The short version
An Old Bird is a giant mechanical bird that ignores you if you are crouching and lands on you if you are not.
When one is active outdoors, crouch. That is the entire counter, and it costs you nothing but speed.
What an Old Bird is
It is a large outdoor entity that starts every moon inactive.
Inactive Old Birds do not move and pose no threat. They stand on the surface like scenery, which is exactly why crews walk right past them and then get caught when one wakes up.
An Old Bird activates when it is chosen for an entity spawn cycle. Additional ones can activate later if outdoor power frees up.
Where you meet them
Base spawn chance and maximum count by moon, from the game’s bestiary:
| Moon | Base chance | Max spawned |
|---|---|---|
| 5-Embrion | 86.96% | 30 |
| 68-Artifice | 45.0% | 4 |
| 8-Titan | 5.69% | 2 |
| 20-Adamance | 3.19% | 3 |
| 21-Offense | 2.37% | 2 |
| 7-Dine | 2.27% | 3 |
| 41-Experimentation | 2.22% | 2 |
| 56-Vow | 0.43% | 2 |
Embrion is in a category of its own. Nearly every landing has them, and up to thirty can be on the map.
Roaming, and the two tells
Once active, an Old Bird walks the surface in a stiff goose step.
Tell one: the screen shake. While it roams, an employee nearby feels a slight vibration on every step it takes. If your screen starts trembling outdoors, one is close even if you cannot see it.
Tell two: the smoke. An Old Bird randomly launches into the sky and lands somewhere else. The flames it emits in flight leave black smoke behind.
That smoke trail shows you where it is going. Read it and you can plan a route around the landing zone instead of walking into it.
Why crouching works
An Old Bird in roaming mode that sees an employee who is not crouching will land on that employee and switch into chasing mode.
Crouching is therefore not a way to hide from a chase. It is the way to never be picked in the first place.
Crews that get taken by Old Birds almost always got taken while walking upright across open ground with a full inventory.
When it starts chasing
Chasing mode is the point where crouching stops being enough on its own and you need distance and an exit.
Get toward the ship or a door, not into open ground. The Old Bird covers ground faster than you do while you are carrying scrap.
Do not try to fight it. There is no melee exchange here that ends with you alive and your haul intact.
Why you never fight it
An Old Bird is not a Hoarding Bug you can shovel. It is a large machine with ranged capability and a flight phase.
Even if you could win the exchange, you would win it standing still in the open, which is the one place that gets you targeted by everything else on the surface.
The correct move on every moon where they appear is avoidance: crouch, read the smoke, keep an exit.
On Embrion specifically
Embrion is not a harder version of the other moons, it is a different kind of run.
With an 86.96% base chance and up to thirty Old Birds, crouching is not a tactic you deploy when you see one. It is the way you move the entire time you are on the surface.
Plan the route before you leave the ship, and pick lines that keep cover or terrain between you and open ground. On this moon the surface is the hazard, and the facility is the safer half of the run.
Budget your time accordingly. A moon that needs constant low movement is slower to loot, so the quota you plan for elsewhere will not hold here.
Mistakes that get people killed
- Standing up on open ground. Not crouching is the single thing that puts you on its target list.
- Ignoring the screen shake. The vibration is a free warning that one is within range.
- Watching the bird instead of the smoke. The smoke tells you where it lands, the bird only tells you where it was.
- Running the same route back. Flight lets it reposition, so the safe path in is not automatically the safe path out.
- Treating Embrion like a normal moon. With up to thirty of them, crouching is not optional there.
Related guides
- Monsters database — every entity with its location.
- Moons tier list — how Embrion compares to the cheaper moons.
- How to beat Earth Leviathan — the other thing that punishes open ground.