How many items, and how many slots?
There are 24 Held Items, and each Aniimo has one slot. That is the entire equipment system: no second slot, no rune inset, no substat reroll. The beta name was Carried Item; the live client calls it a Held Item.
Quality does not change the item's identity. A Rare Ferocious Fang and a Legendary Ferocious Fang are the same item with more of its effect unlocked. The practical consequence is that duplicates are never dead weight: an unwanted copy can be fed as upgrade material.
The system unlocks at Student III. Before that title, Alpha drops are limited to Rare quality. From Student III the drop table becomes 75 percent Rare and 25 percent Epic, and from Wayfarer III Rare disappears entirely, leaving 80 percent Epic and 20 percent Legendary. Targeted purchases also exist: the Pawprint Shop in Astra sells any of the 24 at Legendary quality for 250 Paw Coin, with no random roll.
What do the rarity bands mean?
| Band | CP value | What it unlocks | Practical meaning |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rare | 50 CP | Base effect only | The stat line works, but the conditional payoff is missing. |
| Epic | 100 CP | Base plus core effect | The item starts doing its job: per-level stat growth, extra damage window, shield, or heal transfer. |
| Legendary | 200 CP | Base, core and advanced effect | Full behavior, including upgrades to the core condition. |
Because the core effect only appears at Epic, a Rare copy of a conditional item is close to useless. Do not spend cores upgrading a Rare Heartseeker Pendant; wait for an Epic or buy the Legendary directly.
Which item for each role
The client data contains a recommended item field, and 24 items are chosen 126 times across 95 recommended builds. The distribution is heavily concentrated: four items cover almost every recommendation.
| Role | Default | When to swap |
|---|---|---|
| DPS | Ferocious Fang: damage increase, plus ATK per level | Crit build: Heartseeker Pendant. Ultimate build: Capacitous Battery. Repeat-skill build: Echoing Grimoire. Basic-attack build: Fission Needles. |
| BREAK | Gargantuan Horn: BREAK increase, plus BREAK per level | Tanking hits: Giant Tortoise Shell. Counter-hit loop: Avenging Gear. Starved for energy: Spirited Feather. |
| Heal | Spirited Feather: REGEN increase, plus REGEN per level | Overheal team: Miraculous Fleece. Emergency slot: Rekindling Feather. |
| REGEN | Spirited Feather | Frequent skills: Auspicious Bell. Water map: Pearl of the Sea. |
| Support | Spirited Feather | Element-specific teams: match the element's damage item. Ambush setup: Ambusher's Cloak. |
Three conditional families are worth knowing because they define whole builds: opening burst items that pay when the target is above 70 percent HP, execution items that pay below 30 percent, and the one-item gamble, Supreme Elixir, which adds 50 percent final damage at the cost of setting maximum HP to 1. Supreme Elixir on a Support is a wasted slot.
Two classifications commonly get mixed up. Heritage Amulet is one of the 24 Held Items, a shield-on-hit defensive item. The "inheritance charm" mentioned in older Inheritance notes may or may not be the same object, and the game does not label it clearly. Prismana Orb, Lumin Amber and the collectible palace items are materials or collectibles, not equipment. The materials page sorts those out.
What does an upgrade cost?
Upgrading is linear and cheap to reverse:
- 15 levels. Each level adds a percentage to the item's base effect, and level 15 doubles it.
- 250 experience per core. A Held Item Core comes in Basic, Common and Advanced grades; duplicate items also work as fodder.
- 6,750 experience to max. That is 27 basic cores if every one is worth 250.
- 80 percent refund on reset. Resetting is therefore a reasonable experiment, not a commitment.
One caution about stacking: a maximum-level item does not make a Rare copy better than an Epic copy. The rarity band controls which effects exist; the level only scales what already exists. Upgrade an Epic before you invest in a Rare.
How did the 29 October patch change items?
The patch touched Held Items in three separate ways, and only one of them was a direct item change:
- Bug fixes. Echoing Grimoire's stacking trigger was repaired to match its description; Capacitous Battery no longer fires when a teammate uses an ultimate; Irisalis's exclusive Floral Rainbow Feather skill was fixed.
- Launch balance. The per-level growth on the four recommended items was reduced from 0.8 to 0.7 at launch. That is an older change than the October patch, but it is why older build posts quote slightly higher numbers.
- Damage formula rework. The official direction is that non-DPS roles now benefit from ATK. The community-derived coefficients are: BREAK effective ATK equals ATK plus 0.42 times (BREAK minus half of ATK), capped at 2.2 times ATK; Support, REGEN and Heal use the larger of their own ATK and 7 times min(level, 60) plus 0.3 times ATK.
The formula change is the one that alters builds. A BREAK unit below 1.88 times ATK gains more damage from ATK than from BREAK, while BREAK still governs how fast the guard bar breaks. Heal and Support units no longer gain much from stacking ATK past the level correction. The full combat explanation sits on the Twine and BREAK page.
Six species received a free reset window from 29 October 04:00 to 13 November 04:00: Tuckin, Panpanta, Sherro, Hexxin, Inferlupa and Ignitis, once per species and form. The reset returns experience items, Resonance and Star materials, Potential materials and Capafruit uses. If you invested in those six, redo the points before the window closes.
How items stack with species buffs
Held Items are one layer among several, and the game keeps them separate rather than merging them into a single stat:
| Layer | Source | Scope |
|---|---|---|
| Species stat line | Base six stats of the species and form | Permanent |
| Potential | Innate six-stat roll plus Capability Awakening | Permanent, per individual |
| Resonance and Star Rank | Training investment | Permanent, moves with Inheritance |
| Personality | Personality letter modifiers | Permanent until rerolled with a Psyche Fruit |
| Held Item | One item, base plus core plus advanced effect | Permanent while equipped |
| Skill and mode buffs | Active skills, route modifiers, Sim gizmos | Temporary; Sim and Interlink buffs leave with the mode |
Unpublished formula The client does not document whether percentage lines add or multiply. Community testers treat the stat percentages as additive on the underlying stat, but no official statement confirms it. Do not present a build as a solved equation; present the item, the trigger and the role, and let the numbers follow.
Two modes switch the layer off entirely. Egg Heist replaces the equipment layer with in-mode gear bought using Shell Coin, and Giga-Egg PvP disables Held Item stat bonuses while forcing equipped effects to behave at Legendary quality. Carrying a maxed item into either mode does not carry its numbers. The Egg Heist guide covers the in-mode economy.
What to upgrade first
Width before height. Four Aniimo with the correct Epic item beat one Aniimo with a maxed Legendary and three empty slots.
- Buy or farm the four role items at Epic. Ferocious Fang, Gargantuan Horn, Spirited Feather and Giant Tortoise Shell cover almost every team.
- Match the second slot to the loop. A crit DPS wants Heartseeker Pendant; a burst opener wants Vanguard's Whistle; a healer with overheal wants Miraculous Fleece.
- Push one main DPS item to 15. The doubling is large enough to notice on boss damage.
- Leave conditional items at a low level. A terrain item used on one map does not deserve cores that a second role item could use.
For who should hold what inside a specific team, the team building guide covers the three-slot shell, and the tier list shows which damage dealers are worth the first maxed item.