Budclaw and burrowing Aniimo: how to fight and use tunnelers

Budclaw is in the Break role, and it's a capable one. Its base BREAK stat is 84.

The stat only tells you part of it. Budclaw's trait rewards a tunneling playstyle by raising its BREAK efficiency. In practice, a Budclaw that spends its time underground is doing more than one that doesn't. If you want it to break well, play it as a tunneler.

If you're still asking what Break is in Aniimo and how efficiency and breaker buffs stack, that system has its own guide on this site. What matters here is simpler: Budclaw's efficiency bonus is tied to burrowing, so the traversal and the damage come from the same habit.

Every Aniimo gives you its own traversal ability while twining. The list covers sprinting, climbing vertical walls, swimming, diving, gliding, flying and burrowing underground, and the ability you get depends on which Aniimo you're twined with. Budclaw gives you burrowing.

In the wild, Budclaws burrow to hide and to travel. When you twine with one, you get the same move, which lets you go under terrain instead of over or around it.

Don't mix this up with breaking through obstacles. Magmarex has a mobility skill that smashes walls, boulders and the environmental rocks that guard items. That is a different tool. Magmarex breaks the obstacle; Budclaw goes underneath it.

Burrowing works against you too. Minespine can burrow and attack while underground, and unless you have a specific unearthing attack you can't target it while it's down there. If you bring an ordinary moveset, it can hit you while you can't hit back.

The Tunnel ability gives you the counter. Its official description says Pound skills can knock the tunneling Aniimo into the air. Before you take on something that fights from below, check that someone on your team has a Pound skill. It's the one answer the game names.

Some burrowers aren't fighting you at all. Hummins burrow into the ground when startled, so if you rush one it will dig in and leave.

Here tunneling stops being optional. You reach the Alpha Minespine cavern by tunneling underneath it, using an Aniimo such as Budclaw. Without a burrower you can't get in.

Other Alpha lairs are underground but use a different route. Alpha Geoclaw is in a cave near the giant hole and the river, and you reach it through the pathway that Earthquake Revelation opens. How to fight and catch Alphas once you reach them is covered in this site's Alpha Aniimo guide.

05Where to start

Catch a Budclaw early and keep it on your team. It covers Break, its trait rewards you for playing it underground, and it's how you get into the Alpha Minespine cavern. Before any fight with a burrowed enemy, bring a Pound skill, because an Aniimo underground can't be targeted without one.