Hey, its me again. I don't have a lot of time to play the game, but I just got through the section with the gizmonks. I went to sleep since the day was done, and... Firefly is not responding again after waking up. Technically, the game is still playable, but losing access to a main companion is probably not supposed to happen.
Update: testing shows that this happens any time you dismiss the party and want to pick her back up.
Yes, you can take the save file you had from an earlier build of MLP generations and use it in the current one. There should be no issues doing that given that it's essentially the same game, and you already have all the flags you need to progress in the game with no issues. Now as far as the Gonk and Glouda fight goes. Unicorns are expected to roll the dice on a good Bubble Blast. If not you would deal damage with Gem Beam and focus down on one of the Gizmonks at a time. Additionally, Firefly can contribute to the fight with fogger lowering the Gizmonks hit rate and rain cloud providing a small heal (you'll need to summon clouds first of course), you can also level up Firefly to the point she learns thundercloud and let the chip damage from thunder strikes whittle the Gizmonks down (although by level 3 she learns javelin which is also helps).
You can get pretty unlucky with Bubble Blast, that's for sure. Hm, fogger though, that should have a more perceptible effect on the hit rate, so I'll buff that. Bubble blast I'll have to think about it because it has a random chance per tick, every time it lands a successful hit it has a chance to land again and possibly repeat many times. Maybe guaranteeing at least one hit would be a good tweak. I'll have to think about that one.
Do unicorns ever get to do anything other than flat damage? I understand that they are supposed to be more of a black mage than a more utility-based D&D wizard, but when the pegasus is casting spells that blind and stun or do DOT lightning, it starts to feel like they are more magic user than you are. Maybe that's solved at later levels
Well on later levels Unicorn do get spells that can debuff opponents, but the idea is that you alternate on what spells are most effective for dealing damage. Unicorns are also able to obtain additional spells from other magic users. I believe there is a side quest from Star swirl and one other character grants you a spell if you happen to be a Unicorn. All the ponies are magical in the game, even Earth Ponies. But the way magic manifests are supposed to be notably different. You'll find later on in game that Pegasi magic demands stretch well beyond their base mana pool. They have to conserve and refill mana a lot more often funnelling them into focusing on auto attacks and damage with thunderstorm or using utility spells to debuff opponents (and doing both is a huge drain on mana on resources). Additionally, unlike the Unicorn with many elemental damage outputs, the Pegasi is mostly wind which means certain fights shut the pony down because the opponent is immune to wind focused moves. The Unicorn has versatility in dealing flat damage, there's always a spell to cast on an opponent that should deal damage.
If you are at level 4 you would learn drill shot which is element neutral but in later levels you learn a move that deals fire elemental damage, light elemental damage, you learn a spell that inflicts the held debuff, you learn a spell that deals water elemental damage and applies chatter (chip damage debuff), Another spell that deals what I call "true damage" (A common event handles the damage output and ignores all resistances), And then the final spell a unicorn learns through levelling applies burn and fire elemental damage. Energy is the main elemental output of Unicorns (Earth Ponies primarily deal earth element damage and Pegasi Wind) but generally the spread of elemental damage is more broad for a Unicorn than other classes who are usually stuck with one element for better or worse.
