There is the White pet food icon here
Because of the increase and different rewards, these higher difficulties with the Eternal Dragons are intentionally harder to reach, and thus have a higher Mythstone cost
No there isn’t, but you have to manually toggle to select the Side Quest and it’s written real clear that you have an Explore or Side Quest battle selected
Like all the other Astral Spire descriptions, it’s literal. The Weapon equipped in the opponent team (if they have one) will be changed to a totally different weapon. So the weapon changes, and thus as does the spell and everything that comes with having that new weapon.
It triggers at the start of the battle.
As for feedback like this, or requesting just QOL fixes etc. This is something kinda above our studio’s choice/ability etc. As much as I see the benefit in spending time to do just a bug or just a qol update, there are more factors involved that affect what is or isn’t in every update.
It’s something I have mentioned to the team, and it was very clear in the community survey, so IP2 is aware.
That being said, 9.4 has a few QOLs being addressed, and I am always chasing up bugs where I can.