Flying Crab Hatcher

Flying Crab HatcherElite Flying Crab HatcherFlying Crab

Flying Crab Hatchers are nest-like objects often found near rivers, cliff edges, Resource Nodes, Power Slugs, Artifacts, and Crash Sites. They periodically spawn Flying Crabs when aggroed.

Behavior

When approached by a pioneer for the first time or shot from a distance, the Flying Crab Hatcher will spawn 3 Flying Crabs. Afterwards, it will periodically spawn 1 or 2 Flying Crabs every 5 seconds or each time it is shot, until the Hatcher is destroyed or all pioneers get away from it. Spawned Flying Crabs die when they hit a pioneer or a vehicle, or after 60 seconds.

Flying Crab aggro sphere radius is 60 Meters.

When gameplay is set to Passive or Retaliate the hatcher will still spawn Flying Crabs when the Pioneer is nearby.

Spawning

Flying Crab Hatchers spawn singularly, but there may be several Flying Crab Hatchers in close proximity to each other, and can be prevented from spawning by using creature respawn prevention methods.

NOTE: As of 1.0 the hatcher itself does respawn. It is not known whether this is intended or if this is a bug.

Combat

An aggroed Hatcher will continue spawning Flying Crabs until it's destroyed.

• It is possible to stay much closer to a Hatcher by hiding behind foliage (trees, shrubs, etc.).
• Avoid aggroing more than one Hatcher at a time. Either destroy them from a distance with a  Rebar Gun or  Rifle, or carefully trigger the Hatchers one by one by approaching them slowly.
• If a Hatcher is alone and both  Blade Runners and  Xeno-Basher are equipped, bunny hopping (sprint, crouch then jump followed by another crouch) to its melee range then quickly bash 3 times will kill it before any Crabs can spawn, due to the spawning action taking around 5 seconds.
• Pioneers can sneak up on Hatchers:
  • As long as the Pioneers remain crouched (C), the Hatchers won't open no matter how close the Pioneers approach them. They remain closed even when struck by crouched melee attacks.
  • This works anytime the Pioneer is out of a vehicle and holding crouch (C), including sliding and jumping and jetpacking. Likely this is a bug.
• Parking a vehicle over a Hatcher will cause spawned Flying Crabs to die upon touching the vehicle.

Elite Flying Crab Hatcher

Usually in mid to late game areas an Elite Flying Crab Hatcher may spawn instead, sometime with normal Flying Crab Hatchers. It can be distinguished by the larger size and glowing orange marks on the shell, which are particularly visible at night or in low light areas.

Behaves identically to the normal Flying Crab Hatcher but spawns 6 Flying Crabs instead of the normal 3 when first awakened, continuously spawns 3 crabs while the Pioneer is nearby instead of 2, and has more health.

Tips

• As Flying Crabs only have 1 HP, the  Boom Box is an effective weapon against them, as it deals AOE damage.
• Gas nobelisks are great at disarming Hatchers as the gas kills any spawned Flying Crabs
• Even when creature behavior is set to peaceful or retaliate and unprovoked its still possible to be injured by flying crabs if the pioneer moves into their path. The inadvertent ram by the crab causes it to deal damage just like an attack.

Gallery

• 

  Flying Crab Hatcher's appearance before Update 6.
• 

  Before Update 6, the Hatcher spawned 3 stronger Crabs, and dropped a retextured Alien Carapace.

History

• Patch 1.0: Added Elite Flying Crab Hatchers
• Patch 0.8.2.5: Fixed Crab Hatcher respawning
• Patch 0.8.2.0: Refactored the Flying Crab
• Patch 0.8.1.1: Potentially fixed Flying Crab Hatcher respawning improperly
• Patch 0.7.0.2: Flying Crab Hatchers and Flying Crabs should now work properly with the hostility settings
• Patch 0.7.0.1: Fixed an audio issue with the Flying Crab Hatcher
• Patch 0.6.1.2: Lowered and remixed Flying Crabs sound as they were extremely loud before
• Patch 0.6.0.13: Potential fix for Crab Hatchers displaying incorrectly when joining for Multiplayer Clients and Dedicated servers Clients
• Patch 0.6.0.12
  • Increased the Flying Crab sphere radius to 60 (Was 32 before)
  • Fixed crash related to Hatchers on Dedicated Server
  • Fixed Crab Hatcher not spawning crabs in certain scenarios
• Patch 0.6.0.10: Updated Flying Crab behaviors.
• Patch 0.6.0.4
  • Fixed Flying Crabs not spawning from Hatchers
  • Fixed Hatchers respawning near factories
• Patch 0.6.0.3: Fixed Hatcher Protein recipe so that it correctly requires Hatcher Remains
• Patch 0.6.0.2
  • Hatcher should now show their status properly for for Multiplayer Clients and Dedicated servers Clients
  • Fixed Hatcher not disappearing and respawning near bases
  • Hatchers should now not respawn if the Player is closer than 20 meters to them
  • Hatcher loot is now dropped on the floor instead of on top of the Hatcher
• Patch 0.6.0.1: Fixed an issue with the Flying Baby Crabs not properly saving
• Patch 0.6.0.0:
  • The AI system, navigation, and spawning have been overhauled
    • Creatures now have separate visual and audio perception (and they won’t hear you crouch)
    • Creatures can now panic and run when certain conditions are met
  • Added unique loot for all aggressive wildlife
    • See Alien Remains - Hatcher Remains.
  • Added optional HUD indicators for aggressive wildlife (can be turned on in the options menu)
  • Flying Crab Hatcher changes
    • Full visual overhaul
    • Now persists and spawns new Baby Crabs until destroyed
    • Baby Crabs have more predictable behavior
    • Undocumented Change: Flying Crab HP reduced from 6 to 1
    • Undocumented Change: Flying Crab damage doubled from 5 to 10
• Patch 0.3.4.11: Increased hitstun on the Flying Crabs a little more
• Patch 0.3.4.10:
  • Increased the size of Flying Crabs to make them easier to hit and track
  • Increased the stun delay and downward force on the Flying Crabs so they are on the ground a little bit longer
• Patch 0.2.1?: No longer simply fly in straight lines, but have three different movement patterns, making defeating them significantly more challenging
• Patch Closed Alpha 2: Introduced