Guides › Guide
Aniimo early journey: starters, traversal and Egg Heist
Lunara or Helion is a permanent pick, and an Egg Heist death costs you your backpack. Here is what to catch early and what your first three matches protect.
The short version
- Your starter is Lunara or Helion, and the choice is permanent: you cannot change it without restarting, and the one you skip cannot be caught in the wild later.
- Catch what you meet early instead of rushing past. Specific Aniimo unlock traversal skills such as climbing, digging, swimming, diving and flying, and those skills open new routes in areas you have already visited.
- Dying or failing to extract in Egg Heist costs you unslotted loot, equipped backpacks and anything outside your safe pocket.
- Beginner protection keeps your backpacks and loot safe on death for your first three Egg Heist matches, at lower ranks.
- Keys only work in Egg Heist if they are in your character inventory or backpack before you enter.
The first hours of Aniimo are mostly about two things: picking up creatures that make the world bigger, and not throwing away gear in Egg Heist before you understand how it works. Neither is hard, but each has a point where a mistake cannot be taken back.
The first of those points arrives right away, before any tutorial has taught you anything. After that the game slows down, and the best advice is to slow down with it.
Lunara or Helion: the starter choice you cannot undo
The first major decision in Aniimo is your starter companion, and it is a choice between Lunara and Helion. You get one. The pick cannot be altered without restarting the game.
The part that catches people out is what happens to the other one. The creature you do not choose cannot be caught later in the wild, so there is no picking one now and collecting the second on the road. Treat it as a permanent roster decision, because it is one.
Catch what you meet, starting with Emberpup
Aniimo is a game about catching and collecting creatures, which the game calls Aniimos. The early quests double as the tutorial: they cover movement, catching, twining with Aniimo, combat and elemental counters, so you learn the systems by playing rather than from a menu.
The first Aniimo you catch during that tutorial is Emberpup. It is not a powerhouse. It has one of the lowest base stat totals in the game, which fits its early Lumin stage: HP 67, BREAK 40, M.DEF 57, P.DEF 60, REGEN 68. Its attack is not settled; it appears as both 90 and 86, and the total of 382 assumes 90.
The usual advice for new players is to catch the creatures you run into early rather than rushing past them in search of something better. That is not sentiment. As the next section shows, some of those early catches are what let you reach parts of the map at all. One limit worth knowing: Omega Aniimo cannot be captured, so do not spend resources trying.
Traversal: how your Aniimo open up the map
Movement in Aniimo is tied to your collection. Different Aniimo grant specific traversal skills: gliding, climbing, digging, sprinting, swimming, diving underwater and flying. Bolty, for example, has level two climbing, which lets it scale walls and surfaces.
This is why catching early pays off. Capturing specific Aniimo unlocks new traversal abilities in the world, and those abilities open new options in areas you have already visited. A cliff you walked past in the first hour may be a route once you have the right climber.
Not everything depends on creatures. Your character can swim across bodies of water, and a hoverboard lets you move faster over ground in open areas.
The common advice is to explore and clear the map challenges you come across rather than sprinting through content. There are things to find off the main path. One hidden cave sits near Beast Fang Ridge, by the waterfall where the river meets the ocean.
Aniimo Egg Heist: what you lose when you die
Egg Heist is where the early game can cost you something real. Dying or failing to extract means losing your carried inventory and any unprotected gear. In practice that is all unslotted loot, any equipped backpacks, and every item not in your safe pocket.
You do get a grace period. Beginner protection is active at lower ranks and stops you losing backpacks and loot on death for your first three Egg Heist matches. Use those matches to learn the mode, not to haul your best gear in on the assumption the protection lasts. It does not.
One rule to get right before you queue: keys must be in your character inventory or your backpack before you enter Egg Heist, or you cannot use them. A key left in storage is a key you do not have.
three
Egg Heist matches with beginner protection
The story path and Homeland
Main story quests are how the rest of the game switches on. Progressing them leads you to the Polaris Institute and unlocks features and systems that start out locked, so keep the story moving even while you explore.
Homeland is worth starting early, because its activities are how you level up the RV. The RV expeditions have their own guide on this site; the one early trap to know is that accurate RV upgrade material counts only show while you are inside the Homeland. From outside they display as zero, which is not the same as having none.
Two smaller notes for when you get there. The quality of items you offer during ecosystem nurturing no longer decides the quality of a wild surge, so offering better items does not get you better surges. And once your Dewy family line is supplying enough honey, a common recommendation is to switch production to Premium Rose Incense.
Where to start
Choose between Lunara and Helion knowing it is final. Catch freely, explore instead of rushing, and come back to old areas as new traversal skills arrive. Keep the main story moving so locked systems open. In Egg Heist, treat your three protected matches as practice, and check your keys are in your inventory or backpack before you enter.
Most of this page was re-checked against the released game on 27 September 2026. The rest has not been re-confirmed since release.