Your first hour in Honkai: Nexus Anima
A sensible path for your opening session: bond a few Anima, fill the board, and let synergies do the work.
You start in the seaside town of Iia, on the Reality Plane. This is your home base and the gentle part of the game, so take it slowly and get a feel for moving around.
You don't pull Anima from a banner. You meet them out in the open world and bond with them through Bond Encounters, also called taming. So the first thing to do is head out, find a few Anima, and bond with them. Aim for a small starting group rather than chasing any one creature.
Once you have some, put them on your board. You can place up to nine Anima, and they fight on their own once battle starts. You don't control each move, so the work is in who you pick and how they sit together.
Here's where it gets interesting. Each Anima has one Aspect (its element) and one Trait (its combat role). When you stack Anima that share an Aspect, or share a Trait, you switch on team buffs. As you fill the board, watch which buffs light up and lean into the ones that fire.
You also bring three characters, called Animasters, and one of them is your leader. Set a leader that fits the team you're building before you head into a fight.
A simple first-hour plan: bond a handful of Anima in and around Iia, fill your board, watch the synergies switch on, then pick a leader. For more depth, see the strategy guide, test boards in the Comp Builder, and browse creatures in the Anima database.
All of this is provisional pre-release information drawn from the 2025 beta and community sources, so expect details to shift once the game is properly out.