Flight

## Overview

The ability, **[Flight]** is the most sought after with its utility, offensive and defensive perks. Only 4 factions has unlocked this ability - Insects, Pterosaurs, Birds, Mammals. **[Flight]** is also one of the most overpowered abilities in the game with vast arrays of uses and implications.

Flight Advantages:

* Tough to defend against
* Tough to catch
* Can move between servers quickly
* Can only be counterd by players with flight or reach ability

Flight disadvantages

* Low defense

## Offense

Attack from above are difficult to be seen and ground-based attacks like [Charge], [Bite] And **[Stomp]** are generally much less accurate against airborne opponents. Even though certain builds have low base attack power, **[Flight]** can offer a few ways to mitigate this. First, the **[Dive]** attack is a viable offensive move even for builds with low base power, that can deal heavy damage in spite of lacking power stats because its damage scales with mobility rather than power. So the faster you're moving when this move connects the more damage it does. Secondly, when facing an opponent with defenses too sturdy to be damaged by your basic attacks, you can oftentimes still defeat them as long as you can score a grab as all you need to do is carry them high into the sky, and let fall damage defeat them.

## Defense

The ability to fly massively improves a player's evasion. It's pretty self-explanatory. In most cases, during flight you're immune to attacks from non flying opponents.(Note:Most cases.) Rather than having to worry about armor, stealth, intimidation, or counter attacks,generally all a flying player needs to do to dodge attacks is take off. It's perhaps the quickest, most effective escape option in the game, leaving you basically only vulnerable to stealth attacks or attacking other flying players. The other main defensive advantage flying builds have is being able to land in places that other players can't reach. Places like treetops are great for avoiding most stealth builds, although with enough points spent on climbing or arboreal or mobility. It is possible for them to reach you to truly escape. You'll want to find a cliffside ,completely untouchable by non flying builds except for maybe the mountain goat, but thankfully they're not aggressive. In addition to being protected from terrestrial players attacking you, Flying also allows you to avoid many of the dangerous random events that the game occasionally throws at you. For example,while terrestrial and arboreal builds are likely to get caught in a wildfire aerial builds don't have much trouble escaping, and in a drought. It's far easier for a player to find the necessary water to survive when they can survey huge amounts of land from the sky rather than for example, hopping along the ground. In addition to surviving life or death, situations flight has plenty of other applications, too. Accessing exclusive locations on the map isn't only good for evading predators,a lot of exclusive loot is reachable only by being able to hover or fly which is why builds like the fruit bat are so successful despite their mediocre stats.

## Utility

Perhaps, the most important utility aspect of **[Flight]** is that can be used to fast travel. Very few players have the ability to visit other servers with ease, let alone ones that are far apart. Flying builds, on the other hand, frequently change servers, sometimes to find food, and sometimes to avoid ice damage during the winter world event.  Flight genuinely is also an extremely fast moving option. Comparatively, Cheetah's record speed is not even close to top flying speeds especially diving.

## Drawbacks

There are two main drawbacks obtaining **[Flight]**. The first is that simply to gain access to the flight ability requires a pretty heavy sacrifice to HP and defense because the player is forced to spec into the hollow bones attribute in order to be light enough to fly. Hollow bones are quite weak to crush damage, meaning that being hit with any significant blow can often break a wing which is almost always a game over. Players also experience crush damage during a collision, so if you aren't careful while flying and run into something that can also do huge damage. The other drawback is that during flight, You're obviously high above the ground and moving very quickly, and being in this state can make stealth highly effective against you. For this reason all flying builds that want to play as a predator are forced to spend a ton of evolution points leveling up their eyesight, since basic eyes would be useless in spotting stealthy targets below.