I put this section of the guide off the longest, because it's the most abstract in terms of what constitues "budget", since some of the only upgrade options in a tier are very pricy, but some are also so good that they justify the price. I already covered Budget sets for tiers 1-4, and the endgame guide which at least gives a good approach to the budget side of things, and an order to add the more expensive things into your set.

The good news is that for tiers 1-9, there aren't a ton of once per battle items to really consider. You start to get access to more and more options for different slots, but many of them are not huge upgrades. Deluxe Death Shard is an upgrade over Gorgun, but not a huge one. It's an upgrade you can make if your not on a budget, but using a Gorgun vs a Deluxe Death Shard has probably never lost anyone a battle. Even my endgame freezer of choice the Intricate Energized Helmet isn't a massive upgrade over a gorgun.

Healers are a little trickier on a budget. As I mention in the T1-4 guide just buy the phoenix quill now, you'll use it forever. The other healers I caution people on though. Most of them are 40-60mil each, and while they can be very beneficial in the midgame, they start to get very mediocre in the late game. One possible budget option is the UltimaPlus Tag which is a 25% healer, but also counts as your stealer. Amulet of Drakkonis is ~20mil and availible in one of the collections so it will always be obtainable around that price, but thats still a decent chunk of sP. The good news it that it does scale, and is probably the next cheapest viable healer. The One ring is probably one you should skip, since it's great until you hit 2K HP, but gets severe diminishing returns after that point, and at 60mil, isn't a great deal. Reviver of the Lion is a good healer, but its expensive, and as you progress you end up relying on OPB healers less and less. If you do buy it, wait until there is a time-limited challenger like a plot or morostide challenger that you are very close to beating, but just can't eek out the last win. The super budget option would be a rainbow quill, but that really is only viable early in T5, and quickly gets outpaced as soon as you have a % based healer.

You also gain access to Blasters at this stage as well. Recycle Blaster is a staple that should be in every single t5+ armory, it gets used from t5 up until your pet caps. Soma Tablets is another essential weapon that you will use between T5 and capping, but much more expensive. Since it is something that you can use forever I recommend picking it up early. It really can get you wins you wouldn't otherwise get. You can try to swap it out for a cheap stealer like KT Ring from T4 or Blackmoon Hand Blaster from T2, but stealing is much less effective than blasting, and the cube doesn't stick around in your opponent inventory to give you multiple junk turns from the opponent.

Once you hit T5 I think the safe minimum set to have would be these 5 items:

That leaves our set needing 2 constants and a OPB item to set up the freeze/blast with so that the set flows smoothly. With the option to at least try out Blackmoons Blaster in place of the KT ring, and Soma tablets being the ultimate upgrade for that slot. Then, Amulet of Drakkonis or Reviver of the Lion as the upgrade paths for the Rainbow Quill.

For constants, there are a couple different routes that you can take that are reasonable. Getting Freezewand of doom at T5, combining it with Reborn wand of doom in T6 to make a Reborn Icewand of doom, and keeping that until T10 is a viable strategy. It doesn't deal a ton of damage in the later tiers, but in terms of battles there probably won't be many battles that will hinge on having a different (inexpensive) weapon than the RIWoD.

For the second constant it gets a little trickier. In Tier 5, there are no good second healers. So if you want a second healer you need to shell out 100mil+ on a cash shop scaling weapon or drop back down to Tier 3 or 4 and grab the Stinging Gauntlet or Dark Matter Staff, neither of which are great options, and the DMS is relatively expensive for what it does. The other option would be to get a non healing 2nd weapon which your best option would probably be the Malevolent Grenade or the Feather Duster which are availible out of the battle shop and essentially free 30 icon constants.

Tier 6 for a second healer is not much better. I think it is very reasonable to not upgrade this slot in this tier. Focus on getting the reborn Icewand of Doom as your main healer. If you are dead set or bored and want to make an upgrade here, you get access to the Super-Pie Magician which is currently in the crystal shop for 700 cystals, but on shop search at 10mil. It's the best cheap (for now) second healer we get access too. In terms of raw damage output Forj Tempered Machete does 30-36 icons and has a chance to activate Parched and Singed blessings/curses for under 3mil. It will also scale up a little more in T7 as well. Frost Thorn does decent damage and can be made for less than 1.5mil right now. Although honestly i'm not sure I'd reccomend any of these things.

Tier 7 we finally get access to a cheap healer again in the Arrow Harpoon. It is a fixed healer 100HP though so check to make sure it will actually heal more than whatever it is your upgrading from. The other very cheap budget option in Tier 7 is the Panzer Hydra Blade

Tier 8 Large Gutting Knife is a cheap healer here, but it's about to be reoutclassed by the scaling Panzer Hydra Blade for T9.

Tier 9 Panzer Hydra Blade scales up to be better than LArge gutting knife again in T9.

Then the last slot that I usually use is a once per battle item in the first slot so that you can set up the first 2 turns of the battle without clicking any weapons so that the first 3 turns with preselect look like this: Turn 1 OPB + Freezer Turn 2 Recycle Blaster + Soma Tablers/KT Ring Turn 3 Constants x2 The best weapons for this are usually weapons that set up a blessing for the rest of the game like Shrine of Apollonia in T3 or Mecha in T11. In t5 through 9 I usually use Bombs in that slot just because there aren't many incredible useful blessings to set up. The only thing that's important here is that it be a once per battle item to make pre-select flow nicely and save you time. For Tier 5 and 6 I usually like Shrine of Apollonia or Bauble Bomb, since they are cheap and set up a blessing/curse fora decent length of time. Iron Fireside Lantern is probably the best in slot item for tier 5 and 6, but not much use after that. If you have some extra sP to throw at weapons you can consider it but its probably the least efficient item I list in this guide. Tier 7 Item Hunter's bomb is great for its price, with Acorn Bomb being the expensive upgrade that will last over time. And Tier 8 and 9 don't really have anything better.

One last thing that I would touch on is that on a budget, the 100% blockers are all terrible. They are incredibly niche, but if your on a budget I would see if I could borrow them instead of outright buying them at 100mil+. There are much better upgrades you can make. They can get you some early wins against Cursed Effigy the Tormented, but if you do battle quests for a couple of weeks, you will outstat CEtT quickly enough to get wins without them. I would only consider them if they get the price down below 20mil.

Putting that all together here are some example sets:

Tier 5 [Item=Shrine of Apollonia][Item=Malevolent Grenade]

Tier 6

Tier 7 High HP

Tier 7 Even Stats

Tier 8

Tier 9 (No changes from T8)

Altogether the entire cost of every weapon in the example sets is a total of ~115mil if you get the battle shop weapons from the battle shop, with over half of the budget going towards Soma Tablets, they are that good. Using only the KT Ring, the entire set comes down to ~55mil.

Great guide!

I personally don't own a Dark Matter Staff, so I'm not sure whether the stats on subetalodge are correct. It seems to deal 14-16 damage and heals 20 hp. There's currently one available in shops for 4 mil, with the next one being closer to 7 mil. With these prices, I'd say that the Malevolent Grimfruit can be an alternative, having a couple at 3.5 mil in the shop search at the moment (probably not for long if it gets mentioned in the guide!). It deals 15-20 damage and heals 40 hp. I got a soft spot for the Malevolent Grimfruit, since it started my battling career <3

Malevolent Grimfruit counts as a healer unfortunately so it can't be used with the freezewand. The Dark Matter Staff can be.

Malevolent Grimfruit is a decent very short term budget option, but you need to eventually buy the freezewand anyways to make RIWoD, which if your doing things on a budget, your almost definately going to do.

Oh, you're right. I didn't notice that the staff wasn't categorized as a healer. I guess that does limit the Grimfruit to t4.

Not sure if this breaks necro rules but the advice in this thread + the set advice in random threads from and got me to 10 wins on Brunhilde and 25 on Angrybeard just before the event ended! Thank you guys so much for being so helpful <3

No probblem. It probably breaks the rules technically, but I've bumped my years old guide for people before and they don't usually get locked when they are still relavent.

TBH I'm a little surprised this isn't pinned. but it also is a little out of date since they changed Benevolent Grenade to T10.

[edit] Updated to remove refernces to benevolent grendate

Yeah that's part of the reason I replied here tbh lol, hope more people get to see it even as it gets later. I was wondering about that grenade! Shame they changed it. Oh! Also both the and the count as healers in my set now, I don't think they can be equipped together :/

thanks for the guides, again lmao Wanted to ask re:High End Weapon Sets for tier 1 - 9 Just wondering why the Abaddon wasn't mentioned for the legendary combo. Does 2 more icons and also has a small chance to steal along with the % heal. Maybe it's the blessing > curse? Or are dark icons not good?

I'm planning on getting all the legendaries, so I'm not necessarily debating on which one to buy. Just wanted to know what the main difference was c:

Interesting, I wonder if thats new? Purple Spider Squeaky toy seems to be a healer now too (or maybe it always was and i'm just forgetful...)

Guess Panzer Hydra blade is just straight OP now from 7-9 on a budget now.