Gameplay & Balance

Crow

• Cloak
  • Now immediately breaks existing enemy lock-ons.
  • Cloaked Crows can no longer be acquired by lock-on targeting, splat markers, pings or streak targeting.

• Bleed
  • Now deals three ticks of 5% damage based on the target's total maximum Health, Armor and Shields.
  • Bleed continues to damage Health directly, bypassing Armor and Shields.
  • Added persistent wound VFX, wound audio, heartbeat feedback and blood splats.
  • Damage-over-time ticks no longer repeatedly trigger ordinary attacker or victim hit feedback.

Owl

• Stalker (RMB)
  • Now remembers the target's last server-validated position when line of sight is lost and resolves the teleport around that position.
  • Now searches for a safe destination, including on moving platforms.
  • Blocked geometry, lethal volumes, KillZ and out-of-bounds positions are now rejected as teleport destinations.
  • The charge and cooldown are refunded if no safe destination remains.
  • Added clearer team-tinted wind-up and destination VFX/SFX.
  • Fixed a bug where the damage number UI was combining twice to show 100 damage instead of 50.

Hummingbird

• Flurry (Q)
  • Increased the radius from 180 > 220.

• Overdrive
  • Reworked the Gold Window presentation as Overdrive.
  • Confirmed hits now produce fluttering Hummingbird visuals, air cuts and arrival effects.
  • Removed the old gold mesh overlay.
  • Moved the heat gauge below the aiming point.
  • With overdrive activated your attacks perform similarly to the Flurry ability.

Shoebill

• Charged Headbutt (RMB)
  • Added a charge riser and timed impact boom.
  • Added server-confirmed camera and FOV impact feedback.
  • Misses no longer trigger confirmed-hit feedback.

Improvements

Combat Feedback

• Damage numbers now show the full damage of the attack, including overkill, while scoring, statistics and meters count only the durability actually removed.

Game Modes

• Free For All ties are now ranked by which player reached the tied score first across the HUD, scoreboard and results.
• The first FFA player to reach 20 points now wins immediately.
• Timed FFA matches now use the same first-to-score tiebreak and no longer enter overtime.
• Added Colosseum's map-vote card.

Custom Games

• Team Deathmatch, Domination, Search & Destroy and Capture the Egg now support up to 5v5.
• Egg Conquest and King of the Hill remain capped at three players per team.
• Custom sessions now support up to 10 gameplay participants and five Observers, for 15 total members.
• Observers no longer participate in manual ready-up.
• Custom Game start validation now checks team assignments, capacity, readiness and the selected mode's required topology.
• Dedicated Server is now the default hosting option in Custom Games. Listen Servers are mainly intended for Workshop maps, which are not hosted on dedicated servers. We are also investigating performance improvements for listen-server lobbies.
• Added host-controlled Randomize Teams with confirmation, balanced assignments, readiness reset, party splitting and Observer preservation.
• Added Remind Unready Players. Targeted players receive a toast, sound, lobby system message and temporary card highlight.
• Added Custom Lobby text chat for players and Observers.

Observer

• Added stable F1-F10 player slots ordered by team and lobby position, or by lobby order in FFA.
• Observer slots persist through death and respawn.
• Disconnected players retain their slots, reconnecting players reclaim them and late joiners receive the next unused slot.
• Selecting an unavailable slot now does nothing instead of selecting the wrong player.
• Each Observer's selected camera remains independent.
• Added POV zoom from 20-135 FOV.
• Added centred-follow distance zoom from 120-6500 units.
• Mouse wheel and controller triggers can now control Observer zoom.
• Added X-ray modes for Off, Followed Team and All Players.
• X-ray displays team-coloured outlines with compact player names and Health.
• Added Observer-only noclip, disabled by default.
• Added persistent Observer HUD information for the followed player, team, camera mode, X-ray state, noclip state and adaptive controls.
• Added separate controls for hiding Observer controls and toggling the minimap.
• Added fully rebindable Observer actions for direct slots, target cycling, follow, zoom, X-ray, noclip, minimap, HUD visibility and camera reset.
• Advanced Observer tools remain unavailable to ordinary dead Spectators.

Training & Progression

• All released birds can now be practised in Training even when progression-locked.
• Selecting a locked bird in Training is session-only and no longer changes the player's default bird outside Training.
• Standardised public bird presentation order to Crow, Hummingbird, Pigeon, Shoebill, Seagull, Eagle and Owl.
• Added labelled three-star Bird Difficulty across public bird inspection, selection, Armory, Locker Room, mastery, statistics and store surfaces.
• Added passive ability information to the Loadout screen for Hummingbird and Shoebill.
• Updated passive meters with smoother fill animations, clearer ready states and improved labels.
• Reworked the F1/D-pad Right Ability Help screen with a live bird header, clearer active and passive sections, larger bird presentation, improved ability cards and device-aware basic-control prompts.
• Removed QUEUE AS from the NEST Locker Room.

Tutorial

• Reworked Boot Camp with a high-contrast objective strip, section progress and 14-step course progress.
• Added device-aware live control prompts for keyboard, mouse and controller bindings.
• Added persistent through-wall objective markers.
• Improved hoop, destination, combat-area and ground-zone presentation.
• Improved commander presentation with video-feed transitions, signal loss, static and better subtitle sequencing.
• Delayed the final recap subtitles for more readable pacing.
• Added clearer HUD ability-slot highlights during ability lessons.
• Tightened lesson gating so movement, combat actions, cooldowns and egg interactions unlock alongside their instructions.
• Improved instruction and recovery flow for lock-on, attack combos, abilities, wind tunnels, nest pings, egg carrying, stealing, neutral eggs and Talon Toss.
• Normal match objective indicators are now suppressed while Boot Camp presents its own lesson markers.

Settings & Controller

• Added Pointer Size, adjustable from 1.0x to 1.5x with a default of 1.2x.
• The centre pointer now smoothly changes to blue over teammates.
• Added explanatory FOV info: "Higher FOV makes targets appear smaller and may make attacks harder to aim."
• Added device-aware LB/RB or L1/R1 prompts to the Settings tab strip when using a controller.
• Added a Clear option beside Reset for keyboard, mouse and controller bindings. Cleared bindings now display as UNBOUND and can be restored with Reset; focused bindings can also be cleared with Delete or Y/Triangle.
• Spray Wheel and Emote Wheel are now unbound by default on controllers, removing their previous D-pad conflicts. Both remain available in Controller settings and can be assigned manually.

Audio & Voice

• Reduced wing-flap volume by 2 dB.
• Split the old Streamer Mode master switch into independent Randomise Usernames and Mute All controls.
• Randomised usernames now use stable aliases across different surfaces.
• Mute All now silences voice independently without overwriting saved per-player mute or volume choices.
• Voice Chat Volume can now be raised to 200%.
• Added per-player lobby voice volume from 0-200%, mute/unmute and reset controls.
• Per-player voice preferences are saved locally and persist between sessions.
• Added live Push to Talk binding hints to party, matchmaking and Custom Game lobbies.
• Improved lobby microphone presentation for speaking, muted, idle, Open Mic and Push to Talk states.

UI & Localization

• Post-match player cards now display full, undimmed banner artwork.
• Post-match banner text now uses the same readable outline and shadow treatment as matchmaking.
• Added or completed missing translations across menu, Armory, Career, bird viewport, Settings and keybind surfaces.

Bug Fixes

Combat & Gameplay

• Fixed charged RMB abilities sometimes restarting midway through their cast.
• Fixed repeated RMB input potentially disrupting active abilities across all birds.
• Fixed Pigeon Wing Clap's dash-disable effect being absent from some builds.
• Fixed a rare issue where players could remain invisible after cloak, cosmetic or respawn transitions.
• Improved Owl Stalker reliability to prevent interrupted casts contributing to stuck slow movement.
• Fixed an issue that could leave Owl permanently slowed after teleporting, cancelling or interrupting Stalker.
• Fixed a rare issue where birds could survive lethal damage with 0 or 1 HP, particularly when Health regeneration activated during a hit.
• Fixed lethal damage resolving one frame late.
• Fixed lethal hits allowing same-frame post-mortem attacks.
• Fixed incorrect killer, assist and finishing-blow attribution on lethal hits.
• Fixed players being stunned by their own spawn barrier on Colosseum when flying into it at high speed.
• Fixed bird meshes remaining displaced or invisible after leaving ragdoll.
• Improved the Health display so living birds never appear to have 0 HP. Fractional combined vitality now displays at least 1.
• Fixed a bug with multiple birds physics assets not being configured correctly.
• Fixed a bug with ragdoll physics activating during daze which caused birds to be offset from their actual location. Ragdoll physics still happens on death.

Game Modes

• Fixed a bug that prevented certain game modes from starting because of incorrect team or player counts.
• Fixed tied King of the Hill fights continuing to award score and hill-time rewards.
• Contested hills now correctly display CONTESTED across the hill, HUD, world marker and minimap.
• Fixed empty or uncontested hills briefly displaying as contested.
• Fixed KOTH scoring accumulators and hold rewards carrying across hill rotations.
• Fixed defenders being unable to defuse the bomb in Search & Destroy.
• Defuse intent now begins immediately when an unladen defender presses Interact.
• Defuse intent now clears correctly if gameplay input is suppressed by a menu or modal.
• Fixed world eggs being able to spawn in the same place.

Custom Games

• Fixed unassigned players being able to ready up. Players must now choose a team first.
• The ready button now directs unassigned players to choose a team.
• Stale ready states are now cleared when a player becomes unassigned.

Maps

• Added missing game mode objectives to Highrise and fixed incorrect objective spawners.

Audio & Voice

• Fixed duplicate wing-flap sounds playing within 0.2 seconds of one another.
• Fixed the being-hit SFX sharing a cooldown with other bird SFX.
• Fixed some chain cosmetics not working properly in matches.

Input & UI

• Fixed a regression that caused the Free Look keybind to be removed from Input settings.
• Ability Help no longer opens while observing or spectating without a living locally controlled bird.

If anyone is experiencing crashes or any other issues, please reach out to support and we'll investigate. Thanks!