Chocobo Questions

[Bluecat]

ok I just got my chocobo yesterday it has not hatched yet, but I was wandering how do I make it turn out black? How much should I feed it? How long till it hatches etc...I really want to know as much as possible about this thanks!

[Mhurron]

Re: Chocobo Questions

You don't. Colour is, for the most part, determined by the colours of the parents, but is not guaranteed by them. You're first Chocobo will most certainly be yellow.

As for the rest of it, Chocobo Raising Guide - FFXIclopedia - a Wikia Gaming wiki

[eticket109]

Re: Chocobo Questions

Color is determined at or before birth. Feeding it certain things will only affect it's temperament and stats. If you got the egg from a vendor or from a quest then the color will be completely random (but most likely yellow). If you got the egg from breeding, then the colors of the parents can have some effect on the color of the chick, but even that is fairly random.

[Kitalrez]

Re: Chocobo Questions

The wiki has some info that's kind of suspect on color. But it can't hurt to "watch over it" about 90-120 times to get Parent level affection when it hatches. Try to get a few of those watches at the end of the 4 day egg cycle, too. You want to make sure none has bled off from the care plan "basic care". After that point, it's really confusing as to what makes it go black. Black seems to be a physical chocobo color though, kind of like how most of the blues seem to be mentals. Try raising your two physical stats as far as you can so that you can take advantage of any bonus to color chances they might give you. Also, lots of physical care plans, and probably a competition and walking thrown in for effect. Vomp Carrots most definitely. Take care to nip any illnesses in the bud early, they take away from your stat raises.

Parent basically doubles the effect of the careplan you give it. Make sure you leave enough energy on the chick that it can complete this plan, but walk/compete the rest off. If you get to teenage stage and have the feather tips you want, you could probably go ahead and switch plans/foods, but I'd go with physical for now. I've never seen a black mental bird yet. They exist, but they're not real common.

[KingOfZeal]

Re: Chocobo Questions

Kit -- there is indeed speculation on the wiki page which links a chocobo's attributes to it's color. However, even a little bit of digging will show that this is highly unfounded. There is no proven link between color and attributes. As most people have said, it's a lot of random chance.

[Rhenzinger]

Re: Chocobo Questions

well...i'm on my 2nd egg right now, let me explain a little about the circumstances and what my opinions are...

first egg

purchased in jueno (middle warmth egg)

turned out a yellow female
i read that strength and endurance were good for the red and black breeds of birds so thats what i shot for...i went through about 5 stacks of vomp carrots @ 7k/stack on my server during the 29 day raising period...when the chick turned adolescent (when color is determined) i had sub-standard strength and endurance...level 8 affection...yellow bird...temperament was easy to car for because it had no personality, cant remember exactly how they word that.

so i abandoned that bitch after it turned adult so i'd have something to ride while i worked on a 2nd bird

2nd egg

quested from chocobo on the loose

planted it, turned out female...after a strict diet of 3 vomp carrots/day (dont overfeed your bird or you wont get the food bonuses), @ day 10 i noticed i finaly got a bird with a personality!!!It is now "Ill tempered, ideal for military use."

now for those of you who did some research before you jumped into the chocobo raising...you know that military chocobos were black then phased out for faster red chocobos...after doing yet MORE research, it appears that this "ill tempered" temperament is the KEY (******and i stress KEY******) to getting a black chocobo.

so now this is what i did EXACTLY to the T as far as my raising and caring up to day 10.

watched over it 5 times each day for first 2 days...then checked it at the end of day 4 for hatch
Feed: strictly vomp carrots only
care plan: Take walks in town (yes, everyday...for strength and endurance)
the first few days i took him on 3 walks (short) and watched over him until energy was all gone...after 3 days of that i did nothing but watch over him to gain maximum affection...i think i did walk him maybe once during them 3 days...10th-11th day...i have an ill tempered chocobo that loves the hell outta me, which...like i said, appears to be the key to getting the infamous black chocobo and possibly the red as well. If she turns out yellow i will be dissapointed but will raise him to whip the shit out of some black chocobo's on the racetrack. Will keep you posted on the tailfeather color...should be another week from today


it is my believe that the chocobo breeding is a very random system, ffxi is known for the mystery methods but i believe the mystery is non existant here, your chocobo color is DIRECTLY related to what you feed it and how you treat it. Temperament is the big factor, the most overlooked also. Red and black chocobo's were known for their strenth and endurance, so naturaly one would want to raise them 2 attributes for a better shot @ that color. Warmth of the egg i believe is irrelevant, i've seen too many people get blacks from all eggs, perhaps some eggs have a slight higher % of colors apposed to other eggs...possibly...but probably not noticeable...this in my opinion is a simple way for SE to make us talk and ponder amongst each other weather or not it has any bearing on the outcoming color...i believe it is slim to none

get an egg, raise it...and dont be disapointed with a yellow, expect it...plan on having a yellow bird, anything else...well thats just fuckin cool huh!?

[TheGrandMom]

Re: Chocobo Questions

This was a guide given to some members of my LS. I did not write it so I can't answer any questions about it. I am only posting this to help Bluecat. Credit goes to Kylea!

First off, ffxiclopedia is stupid when it comes to color heredity. I've proved time and again that it is inherited. My current theory (so far not disproven) is that every character has a built in special color (not yellow) assigned to it and they have a good chance of getting that specific color if raising a randomly purchased/quested/ISNM egg. Whenever I raise a random egg I get a blue or a yellow, other people I know and have helped raise chocos only get black or yellow. The only time I've gotten another color is when I've had cards to trade in to specifically breed that color. Out of all the times I've turned in cards to breed a specific color only once have I gotten a yellow instead of another color I wanted... and that's a lot because I've stopped at juvenile level a few times when testing cross breeding... If you want a specific color, do yourself a favor and get cards... I've got access to pairs of all colors but green (with green shortly to complete).


Starting off - I'm only an egg

4 days of egg watching... boring! On the fourth day it hatches. It will be full, you don't have to feed it this day, but you /should/ check it, name it, do care for it and put in a raising plan for your new baby.

Care Activities - 3 short walks, 1 or 2 watch over chocobo (if it picked something up)

Raising Plan - 2 sets of 7 days. If you going for speed/endurance these plans should be Go for a walk. If you are going for receptivity/discernment these plans should be listen to music. Choco babies become adolescent on day 19, this plan will take them all the way through to that point when you get other options.

Baby choco days - isn't it fluffy and cute???

Set a specific time every day (or as close to as possible) to check. either as you log in or before you log out usually works pretty well. Daily checking means a chocobo that stays happy. During these 14 days you should feed your chocobo every day, do care activities and generally keep track of how it's doing. This takes all of 10 minutes max (less if you don't watch the FULL cs but the edited version). You don't /have/ to worry about illness/injuries/etc if you don't really want to. Chocobos will generally heal on their own. You can change the food slightly the next day if you really want to though.

Food - 2 Azouph Greens. If Ill - 1 Azouph Green, 1 Tokopekko Grass. If injured - 1 Azouph Green, 1 Gausebit Grass. If stomachache (you'll almost never see this) - 1 Azouph Green, 1 Garidav Grass. Azouph Greens are totally the way to go. They make your chocobo like you more, in turn making them more productive and less likely to become unhappy when the harder options for training open up.

Care Activities - 3 short walks, 1 or 2 watch over chocobo. Usually you'll get the handkerchief quest (if you don't have a whistle), the lost chick quest and the main story for your area during this time if you keep doing the care activities every day.

Adolescence - teenage chocobo angst

Keep to your check time. Day 19-30 are the adolescence and they go fast. Now is when you will see the color of your choco come into light. Despite rumors, once they have shown a color it CANNOT change. On day 19, when it grows to the next stage, you'll want to update your raising plan for your baby. Food stays the same, no matter what stage they are at. Azouph Greens are /always/ best.

Care Activities - Mid-range walks (2) or 1 Mid-range walk and 1 race (if you really care about the Auto-regen ability which is what that quest gives you the story for). If you're in San or Bastok you can get the story for the other city in the mid-range walk. If you're in Windy, you'll get the San story.

Raising Plan - 2 sets of 7 days again. This will actually carry you past the day it turns adult, but you can change it after that happens. 7 days is easy to set and you don't have to worry about it. For str/end chocobos you want to switch to Carry Packages. If you are raising a digging choco with rec/disc then you want to Exhibit to Public. Bonus here is you'll make 100-200 gil per day.

Adult - grown up at last!

Full color and riding capabilities are yours. If you've done the quest for the whistle then you won't have to do it again, but it's easy enough if you do. Remember you've been feeding it Azouph this whole time, so it likes and trusts you completely. Unhappy chocos are the hardest to get a whistle for. Keep training toward caps and now's the time to toss in stories to get abilities you want. SAME FOOD. Yay Azouph Greens!

Care Activities - Long Walk and a story or two (depending on choco energy) or Long walk and watch over chocobo. If you have the right training activities in, you normally won't get enough energy for 2 long walks.

Raising Plan - Override the leftover days from Adolescence and put in two 7 day sets of your preferred activity. If you are going for a fast chocobo, your plan should be set for Deliver Messages. If you want to learn abilities easily/have a digger, you should be set for Digging for Treasure. If, for some odd reason you want Receptivity instead so your choco will pass on its abilities (or will be more likely to do so) to a new chocobo, then do Acting in a Play. Endurance doesn't have it's own, but it's last on your list if you want a fast choco anyway.

Raising Plan part 2 - Once your chocobo hits Outstanding in one stat area, you need to change your plan again. Strength chocobos need to go to Excercise Alone. Discernment go to Interact with Children. Receptivity go to Interact with Chocobos. These options give a 5% boost to the amount of that stat instead of a hard number. Before this point, it's really not as much as the other options.

Raising Plan part 3 - Hitting First Class in one stat means switching to another. You're going to hate it, but honestly it's just about impossible to have one physical and one mental stat capped. Str/End or Disc/Recp are the way to go. Endurance needs either Carry Packages or, once you hit Impressive, Excercise in a Group.



Other Tips and Tricks:

Azouph Greens aren't hard to grow if you're worried about cost. For best results, a porcelain pot with wildgrass seed will give you a decent range of grown stuff. Feed the plant water crystals. You can even npc junk the stuff you don't need/want and probably pay for your seeds that way.

Stories:
Hantileon - San d'Oria (short walk), Bastok and Windurst (medium walk) Story of an Impatient chocobo = Gallop
Zopago - Bastok (short walk), San d'Oria (medium walk), Windurst (long walk) Story of a Worrisome chocobo = Burrow
Pulonono - Windurst (short walk), Bastok and San d'Oria (long walk) Story of a Youthful Chocobo = Bore
Brutus/Dietmund - Long Walk chance no matter what city Story of a Curious Chocobo = Canter
Lost Chick Quest - Story of a Diligent Chocobo = Treasure Finder
Race Trio - Win a Race 3 times against these guys and get Story of a Happy Chocobo = AutoRegen

If you don't want to wait for stories to work, you /can/ try to get cards of a chocobo that has the trait(s) you want and breed for the traits of that parent with a honeymoon plan in Jeuno. This makes it more likely that those traits will pass along. Stats aren't ever passed on to offspring, just traits.

You don't have to wait for auto-retire to retire your chocobo. If it's done to your satisfaction, retired it.

Make sure that when a stat upgrades in skill you reset your whistle for your chocobo. If you don't, the stats for the chocobo you call won't be upgraded.

[Kitalrez]

Re: Chocobo Questions

I should probably have separated my response into two paragraphs. What the wiki said, which I don't think it very accurate at all, and what my experience has been. In my experience, I don't see very many black chocobos who are mental birds. I see a ton of them who were raised for riding/racing though. Therefore, I assume that if stats play any part in color, black probably gains some random +% chance from physical. Which would fit into the writing on chocobo breeds the tribune put out. Mental black birds must exist, because I know they're in the .dats, but I haven't seen any at all, so I keep my suspicion. That doesn't mean you can't make a mental bird that turns black, just that it seems to have a higher chance going the other way.

Grandmom: Azouph greens? Couldn't you get the same benefits taking it for short walks and watching over it? Then you could afford to feed a stat booster like carrots or celerity salads. They're expensive, but they work. The number totals we've been given for each level, as well as the careplan/food numbers are seeming to add up in my experience with my current bird, too.

For reference, here's what I've been given from Japanese sites and other forums:

There are a total of 637 points a chocobo can have in all stats.

Poor: 0-31
Substandard: 32-63
A bit deficient: 64-95
Average: 96-127
Better than average: 128-159
Impressive: 160-191
Outstanding: 192-223
First-class: 224-255

Ok, first off let me say that the above numbers roughly corresponded to what I witnessed in my own raising strategies. Where the care plan/food numbers given by the wiki totaled to the point it ought to be going up a rank, it did. This doesn't mean the stat ceiling I have there is fixed, however, as I've not personally reached it. What the wiki does say however is that zegham and vomp carrots give +1 to their respective stats and 0 to the opposing stats, San D'Orian carrots give +.5 to all 4 stats, and Celerity Salad gives +4 Discernment only. I can confirm the zegham and the salad, I used those exclusively, and they behaved as predicted on the stats.

Now, from what I know of the care planning, at the end of Day 4 all of our chicks should hatch with a 4 in every single stat, (4 days of straight basic care). From this point, you have to somehow inject an additional 621 points into the equation for redistribution. It seems like you have to raise the ceiling of stats to as high as you can get them, then redistribute before day 64~65 when careplans seem to no longer affect stats. My guess would be that you almost have to use Kamp Kweh every single day for the stat bonus, plus stat food, plus parent affection to double the careplan's effectiveness, plus lots of direct care options to keep your affection high.

This is kind of what I was asking for in my other thread, someone who could actually crunch the numbers and give me an idea on how I could've done my raising better than I have been.

[zantes]

Re: Chocobo Questions

Kitalrez, where did you get this information?

[Kitalrez]

Re: Chocobo Questions

The 637 thing and the chart are taken off Japanese websites I located and ran through babelfish. I'm not sure if they're theory or canon, but they're roughly adding up to what I experienced raising. I don't have the links anymore, as I don't read Japanese and the links were only so helpful without that knowledge. They've been correlated with what I've seen repeated on KI and BG's threads on chocobo raising, by breeders with much better birds than I own, which leads me to believe they're probably pretty well grounded or someone would've ripped into that person 2 replies later as is normal for these sites. Again, I have no idea if the 637 cap is hard or soft, as I haven't been able to reach it. I can say that the tiers for each rank seem to be working just fine, however. These are on unbred eggs you either bought/ISNM'd though, bred eggs show up with different numbers already in them based on date plan and parent stats.

Now, for reference, here's the FFXIcylopedia reference on chocobo raising: Category:Chocobo Raising - FFXIclopedia - a Wikia Gaming wiki

Notice about halfway down the page there's a chart in plain text that has numbers on it for each care plan? That's what I use. To that, add that a San D'Orian Carrot is worth .5 points to every stat, and the Vomp and Zegham are worth 1 point to the two stats they effect, and 0 points to the stats they don't. Celerity Salad is 4 points to Disc only, and Carrot Paste effects Endurance, but I don't know by how much.

[zantes]

Re: Chocobo Questions

I was referring to the 637 part, as I haven't seen that information before. I'm familiar with the page from the wiki. 637 seems like such an odd number for a limit on amount of attribute points though.