I don't know what I'm doing wrong over here, but I swear I was somehow managing to do better in the Battle Arena when I had supposedly sub-par weaponry.

This is my current battle set at the moment:

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...not great, but not completely awful for T5 I guess. I only recently brought in the Replica Minotaur Knocker and Malevolent Grenade after reading some of the forum advice here, swapping out the Demonic Blade and BunBonny in the process. And ???? Somehow I swear I was doing better before the "upgrade." Maybe I'm imagining things, or I've just gotten some crappy rolls of the dice when it comes to battles since changing my setup... but dang.

Any advice on what I could be doing better? I know I could upgrade my freezer, but that's honestly not much of a problem. I almost always freeze on the first round with the duct tape, so I'm not necessarily looking to upgrade there. I just feel like the Minotaur Knocker and Grenade aren't as great as everyone says they are... either that or I'm just the unluckiest person in the world (which honestly wouldn't surprise me at this point sighs and rolls eyes).

It's up to you on the freezer, but 3m isn't too terrible a price for a 100% freezer with a mod slot on it. You'll be using a pretty much until you make an unless you have a hanging around for tier 6. With it you don't run the risk of an RNG fail at the start of a battle. It's also 60 Hard tokens if you've got them or are close to it.

And while this isn't troubleshooting, are you saving up for more or better scrolls? You pet looks like it has 39 alchemy points. You might want to aim for or . Both do a 7% heal, are infinite use, do some block and some damage.

I think you can keep the BunBonny, since it's a bomb and you don't have any others in your set. It might help to dish out some damage when your opponent is frozen. I have the feeling that the Minotaur Knocker is mediocre. It's just nice to have since it scales so you can keep using it for a long time. I even use it with my tier 13 pet since I don't have any other earth blocker. But usually it does rather poorly when compared with other weapons of that tier, if you try to buy the top weapons of that tier.

Which opponent are you trying to beat? Maybe that one blocks the damage from one of your new weapons. The might be worth looking into, it scales from tiers 5-7. It does to less damage now than the Malevolent Grenade, and if you plan to buy new weapons for tier 6, it might not be worth it to buy now.

You could maybe replace the Malevolent Grimfruit by the [item]Freezewand of Doom] or if you plan on getting the Reborn Freezewand of Doom for tier 6. Either of them are slightly better than the Grimfruit. They deal a bit more damage (unless your opponent blocks a little bit of everything) and have a bit of defense. The healing is the same, so the upgrade is not very big.

During Morostide, you might want to check whether the price on drops a bit; it's a once per battle scroll that heals for 300hp and deals 40 icons of damage. Takes up 15AP.

Sadly, I wound up spending my hard tokens on that stupid Grenade... so I'm back to 1 hard token at the moment. I'll either have to do the battle quests a while to save back up, or I'll have to buy the collar outright 😔 I definitely need a new spell though, you're right. I'm aiming for an Aftershocks Scroll, but they're so pricey after what I recently spent to snag the quill and the knocker that I'm probably going to have to wait a bit. That is, of course, unless I find someone amiable to a trade.

I suppose I could toss the BunBonny back in for the moment, but it's hard to decide which items to keep and which to nix when you only get 8 spots. As it is, I was having trouble... but the BunBonny got thrown out in favor of that Malevolent Grenade everyone was raving about. I think I would've been better off skipping that one altogether 😐

Right now I'm trying to either beat the "hard" set of opponents for extra tokens (I've beaten Pete about 23 times now, so even he's quite difficult...) or in the battle quests, I keep getting stuck on Level 16. I know it's pretty typical for a T5 to get stuck on Slavam, Jacques, FeliBot, etc. but I'd like to try and head in the right direction to beat them whenever possible. It's frustrating continually getting stuck on 16 every day. Hell, even Mama Mush gives me issues after my first win. I definitely need a better scroll ASAP.

The minotaur knocker is recommended for the following reasons:

1. Affordable earth blocking weapon. The amount of earth block depends on your pet's stats
2. Scaling weapon that can be used for pets at multiple tiers
3. small % heal not found on 99% of low tier weapons

Once your pet gets higher in tiers, the knocker is an affordable option but not necessarily the best option. Sometimes the best option is outside of people's budgets. It's great for lower tier pets because it is one of the few weapons that have a heal and blocks a very common icon type. That being said, if your opponent doesn't do earth damage then you will want to use something other than the knocker. At tier 5, you could try . It has the chance to hit pretty hard and is super affordable. It also has two mod slots.

Scrolls also play a big roll in battling. They often offer the defense your weapons lack. I would highly recommend and . Both of these scrolls are once per battle, so you will want to equip more than one. I believe the SE scroll will be cheaper if you make it at the shrine with the right ingredients.

Some really good infinite use scrolls are and , which get better when you have more health, and

could be a good alternative if your pet doesn't have enough AP or if the two scrolls I listed are too expensive.

See? I always get caught up in thinking I only need a good constant healing scroll, and that's it... because logically (at least logically to me?) I wouldn't want to use anything else and sacrifice the healing. I suppose that's a bit more of a moot point when you have something like the Cobalt Eternal Scroll, because that's a really solid blocker... but something in my brain just screams "You need that healing, idiot... don't do it!" My pet has 39AP. I definitely need to invest in at least one of those, and learn to get past my initial nervousness where that's concerned.

On the bright side, I did manage to bite the bullet and trade for an Aftershocks Scroll... so I have one of those in my set now! I also purchased the Gate Keeper Collar of Slavery to replace my Magical Love Duct Tape, and I went ahead and added the Forj Tempered Kusarigama as well, per your suggestion. I suppose I just find it difficult to come up with a way to only have 8 items in my set while still covering all the bases. I'm never sure what I should be including or taking away. I generally battle all opponents with a default battle set when it comes to my T5 pet, but maybe that's not the way to go after all.

I feel like some items are just non-negotiable in a way... having a freezer, having a blaster and/or a stealer (I have a blaster), having a full-block, having a solid healer. That's four items minimum there. If I include a bomb, that's five. If I include a defensive item like the shield, that's six. I need at least one weapon that deals out a good chunk of damage 24/7, that's seven. And I need something akin to the Freezewand or Grimfruit that does damage, but also extra healing. That's eight. I still feel like I'm missing things or cutting corners somehow. Then again, I'm not sure anything could legitimately help Farynheit beat the Level 16 onward opponents with the stats he has now either. I may have hit a roadblock there for a while, which is frustrating.

I think that's my major struggle at the moment though... balancing cost vs. potential benefits with upgrades considering there's not a lot more I could likely be doing at T5 anyway, and trying to assemble a reasonable set of 8 items that'll actually do the job well without leaving anything out.

Yeah, I think Jacques and Felibot are more T6-ish. Unless you have unlimited AP and can freeze them to death (which is difficult with Jacques since he has that anti-freeze blessing, so you need to be extremely lucky the first turn to have him not activate it). Or if you could equip unlimited Gift of the Forj or The Void scrolls, that might also help :P Though by the time you get all those scrolls and enough AP, you're probably tier 12 already xD

Mama Mush has defense disabled I think, so the best way would be to freeze her, or to heal tons.

Congrats on the Aftershocks! It's a really nice scroll! I think it heals a little bit less than the Soothing Current, but has a pretty decent attack and some defense.

For the higher tiers, I go with two infinite use attackers that also have a percentage heal on them. I pick the attackers depending on the opponent, so I can block two of the major icons it deals. Then I have the Phoenix Quill for 100% heal, Soma Tablets for blasting and the Intricate Helmet as a 100% stealer. That's 5 weapon slots used. In my default set, there is the Rapier of Error for the nice curse and the high freeze chance, and the two full blockers Shinwas Temple Shard and Rainbow Vortex. The last three are usually the ones I switch out depending on the battle. Sometimes having an extra healer is better than blocking damage for one turn, so I swap out one of the blockers for Reviver of the Lion, or swap another blocker or the rapier for the Volatile Energized Mecha and Recycle Blaster if I feel I need more healing or more blasting. With some opponents, I get rid of the Phoenix Quill alltogether, because they tend to steal a lot and ofcourse the steal the quill and use it right on the last turn where I would have otherwise killed them. Then I prefer to have an extra attacker in case one of my main attackers get stolen. I think in the past I had the Acorn Bomb instead of the Rapier, to speed up the Battle Quests a bit.

So it all kind of depends on the situation. Tier 5 doesn't have that many attackers that heal yet, so you'll probably end up using 3 slots for attackers, two that have healing and one that does a bit more damage but doesn't heal. Then the Phoenix Quill, a freezer and a blaster are most essential. Optional are the shields, 100% blocker and a bomb. It depends a bit on the opponent. If you get stuck, try a few different setups. It also depends on the kind of damage the opponent deals; if they deal a lot of physical icons, and you have a shield that blocks that, it might be worth it to use that instead of a normal attacker, but you'll lose out on some damage and/or healing, so in the end you might lose because the opponent out heals your damage.

With the freezer, you can try different strategies too. usually I use it at the start of the battle so I can safely blast in the turn that the opponent is frozen. But you can also keep it for later, so that you might have a turn to have a breather and heal up in the middle of the fight. Ofcourse this only works if the opponent doesn't have a blessing to protect against freezing.

Yeah, I have that too xD Why would I block if I could heal? But I guess the damage that you potentially block might be higher than what you could have healed. Especially if the blocking scroll covers an icon type that your weapons/shields don't cover. Usually I end up not using the Cobalt Eternal and Sancturia Exodin. That's something I still need to try and get used to.

Edit: Also, I see you didn't defeat Torroweep yet. You can unlock him by buying the from the Millionaire Center for 2 million SP. I think it's a tier 4 challenger, so you'll probably walk over him. Gives you some extra Hard tokens if you need em.

More edits: There's also Insight, unlocked by from the Millionaire Center for 4 million SP. That one is a bit harder, not sure what tier. I think you can probably get some wins. If not, then definitely at tier 6.

Even more edits: Actually, Insight's stats are pretty close to Nightshade, so you'll probably beat him. Then you can try the Rimeflare Hatchling, for 5 million SP from the Millionaire Center.

Healing and blocking are the opposites of each other, but you need both to survive. If you are healing instead of blocking, then you better be sure you are healing for than your opponent can deal damage. Sometimes though they do so many icons of damage, it's better to sacrifice the heal for blocking out more icons. After all, what does healing matter if your opponent can't do damage because you are blocking it?

Aftershocks is great but again it will get better when you have more health so the healing is more substantial. Usually for pets with low health, scrolls like morosbane that have a constant +x amount of heal are better because 7% for a pet that low health is not a lot of healing. For example, my second battle pet is tier 9 now, but I have been equipping him with the gift of the forj scroll since he has had enough AP for it. Because his health was still low, that scroll is like equipping another full healer that can't be stolen. It's not as useful now for my main battle pet that has over 6k health because the scroll only heals for a constant 1,500 HP instead of a % heal.

What is in your set really comes down to who you are facing. The only thing you could really use for all opponents is weapons and blasters. Sometimes opponents have freezing, stealing, or healing disabled. A majority of the opponents you will face now will have healing and freezing enabled so reserving a spot for each of those is always good. Full blockers make battles easier, but are not necessary. I will say the rainbow vortex you have is really nice because it has the full block and the chance to heal. My default set looked something like this at T5:

minotaur knocker, Forj Tempered Kusarigama, recycle blaster, soma tablets, rainbow vortex, reviver of the lion, phoenix quill, Icy Freezing Rod of Doom. There are better freezers than the freezing rod, like the gorgun, for tier 5 but I waited until T6 before I upgraded. There were also instances when I swapped out the knocker and the kusarigama for tier 4 weapons I had based on what block I needed or what damage I needed to do.