Birds and Abilities

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Birds and Abilities

Every run starts with one bird and one loadout of abilities. The bird sets the physics you fly with (gravity, flap strength, fall speed) and, for most birds, a signature twist; the loadout adds one active ability and a few passives on top. Both are chosen on the Birds screen, reached from the bottom navigation of the Home Hub. Birds and abilities are earned through play or bought with coins; prices, the wallet and refusals are covered on Shop and Upgrades.

The seven birds

All seven birds share the same 33 × 31 hitbox. What differs is the physics, the number of passive slots and the signature. Names and descriptions are the game's own (bird.<id>.name / bird.<id>.desc); the reference physics is Forgewing's gravity 1800, flap 405 and maximum fall speed 1500 px/s.

id	Name	Archetype	Passive slots	Signature	Earn it by	Or buy for
classic	Forgewing	Balanced	2	No modifiers: the bird you learn on	available from the start	—
swift	Zephyr	Swift	2	Gravity 2100 and flap 470: a stronger flap under a heavier sky	passing 15 gates in one run	300 coins
heavy	Anvil	Heavy	2	Gravity 2200, flap 460, and it never falls faster than 450 px/s	playing 4 runs	200 coins
guardian	Ironbeak	Guardian	2	Flies with an innate Shield; −20 % coin multiplier	playing 3 runs	150 coins
gambler	Jackdaw	Gambler	2	+30 % score and +30 % coins; gaps ×0.9; hitbox scale +0.10	passing 25 gates in one run	500 coins
mystic	Oracle	Mystic	3	Ability duration ×1.3 and cooldown ×1.4	the Ability Adept achievement (use abilities 50 times)	600 coins
forge	Cinder	Forge	2	+2 % score per gate passed (up to +50 %); +0.5 % flap and +1 % coins per owned upgrade level (up to +8 % / +25 %); base flap 385	clearing the Green Fields boss	800 coins

The archetypes are meant to play differently, not just look different:

Archetype	Strength	Weakness
Balanced	Predictable movement	No major advantage
Swift	Fast reaction potential	Harder to control
Heavy	Stable descent	Requires stronger timing
Guardian	Defensive ability	Lower reward multiplier
Gambler	Increased rewards	Increased difficulty
Mystic	Ability-focused	Longer cooldowns
Forge	Upgrade synergy	Weak early in a run

Cinder's synergy is resolved once, when the run starts, from the total number of upgrade levels you own (see Shop and Upgrades); its ramp grows with every gate of the run. Combined with upgrades and the cards drafted mid-run (Modifiers and Synergies), birds turn into recognisable builds: Ironbeak with Tempered Shield and Shield level 3 is a defensive build, Jackdaw with Score Multiplier is a high-risk economy build.

Tip: Ironbeak's shield costs a fifth of its coins but pays for itself early: the balancing notes measure it at +96 % gates for the game's average bot. It is also the cheapest bird to buy.

The Birds screen

The Birds screen: the browsed bird on the anvil, the roster below it, and the run in one line.

The screen wears the home hub's clothes: the same header, the same gold call to action, the same bottom navigation with Birds on the gold plate. It has seven parts, top to bottom:

• The header. The title on the left and your coins on the right. The coin chip opens the Shop and Upgrades, exactly as it does on the hub.
• The bird. The bird you are browsing, large, bobbing on an anvil on a floating island: its name, a line saying what it is (Guardian · Selected, Heavy · Locked), and three badges — Mobility, Defence and Control, each out of ten. The three numbers describe the bird alone, read from its own data and its innate abilities: they are what separates Zephyr (7 mobility) from Ironbeak (10 defence), and they never move when you buy an upgrade. What the run would actually resolve to is the stat breakdown behind See details.
• The roster. One tile per bird, in a strip you walk with Left/Right, the arrows at its ends or the mouse wheel. A tile carries the portrait in the palette you selected for that bird, its name and its archetype; a locked tile is dimmed under a padlock and says the cheapest way in, in words or in coins. The selected bird's tile carries the same gold border as the hub's call to action. Walking onto a tile shows that bird above; tapping an owned tile selects it and saves at once, and tapping a locked one nudges its padlock.
• Colours. One swatch per palette the bird ships, with the locked ones marked. Every bird has a default palette and a golden Prestige palette (granted by a prestige, see Game Modes and Difficulty); the others are listed below. Switching birds repairs the palette, because a palette belongs to one bird.
• The run setup bar. One line — Green Fields · Normal · Standard › — with the world's colours beside it and the hazards, the seed hint or the daily's setup underneath. Activating it opens a panel with the world row, the tier row and the mode row and a Done button; Esc closes it too. The world row lists the five worlds in order with "Hazards: …" for an owned one and "Locked: …" with the cheapest way in for a locked one; the tier row lists Normal, Hard and Nightmare; the mode row lists Standard, Seeded and Daily. Stepping onto something locked snaps the row back with a toast. Under a settled Daily the world and tier rows are read-only and say so: the daily picks them, not you. See Worlds and Bosses and Game Modes and Difficulty.
• Abilities. One card per slot — Active, Passive 1 to Passive N, and a fixed Innate card for each passive the bird grants by itself — each with its icon, its level and the ability's name; an empty card reads Empty. Enter cycles a card through the abilities that slot may hold. See details opens the panel that lists every ability with its kind, tags, level, the price of the next level and what each level does (the equipped ones marked Equipped, one the run's rules would remove greyed out as "Stripped by …"), followed by the stat breakdown: the resolved physics of the run that would start right now, one row per contribution (bird, upgrade node, synergy, world, tier). Buying Feather Weight in the upgrade trees adds a line under Gravity there and drops it from 1800 to 1746. The panel scrolls with the wheel, the arrows or Page Up/Page Down.
• The call to action and the navigation. The gold button says the one thing to do with the bird above it: Use <bird> for an owned bird, Bird selected when it is already yours to fly, Buy · <price> when you can afford it, or Locked · <condition> when you cannot. Below it the hub's five items — Shop, Birds, Play, Forge, Goals — with Birds on the gold plate: Play starts the run with everything shown, the other three change section. There is no Back button: Esc or the back gesture returns to the hub, and closes an open panel first.

Bird	Palette	Unlocked by
Forgewing	Ember	completing the No Shield I challenge
Forgewing	Voidglass	clearing the Void boss
Zephyr	Comet	completing the Speed Run I challenge
Anvil	Basalt	passing 500 gates in total
Ironbeak	Bronze	completing the Moving World I challenge
Jackdaw	Gilded	completing the Coin Rush I challenge
Oracle	Aurora	the Ability Master achievement (use abilities 200 times)
Cinder	Molten	owning 50 % of the upgrade levels

The eight abilities

An active ability is fired with the ability key (X, Shift or the right mouse button, see Controls) and works only while its duration runs; a passive one applies for the whole run. Durations and cooldowns are counted in ticks, and the simulation runs 60 ticks per second, so 300 ticks is five seconds. Level 1 is what you get with the unlock.

id	Name	Kind	Tags	Level 1	Earn it by	Or buy for
double_flap	Double Flap	Active	Movement	Cancels the fall and flaps again at 1.5× strength; 2 charges, one back every 5 gates; no cooldown	available from the start	—
shield	Shield	Passive	Defensive	+1 shield charge: absorbs one hit and gives 45 ticks of grace	playing 5 runs	200 coins
dash	Dash	Active	Movement	20 ticks at two and a half times the scroll speed, with no gravity, invulnerable while it lasts; cooldown 600 ticks	passing 10 gates in one run	250 coins
coin_magnet	Coin Magnet	Passive	Economy	+90 px magnet radius: nearby coins are pulled towards you	earning 500 coins in total	120 coins
slow_time	Slow Time	Active	Tempo	The world runs at half speed for 90 ticks; the bird does not; cooldown 900 ticks	reaching level 4	350 coins
emergency_recovery	Emergency Recovery	Passive	Defensive, Revive	+1 revive: brings you back once with a flap kick and 90 ticks of grace	passing 150 gates in total	400 coins
score_multiplier	Score Multiplier	Active	Economy	Double points for 300 ticks; cooldown 1200 ticks	passing 20 gates in one run	450 coins
invulnerability	Invulnerability	Active	Defensive	Nothing touches you for 120 ticks; cooldown 1500 ticks	completing the One Life I challenge	700 coins

Levels 2 and 3 are bought in the Shop's Abilities tab for twice and four times the purchase price:

Ability	Level 2 (price)	Level 3 (price)
Double Flap	3 charges (300)	1.6× flap, 3 charges, one back every 4 gates (600)
Shield	the charge comes back every 15 gates (400)	60 ticks of grace, back every 10 gates (800)
Dash	26 ticks, cooldown 500, +6 ticks of grace (500)	32 ticks, cooldown 400, +12 ticks of grace (1000)
Coin Magnet	+40 px radius (240)	+70 px radius (480)
Slow Time	120 ticks, cooldown 800 (700)	150 ticks, cooldown 700 (1400)
Emergency Recovery	105 ticks of grace, ×1.15 kick (800)	120 ticks of grace, ×1.3 kick (1600)
Score Multiplier	360 ticks, cooldown 1050 (900)	420 ticks, cooldown 900 (1800)
Invulnerability	150 ticks, cooldown 1300 (1400)	180 ticks, cooldown 1100 (2800)

Shield charges and revives are plain stats, so other things grant them without the ability: the Tempered Shield and Second Chance nodes of the Forge tree, and the Field Shield, Second Wind and Phoenix cards of a draft. In the HUD the active ability shows READY, its remaining cooldown in ticks or its charges; pressing it with nothing equipped, while recharging or without a charge raises the matching toast.

Loadout rules

• One active and N passives. A run carries one active ability plus as many passives as the bird has slots (2, Oracle 3) plus the +1 of the Ability Scholar node, never more than 4 in total. The extra chip appears as soon as the node is owned.
• Innate passives occupy no slot, need no unlock and cannot be unequipped. Ironbeak's Shield is the only one shipped.
• Only what you own, only in its own slot. A locked ability, a passive in the active chip or an active in a passive chip is refused and nothing is written.
• Slots hide, they do not delete. Switching from Oracle to a two-slot bird hides the third passive; switching back restores it.
• Levels run from 1 to 3, under a cap. The cap starts at 2; the Master Forge node of the Forge tree raises it to 3, and it is the only node that does. The Shop's Abilities tab says "Next level N", "Level cap N", "Cap reached" or "Fully upgraded" accordingly. A prestige locks the abilities again (Double Flap stays), clears their levels and puts the cap back to 2.
• The rules of a run strip, the profile keeps. The NO_DEFENSIVE_ABILITIES rule of the No Shield I and One Life I challenges zeroes shields and removes every Defensive ability (Shield, Emergency Recovery, Invulnerability, Ironbeak's innate shield included); the NO_REVIVE rule of One Life I removes revives. The Birds screen greys the ability out with "Stripped by …", the run says "This run allows no …", and nothing is unequipped: the loadout is back for the next standard run. See Challenges and Goals.

Related pages: Playing a Run for what the HUD shows, Shop and Upgrades for the nodes that change abilities, FAQ for common questions about builds.