Was just on pace for a 9 minute PB going into Lava Palaver and the game proceeded to drop an alien into the lava after I jumped. I restarted the mission, and this time whenever I'd get to a lava river, I'd wait until they dropped out of my hands before picking them up again and then jumping over the lava. Unfortunately, even after doing that, the game proceeded to immediately drop one out of my hands as I was jumping over the lava. Sucks to lose such a good run to some seemingly random drop/grip mechanic.

Does anyone have a better idea of what causes the aliens (or really any NPC for that matter) to drop out of your grip? Any way to prevent it?

I might try and re-route the stage so I don't have to jump over any lava, but there is always the one alien on the island that cannot be rerouted - so at least one jump over lava is required.

That sucks and sorry to hear it.

That's a good question though and I don't think there is info out there about the logic of holding the alien so I decided to test it myself. I picked up an Alien 35 times and on average the hold time was 6.1 seconds. Here are the seconds numbers of each hold: ( 8, 7, 3, 4, 6, 3, 2, 7, 23, 1, 3, 1, 4, 5, 11, 11, 2, 6, 2, 4, 12, 9, 1, 7, 14, 6, 9, 3, 6, 7, 3, 2, 13, 9, 2) 8 times I would drop the alien within 1 or 2 seconds which was frustrating.

Unfortunately you must go over the lava for some aliens, (at least 2 I think) so your best option is the drop just before the lava and then pick them up again for the jump across the lava.

I also checked if movement influenced the drop rate and I don't think it does.

Best of luck!

That's what I was afraid of hahaha

I tried "blowing up" the aliens with the medic's ability to see if that helped keep the grip, but that didn't seem to help either sadly. I had never tried to blow up the aliens so I was a little disappointed you couldn't launch them like you can with enemies. that could have helped get them across the lava.

Well, I ended up just dropping them right at the edge, quickly picking them up and jumping at the same time to minimize the time above the lava. Can't say for sure it will work every time, but it worked tonight and I managed a huge new PB :)