Demystifying Chocobo Raising Plans And Food!

You get to skip the handkerchief process, and I recommend trying to skip running into Brutus and learning Canter by breeding multiple times until you get an egg with it inherited since the addon works on eggs from Finbarr.

Go for 254 4 254 128 or 254 34 224 128. The ELM saddle from C1 races gives +16 END during the race and as the best saddle it's all the END you need.

Honestly, I don't even know how to breed a chocobo... I have to get a Chococard from someone else? I can't just like, breed with a NPC?

FFXIV had the right idea, letting you purchase from a NPC.

I don't mind trying to find Brutus! That seems perfectly reasonable. I guess it might make my END too high but we have food and training plans for that.

You just need two chococards, M and F. You pick a plan to favor abilities/gender being passed along, and the color is a mix from the parents plus a random color I believe. You can get a new egg once per day.

Nothing random about the color inheritance luckily. It's a simplified 3x3 Punnett square for figuring out your color results based on the parents.

Example:
BLACK RED YELLOW Male
RED RED BLACK Female

Only possible egg outcomes:
BLACK RED YELLOW
BLACK RED BLACK
RED RED BLACK
RED RED YELLOW

Oh that's interesting, good to know.

Having decided to raise another chocobo, it's 29 days old and at adulthood!

Using Care Plan = Listen to Music (actually Exhibit to the Public now that it's fully grown) and feeding 2 Zegham Carrots and 1 Azouph Greens to get DSC/RCP up.

Two questions:
1) Do item feeds... actually do anything positive? I'm using Ivaar's Chococard lua to track the exact stats and before/after feeding I had 0 change to DSC/RCP and -2 to STR. Am I better off just feeding Gysahl Greens? I saw the log on the previous page where Vomp Carrots did something literally 1/6 of feeds.

2) What's the optimal way to raise STR? I know (from the previous page's excellent posts) you can get 4/6 (alternating) points per 80 chocobuck "training session" - is that + buying Chocotrains from the AH the best way or is there a better method I don't know?

2.5) Okay, I lied. Related to that, I should hold off on STR until the mental stats are done if I'm in no hurry, right? Because I can use the care plans to do mental stats faster when STR is at 0 and I don't care about dropping it.

1. Maybe someone else with more experience can chime in here. I haven't tracked stats from feeding, but you should be using food better than Gysahl Greens. You might not get a stat gain after every item, but over the course of weeks, it will add up.
2. Once you can race and earn chocobucks yourself, will probably be faster to buy your own chocotrains rather than wait for them to show up on AH.
2.5. Assuming you are building a race chocobo, you want to focus on mental stats first until you learn the abilities you need, then you can work on STR/END.

I do have a previous race chocobo online, I'm farming some Chocobucks daily, just a question of when I spend them - can only hold 1k but that's fine, that's still 12 training sessions.

Oh crap, you have to feed the damn thing? ***, ***...I haven't talked to my chocobo chick in like 5 days.

1. You want to feed Sharug/Azouph greens as affection being at level 8 is the big contributor to making sure the daily plan is a success, which in turn is the best way to raise stats.

2. Optimal way to raise STR is Delivering Messages ~+4-+12 STR per day and Race STR tokens +5 per use.

3. Definitely do your DSC target in the first half of raising as it directly plays a role in running into the NPCs for KIs and being needed to learn said abilities.

Felgarr, you don't have to feed every single day and in fact many times you will not be able to based on how much energy was used up the day before if doing a token/low maintenance power level raise. But checking in every single day for a Watch Over is a huge requirement otherwise affection will tank.

Lol gg bro. That thing ded.

I officially have the worst chocobo imaginable. I can't even win the first race where you have to come in 1st 2nd or 3rd out of 4 chocobos.

I really half-assed this chocobo raising. My chocobo is 75 days old, and is STR/END/DSC/RCP: A little below, A little below, Poor, Poor.

I gave the stables a new, warm chocobo egg. Do I check on him every day, like the monsters in Monster rearing? If yes, then why do the care plans even exist? I guess I have to feed it every day too right?

.....Frustrating. What do I do?

Bg wiki (kinda maybe) implies that celerity salad gives more discernment than zegham carrot ("boost" vs "small boost") and a ffxiclopedia guide states its +4 and "almost as much as a token". From what I've noticed below it seems to be much smaller. To be fair, I wasnt intentionally measuring its value and there's lots of flaws to what I observed. From what I noticed, salads are either giving discernment and receptivity equally, neither, or only a very small amount of discernment, like 1-1.5 weeks of feeding was less than a days difference of listen to music. Without wrecking the usability of my chocobos, is there a better way I can try to measure the effect? Celerity salads are not hard to make, but it is more effort than carrots and it doesnt seem to be worth feedimg them daily with a neglible return.

Salads are +0 to DSC/RCP and so are Carrots. The reason I know this is because I attempted to raise a chocobo with 96 in STR/END/DSC by day 29 in order obtain all 3 of the physical characteristics like the Noble chocobo mount.

We are lucky that Ivaar's chococard addon exists and it removes all the guesswork and also all of the information from past guides are about the system before the 2016 rework.

I recommend the first bird for anyone new to chocobos be raised like this:

Abilities to obtain: Gallop & Canter

Day 1-5 Basic Care

Day 6-20 Listen to Music

Day 21-30 Exhibit to the Public

Day 31-64 Delivering Messages (If STR caps early switch to Digging for Treasure)

Day 65+ Basic Care (Buying time to purchase/farm chocobucks to increase END to 4-34 and RCP back to 96-128 before day 120 using R: tokens)

254 4 254 128
Once this bird is made all the rest come much easier.

Yes, you have to check it every day. Care Plan works best when the chocobo thinks of you as its parent, and basically not at all once affection is low enough.
Feeding daily is part of that.

Dang that lua would have been nice before I started raising new birds. Its odd food doesmt do stats anymore but SE does weird things. 3/4 characters have birds of varying quality already made from like 15 years ago. Do chocobucks earned on one bird carry over to another if I just hoard them?

oh my god I'm not crazy I could have SWORN that this was the case

thank you so much

(do we know if any foods still change values? or was I right, just slam Gysahl Greens and ignore it?)

It's an SE mini game, yes, you have to do something every day.

Already been a couple howtos.

I understand that the intellect stats RSC and DSC allow the bird to be smarter in the races, and your saddle gets your END to the minimum value you want to still be decent in the races, but I could trim a bunch of stats in favor of more END in order to have a good hybrid bird for more digs per day right?


It'd simply come at the cost of consistency winning races, but they're RNG anyway and I could just brute force them... no?

Azouph and Sharug are the way to go.

Well, how many more digs do you truly need for this hybrid bird? 4 END is 100(starting minimum) +2 items per day in digs. 196 more END gets you the remaining 98 items per day.

While yes you could sacrifice speed, race pace and negative item evasion for slightly more digs per day all on the same bird. Why not just raise a second bird all together and obtain what I consider a perfect hybrid mount digger with maximum TH? That is 224 196 0 224 and is obtainable once you have the first bird that makes farming chocobucks a breeze.

...oh, the Greens do change the mental stats? Okay then!

Ok so now that my bird is old enough to make cards (31 days), I was able to use the chococard lua on it. I was able to raise str by 2 points with 3 vomp carrots. The first carrot provdided no change No current statuses on the bird. END remained at 0. And DSC/RCP were unaffected. I'll try 3 tornado salads tomorrow just to triple check I didn't feed it enough yesterday. I believe Zedoma is right about them having no effect on DSC/RCP, but I had just made 50 of the damn things so I'm really just hoping he was wrong. I'll check zegham the followinng day.

My understanding (which is worse than I previously thought) is that azouph/sharug are for affection raising amd gysahl was a cheaper/easier option. Azouph can be bought in abyssea for the extreme price of 300 cruor

I hate chocobo raising so much. I'm going to just:

Walk Leisurely until I can't anymore
Watch over it until I can't anymore
Feed 3 vomp carrots/day

It's still a chick. I need a racer to win races and earn chocobucks. Any other suggestions from now until Day 29? (Also, what do I do at day 129 when it automatically retired?)

This is my mood right now:

His listed raising plan is still ideal. 2 points for a day is minor but its less chocobucks spent on stats. I'm doubtful the difference will be enormous and may only matter until (or maybe starting on?) certain days.
Id say do the plan he listed. Save vomp carrots until you start delivering messages and stop when str is maxed. Early DSC/RCP care plans likely will negate your str bonuses from vomp. Feed greens or zegham if you want to be safe. I absolutely dont think watch over or leisurly walks are meccessary anymore. Just do brisk until you cant and call it good. Switch to you're birds favorite green if affection drops below cap. Affection and fixing conditions are probably the most important part of food.

Sidenote: I have a bird on each of 3 characters made in like 2009. 2/3 were pretty nuch forgotten after day 30 after care plans were changed. None havea any abilities, max str and between below average and almost max end. No rcp/dsc. They win chocobucks at a failry tolerable rate. I doubt they'd finish all the challenge races and you wouldnt want to breed with them, but they get bucks. Even fairly neglected birds have some potential if all you want is bucks

My first bird can't even win the very first 'test your choco' / 'just don't be last' race where it's only 4 birds. I'm not exaggerating when I say my first bird is 4th place /last every single time, so I started over with this new bird, which just hatched yesterday. I did watch over it 150 times in the first 4 days. I want to make sure that I'm doing everything correctly for each phase of it's life.

Could you explain it like I'm 5? What actions do I take and foods do I feed while (1) a chick (2) adolescent and (3) adult? Sorry, I suck at this. :/

Affection now begins at max. You are max tieted affection if you get "regards you as a parent"
First priortiy is fix the status effect if there is one. From what I see, celerity fixes everything. One corrective action or food is enough. After that maintain max affection. Sharug or azouoh should be its favorite green. You will kbow its the favorite if the eating message when eating a single green is something along the lines of "swallows in a single gulp." You can feed one item at a time until the message is "chocobo is completely full" appears. You can feed one item at "almost full" without issue. I'll get back to the effect of zegham carrots in a few days. You can feed it those if you wamt to hope it matters until day 30 when you switch care plans as listed above. Vomp can replace zegham as an adult, given affection is maxed, there are no ailments, and str is nor capped.

Gallop is learned from story of impatient chocobo. This is recieved from short/medium walks depending on your country. You can teach it to an adol bird with "a bit deficient" discernment or higher. Read it the story until it learns the ability. Canter is recoeved from long walks. You will be average or better discernment when you get this, so it can be learned immediately (potentially). If there are no abilities to learn or ailments to address, walk until you cant and be done.
I'm pretty sure the difference between brisk vs leisurly walk is just if you want the to see the cutscene or not.
Los if typos because I'm on my phone and apparently I'm blind, but I think the message is clear

Thank you Echo! This is really helpful. I feel better about this second go-around.

What should I feed it while it's a chick and adolescent?

Phrasing.

tldr: Zegham carrots and celerity salads most likely do nothing for STR/END/DSC/RCP. Just feed it affection greens (azouph/sharug). Vomp carrots build str (shown in post above), but by the time you are building str, you are destroying affection with adult care plans.

Yeserday, I went to the chocoguy, checked on my bird, printed a card, fed it 2 tornado salads then a celerity salad and printed another card. No shown stat bonus. This did move my affection from "wants to be with you all the time" to "regards you as a parent." Considering celerity/tornado salads also give the "swallows in a single gulp," I'd think its obvious it gives an affection boost, but it is not listed on either wiki that it does this. I've seen salads fix bored, sick, hurt, and maybeee spoiled. So its an affection boosting ailment remedy, whereas most other corrective actions/foods suggest affection loss. Not sure where the belief it boosted discernment came from, but both wikis have this. It wasn't a huge boost to affection as I was back to "wants to be with you..." affection today after delivering messages. Not sure I'd actually recommend farming/growing them though. I have been able to pick some off the AH, and if I were only raising one bird, that would have been enough. I assume people are getting these from the gobbie box and just toshing it up there. They also can be crafted from cooking kit 75, but this is a horrid recipe for crafters points, especially for cooking, so expect to never see any.

Today I again went to the chocoguy, checked on my bird, printed a card, fed it 3 zegham carrots, and printed another card. No stat bonus. My affection was not capped before/after feeding these. I suppose it could be possible that I need to be on a DSC/RCP boosting care plan to get benefit from these. This could be why vomp only gave only STR and not END as deliver messages is str only. However, I have fed 4 birds zegham carrots for 1-2 weeks each while listening to music and/or exhibit to the public and the carrots never crossed a stat tier threshold. Of course that doesn't rule that out entirely, but it adds to the evidence these carrots don't increase DSC/RCP. I could test it and change my care plan, but tbh I don't want to do that and I most likely won't.

Someone asked if greens increase mental stats, and other than affection, I've never seen any suggestion it does. I'll keep an eye out for it as I feed my bird/measure stats, but if I don't say something, assume I found no evidence of stat increase from greens.

Greens should be the primary food though, because affection and ailment correction seems to be the most meaningful thing to do with food.Whatever she swallows (in a single gulp)