Releasing Aniimo by mistake: refunds, locks and checks

Look at four things before you register or release an Aniimo: its Alpha status, any special or weather form, its potential grade (Common, Good, Elite or Perfect), and whether you need it for something. Checking the grade stops you throwing away one with high innate potential just because it looked like every other copy.

Don't treat Alpha status as a stat check. An Alpha doesn't get higher base stats and isn't guaranteed high Potential. Potential is rolled when the creature is caught, so an Alpha can come in above or below the standard for its species. Look at the grade itself.

Forms are the easy thing to miss. A weather form, an evolution, or a form you need for a split evolution or the homestead can look like just another duplicate in a full box. Auto-releasing without reviewing your catches is exactly how those disappear.

Also keep some ordinary catches. Common and good rarity Aniimo are the workers your Homeland tasks run on. If you release all of them, Homeland is short of hands.

Releasing or recycling an Aniimo from storage refunds most of what you put into it straight away, as Farewell Gifts. That includes auto-releasing at the research console. The refund covers EXP fruit such as growth seeds, Growth Buds and Growth Flowers, plus other levelling consumables. Growth Flowers grant 5,000 EXP each, so they're worth getting back, and you do.

The catch is everything that isn't levelling. Prismatic Stones, Resonance consumables, Star Sand and Star Essence are not refunded on release. They only come back if you reset or transfer those upgrades before the creature goes. If you release first, they're gone.

Capability Awakening has its own way out. Resetting it refunds all of the materials invested in it, Stardust included. Whether that refund is restricted below level 60 is not settled yet, so test it on a creature you don't mind before relying on it.

Capability Fruit (also called Kappa Fruit) is different from all of the above. Each Aniimo can eat only one in its lifetime, and the fruit changes its innate stats. A creature that has eaten one is not the same as a fresh copy of its species, so look at it again before you treat it as a duplicate.

Lock an Aniimo or mark it with the star symbol and it can't be transferred or released by accident. That includes mass disposal. Do it as soon as you find something worth keeping: a good grade, a weather form, a member of your story team. The lock also keeps auto-release away from the forms you'd struggle to replace.

The full workings of the box, locks and releasing have their own page. The rule for this one is short: lock first, then clear storage.

Levelling up uses upgrade resources, and a lot of what you spend never comes back on release. The usual advice is to put your resources into the small team you use for the story, not to spread them evenly across every creature you catch. Upgrades split across a whole box don't make any one team member stronger, and they leave you spent materials sitting on creatures you'll probably release.

Grade affects cost, not the ceiling. A lower-grade Aniimo can reach the same maximum stats as a higher-grade one. It just needs more resources to get there. So if you want a better starting point, catch for it rather than paying for it. Potential is rolled at capture, so catching the same species again gives you a fresh roll. The recommended approach is around 20 to 30 copies of the base form to find one with perfect potential. Then release the rest, after checking each one, and before you've spent anything on them.

05Where to start

Lock anything worth keeping before you clear storage. Check the grade, form and Alpha status on everything else. If a creature has Prismatic Stones, Resonance, Star Sand or Star Essence in it, reset or transfer those upgrades before you release it. Spend your materials on your story team and catch more copies to get better potential, so most of your releases cost you nothing.