Most lost eggs disappear on the walk home. The guard chases after you take an egg, and Speed decides whether you still have it when you reach the Farm.
What failure looks like
You drill into a zone, take an egg, and the Animal Guard chases. If it catches you, the egg is lost before it reaches the enclosure. Power got you into the zone. It does not carry the egg home.
Deeper ground is where the developer says rarer eggs are. A longer return against the same Speed is also a longer chase. Push depth only after the trip you are already doing succeeds.
Raise Speed first
Step on the green buttons near your base to raise Speed. This is not the green button that upgrades auto-training. Speed does not raise your drill rate or your Cash per animal. It raises the chance that every future egg survives the return.
If you can buy only one early improvement, buy the return. A drill still matters, and the shop notifier will tell you when the next drill is affordable. A drill you cannot escort home does not hatch.
Choose a zone you can finish
Rarity is a hint. The useful comparison is Cash you actually bank divided by the time you spend, including failed trips.
Use a short test instead of a guessed drop table. For about ten minutes, count eggs taken and eggs placed. If you are losing most of them, step one zone closer and raise Speed before you go back out. No official zone list, guard roster, or detection range is published, so the test is the measurement.
On the trip
- Treat the walk home as the hard part. Finding the egg is the setup.
- Leave as soon as you have the egg. Time spent at the nest is time the guard uses to close in.
- Repeat one route per zone. A route you know is faster than a new path every run.
- Bring the egg you are holding home before you start another chase. A catch loses the egg you are carrying.
- If the run is going badly, keep moving toward the Farm. The published penalty is losing the egg when you are caught, not a separate damage number.
If the session earns nothing
Check these in order.
- The return is failing. Move to a closer zone until most eggs get placed, then come back as Speed rises.
- Hatch time is the limit. Gestation can take several minutes for rarer eggs. Stealing faster does not help while the enclosure is waiting. See Hatch animals and spend Cash.
- You are ranking by color. Compare animals by the Cash you can read and by how long the trip took. The method is in Compare animals.
There is no published safe-teleport rule. Use whatever return prompt your server shows, and confirm the egg is placed before you count the trip as a success.