It's been a long time since been active on Subeta and I'm looking to revisit my battle set because I felt like the division of items was off. I checked the recommended guide and made a couple of the cheap ones (the Forj set) but I already had a fair bit of the recommended items. I'm not sure if it's worth to get the other recommended items and which of the other items I should get.

I would like to also mention that while my main battle pet is T5 my other 2 battle pets are T3 and T4 so I should get use out of this T5 set for a while.

current setup:

I don't have Ice Rose, or Iron Fireside Lantern but MC has a cooldown so if I really should have one/some of them what is my priority list?

I also don't have the Malevolent Grenade yet but it shouldn't be hard to get. I don't know if I should actually use my tokens on that though.

And then I bought the but do I need or or another shield? I don't think I need with my Somas Tablets either? I also own buut again I think I just need Somas.

So I guess items for T5 that I own but aren't in my "default" set:

and then for spells I originally just put on 3 that I remembered were good (it was so long that all of them were attached to specific pets so I put on the Colbat + the ones on my main battle pet) but then I realized I had no offensive scrolls on (which I think I'd really want for when I freeze my opponent)

My main battle pet as 22AP atm. Is there a combination of scrolls I have that work now or now that I can share my scrolls between pets without manually shifting is there any specific scrolls I should go for.

Sorry I know this is a lot of stuff, but I kind of recognize a lot of it...but a lot of it is still semifuzzy to me and some of it is new to me so I'm still trying to sort everything out >_<

I would not invest heavily in T5 weapons unless it is something that can scale with your pet. That being said, these are some weapons that I used for my pet when he was T5:

Tier 5 is an awkward tier to be at, nothing really great to offer. The rainbow vortex and shinwa shard are not necessary but make battling easier. The truth serum is also not necessary but can be very useful against guys like the scary singer, the hustler, the forj, general error and skeleton warrior. These are all opponents that either steal or you can steal their weapon and use it against them. I highly recommend using the recycle blaster. It can be equipped with the soma tablets. I double blast all the time with my T12 pet so the blaster definitely does not become useless.

Definitely work on getting your AP up. Scrolls are always super useful and the more scrolls you can equip the better off you are. I have to tier 3 pets; one has 24 AP and the other has 17 AP. I am battling a hard challenger with them both. The pet with 22 AP can equip three fire blocking scrolls and the pet with 17 AP can only equip two. The pet with 22 AP was easily able to get to 8 wins while the second pet is struggling for 5 wins, all because one can equip one more scroll than the other.

Some good low AP scrolls to consider are perilous whirlpool, cobalt eternal, sancturia exodin, typhoon of valor, and terra focujin. You can equip more than one of these since they are once per battle scrolls. Once you increase your AP, I would look into getting these scrolls:

Fatal Fire, Shriek of Despair, Aftershocks Scroll, and Morosbane

Hmm I actually do have the Shear Sword and the Replica Minotaur Knocker in my armory (and the Recycle Blaster and Forj Kusarigama I listed in my first post as well) although I'm pretty sure Ol Blue has more icons than the Knocker and the Sword and less than the Kusarigama is you get a bad draw on it. I could see myself putting in the Knocker in place of my bomb (I already switched out my reborn wand for the kusarigama) but I don't see the point of putting on a Shear Sword.

I also don't know if Truth Serum is significantly better than the Soma Tablets though. The tablets are very similar to the Recycle Blaster but also have a large chance to curse and bless but it doesn't steal weapons like the Truth Serum. I could definitely add the Recycle Blaster to my set though.

As for scrolls I'll look into the cheaper ones for now and once I get the AP I'll see how close I am to actually being able to fight those challengers myself before buying the scrolls. My t3 pet actually has 33 AP compared to my T5 with 22 because in the beginning she was the one I read all my books to before I realized how much my battle pet would need them :c

The knocker is nice because it scales with you pet. It's stats don't start out very good, but it could become an affordable option for T10 compared to the ornamented hook swords. I don't have many tier 5 weapons, I didn't put a lot of investment in that tier. The forj tempered machete is the hardest hitting T5 weapon, but not worth the price for T5 imo. The shear sword I have just to do water damage against the forj.

The truth serum is different, not better or worse. Blasting is very different from stealing. Not all enemies can have their weapons stolen where blasting can always be used. However, stealing can make battling some of the tougher guys easier. For example, the hustler has a lot of higher tiered weapons and an emo spork so stealing from him means you can take away his one hit kill weapon or use something like the paint brush blades that is a T11 weapon against him. Again, not necessary but makes battling easier in some situations.

No worries, there's still a lot of cheap books out there for you to buy. My second battle pet has around 750 intelligence and I am still buying books for him that are under 100k.

I got a lot of my weapons through other events/collections (such as the Minotaur Knockers and the Soma Tablets and such) so I didn't spend that much on them, but I do plan to have T5 pets for a while so I didn't mind spending a bit of money on a set if there were a lot better items than what I had.

And that makes sense about the Blasting vs Stealing. I remember a little bit about certain challengers but I stopped actively playing a little bit after all 12 of the research notes came out I think. I got those and then 1 or 2 more challengers and then only got more when I logged on every once and a while.

and as for cheap books q-q guess what three pets are now magically 37 books smarter? (because I'm not buying the 3 that were 1 mil each once I got to them with so many cheap books left). I'll get my pets intell up eventually but I just got back and sorting through what I do/don't need in places I can restock it would have been a pain to start with so I'm leaving the books that aren't holiday books and for sure new up until I get all of my items sorted and everything else done.

The machete then is really the only other thing that is worth buying just for the amount of damage it does for a T5 weapon. You could also get the grenade since it comes from the battle shop. I don't battle too much with grenades though.

Once you get at a high enough tier, stealing loses it's usefulness. Mostly because enemies either can't be stolen against or have so many copies of weapons. It's at the low to mid tiers where enemies have limited copies of weapons or when you can use their weapons against them that it may be more useful to steal.

Haha yeah I just dropped like 1 mil to make all my pets smarter by 2 AP points. You can use subetalodge to upload all the books you have read to your pet and the see which ones you are still missing that are cheap.

I tend to have a lot of bombs on my alts but I'll keep it out for now since I replaced my other bomb with the recycle blaster. I'll buy it if I think I need the damage though.

I guess I won't bother with the truth serum for now then either. I'm sure my Stealers will be useful for a while as I'm only T5 and will have a few pets lagging a bit behind for quite a while but I don't need variety for something that loses usefulness like that.

I used to use Subetalodge a lot but the real reason I'm holding back is because I plan to just restock them which is a lot easier for me if I know what I'm looking for and stalk the shop rather than SS everything over and over. I'll try to get back into it in a few days but for now I did get 2 more AP on all my pets tonight which is good enough progress until morning I guess.

thank you for all your help with my battle set though. Some of the stuff I probably would have overlooked if someone didn't talk me through it (like the Knocker's changing stats!).

You're welcome, happy battling!