What causes Unreal fleeing AI running into walls?

The flee logic steers directly away from the threat with no pathfinding, so when a wall is behind the AI it presses into it instead of routing around obstacles on the navmesh.

How do I catch this when it only happens for some players?

Capture it automatically from the player's device with the full stack trace, the device and OS, the build, and a breadcrumb trail of what they did. That turns a vague complaint into a specific, reproducible issue you can fix without owning the hardware it happens on.

How to Fix Unreal Fleeing AI Running Straight Into Walls

Quick answer: Use an EQS query to find a reachable flee point away from the threat on the navmesh and MoveTo it, rather than setting a focal/move direction blindly along the away-vector.

An Unreal enemy that flees by running face-first into a corner is using pure away-from-threat steering. Choosing a navmesh-valid escape point with EQS and pathing to it fixes the wall-hugging. Here is how.

How to fix it

1. Query a flee point with EQS

Run an EQS query that generates points away from the threat, filters to navmesh-reachable ones, and scores the farthest-from-threat highest, then feed the best item to the move task.

2. MoveTo the flee point

Use MoveTo / AAIController::MoveToLocation so the navigation system paths around walls and corners instead of the AI pressing into them.

3. Re-pick when cornered

If the chosen point is very close or the move fails, re-run the query including lateral directions so a cornered AI finds a way out instead of grinding the wall.

Catching the ones you can't reproduce

The hardest version of this to fix is the one you can't reproduce — it only happens on a player's hardware, OS, driver, or save state, under conditions that simply aren't present on your machine. A report that says “it crashed” or “it froze” gives you nothing to act on, so the bug survives release after release while quietly costing you players.

Automatic error capture closes that gap. Each failure arrives with its full stack trace, the device and OS, the build number, and a breadcrumb trail of what the player did right before it broke, so even a failure you have never seen becomes a specific, reproducible issue. Fold identical failures into one signature ranked by how many players each hits, and your worklist sorts itself worst-first instead of arriving as a stream of vague complaints.

This is where a tool like Bugnet earns its place. Its SDK captures every Unreal Engine error automatically with the full stack trace plus device, OS, memory, build, and game-state context, folds duplicates into one grouped issue with an occurrence count, and ties each to the build it first appeared on — so you fix the problem that hurts the most players first and confirm it is gone when its signature disappears from the next release.

Ship the fix, watch the signature disappear from the next build. That's how you know it's really gone.