Can you really play Steal an Egg for free?
Yes, and this guide proves it with a real run. We followed a creator who restarted on a brand-new account with zero Robux on it. Not even the 3-Robux 2x speed, because there was nothing to spend. The milestones:
| Milestone | Income | Speed |
|---|---|---|
| End of tutorial | $2/s | 430 |
| First Desert eggs | $18K/s | 37K |
| Jungle tiger egg | ~$300K/s | 150K |
| Volcano | $500K/s | 700K+ |
| First secret (Yeti) | $15M/s | 22M |
| First eternal hatched | $600M/s | — |
| End | $2B/s | several hundred million |
It took hours rather than minutes, and the eternal timers were the slowest part. But no step needed Robux.
The core idea: index first, treadmill second
Early treadmills are weak. The Cyber treadmill gives 10 per step and the next upgrade 24. A single index claim for a new pet can be worth thousands of speed, and the money reward scales too: the Forest's legendary paid $180K in index rewards, an epic about $18K.
So the free-to-play loop is:
- Steal one of every egg you can reach in your current biome.
- Hatch them, at night if possible because it's faster.
- Claim the index.
- Buy the next treadmill or trail with the cash.
- Move on to the next biome as soon as the speed allows.
The creator said it themselves while doing it: "Indexing is actually such a good way to make money," and later, "indexing is genuinely the strat, because gaining speed on the treadmill is super slow."
Stage 1: Forest to Desert (first 15 minutes)
- Finish the tutorial and claim the index right away (430 speed).
- Steal every Forest egg colour. A rare Raccoon at $46/s already beats the Golden Chicken.
- Unlock the treadmill. Buy the $100 trail, then the $5K trail.
- Lake at 900 speed, guarded by a Swan that hits you if you're careless. Take one of each.
- First treadmill upgrade at $15K (the Cyber treadmill).
- Desert at 10K speed. A free-to-play account hit 12K speed mostly from index claims.
Stage 2: Desert to Volcano
Here's where the money starts. A Desert Scorpion at $8K and a run of Camels, Turtles and Swans took the account to $18K per second. Keep doing the same thing: steal every new egg type, hatch, claim.
- Upgrade the treadmill whenever it's affordable: Golden, then Blue. Speed per second climbs to about 75.
- Jungle at 40K speed. A White Tiger at $222K was the biggest single jump in the run.
- Snow at 170K. Polar Bears and Woolly Mammoths ($85K) fill the pen.
- Volcano at 700K. Chillis and the volcano pool.
Two habits from this stage:
- Hop on the treadmill until night, then hatch everything at once. Night growth makes timers fly.
- Feed Parasite eggs to Mr. Toad only if you're bored. The chest is a long shot.
Stage 3: Getting an eternal without the speed
Around the 30-minute mark an Eternal Oni Tiger egg spawned, and the free-to-play account was nowhere near fast enough to reach it. Here's the trick it used: the game is called Steal an Egg. When another player picked up the eternal and ran past, the creator hit them, they dropped it, and the creator carried it home.
That's legitimate, and it's the fastest way for a low-speed account to get an eternal. Other routes:
- Admin Abuse mini games hand out Gorilla Kings and Oni Tigers to winners, and they reward skill rather than speed.
- Traps on the route home catch other players carrying eggs. One trap caught someone carrying a La Vaca egg from the sky area.
The catch: an eternal takes about 8 hours to grow without Robux. The run unlocked the index reward for 1.25x grow speed, which cut it to about 6. Use that time to keep training.
Stage 4: Prehistoric and the first secret
The Prehistoric biome needs 18M speed, the first real wall. The free-to-play account needed about an hour of treadmill time (with a better trail) to get past it. Meanwhile:
- The first secret, a Yeti at $5.2M, arrived after more treadmill time.
- Income reached $15M/s.
- At $75B it bought the Lucky Block treadmill (1,000 per step) and the Galaxy trail (5x), and from there speed came quickly.
Stage 5: Hatching the eternals
When the Oni Tiger finally hatched it was silver and earned $600M per second, alone worth about forty times the rest of the pen. The "Hatched Eternal" badge popped, and the index reward paid 5.4M speed and $60B. A second, bigger Oni Tiger added $1.2B, and a Cosmic Dragon finished the run at $2B per second.
Free-to-play mistakes to avoid
- Buying the pen upgrade by accident. The creator meant to save for a treadmill and clicked the wrong button, and it cost them an upgrade cycle.
- Grabbing eggs that are too big. A big Prehistoric egg was "way too big to even take" at 22M speed. Small eggs are fine for the index.
- Ignoring the bat. The default bat is terrible. Complete the Lake index for a better one, then the Snow index for the Ice Bat.
Is free-to-play slower? Yes. Is it worse? No.
Robux mainly buys time: skipped timers and speed multipliers. A free account that plays the index loop and grabs eternals smartly reaches the same biomes, just later. Compare the numbers in our pay-to-win analysis, and for every purchase that is worth it, see the Robux spending guide.