The Chocobo Digging Thread

[Ryphen]

I think I got into digging either just before they added the fatigue or just after, and it took me 9-12 months to cap it out. Can't remember exactly.

Not sure where everyone is getting these 2 year figures from.

[Albender]

That pretty much depends on how many items you got per day.

On the long run, not the same digging 36,500 items a year (max) or 29,200 (which is 80 items per day average) for example.
Not to mention if you average 60 items per day during a year because you missed one month or whatever. That would be 21,900 items...

There you have your difference.

Hardcore diggers promotion faster cause they do 100/100 daily no matter what.

[Reinah]

hmm lets see, I think thats how I did it...

Say you are A40 and want to check if you levelled to A35.

make a macro:

/echo level check macro.
/wait 38
/dig


zone and spam your macro until you see the echo message, then stop.

IF you get an error msg ( must wait longer) then you're still A40
Else you are A35!

You can put any number between 36 and 39 there, 38 is just to avoid lag thingies ( for example, for me A10 is A11, A40 would be A41 etc due to lag)

Hmm, that works better than my method...

Apparently, I'm A20 :D

[Reinah]

Oh, and right after I used that method to check my level:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v1...dism/orich.jpg

:D

[Kaeli]

A15 on Phoenix, though I don't really dig for money much anymore. I just try to do a little every once in awhile to work toward eventually capping. If I notice it's ore time I'll give it a token attempt but there's usually so much competition. My first ore was pretty early, I think I was something like A30. And it was fog in Ronfaure, I remember that 'cause I wasn't even sure that counted. Only other remarkable digging memories I have are getting 4 Phil. stones in about 20 mins and going crazy trying to figure out why the hell I dug up a chicken bone in the jungle. (happened to amazingly land right on a gob digger's item without the "something's near" message)

I have a browser bookmark directly to the STF email report form and I report the W. Altep bots at least once a day. Hasn't worked so far.

[Wakabo]

I remember seeing a blog of someone who was a choco digger and posted multiple ore pictures they dug up. I wish I remembered who I have only dug a little bit of digging and it seemed like it would be a lost cause if I kept continuing since it would take so much time to level up. I know there is a guide on the wiki but anyone have one of their own?

[Reinah]

I remember seeing a blog of someone who was a choco digger and posted multiple ore pictures they dug up. I wish I remembered who I have only dug a little bit of digging and it seemed like it would be a lost cause if I kept continuing since it would take so much time to level up. I know there is a guide on the wiki but anyone have one of their own?

Ayrlie's FFXI chocobo blog

I think that's who you're talking about, though it could be someone else.

[vegetaa]

Complete digging noob question : How does someone know it's Ore time ?

[Syanonn]

Think the earliest you can get it is at A30.

I'm A30 and never gotten one yet, also need the correct moonphase and weather must be present. My main problem being the zones are always almost empty during these moonphases.

[barber2006]

I think a large part of the discrepancy in hitting max level is that digging fatigue took place in the midst of introducing player owned chocobos. I hit /a10 in November of '05 and I can tell you this.....there is a HUGE difference in the frequency of digging up items with a raised choc vs. a rental. I would never dig again if I were forced to use a rental. For years most digging leveling theories fell into one of two categories: 1) possible skill up when digging up an item and 2) possible skill up when digging even if unsuccessful PROVIDED it was possible to dig an item at the time (i.e. zone not dug up).

Under the old requirements it would have taken over 2 years to max digging with the current restrictions. However, people are reporting hitting /a10 in less than half that time. To me that can only mean two explanations:

1) They lowered the requirements to level

or (more likely in my opinion)

2) Digging skillups are based on successful digs so the total number of greens needed to level is reduced since more digs result in an item with raised chocos.



I can tell you this about ores. I've gotten 3 ice ores in a five dig span (when they were still worth more than a flint stone). I've also gotten 7 ori ores in one session in thickets. This is extremely rare and hardly worth banking on. As a matter of fact, I only dig for ori ore and elemental ore when my favorite zones are dug up because I like to jump on my bird, dig for 12 minutes and synth logs into lumber. Even after all these years I still am not completely sure about how ele ore and other top tier items drop back into the digging pool.

Even after the nerf digging is still my favorite way to make money. If I could trade my five 96+ crafting mules in for /a10 diggers I'd do it in a second. I'd probably also trade my fishing skill and ebisu rod for an extra /a10 digger. Having said all that, I don't think I could deal with leveling digging nowadays. I much prefer marathoning something to doing 100 items a day.

[urat]

To test myself I generally do a multi dig macro:

For example, I'm A35 atm, so my macro would be:

/wait 27
/dig
/wait 5
/dig
/wait 5
/dig

Each error message tells me how far I am. 2 means no change, 1 means level up.

even at 35 I can net a decent profit since quetz has like 5-6 diggers total, so I can generally walk into altep and use a good 4-5 stacks after playign hot and cold and dominate the whole place.

I generally do a orichalcum ore run via 6-7 stacks in bahflua thickets then another 6-7 in rolanberry. I get 1 or 2 per run. I suppose if I tried I could pull up 1 per day, but I generally just do it whenever I'm bored and its close to full/new moon.

I'm finding hot and cold is givign me more skillups then I expected. Did a months worth of it without any real digging and found I went from A 45 to A40. Combined with diggin it took about 4-5 months to get from A60 to where I am now. Shoudl really get around to finishing it off...

[Reinah]

Complete digging noob question : How does someone know it's Ore time ?

From Chocobo Digging Guide - FFXIclopedia - a Wikia Gaming wiki

Sadly for the new diggers, Elemental Ore requires a digger of Veteran Rank to dig them up. This means the earliest you can possibly pull one up is Craftsman rank, but even for them its hard to do. A digger with Artisan rank has a better chance, but not by much. A digger with Veteran or Expert rank can see anywhere between 3 to 8 elemental ores per Early Waxing Crescent though I have seen some pull more than 10 during that time. Digging competition is extremely high during this time and even Veteran rank diggers will have to deal with constantly dug up zones.

In addition, an active weather effect must be in effect in those zones. Fog counts as a weather effect. The Moon Phase must be between 7% to 24%, and most of the elemental ores tend to come in the 10% through 14% part of the moon phase. It is rare to see an elemental ore at 21% or 24% waxing crescent.

[urat]

Ok so I kind of have had an idea floating around about a way to reinvigorate chocobo digging, since hot and cold just doesn't cut it. It's a lot of work with very low returns.

The best item I can get for it sells for 30K on ah. I get like 1 every couple months. Other than that, hot and cold definitely has the spotlight stolen from its counterpart C1 race.

Here's my idea, I am about to mail it to SE and would like your thoughts on it. It's probably way to much to ask, but they may get some cool ideas to further expand hot and cold. Honestly I'm surprised we didnt get the areas outside jueno and the 3 cities unlocked

Well, I am an avid chocobo raiser, and feel that you have put tonnes of time and effort into chocobo racing. It takes awhile, hard work, lots of time to beat. And ends in one big dramatic race against the big boss, etc etc

It even has a sweet reward. I also am as avid a digger as I am a racer, and feel that the entire other half of chocobo raising kind of got the spotlight stolen from it.

Racing you get 100K races, big trophies for your mh, an awesome title, and a cool neckpiece.

Hot and cold gets you like 20K a day, and a couple key items you can't really show off. Not even a cool title to show for it all!

It feels unfinished, like there could be so much more, so here's what I propose:

Treasure Hunting. Kind of how in final fantasy 9, which is obviously where the side quest gets its origin from, it feels like we're still inside the chocobo forerst. Getting our graphs, but none of the REAL booty.

So how about you change it up a little. Once said person has completely unlocked chocobo hot and cold, beat it all, AND beaten the sakura race, then it opens the next step.

Treasure Hunting. You are officially asked to become an all out VCS member, along with a simple VCS jack coat. Just yellow, nothing all that cool.

Then, you get the ability to ask the same hot and cold npc to do assault style missions, where you are sent off with nothing but a verbal hint/clue as to the whereabouts of a long ago lost treasure. The missions could follow a similar path to ZNMs too

IE you start out with a choice between 3 tier 1 missions. Each one leads to its own respective chain of missions, then once beaten you gotta head back and do the Next.

Each mission will even award you with rank points. Each rank will add a new jack coat and othe rpieces of HQ chocobo riding gear to the chocobucks npc.

For example:

Master Riders Jack Coat:
Chocobo riding time+30

Master Jockeys Jack Coat:
While ridding chocobo, movement speed +5% (in other words your bird gets faster)

Master Hunters Jack Coat:

Enhances digging skill (raises digging cap by ##)

You end up unlocked a hand,body,leg and feet piece for each set. The master riders increases riding time, jockey riding speed, and hunters digging skill.

But that's not all!

As you go along wrapping the whole treasure hunting missions, every now and then you'll find a curious piece of old material key item, like:

Matted cloth, or torn material, or frayed rope, etc etc

Each one the npc upon returning takes it for closer examination.

At the end of wrapping all the missions you get a cool title and congratulations, along with a nice surprise! the VCS took all the random stuff you found and made you a sleek new VCS outfit, that enhances all three stats substantially!

And you get to choose the color! cool!

But then the big thing. Turns out the materials were all given old ancient enchantments, and now reassembled open up the doors to:

Chocobo Paradise! Finally Sakura gets to go home, and then begins yet another final long convoluted quest, involving gaining the ability to talk to chocobos, then running back and forth trading items, digging up more artifacts, finally ending in Sakura getting a mate, and you, a very special chocobo egg

You take the egg to brutus in jueno ,who then takes it and begins raising it. Lo and behold, its a beautiful white prince chocobo!

And guess who's put in charge of raising the new prince? Why you of course. So now you end up with ability to attach him to your whistle. Sure he isn't exactly the perfect chocobo for digging, but he runs easily 20% faster than the average chocobo in stables, lasts 30 mins longer, and is WHITE.

the series of quests will definitely need to be along the scale of the ebisu / lu shangs, etc etc, since it would lose it's grandeur if everyone had a white chocobo.

Now as I said, this wouldn't be like hot and cold or even racing really. The first part is easy enough, and the rewards would be pretty good. Maybe some special weapons like the MMM stuff, cool pieces of gear you can only get there.

Maybe a new swimsuit, while in other things you may get 20K and 5 imperial gold pieces form a pirates booty. etc. etc.

In the end though it'd be on par with getting ebisu. Cause seriously. White. Chocobo.

Thoughts? Too long? too hard? too generic/silly?

[Zeb]

Chocobo digging/raising suggestions

They'll never allow faster than the top speed chocobos currently have, because they'd have to change the settings on their rmtpwner. I don't see a need for riding time equipment either. Riding time + equipment just encourages diggers to chase digging pops in the popular zones. Your digging based missions are like the quest Orlando's Antiques, which could definately use a boost in its reward.

[urat]

Most of it would be like MMM stuff, just for looks, but the full set of digging set would nearly double your digging cap.

The main direct reward for the missions would be treasure. Coins, rare(r) mats, nicer stuff then some of the silly stuff we get from hot and cold.

Things like orichalcum ores, wootz ores, much rarer and much nicer stuff then a HQ ingot no one ever wants.

For example:

The VCS has discovered a vein of a rare ore in North Gustaberg. Head out and get us a sample.

You end up with a chunk of orichalcum ore, whicvh the npc basically says "meh keep it for payment" etc etc

Maybe asking for a bird that runs faster than stables birds is too much, but damn it'd be cool. If anything having it run AS fast as a stable bird would be good enough. Walking up to a meripo on a big white chocobo would be so damn awesome

[Thistle]

I've been digging daily for four and a half years, and when I say daily I mean that. I've never missed a day. I dig on vacations, my birthday, Christmas, whatever.

I'm A15. Been A15 for more than a year now. It's killing me. The day I hit A10 will be the day I can finally quit FFXI (but not really).

Having tons of crafting mules helps, as I can process lots of what I dig up.

[Pyree]

I haven't done very much digging, but I'm thinking about starting and I'm wondering if someone could answer some questions!

Do I need to move around a zone, or could I just keep digging in the same spot?

Right now I get nothing about 80% of the time, does the rate get better after a couple ranks? I don't mind if I get crappy items, but getting nothing kinda sucks...

Thanks.

[vegetaa]

Hey, could any of you A10 guys do a little digging guide for us noobs ? Some kind of Digging 101 post, that would probably help a lot of people (including me !)...

TY !

[midguardian]

Chocobo digging is too much like camped NMs for my tastes. Hot and Cold on the other hand is more like popped NMs and I like it.

I do think there is room for a Hot & Cold expansion. Something like that Nashmau Treasure Hunt quest where you're sent to dig in different zones once a week for special prizes. Maybe even a team Hot & Cold quest where you have to dig up as many chests as possible in a time limit. Or something like the Chocobo rental-return quest where you make a Sandy to Jeuno run digging in each zone along the way.

How about a chocobo digging campaign Op? Rare herbs needed for the war effort. Minesweeper outside the city on your chocobo.

[barber2006]

Hey, could any of you A10 guys do a little digging guide for us noobs ? Some kind of Digging 101 post, that would probably help a lot of people (including me !)...

TY !

Well.....here is the most complete thread on digging I've encountered:
[link deleted]

As you can see, it starts out in mid 05 and you can actually seeing the process of diggers figuring out what is going on. Obviously, this was before the fatigue system, raised chocs, or TaU areas, but I still link it because there is a ton of good information in it.