How a bird gets lost
| Cause | What the loss chance depends on | Possible fates |
|---|---|---|
| Training toss | 1, 5, 20 km: 2%, 6%, 15% x (1.5 - NAV/100). See training. | Astray only |
| Race | Race loss chance (0.7% to 20%) | Astray 60%, hawk 25%, captured 15% |
| Tournament (Flying Meet) | Small base risk per event, see tournaments | Depends on the event |
| Hawk visit while outside | Hawk catch chance (3.7% to 14% per visit) | Hawk (assumed killed) |
Source: scripts/lost_birds.gd, scripts/race_runs.gd, scripts/tournaments.gd. A lost bird leaves your loft list (it no longer counts for loft space, nests, racing or selling). A bird that was part of a pair splits the pair.
Its fate is decided at once
The game rolls the fate the moment the bird is lost and saves it, so closing the app never rerolls it.
| Fate | Happens after | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| Chased (a hawk) | A hawk, in a race or in free roam | Shown as ASSUMED KILLED. About 5% come home by themselves on a day from 5 to 59. After 60 days it can show up in the Trap (10% on each stray). Otherwise it is never seen again. |
| Captured | A race | 20% get free and come home by themselves on a random day from 2 to 40 (LostBirds.CAPTURED_HOME). The other 80% never do. After 45 days it may turn up as a stray in the Trap (35% on each stray that arrives). |
| Astray | A toss, a race or a tournament | One roll decides if it ever comes home. If it does not, it can turn up in the Trap after 60 days (55% on each stray that arrives). |
Coming home by itself
| Navigation | 20 | 40 | 50 | 70 | 90 | 100 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chance | 44% | 48% | 50% | 54% | 58% | 60% |
- If the roll succeeds, the bird comes home on a day chosen at random from 2 to 59 days after it was lost (every day equally likely, 30.5 days on average). Nothing is rolled again.
- If the roll fails, the bird never comes home on its own.
- The bird arrives in a loft that has room, preferring its own loft. If every loft is full it waits, see when the loft is full.
- Because the latest return is day 59 and the Trap only finds astray birds gone 60 days or more, a bird that comes home by itself is always back before it could appear in the Trap.
The Trap
The Trap costs 150G in the Shop. It catches the strays that arrive while birds fly outside. When a stray is in the yard you play a small timing game: scatter grain, wait for it to peck, drop the net.
- Every stray has a wariness from 0 to 100. It starts at
10 + 0.3 x INT + 14 per rarity step (+4 for racing breeds), at most 78. - Wariness goes up when you scatter grain (+6), while it creeps closer, and by +35 when you miss with the net. At 100 the bird flies off.
- Each second there is a spook chance of
14% x (wariness / 100)^2. The net's catch zone also gets up to 45% narrower as wariness grows. - A stray you do not catch leaves on its own after its stay (2 days, 3 with an anchor bird).
| Rarity of strays (no lure) | Chance | Stats | Age |
|---|---|---|---|
| Common 55%, Uncommon 25%, Rare 12%, Epic 5%, Legendary 2.5%, Mythic 0.5% | 20% to 35% a day while birds fly | 90% of a shop bird of the breed | 65% young (160 to 330 days), 35% adult (400 to 900 days) |
Familiar strays: long-lost birds
When a stray arrives, there is a chance that it is not a new bird but one of your own long-lost birds: 35% for a captured bird gone 45 days or more (LostBirds.TRAP_CHANCE_CAPTURED) and 55% for an astray bird gone 60 days or more (LostBirds.TRAP_CHANCE_ASTRAY). The game then says "A familiar pigeon! It's [name]". It keeps its old stats and everything else.
- Which birds can come back this way: birds on the lost list that are on the lost list, not waiting to come home, and gone long enough (45 days if captured, 60 days if astray). One is picked at random, then its own chance is rolled.
- If no bird qualifies, the stray is just a new one.
- You still have to catch it in the Trap. If it slips away or leaves, it stays on the lost list and can come back again later.
| Birds outside | Stray chance a day | Captured bird shows up (35%) | Astray bird shows up (55%) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 20% | 7.0% a day, about 14 game days | 11% a day, about 9 game days |
| 3 | 24% | 8.4% a day, about 12 game days | 13.2% a day, about 8 game days |
| 6 | 30% | 10.5% a day, about 10 game days | 16.5% a day, about 6 game days |
| 10 with a strong lure | 55% | 19% a day, about 5 game days | 30% a day, about 3 game days |
The figures assume one lost bird of that kind is waiting in the pool. With several, the game picks one at random first and then rolls its chance. A game day is 2 real minutes, so 14 game days is about 28 minutes of play.
A stray may go back to its old owner
A stray you catch for the first time may belong to somebody else. When you catch it there is a 20% chance (StrayData.OLD_OWNER_CHANCE) that it will fly back to its old owner. It happens 35 to 50 days after the catch, at the day change, and only once the bird is no longer clipped (it has become a batcher). That is about ten days to tame it and a month of flying with your flock, then it is gone. It does not come back, and you get a History entry. Familiar birds (your own long-lost birds) never do this, and neither do the chicks of a caught bird.
When the loft is full
A bird that has found its way home (or a bird you catch in the Trap) needs a free slot in a loft. If every loft is full, the bird waits and you choose: sell it, let it go, or make room (sell another bird, or buy more slots; see gold and levels).
Worked examples
Example 1: 100 Classic entries with a NAV 70 / REC 60 bird
12 are lost (see race loss risk): about 7.2 astray, 3.0 taken by a hawk (assumed killed) and 1.8 captured. Of the 7.2 astray birds, 54% (3.9) come home by themselves between day 2 and day 59. Of the 1.8 captured birds, 20% (0.4) get free and come home within 40 days. The other 3.3 astray and 1.4 captured birds, 4.7 in total, stay on the lost list and can turn up in the Trap (captured after 45 days, astray after 60). So of 100 Classic entries, about 88 come home, 4.3 come back later, 3.0 are gone for good and 4.7 can only come back through the Trap.
Example 2: a better navigator comes home more often
Two birds go astray in the same race. A NAV 30 bird has a 46% chance of coming home and a NAV 90 bird has 58%, so the better navigator is 1.26 times as likely to come back. Navigation also lowers the chance to get lost in the first place, so it matters twice.
Example 3: toss risk
A 20 km toss of a NAV 50 bird: 15% astray. Of those, 50% come home on their own (7.5% of all tosses), so a toss loses a bird for good (or until the Trap) about 7.5% of the time.