Hello! My name is Lacey and I just joined. I did the tutorial and it helped a lot. But I still have a lot of questions. Are there any guides for newbies out there?

There's the pet Newbie but that's the only one I know of. If you have specific questions, you can always ask them here, that's what this forum is for c:

How long does the main shop discount buff last?

If you click on it, it will tell you how long you have left but from the start it lasts for 6 hours c:

Ahh ok. And is that like a random event to get it again? Or is it something you buy?

You will randomly get it again buying anything from the main shops. Sometimes it clicks back to use after one item, sometimes it takes buying several items to get it to activate.

Ok thanks! How do I make a pet active? I tried playing a game but it says I need to have an active pet.

http://subeta.net/pets.php

Go there and just click on any of your pets and it will make them active.

For the vending machines is there a popular one to go to for chance of best prizes? I have 300 wizard tokens and I think it would be fun to use them.

It depends what you're looking for. This guide is really useful for that (Subetalodge in general is a really helpful site, you should definitely make an account or at least keep it in mind for later).

I like Prize Get for making money though, weapons sell for a pretty nice amount because Maleria asks for them exclusively in her quests c:

in this very forum were in now there's a FAQ http://subeta.net/forums.php/read/141578/Frequently-Asked-Questions-Answers

it's a huge tome of a post, but you can use Find on it. And there's also a Subeta Wikia. Sometimes any of the Subforums you see here will have a sticky thread that's all about that particular subject of the site and those can be pretty darn useful too.

But really like said there's a number of us users who like to hang here in Help & Questions, so you could just ask.