Is ANANTA a gacha game?
No. ANANTA has no character gacha — not a weakened version, not a cosmetic-only banner. Zero.
Developer Naked Rain and publisher NetEase have built their entire pitch for the January 15, 2027 launch around this one promise: every playable character in ANANTA is earned by playing the game, and the money you spend goes to cosmetics only. This page collects what that actually means, where it was confirmed, and how the unlock system works in practice.
What NetEase and Naked Rain have confirmed
The no-gacha commitment is not a rumor or a datamine — it is the official line, repeated at every major beat of the game's marketing. It was part of the original Project Mugen reveal, it survived the 2024 rebrand to ANANTA, and it was re-confirmed in the release-date announcement that locked in the January 15, 2027 global launch across PC, PlayStation 5, iOS, and Android. You can verify the current official position in two places: the official ANANTA website and the NetEase Games news channel.
For a game monetized as a free-to-play live service, dropping character gacha is a genuine structural break. It means no wish-style currency funnel, no limited-time character banners, no 50/50 losses, and no reason to log in "to not lose pity". We consider it the single most important fact about ANANTA's economy, and we keep our news timeline watching for any change to that position.
How you unlock characters in ANANTA instead
Characters join your roster the way party members did in classic single-player RPGs: you meet them, you play their story, they stay. The three confirmed acquisition channels are:
- 1.Main story recruitment — each character joins at a specific campaign milestone. Taffy, for example, is one of the first recruits in the Nova City opening arc.
- 2.City events and faction assignments — side content across Nova City's districts recruits characters who will not appear in the main line.
- 3.Exploration — hidden encounter chains off the beaten path reward players who actually use the traversal system.
Once unlocked, a character is permanent, full stop — no duplicate-shard system, no star-rating re-rolls, no "constellation" copy grind. We maintain a per-character unlock route table and update it as routes are confirmed.
What ANANTA sells instead of gacha
A free-to-play game still has to make money, and ANANTA's answer is cosmetics: character outfits, vehicle skins and decals, housing furniture, and battle-pass style vanity tracks. None of it touches combat stats. The practical consequence is that the strongest account and the luckiest account are the same account — progression is a function of time played, not money spent. Our currency guide breaks down how golvent and the premium token work if you want the full economy picture.
What no gacha means on day one
Launch day economics look different here, and it is worth spelling out. In a gacha launch, most players start the game with two or three characters and a currency plan; in ANANTA, the opening story recruits a core squad quickly, and the question shifts from "who can I afford" to "who fits my play style". Squads are built from the full roster you have earned, and our team comp guide starts from that assumption.
It also changes the rhythm of updates. Gacha games sell new characters through limited banners, which is why their calendars revolve around patch-day pulls. ANANTA's equivalent moment is a story chapter or city event that introduces a recruit — the excitement is content-shaped rather than lottery-shaped. Whether that holds up as a live-service cadence is the single most interesting question about launch, and we will answer it with data: the tier list and unlock tracker both update within a week of every new character.
Gacha vs no gacha: what actually changes for you
Compared with hoarding pulls in a gacha title — say, the wish system in Genshin Impact, which we compare in detail in ANANTA vs Genshin — three daily habits disappear: saving currency for a future banner, doing dailies to refill that currency, and deciding whether a character is "worth" rolling. In ANANTA the decision is replaced by a question with a definite answer: which story chapter unlocks them? The trade-off is honest to state, too: with no scarcity, character hype cycles are weaker, and the meta matters less. What you get in exchange is a roster that is always fully yours.