HP. When god mode is activated, each time a player receives an attack, his HP remains unchanged. But if a captain or friend captain gets despair, automatically, hp is reduced as long as max hp isn't. In short, despair forces hp to be reduced whereas max HP keeps on steadfast (god mod does it). There's another situation when this glitch occurs. If an enemy uses a blow out attack (when a crew's member is removed from the stage). It can't be helped since god mode is always active. That's why I'd rather a mod with only 1 hit or high attack since there aren't many enemies with preemptive attack of despair (which attack first) and neither are there a lot of ones that survive from a high attack.
1 - There're many methods to prevent it. For instance, select a captain and/or friend captain with no HP boost. Because despair cancells captain effect. If your captain is afflicted with despair, god mode will prevent it from losing HP. But at the same time, OPTC is going to freeze due to it. Other option is choose WB ship because there's an effect which reduces 50% of HP at the beginning of the stage. But this option is a little bit perilous. Even if your HP is at 50%, you can reach the final stage with 100%, since RCV orbs and healings are able to recover it. So, if a boss inflicts you with despair as long as your HP is 100% and your captain is a HP booster, there's no way you can avoid a freezing. A latter option that I remember is choose a captain or crew member with despair reducer as special, switch effect or sailor effect (support effect as well). If you dont know what I'm talking about, please, ask me if you dont mind.
2 - Ship doesn't step in. Or rather, there're few stages with despair on ships. They're extremely rare. In this case, just choose a ship with no HP boost.
3 - On no circumstances does RCV affect this glitch. Rest assured!
4 - Well, you can select a captain with no healing since you choose a WB ship. The same goes for RCV. If you prefer to avoid any kind of healing or RCV orbs, it makes sense whilst a WB ship is selected.
5 - Actually, Despair and Bind are obligated forbidden tomes. Regardless of which characters is, these tomes are always indispensable.
6 - As aforementioned, some characters have special effects which neutralize despair freezing. Barto & Cavendish is one of them. Besides being a new double legend (one of the most powerful on global currently), this character is able to cancell despair glitch due to the swap effect. When you swap them, a healing is automatically activated. This effect corrects the max HP and makes it equal to HP ( in terms of quantity). So, why do other characters not have the same applicability? They have, but in a distinct way. Usually characters with healing effects carries out it in the next stage. When it happens, the max HP is corrected. However, it doesn't prevent the game from freezing. In other words, before do you proceed to the next stage, you need to adjust max HP either by healing effect (Barto & Cavendish, specials and whatever) or WB ship.
7 - Vivi ( unit. 073) has a support effect which actives a healing in the last stage ( boss). Is the same principle for Barto & Cavendish. But the last one is much better because can be activated on any turn or stage.
P.S ¹: I'm going to attach some screenshots to demonstrate Barto & Cavendish manoeuvrability
P. S.²: Blow out and despair have similar ways. Rather than selecting a character with a blow out special diminisher, you pick up one with blow out resistance.
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Look at these pictures. First one my max HP is above my current HP (despair effect and freezing glitch). If I had proceeded to next stage, OPTC certainly was going to crash. But instead of it, I activated Barto & Cavendish swap effect and adjusted max HP (2nd picture). That's why this character is awesome because you can avert always (at least I think) the game from crashing.