Managing Your Collection: Box, Locking and Releasing

The research station menu has filter options that batch release Aniimo by grade. You can set it to clear out Common, Good and Elite catches automatically, and it will leave Sparkling Aniimo alone while it does.

The built-in protection is wider than that one filter. Alpha, shiny (Sparkling) and Prismana Aniimo are protected from both automatic and batch release. You cannot lose one of those to a careless setting.

The catch is everything else. Auto-releasing catches without reviewing them can discard special forms such as weather forms. It can also discard evolutions, and forms you need for split evolutions or for the homestead. None of those count as protected, so a grade filter will treat a rare weather form as just another Common.

That makes the auto-release settings worth checking carefully every time you change them. The cost of a wrong setting is an Aniimo you wanted and no longer have.

The fix for everything the protections miss is the lock. Any Aniimo can be locked or marked with a star symbol, and that stops it being transferred or released by accident. It holds during mass disposal too, which is the moment it matters.

The habit worth building is simple. When you catch a weather form, an evolution you are saving, or anything earmarked for a split evolution or the homestead, lock it straight away. Then the batch tools can do their job without you auditing every row.

Before you register or release an Aniimo, look at three things: whether it is an Alpha, whether it has a special or weather form, and its potential grade. The grades run Common, Good, Elite and Perfect. The point of checking is to make sure nothing with high innate potential goes in the bin.

When you are handing in a large catch, such as an Outbreak haul, Perfect is the appraisal grade worth keeping. The rest of that pile is what the release filters are built for.

Shinies are easy to spot. A shiny Aniimo carries a distinct icon, with a rainbow border and animated sparkles, so you will not mistake one for an ordinary catch while scrolling.

Unwanted or duplicate catches can be released or recycled, and either route pays you something. Releasing or recycling a captured or stored Aniimo, auto-release at the research console included, immediately refunds most of what you invested in it as Farewell Gifts. That covers coins, credits, EXP items such as growth seeds, Growth Buds and Growth Flowers, and other levelling resources.

It does not cover everything. Prismatic Stones, Resonance consumables, Star Sand and Star Essence are not refunded on release. If you want those back, reset or transfer the upgrades first, then release. Skip that step and the materials go with the creature.

Recycling by analysis is the low-value end. Common through Elite rarities return only a few credits that way, so analysis is for clearing space rather than earning.

Releasing also earns training points, and those have a real use: Mega Anipods can be bought in the shop for 60 training points. A steady habit of clearing duplicates turns into better capture tools.

Your active combat team holds up to four Aniimo: the main starter plus three others, and you can swap between them during combat. Everything else lives in a box system. You can save up to eight preset battle party rosters in Aniimo Management, give each one a custom name, and switch between them during exploration.

The Explore tab in the same menu sets which Aniimo deploy automatically for climbing, flying and swimming. It is worth setting once so traversal does not depend on whoever happens to be in your party.

On an individual Aniimo's page, the star icon tab shows its skills, abilities and passives. Evolution starts from that creature's management screen, using a button next to the level-up option. One thing that trips people up: an Aniimo in your party cannot be used for Inherit until you remove it from the party.

The in-game Dex works as your collection index, cataloguing what you have captured along with species details. It is a quick way to see what you already own before deciding a duplicate can go.

Releasing is not the only answer to a full box. Aniimo storage capacity can be increased through character upgrades. Your backpack can be expanded too, with larger backpacks bought from the store as your player rank and currency increase.

During the Global Closed Beta, the Bond Pact: Seal Your Aniimo event let testers seal one Aniimo inside an egg. That removed it from Aniimo Management so it could hatch and be reclaimed on the same account after the official launch. If you took part, that sealed Aniimo is the one beta creature meant to carry over.

07Where to start

Lock anything with a weather form, a pending evolution or a homestead use before you touch the batch filters. Reset or transfer Prismatic Stones, Resonance consumables, Star Sand and Star Essence before you release an invested Aniimo. After that, let auto-release clear the Commons and spend the training points on Mega Anipods.