Best Free-to-Play Teams — The Mantis Core

You do not need a wallet to clear Aniimo's launch content. The community settled on a free-to-play core within days of release, and it is good enough to take through everything currently in the game: a mantis-led comp that answers every role question in the team building guide with creatures you can catch, earn or pick for free.

Here is the roster, both versions, and how to raise each piece.

Version 1 — the starting four (pre-Dreamwing)

Slot	Creature	Role
Main DPS	Verdant Blade Mantis	Attacker
Breaker	Silverdrake	Breaker
Sustain	Glaciva	Healer / damage amplifier
Battery / flex	Sun Priest	Battery / secondary DPS

Verdant Blade Mantis — the dark mantis — is the free-to-play mainstay Attacker of the launch meta. Crucially, the boss-form mantis you catch in the wild comes with its skill enhancement already unlocked, meaning its signature skill arrives in the enhanced area-effect version without you spending a single Champion's Seal on a pact (pact rules in carried gear & pacts). It brings mobility — stealth and displacement skills — that makes both boss phases and open-world clearing fast.

Silverdrake is your Breaker, and the friendliest one in the game for new players: you can catch it as a wild spawn in the Redrock Highlands (see its dex page), and its Break game triggers reliably without demanding high APM. Pair it with the Behemoth Horn carried gear when you get one — allocation rules in the gear guide.

Glaciva sustains the team and amplifies it. The iridescent version — which the launch reward lets you pick for free — combines group healing with a 15% team-wide damage amplification, which is why it tops the Training Program picks ranking. The non-iridescent version still does the job early; upgrade path is capture or event.

Sun Priest rounds out the starter four as a Battery with a twist: its kit includes a fast energy-refill skill (Bathing Holy Light) that keeps the mantis cycling, and its damage is respectable enough to act as a secondary Attacker. It has one more trick — covered below.

Version 2 — the graduation (Dreamwing replaces Sun Priest)

Slot	Creature	Role
Main DPS	Verdant Blade Mantis	Attacker
Breaker	Silverdrake	Breaker
Sustain	Glaciva	Healer / amplifier
Battery	Dreamwing	Battery

Dreamwing — the iridescent butterfly — is the launch meta's best pure Battery, full stop. It refills energy fast enough that the mantis never starves, and it does so while the rest of the team keeps full uptime. The trade: Dreamwing is a rare spawn, so treat Version 1 as the plan and Version 2 as the graduation when the butterfly finally lands in your dex.

The Sun Priest's flexibility trick

Why keep the Sun Priest in mind even after graduation? Elemental coverage. When a stage hard-counters dark damage — or your mantis keeps getting punished — transfer the mantis's carried gear to the Sun Priest and let it carry the DPS slot for that fight. Gear stats transfer freely between creatures (only pacts lock); this one habit turns a counter-pick stage into an inconvenience instead of a wall.

Raising the core without waste

1. Potential points: attack and energy on the mantis; break and energy on Silverdrake; energy on your Battery; health-first on Glaciva. Stop any line the moment it starts consuming gold materials. Full rules: potential & resonance.
2. Resonance ranks: rank 5 is enough for the core four; rank 6 costs Cosmos Crystals you will want elsewhere.
3. Carried gear: the free Beast's Fang from the story plus the five-day login calendar covers your Attacker. Do not pact it yet — see the pact priorities below.
4. Inheritance note: training on the electric Spark Mantis inherits to the Verdant Blade Mantis (levels, stars, potential fruits) — a legal double-dip for anyone who leveled both. Gear does not inherit.

Pact priorities for this comp

If and when you spend Champion's Seals:

• First and best pact in the meta: Beast's Fang → Spark Mantis (the electric one). It is the highest-value skill-enhancement unlock in the launch window.
• Skip: pact on Helmbrave — its enhancement barely moves real fights.
• Wild bosses need none — your mantis and Silverdrake-class bosses arrive pre-enhanced.

The reasoning and the full decision table live in the carried gear & pacts guide.

Matchups and variants

• Against break-resistant bosses: swap Glaciva's amplifier window into the Break phase for maximum burst value.
• Against swarms: the mantis's enhanced area skill plus Sun Priest AoE covers waves; Dreamwing Version 2 turns this trivial.
• Against dark-counter stages: the Sun Priest gear-transfer trick, or graduate temporarily to the dark team structure, which shares most of these pieces.

Why this comp endures

Every slot is free or farmable, every role is answered, and every piece has a stated upgrade path that does not invalidate the others. You assemble it in your first week, graduate it in your first month, and its skeleton — Attacker, Breaker, Healer-amplifier, Battery — is the same skeleton every endgame roster uses. Learn it once, and the whole combat system opens up.