Advanced chocobo raising

[Frenzy]

San d'Orian carrots can be bought at an npc for 28-158 gil or something, usually 28-30. Gysahl greens are always 68+ a piece. So ya, not talking about anything too drastically expensive here.

Yeah, but I get Gysahls as byproduct from Gardening

I don't think they'll disadvantage you, but your chocobo seems to be almost finished, I don't think you'll see much effect either.

[Quendi]

Ah, well, I certainly don't have the patience for gardening^^; I suppose I was wondering if anyone could confirm that the carrots actually do something. Wiki has this wonderful quote; "Effect on Chocobo: Unknown effect. Rumored to increase chocobo's desire to breed." Ya... and yet on the chocobo raising guide, it says that they actually raise all stats. I'm of the mind that if anything helps, use it, even if it is a minimal difference.

[Guppy]

Wiki has this wonderful quote; "Effect on Chocobo: Unknown effect. Rumored to increase chocobo's desire to breed." Ya... and yet on the chocobo raising guide, it says that they actually raise all stats.

There's a long-standing rumor that Sandorian Carrots increase the chances of getting love-sickness, mostly based on people's hunches and intuition. It's hard come up with good evidence to test it. I personally disregard this rumor, true or not. Lovesickness isn't hard to cure if you have Celerity Salads (Celibacy Salad?) on hand; I would recommend collecting a few and stashing them away on a mule before your chocobo reaches adulthood.

Since Celerity Salads became available through the Hot-And-Cold game, they've hovered near the NPC sale price. If you're having trouble finding them, it's because the market is moribund, and people are vendoring them instead -- try asking your choco-digging friends to save them for you instead.

If you need them in a hurry (and don't mind the cost), you can buy them with chocobucks or synth them. However, it is much cheaper to accumulate them ahead of time.

[Not Kuno]

I got some chococards with my Chocobo yesterday, they all say F.

The problem is I don't remember what gender it was before. XD I'm pretty sure it was a male. >.>;

[Gsarivan]

I'm kind of new to the whole chocobo racing scene and I've been working on a 'bo for the last 2½ months or so. It's at 8/7/3(I think?)/0 G C right now (First-Class (capped)/Outstanding/Average/Poor Gallop and Canter) and my plan was to raise it so that I could win the C1 races pretty consistently and make a decent amount of gil, and I have a couple questions to pose to all you experienced people:

1) My plan was to take it to 8/8/5/2 GC, is this worth it/will it win consistently? If not, what setup does?

2) Right now I've found that the most effective way to raise stats day 64+ are doing free runs and spamming trains when I get enough chocobucks, but I could be very wrong (in fact I hope i am because it takes so damn long @.@), Do you all have any secrets to making it either go faster or do you have a better method?

3) WHY WON'T SE LET US SKIP THE FREE RUN CUTSCENE ><

Thanks for your replies~

[Ryphen]

I got some chococards with my Chocobo yesterday, they all say F.

The problem is I don't remember what gender it was before. XD I'm pretty sure it was a male. >.>;

I went and got one card for each of my three retired birds and all of them match what their gender is supposed to be. So it looks like they just bugged the ones currently in the stable.

[Bockage]

2) Right now I've found that the most effective way to raise stats day 64+ are doing free runs and spamming trains when I get enough chocobucks, but I could be very wrong (in fact I hope i am because it takes so damn long @.@), Do you all have any secrets to making it either go faster or do you have a better method?

This is the only way I know of past day 64 since care plans have no effect after that day. You can also do the hot and cold game if you're any good at that.

[Gsarivan]

Anyone know if the Circuit has any specific order that the races go in? I have a hell of a time waiting every day to try to find a C3 race and if there was an order like C4 C2 C4 C3 or something it would really help so I dont spend 2 hours camping the circuit XD

[Croaker]

Can someone please tell me what exactly does Regen ability do? I have searched a lot of wiki and forums and can not find an answer.

My guess would be that it means either regen energy or regen stamina.

If it is regen energy, does this mean you can train you chocobo multiple times a day. I usually get a full energy bar each day, but with regen does it just go up a % for each hour that passes?

If it is regen stamina and is usefull in races, then would it be an alternative to canter? Stamina that constantly regens may be better than higher initial stamina.

It seems that Strength for speed must be maxed out, but are the races even long enough that high endurance comes into play? I.E. I don't need to have the endurance to run for 100 miles if all I am doing is a 100 yard dash.

[Clave]

There are 2 C4 races every hour, 1 C3 race every hour, and the last 15min slot alternates between C2 and C1, C2 being a little more common.

I haven't done anything besides C1 in a while so someone correct me if I'm wrong but from what I remember the pattern is:

:00 = C4
:15 = C3
:30 = C4
:45 = C2 or C1

I believe that's correct. Those are the times the signup periods for the races start.

Auto-Regen: I don't think anyone actually knows what that does.

[Gsarivan]

Thanks for your help I have another question, right now my 'bo is at SS/S/C/C CG, I've won all the races and such and am doing C2s to work my way up to C1s and that delicious 100k a day. Been spending all my chocobucks on trying to cap str, and end dropped to A when I finally capped str, so then I pushed end back up to S and tried recapping str, but end dropped to A again as I capped it so I did the same thing again figuring that it would drop the mental attributes enough this time for me to be able to cap out str without making my end A rank, however as I used the final chocotrain it dropped to A once again, yet during this entire ordeal the mental attributes never moved from C rank. I don't want to keep wasting chocotrains if this is gonna be an endless cycle, so do you all know what I should do? And is it even worth it to get capped str or is 1 chocotrain away from capped good enough to reliably win C1 races? Thanks for your help

[urat]

From waht I've seen and noticed in races, if stamina exists, which we'll assume it does, regen seems to lower the rate it's lost and regains it back slowly.

I notice this when a bird with regen will run out of stamina (assumed to be marked by the sweat drops), after a few moments, it dissapeared and then reappeared, sometimes twice.

[Guppy]

I notice this when a bird with regen will run out of stamina (assumed to be marked by the sweat drops), after a few moments, it dissapeared and then reappeared, sometimes twice.

Good observation, this is the first really good evidence I've seen as to what Regen actually does in a race. I've seen a NPC bird on the racetrack with Canter + Regen, and it was a pretty strong racer -- maybe we should start considering different combinations of abilities other than the standard Canter + Gallop.

[Landael]

Has anyone noticed a significant decrease in wins since the Dec 9th update? It may be coincidence but the last couple weeks have been the worst I've ever had. I usually race against 7 NPC chocobos but now I'm losing to them much more often which is silly...

In October I started keeping track of my racing results. Here are the before and after results:

Oct 2 Through Dec 8
          # Placed  % of Runs
C1 (1st)  25        53.19%
C1 (2nd)  10        21.28%
C1 (3rd)  7         14.89%
C1 (Loss) 5         10.64%
Total     47


Dec 9 Through Current
          # Placed  % of Runs
C1 (1st)  2         22.22%
C1 (2nd)  2         22.22%
C1 (3rd)  3         33.33%
C1 (Loss) 2         22.22%
Total     9

For perspective, to bring my first place Dec 9 results back up to 53% that 2 would need to be an 8.

I also race on a mule which has also had a significant drop off in wins. I'll refrain from posting his before & after results because (1) he just started racing a new chocobo and (2) he mixes in C2 races.

[Guppy]

It may be coincidence but the last couple weeks have been the worst I've ever had.

Hard to tell -- SE has made a lot of poorly understood adjustments to chocobo racing lately. There were some announced changes in the June 2008 updates, and some vaguely worded changes again in the September 2008 updates. I also suspect there's been some un-announced ninja tweaks since then. The relative strengths of different chocobo styles and racing strategies have probably been bouncing all over the place.

I've sometimes wonder if a new chocobo racer gets a "grace period", and then the relative difficulty of racing goes up after the player racks up a lot of wins (victory points?). Then again, given all the adjustments to racing during the time I've been participating, it's really hard to tell what's going on.

[urat]

I notice I do good on a run, then fail miserably after, then do good again if I take a break.

considering your bird does better at hot and cold when you take a 24 hour break, I'm not surprised if this applies to chocobo racing too...

[nitsuj]

In building your perfect bird, has anyone finished capping the stats AFTER the bird was retired? I understand there are coins you can buy that upgrade retired birds as well, or am I mistaken?

I got distracted with Lu Shang's over the holidays and slacked off on my Chocobo, he's still 8/7/4/0 and I'm worried I won't have enough time to cap him before he auto retires...

Anyone know how that works?

[Clave]

They say that the tokens you can use on retired birds will still increase stats but even slower than other training(I think the figure was +2 or 3 instead of +5 idk). Given that you'd need twice as many and they cost 100 instead of 80, it seems way too inefficient for me to consider unless choco was close to capped already... you'd be asking for a lot of punishment. No personal experience to offer though sorry.

Also, has anyone noticed the official races now give you back chocobucks when you beat them? It used to be that you only got a small gil reward ; ; that would have been useful when I raised my first 4 chocobos

[Guppy]

I got distracted with Lu Shang's over the holidays and slacked off on my Chocobo, he's still 8/7/4/0 and I'm worried I won't have enough time to cap him before he auto retires...

Anyone know how that works?

Your Chocobo auto-retires on Day 129.

There doesn't seem to be a limit on how many chocobuck training sessions you can spam in a day (or if there is, I have never run into it). So, your only problem is how fast you can earn enough chocobucks (and that spamming lots of races at once costs more than doing a few every day).

In theory, you could also buy training tokens with gil, but there's not much of a market for them. A friend of mine who ran short on time-before-retirement ended up borrowing a bunch of tokens from me once, since I had several hundred chocobucks saved up.

[nitsuj]

Well as of yesterday, I'm at

Strength: First-class
Endurance: Outstanding
Discernment: Average
Receptivity: Poor

Abilities Gallop + Canter

I'm going to move to getting Receptivity up next, try and buy a few STR tokens I've seen around to cap Strength and if I have any time /points use them in Endurance.

I'm going for 8/8/4/4 but I'd settle for 8/7/4/4 depending on distribution. (8/7/4/0 now if you want numbers).

I've also beat the 2nd Swamptrot race with this setup, so I seem to be on the right track.

p.s. I met a Japanese raiser last night who had SS/C/S/C for her chocobo and had the Pullus Torque. I thought that was an interesting distribution.