The Chocobo Digging Thread

[Electro]

Grtas Sox...I went digging the other day, got 13 wyvern scales in ONE SESSION. I seriously could not believe it. I normally only get maybe 5 at most. I also got 2 philosophers stones. I had a friend craft me 4 dragon gauntlets. I was planning on saving for a random day, I was not in the mood to craft. A guy about 30 minutes later send me a tell "Do you have any cursed finger gauntlets for sale?" I reply "sorry no, i normally npc all the nq's" He replies back with "Uhg, ok guess I will have to wait on nq or some on AH." I begin to think about it and say to myself "screw it im gonna buy a dragon heart, and some rev tree roots and ill see what i can do". I send him a tell saying sure pay me w/e u want for a pair. Well I end up going 1/4 on cursed finger gauntlets-1. So only 200k in materials, and they sold for 1Mil. Mmmm 800k profit. Too bad i've sat there and gone 0/12 sometimes ; ; ....

[Jontale]

I've just started digging, and as I begin this arduous activity, many questions I've not found answers to by looking through guides / forums arise.

Is it known whether or not you're unable to 'skill up' after your 100 item/day limit is reached?

If you aren't able to skill up after you reach your 100 item limit, could it be extrapolated that a new 'skill up' chart could be made using items/level instead of stacks/level?

Is raising a chocobo worth it for early level digging? Will it help me skill up faster in any way? This is excluding the theorized skill increase from having access to the Chocobo Hot and Cold Game.

Thank you ahead of time, and I'm very happy to have been enlightened by this thread, it really has taken the daunting away from chocobo digging for me and made me more optimistic.

[Reinah]

I've just started digging, and as I begin this arduous activity, many questions I've not found answers to by looking through guides / forums arise.

Is it known whether or not you're unable to 'skill up' after your 100 item/day limit is reached?

If you aren't able to skill up after you reach your 100 item limit, could it be extrapolated that a new 'skill up' chart could be made using items/level instead of stacks/level?

Is raising a chocobo worth it for early level digging? Will it help me skill up faster in any way? This is excluding the theorized skill increase from having access to the Chocobo Hot and Cold Game.

Thank you ahead of time, and I'm very happy to have been enlightened by this thread, it really has taken the daunting away from chocobo digging for me and made me more optimistic.

To answer your first question:

The only known ways to skill up are through digging up items (obviously before 100/cap is reached) and you can skill up through Hot and Cold (Possibly only if you successfully dig up treasure.)

[soxfan]

I'm not sure about that egg helm item though, you can only dig up 100 items a day so can only skill up on that many a day, but if you use the egg helm you can still dig up eggs and stuff and I'm not sure if that will count towards your digging or not, but it isn't very profitable.
I would raise a digger chocobo even early, this will help you get more uncommon/rare items and if help you to make more gil while lvling, digging in the dunes for phoenix feathers/black chocobo feathers alone and make you decent money. Also try to do hot and cold game every day.

[midguardian]

Also try to do hot and cold game every day.

Better to do it twice every other day since you get two bonus digs if you haven't done Hot & Cold the previous day.

[akasephiroth]

ive been looking around but cant the info on 100% if the egg helm provides skill ups after you hit that 100 item mark, has anyone ranked up after digging up eggs past the 100 item mark?

[Rugazanami]

ive been looking around but cant the info on 100% if the egg helm provides skill ups after you hit that 100 item mark, has anyone ranked up after digging up eggs past the 100 item mark?

I've been looking to start up chocobo digging lately, and I must say; if it is possible to skill up using the egg helm, it's going to be a lot less intimidating to get to A10. Now my only problem is that I need to wait till next Easter to get this thing and try it out.

[Clyne]

It's very apropos that someone necro-bumped this 1 day after I ding'd A10.

Part of me wants to be selfish and keep this to myself, but I think it should provide some decent information to new diggers, as well as an interesting comparison to the old system. While my records aren't entirely complete, I highly doubt anyone else has been this meticulous and willing to share:

2/19/2008 A40
2/12/2008 A35 402 stacks
5/2/2008 A30 550 stacks
11/25/2008 A25 660 stacks
3/9/2009 A20 730 stacks 30 H&C
7/3/2009 A15 776 stacks 30 H&C
11/16/2009 A10 772 stacks (reg) + 83 stacks (SB Silks) 30 H&C

I did the first few levels under the old system, got to A45 but stopped cause I was losing money. I didn't pick digging back up until January 4, 2009, after discussing it for awhile with an A15 friend at the time, and finishing raising a digger bird.

As you can see, the stacks to level are significantly lower than under the old system. My bird had 1st Class Rec. & Dis. with Bore & Burrow. When I first started out, I normally went through 15-16 stacks to hit the 100 item cap. By the end, I was using on average 10.5, and rarely ever more than 12, which is a successful dig rate of about 75-80%.

I probably should have just stuck with regular digging, but I wanted to hit A10, so I went ahead and got a Sky Blue Silks body...but only ended up using it for 7 days.

The actual calendar dates are often spread out because I would often have long stretches without digging, normally due to severe inventory limitations - Mog Bonanzas sucked ass having those marbles taking up so much space - or I just didn't have the time or interest to dig. But if you do the math and extrapolate rising dig %'s as you level, I believe you could go W16 - > A10 in just under 13 months. I did the math awhile ago when I hit A20, and it came out to just over 14 months, but I was using 1000 stacks as the estimated amount for A10 & 850 for A15.

I did find it extremely interesting that I level'd up each time after having exactly 30 successful Hot & Cold digs. I don't know how much this could have factored in.

Hope this helps shed a little light on present-day chocobo digging for the neophites & veterans. If you have questions, I'll try to answer them.



And with all that said....stay the fuck out of the jungles when I'm there, and for gods' sake, put up a /seacom when you're in a zone so other diggers (with the courtesy gene) know to find another area.

[Teorem]

I did find it extremely interesting that I level'd up each time after having exactly 30 successful Hot & Cold digs. I don't know how much this could have factored in.

Coincidence. I've since dug up over 125 successful VCS Crates in Yhoator but only used ~300 stacks of Gysahl Greens, and my dig-after-zone time still hasn't changed since the end of May.

Hot & Cold helps, but 30 isn't a magic number.

[Rugazanami]

About the new racing silks. I was wondering if the Sky Blue or regular Blue would be better for skilling up digging. The Blue allows you to dig way past the 100-item cap, which means more skill ups, but supposedly the Sky Blue increases the rate of skill ups. Is the data on the Sky Blue concrete yet, or is it still mysterious?

[Spekkio]

About the new racing silks. I was wondering if the Sky Blue or regular Blue would be better for skilling up digging. The Blue allows you to dig way past the 100-item cap, which means more skill ups, but supposedly the Sky Blue increases the rate of skill ups. Is the data on the Sky Blue concrete yet, or is it still mysterious?

does the former require wearing it through the entire digging session? if not it seems to me that you could use the latter for your first hundred items, then continue with the former to keep going, no?

[Seyrr]

does the former require wearing it through the entire digging session? if not it seems to me that you could use the latter for your first hundred items, then continue with the former to keep going, no?

Sort of. With the blue one equipped, you'll get a message when you dig up an item that effectively says "This one doesn't count against your daily limit". If you put it on at 100 items, you've already hit the daily limit, so you gain nothing. Someone did suggest using the skillup one for the first 80, and then the endurance one until you get 20 digs that count. (Adjust number as appropriate?)

[Rugazanami]

I had originally posted this in the "Advanced Chocobo Raising" thread, but I'm a little anxious about advice, so I'll post this here, too.

First, a question about the hard cap on a bird's stats. I was reading about it on the wiki page, and it said that, "Once the point hard cap has been reached, additional points will only cause other stats to decrease." Does this mean that your bird can strictly gain only 637 worth of stat points? So if my bird has Average receptivity and I start using a care plan that lowers it, the points that my bird had in receptivity still count towards that 637-point cap?

If that is true, then would it be best to retire my bird once it has its discernment at SS and it has Bore and Burrow? I'm thinking that if I do that, then receptivity should be around B or A, and I can use Chocotrains to pump strength and endurance up to B and C respectively. As far as raising and digging, receptivity won't seem to matter after my bird learns Bore and Burrow, so it won't be important to cap for a digger. I'm interested in raising strength and endurance so I can use this bird to also win some races to help earn Chocobucks for racing silks.

Would this plan work? Any help would be greatly appreciated!

[spider123]

afaik, when you set your chocobo to a plan that drops the value of another stat, those points simply get redistributed.

I'm currently doing the same thing you are, keeping it on str/end plan until it hits the day where care plans have no effect. I'd say retire when it gets to that point, and simply being a new racer bird. It's by and large simpler than pumping hours worth of chocobucks into tokens for your digger.

[Haxx]

Necropost but w/e, looks to be the right thread.

Anyone notice any changes to the proc rate on the Blue Racing Silks while digging after the March version update? Before the version update there were many days I'd get over 200 items with an average of 170 items/day I'd say. I threw away all my logs I had kept recently so exact numbers I don't have. I do dig everyday though till cap, not a casual digger.

Since the March version update my proc rate on Blue Racing Silks while digging has been horrible. Yesterday it only proc'ed 23 times and 100 normal digs. Similar results the days before as well. Maybe just bad luck? Though since I've dug with it equipped I have never gotten proc rates so low as post update :/ Anyone with similar results?

[CubsWoo]

It's bad luck. My A10 digger gets around 170-215 items a day.

[Electro]

Does anyone have a working parser, I'm an a10 digger as well and dug for the first time in a LONG time. Only did one small run through western/eastern altepa desert. I managed 2 coral frags, 2 philosophers stones, and 3 platinum ores. So for 5 stacks of greens I came out on the good end . Anyways; if someone finds a parser let me know because I lost mine ....

[soxfan]

Kparser works for me, it sometimes gets messed up after updates, but gets updated and just need to change something in config to get it to work. It keeps tracks of number of digs, number of items, number of items found with ease, number of found nothing, and all your items.