FINAL FANTASY XIV Online – Chocobo Gameplay and Tips Guide

FINAL FANTASY XIV Online – Chocobo Gameplay and Tips Guide 1 - steamlists.com
FINAL FANTASY XIV Online – Chocobo Gameplay and Tips Guide 1 - steamlists.com

In the world of Final Fantasy, chocobos are feathered companions. They can battle with you or compete in races with their Chocobos, and you can use them as a mount to go around more quickly. You can learn how to accomplish everything in this manual!

Your Personal Chocobo

Acquiring your own personal Chocobo

When you reach level 20 and have chosen a Company, which comes naturally through the main story, you will be ready to accept the task.”My Little Chocobo“. This is not a Main Scenario Quest but a Blue Side Quest, so make sure you don’t accidentally miss it!

Depending on what company you choose, the quest giver for this quest will be a different one; the pursuit itself, however, will be the same.

Maelstrom

Quest giver: R’ashaht Rhiki

Limsa Lominsa Upper Decks (X:13.1, Y:12.8)

Twin Adder

Quest giver: Vorsaile Heuloix

New Gridania (X:9, Y:11)

Immortal Flames

Quest giver: Swift

Ul’dah – Steps of Nald (X:8, Y:8)

You must obtain Seals if you want to complete the quest. You should already have 300 seals after finishing the Main Scenario Quest of selecting a corporation. If you don’t already have these seals for some reason, you can just take part in a few destinies to swiftly acquire them.
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Once you have 200 you exchange them at the Quartermaster for Chocobo Insurance. With that Insurance, you can now exchange it for your own personal Chocobo! To complete the Quest you will have to give your Chocobo a name. Don’t worry if you can’t think of anything significant right away, you can still change the name later.


Should you need a Chocobo before reaching level 30, you can rent a Chocobo from the Chocobo Stable of one of the leading 3 Cities. This is not like the Porter and will allow you to ride a Chocobo on your own control for 10 minutes. 10 Minutes cost 80 gil, but be aware that dismounting it will result in the Chocobo to disappear.

Your Chocobo as a Fighting Companion

Unlocking your Chocobo as a Companion

Your chocobo can fight by your side and help you in many valuable ways as a companion in the world. But first, you must unlock the ability to summon your Chocobo by completing another Quest.

The Quest “My Feisty Little Chocobo” will be available to you as soon as you acquire your Chocobo as a mount. To accept it you have to go to the South Shroud (X:17.0, Y:28.2) and speak with Docette. (You should accept the follow-up quest for later as well)

Following this quest you’re going to learn to use Gysahl to summon your Chocobo and upon completing will unlock the ability to do this everywhere in the over-world.

FINAL FANTASY XIV Online - Chocobo Gameplay and Tips Guide - Your Chocobo as a Fighting Companion - A996405


Finishing this quest also grants you access to the Chocobo Saddlebag. This is additional Storage space you can use to carry items. Be aware you cannot access it in Dungeons or Instances.

You can find it under Character > Chocobo Saddlebag.


Gysahl Greens

Gysahl can be purchased from a bunch of merchants, but the easiest to access is Maisenta in New Gridania (11.5, 11.2). She is right next to the Aetheryte. 1 Gysahl costs 36 gil.

With one Gysahl you can summon your Chocobo for 30 minutes. If you use another one, the time will extend to 1 hour, but it won’t go above that. Once the time runs out, your chocobo will dissappear, but you can simply summon it again by using another Gysahl.

The Timer is visible in your party list and looks like this:

FINAL FANTASY XIV Online - Chocobo Gameplay and Tips Guide - Your Chocobo as a Fighting Companion - AF63608

Should your Chocobo level up in Combat, it will extend the time by 30 minutes for free.

Important to note as well is that the timer will pause if you are mounted or in a dungeon. Chocobos itself will only accompany you in the over-world and cannot come into dungeons or instances with you.

Leveling your Chocobo in the Field

Leveling from Rank 1 to 10

Your Chocobo will always match your current characters level, however it has its own ranking system and will start at Rank 1. At that rank your Chocobo can’t do very much, other than some basic attacks it will do to help you fight. But it can learn more skills later.

You can gain experience for your Chocobo by fighting monsters that are in your level range together with your Chocobo. Each defeated enemy will grant your Chocobo a small amount of XP. At the start you’ll level fairly quickly by just having your Chocobo summoned with you at all times.

You can check your Chocobos Status in your companion menu under Character -> Companion:

FINAL FANTASY XIV Online - Chocobo Gameplay and Tips Guide - Leveling your Chocobo in the Field - 1719258

When you defeat enough enemies, your Chocobo will rank up and you will be rewarded with Skill Points to spend on your Chocobo. More on that in the Skill Tree Section.

You can freely level your Chocobo until Rank 10 at which point it will cap and stop leveling for now.


Leveling beyond Rank 10

To increase the level cap of Rank 10 you need to feed your Chocobo a Thavnairian Onion. This will increase the level cap by 1 level, which means for each level going forward you’re going to need to feed your Chocobo another Thavnairian Onion to continue leveling. You can do this a total of 10 times to reach the actual last Rank of 20. Leveling from Rank 10 will also be significantly slower than before.

Important:

To feed the Onion to your Chocobo, it has to be summoned in the field next to you or used in stable training. If you use the onion in a dungeon, city or instance without your chocobo being present, you will lose the onion.

Thavnairian Onions can be acquired in 3 ways.

  1. Market Board
  2. Gardening
  3. 2 Onions through Questing

The easiest, but also most expensive way is by buying the Onions on the Market Board.

Alternatively, you can garden them yourself, if you have a housing plot with a garden.

Refer to this guide if you want to know how: https://www.ffxivgardening.com/cross-diagrams – [ffxivgardening.com]

There are however two Onions you can get by doing two quests in Heavensward, which will save you some money for the first 2 levels past 10.

Quest 1:

Lvl 50: Landing a Stable Job The Pillars (X:6.2, Y:9.4) by Mathye

Quest 2:

Lvl 57: A Hunter’s True Nature The Dravanian Forelands (X:31.6, Y:22.9) by Hervoix

(These Quest might require you to do some previous quests to show up)


 

Tips for leveling

If you have your chocobo summoned at all times that you’re fighting outside, it will level naturally with time. There are however two things you can do to speed this up.

Your Challenge Log has 2 Challenges every week that will help boost your Chocobos level.

Bosom Buddies I – defeat 20 enemies with your Chocobo – rewards 5% of your current Ranks XP

Bosom Buddies II – defeat 100 enemies with your Chocobo – rewards 10% of your current Ranks XP

I recommend doing these challenges through fates, as the sync down option for the fates makes sure that your Chocobo and you are always at the same level range and guarantee XP for your Chocobo. It’s also a good way of leveling in general. The higher level fate you will do, the more XP your Chocobo will earn.

It’s also a good idea to stable and train your chocobo everytime you know you will be in a dungeon, or are going to log off, as this will help with increasing the XP over time as well.

Feeding your Chocobo Curiel Root as a Training Program to make it their Favorite Snack and then using it in the Field will also grant you an XP Buff to increase the amount earned and can improve the speed at which it levels.

(More on stables and food in the next section)

Chocobo Stable and Training Food

Raising Chocobos at a Stable

Following the Quest “My Feisty little Chocobo” you will get the Quest “Bird in Hand“. You should have already accepted it.

The Quest is fairly quickly done and will reward you with 5 Krakka Root and the unlock Chocobo Raising.

In oder to raise your Chocobo you will need to stable it. For this you need to have access to a Chocobo Stable. Chocobo Stables are only accessible if you have a housing Plot, an apartment or are part of a Free Company that owns a Stable.

The Stable can be used for a variety of things, while it is mainly to train the Chocobo, you can also customize it with the stable. Though more on that in the Customization part of the guide.

While your Chocobo is stabled you will not have access to your Companion Menu. You won’t be able to summon your Chocobo as a mount or as a fighting companion in the overworld either. For this you have to use the Fetch Option at the stable to get your Chocobo back.

You also have to Withdraw your Chocobo in order to stable it. You can do this with the Companion Menu as well.

Training and Chocobo Food

When in the stable, you’ll have the option to train your own or other stabled Chocobos.

(A Head Barding can be obtained upon training 10 Chocobos that don’t belong to you)

Training can be done once per hour and will increase the XP your Chocobo currently has, but it demands specific foods in order to be able to train them.

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There are 6 different types of food that you can use to train your Chocobo. Upon training your Chocobo 10 times with the same food, it will become their favorite snack. You can check this in the first page of your Companion Menu.

All 6 foods can be fed to your Chocobo outside in combat as well, they won’t however incrase XP but give your Chocobo a specific buff. If you feed them their favorite snack, it will increase the buff of the food a little more.

(You cannot summon a Chocobo with a snack, you need to feed it to them after you summoned it)

Icon for feeding a non favorite snack

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Icon for feeding a favorite snack

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Food Effects:

Food
Effect
Curiel Root
Increased XP Gain
Sylkis Bud
Increased Attack Power
Mimett Gourd
Increased Healing Potency
Tantalplant
Increased HP
Pahsana Fruit
Increased Enmity
Krakka Root
No Effect

These effects only appear when fed to your chocobo after you summoned it, they will not appear when training with these foods. You can change the favorite food of your Chocobo by training it again 10 times with a different food at the stable.

Where to get Chocobo Snacks

Having finished the Quest Bird in Hand you will have obtained 5 Krakka Roots

To get the other Foods you will have to either Garden them yourself, acquire them from the Market board or buy them off the Vath Vendor in The Dravanian Forelands (23.6,19.0). For this you will have to unlock the Vath as a Beast Tribe and reach the Reputation Friendly. You can then purchase all Foods for 348 gil each, except for Krakka Root and Curiel Root. These are exclusive to the Market Board or Gardening. Keep in mind that Market Board Prices can vary and you might be able to buy them cheaper off there than of the Vath Vendor.

Stable Conditions

There are 3 Stable Conditions that will effect the amount of XP your Chocobo will earn during Training.

  • Good
  • Fair
  • Poor

You can see it’s status when you click on it, or by looking at the stable. If it shines it’s good, no shine is fair and if the hay is scattered around it’s poor.

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To maximize the amount of XP you gain, your stable should always be in Good Condition. You can achieve this by using a Magicked Stable Broom on the Stable to clean it. You will have to use it twice to get from Poor to Good.

You can acquire the Magicked Stable Broom in 5 different ways.

1. A level 57 Quest in The Dravanian Forelands (X:31.6, Y:22.9) by Hervoix will reward 3 Brooms.

2. A level 50 Crafting Recipe

3. Market Board

4. If your House or FC has a Junkmonger you can purchase them for 20000 gil

5. At the Quartermaster of your Company for 1500 Company Credits

Fighting and Skills

Your Chocobo will naturally use its abilities to help you fight enemies. You can however influence the effectiveness of your Chocobo with different things:

Your Skill Tree and your Stances

Let’s go over the Skill Tree first:

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You can find this in the second Section of your Companion Menu.

You have 3 Skill Trees to choose from:

  • Defender
  • Healer
  • Attacker

Everytime your Chocobo levels up a Rank, it will gain Skill Points. You can use these Skill Points to buy Skills from the different Skill Trees. Each Skill costs its level in SP, so the first Skill of the Tree always costs 1SP, the second one 2SP and so on.

You will have enough Skill points to buy every single Skill if you level your Chocobo to level 20.

Finishing a Skill Tree will also reward you with a Barding. You can get 3 Bardings by finishing all 3 Skill Trees.

While it is possible to mix and match the Skills from the trees, I personally recommend choosing a skill tree and sticking with it. Depending on your needs, the Healer and Attacker Skill Tree should be the one you focus on, while the defender Skill tree should come last, as its skills are the least useful in there.

Each Skill Tree has 4 Active skills and 6 Passive Traits. Traits will increase your Chocobos strength, HP or mind. While active skills will help in battle by teaching it spells to heal you with or weaponskills to fight with. You can check what each skill does by hovering over them in the Companion Menu.

Refunding Skills

Should you be unhappy with the Skills you chose for your Chocobo or want to try out a different Tree without leveling further, you can refund all Skills by feeding your Chocobo a Reagan Pepper.

You can buy a Reagan Pepper at the Quartermaster of your Company for 48000 Seals (You have to be the Rank lieutenant for this) or from your Hunt Billmaster for 20 Allied Seals.


Now let’s get over your Stances:

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The first section of the Companion Menu will show you what stance you can choose from. Each of these stances can be assigned to a hotbar as well for easy access.

You can see what stance is active in the Party list on your Chocobos name.

Stance
Effect
Follow
Your Chocobo will not engage in Battle and only follow you around. Good to lose emnity
Free Stance
Your Chocobo will freely choose out of all its available skills and do what it thinks is the most important.
Defender Stance
Your Chocobo will attack the enemy and use skills from your defender tree only
Healer Stance
Your Chocobo will not engage in battle, but will focus on healing you and your party members
Attacker Stance
Your Chocobo will focus purely on attacking and use skills from your attacker tree only

(Please not that Withdraw is not a stance and it will completely remove your Chocobo, until you summon it again with Gysahl Green.)

Recommendation for Stances

Using Free Stance is almost always recommended, as your Chocobo will make the most out of all the Skills it has and won’t suffer the skill cooldown penalty from only using one skill tree.

This means, at the highest rank your Chocobo will have more DPS on the free stance, than on the Attacker Stance, since it can use the defender Skills as well.

Should you realize you’re struggling to keep yourself alive in a situation however, changing your Chocobo to healing stance can also be recommended, while the cooldowns on the skills still apply, the focus on purely healing can make the difference in keeping you alive.

The Attacker Stance can be useful if you’re starting out as a healer and need some extra DPS in the beginning, or to help speed up quests to kill enemies as a healer.

The Defender Stance should mostly be avoided, as the Emnity your Chocobo builds up does not compare to your own and it will struggle holding Emnity.

If your Chocobo is attacking the wrong enemy, you can change what enemy it attacks by choosing the following Stance, then switching back to Free Stance or Attacker stance and attacking the enemy you wish the Chocobo to focus.

Changing Chocobo Colors and Bardings

You can customize the appearance of your Chocobo in mostly 2 ways.

The Color of your Chocobo and the Barding.

Check your Appearance Tab in your Chocobo Menu to see Customization options and Infos:

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All Customization options appear both mounted and unmounted on your Chocobo.

To change the color of your Chocobo you need to stable it and feed it specific foods in a specific order to change the hue.

It is important that you feed the food in the right order to avoid unwanted results, as you will have to do it all over again, should the color not be the one you wish for.

The process takes 6 hours after you fed your Chocobo the snacks, do not unstable your Chocobo in that time, as it will reset the progress on the coloring. This is only useful if you made a mistake in the feeding order and wish to start over.

This website has an excellent overview over what colors you can choose from, what food you need for them and in what order you need to feed them:

https://ffxivchocobo.com/en – [ffxivchocobo.com]

As always there are different ways of acquiring the Snacks to change the Colors

Gardening and Market Board as usual

and the following quest that are all acceptable from

Hervoix in The Dravanian Forelands (X:31.6, Y:22.9)

Lvl 57 Getting a Legtrap Up – Rewards a choice of either 15 Xelphatol Apples, 15 Doman Plums or 15 Mamook Pears

Lvl 57 Pest Control – Rewards a choice of either 15 Valfruit, 15 O’Ghomoro Berries or 15 Cieldalaes Pineapples

Lvl 57 A Step in the Right Direction – Rewards a Han Lemon

The Han Lemon can be used to revert your Chocobos color back to the original desert Yellow Color and only needs to be fed once.

Bardings

Equipping a barding is another way of customizing your Chocobo.

There are a total of 88 Bardings that can be acquired in different ways. Some have to be bought with real money, some are crafted or bought from the market board, some you get through fates or other currency exchanges.

Some easy to get Bardings in the beginning can be acquired in Old Gridania (10.6, 6.2) at Jonathas Achievement Exchange. He offers 3 full bardings and one head piece barding for a few Achievement points.

In order to equip your Bardings open the Companion Menu.

You can equip the Bardings in the Gear section of the Appearance window. Feel free to mix different Bardings together for a unique look!

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A complete List of all Bardings and how to get them can be found here:

https://ffxivcollect.com/bardings – [ffxivcollect.com]

Chocobo Racing

As there already exists a really good and in-depth guide about Chocobo Racing and Breeding, I will link it here and only go over the basics.

https://ffxivchocoboracing.wordpress.com/ – [wordpress.com]


Unlocking Chocobo Racing

To unlock Chocobo Racing you first need access to the Gold saucer, which you gain through a level 15 quest “It Could Happen to You” in Ul’dah – Steps of Nald (X:9.6, Y:9.0) by Well-heeled Youth

Once you have access to the Gold Saucer, you can use the Aetheryte to teleport to the Chocobo Square. There the Race Chocobo Registrar should have the Quest “So You Want to Be a Jockey” for you.

The Reward unlocks Chocobo Racing as well as your first Fledgling Chocobo Registration. You can choose between G1-M and G1-F, which basically means you can choose between having a female or male racing Chocobo. (This is purely choice preference and has no influence on stats)

Chocobo Racing is made up of different things. I will go over the basics in each of these:

  • Your Racing Chocobo
  • Racing
  • Tips for Racing

 

Your Racing Chocobo

For Racing you get your own racing Chocobo, you cannot use your Companion Chocobo for it.

Just like your Companion Chocobo you have a menu to check their stats which you can access over “Insert”

Your Racing Chocobo has a Rank and a Rating.

Rank

Your Rank is the level of your Chocobo and will go up naturally through racing. The max rank is 50, but if you plan on breeding with it, you can retire it with Rank 40.

Each level your Chocobo will gain 5 random stats that increase by 1% as well as a training session.

Once you reach Rank 10, your chocobo will learn an ability.

Rating

The Rating of your Chocobo is the calculated average number of its 5 stats and it dictates which racing class your chocobo can enter. The higher the stats, the higher rated races your Chocobo can enter, which will be more difficult but also yield more XP and MGP.

(Please note that the training food stats will not be used in this calculation, more on that in the training section)

Additionally, even though this is not your companion Chocobo, you can customize it with Bardings as well, which will be visible inside the races.

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Racing

You can race against up to 8 different players. Should no players be found, you will be racing against AI Opponents.

The difficulty of the Race Track depends on your Chocobos Rating. There are several things to look out for while in a race:

  • Magicked Panels
  • Weather Effects
  • Treasure Coffers
  • Course Hazards

The Basics of Chocobo Racing will be told to you via the Training Course, which you can repeat as many times as you wish. A small summarry of it would be this:

You can move your Chocobo forward, backwards and sideways. Moving forward will cause it to speed up and entered the Lathered Status, which removes Stamina quicker. Backwards movement will slow your Chocobo down and preserve Stamina.

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Magicked Panels are 4 types of squares that can be found on the ground that your Chocobo can run over.

Color
Effect
Blue
Grants a short boost of speed
Green
Restores roughly 5-7% of your Stamina
Purple
Slows you down for 5 seconds
Red
Makes you lose 15% stamina

There are 3 different types of Weather Effects.

Fair, Neutral and Foul. Depending on your Chocobos Weather preference, they will do slightly better or worse depending on the weather. Generally, Chocobos with a Foul weather preference have a small advantage over Fair weather Chocobos.

FINAL FANTASY XIV Online - Chocobo Gameplay and Tips Guide - Chocobo Racing - E8966DBTreasure Coffers are another thing your Chocobo can run through (sometimes you will have to jump to reach them) that will grant you with different racing items. You will always be able to tell ahead of time what items are in a coffer,so you can slow down or speed up to try and get the item you need the most.

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Race Items

Race Item
Effect
Choco Potion
Restores 10% of Stamina
Stamina Tablet
Prevents Stamina Reduction, will restore a small amount of Stamina when used at 0%
Sprint Shoes
Makes you burst forward for 3 seconds
Choco Aether
Allows to execute the previous racing ability again
Bacchus’s Water
Forerunning Chocobo enters a frenzy in which it can’t stop running and will suffer stamina loss for 15 seconds
Graviball
Slows down Forerunning Chocobo for 10 seconds
Briar Caltrop
Surrounds your Chocobo with a field of thorns that saps 5% stamina per second, up to 4 seconds, for each Chocobo inside the ring
Hero Tonic
Increases your overall performance for 15 seconds, prevents and removes enfeeblement
Choco Meteor
Hits all forerunning Chocobos for 20% Stamina loss and adds lamed status, preventing any speeding
Stamina Swapper
Switch your Stamina with the forerunning Chocobo, only works if Chocobo in front of you has more stamina
Spiderweb
Chocobo behind you can’t use items for 10 seconds

Course Hazards will occur on each of the 3 racing tracks as well. Those can be enemies walking around, floating or creating AOES for you to avoid. Some of these enemies will slow you down or steal your items when you get hit, so avoid them.


 

Tips for Racing

 

  • The controls for your Chocobo Racing are, unlike most of the game, Server Sided. This makes the Chocobos feel sluggish but makes sure your position is always accurate. It’s recommended to think 1 second ahead when trying to grab items or avoid obstacles, so jump a second before you would normally jump to make sure the server is on your side.
  • AI can tell what you’re doing. They will know when you speed up or slow down, so carefully plan when you’re going to use Items like the Briar Caltrop. AI will also be aware of some of your items and if you can use them, don’t underestimate their abilities.
  • Control Items when you can. You will always know what Items a coffer has. If you’re in first place you will have the control of knowing what items the opponents will pick up. Use this to your advantage.
  • Collision is a thing, so do not accelerate if another Chocobo is blocking your way. You yourself will only be able to block other players, not AI, but the AI can still block you.
  • Cut Corners as much as possible, as it will shorten the distance and stamina need for the course
  • Feed your Chocobo when possible, to make sure you’re not at a disadvantage against other Chocobos of the same rating (More on that in the next Section of the Guide)

 

Race Chocobo Covering (Breeding and Training)

Breeding

To unlock this feature you will need to have finish the Quest “So You Think You Can Ride This Chocobo”from Katering in Central Shroud (X:20.4, Y:22.8) and “Like Sire Like Fledgling” from the Chocobokeep in the Chocobo Square. Once completed you unlock the ability to breed Chocobos.

This means you can breed Chocobos with each other to create different Chocobos with higher stats.

Once your Chocobo reaches Rank 40, you will be able to retire it at the Race Chocobo Trainer in the Chocobo Square. This is permanent and you will no longer be able to race with this specific Chocobo. When retiring you can choose words to praise one of your Chocobos abilities. The one you praised will become hereditary and will have a chance to pass onto the next Chocobo that was bred from it. After retiring you receive a Retired Chocobo Registration Form.

You will need this Form to breed your Chocobo.

Every Retired Chocobo Registration Form can be used 10 times. So if you have an especially good Chocobo, feel free to breed it more than once.

To breed your first Chocobo, you will also need a Chocobo to breed it with. For this talk to the Tack & Feed Trainer and choose “Race Items”. You can find several different Chocobo Breeding Permissions in there. Make sure you grab one that is the opposite s*x of yours.

Try to pick the same Pedigree level as your own Chocobo, otherwise you might spend MGP for nothing.

Where to Breed

To get your newly bred Chocobo you will have to travel to Betbranch Meadows and talk to the Chocobo Breeder. You should have been there for the quest as well.

From her you can choose “Chocobo Covering”. It will open a menu for you to drag and drop your Chocobo Forms into.

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Breeding requires a small gil fee and takes 30 minutes real time. You will recieve a “Proof of Covering” that you need to return to the same place to get your new Chocobo!

After adopting your new fledgling you just need to register them back at the Gold Saucer and you can then enter races with it once again.

Your newly bred Chocobo will have higher stats than your previous Chocobo, as well as randomly inherit an ability of its parents. By continuously breeding you will further better the stats your Chocobo has and be able to access higher rated races later on.

Your Chocobo can also inherit the Color of one of it’s parents, this is always a 50/50 chance on its parents colors.

You can see its current Pedigree and stats in the Character – Gold Saucer – Chocobo Menu

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On the side you can see the parentage. Each row of stars has a chance of being inherited, it is completely random and has nothing to do with how good they are. The color indicates where your Chocobo inherited it from.

If you apply the right breeding strategy you can continuously improve your Chocobos stars and eventually reach 4 stars in every row. This will require you to inbreed as well and take quite a hefty amount of time to achieve, as you will have to rank up several racing Chocobos to 40.

The Pedigrees end at Level 9 and each level increases your Maximum Attributes by 40.


 

Training

If you open your Racing Chocobos Menu and look at the Parameters you will see something like this:

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Your Attributes are a reflection of your Chocobos Stars in Stats. On a Pedigree 9 Chocobos, having 4 Stars in a stat means you will have a Maximum Attribute of 500, it does not mean your Chocobo has a 500/500 Stat. This is where Training comes in.

Overview

  • Attributes
  • Abilities
  • Food

Attributes

Each time your Chocobo Ranks up, it will gain a random Stat Boost as well as a Training Session.

The Training sessions can be used to feed your Chocobo a special Blend Food to increase one of its abilities. You can see how many sessions you still have available in your racing chocobo menu.

To train you need to obtain a special blend food (More on that later) and talk to the Chocobo Race Trainer. There you can choose “Chocobo Training” as one of your options.

Here is a short list of the attributes and what exactly they do:

Attribute
Effect
Maximum Speed
Affects the speed at which your Chocobo runs
Acceleration
Affects how quickly your Chocobo reaches its max speed
Endurance
Affects when the Lathered Status triggers and reduces Stamina consumption
Stamina
Affects the total amount of Stamina
Cunning
Affects how well your Chocobo can traverse Terrain* in both speed and stamina

*Terrain are sections of a course that are going uphill or are covered in Water


Abilities

Your Chocobo can have 2 abilities. One Ability is Hereditary and one is learned.

If you don’t teach your Chocobo an ability, it will automatically learn a random one at Rank 10.

You can unteach it the learned ability at any time by using a Lethe Water at the Chocobo Racing Trainer. Lethe Water can be purchased from the Tack & Feed Trader for 10 MGP. If you do not teach your Chocobo a new ability after this, it will learn a new random one upon the next rank up.

When you retire a Chocobo, you can praise one of its abilities, this makes it the new hereditary ability of that Chocobo, to possibly carry over.

There are active and passive abilities. Active Abilities act just like Race Items do, while passive abilities work on their own or require only small adjustments to activate.

You can buy ability books to teach to your Chocobo from the Tack & Freed Trader as well. There are several levels of certain abilities, some you have to unlock through Challenges which I will talk about in the next section.

Abilities and their effects:

FINAL FANTASY XIV Online - Chocobo Gameplay and Tips Guide - Race Chocobo Covering (Breeding and Training) - D4C41F3

(List was taken from here: https://ffxiv.consolegameswiki.com/wiki/Chocobo_Racing – [consolegameswiki.com]  )


Food

As mentioned before, you can feed your Chocobo everytime it ranks up. This food will translate into an increase of a specific attribute. You don’t need to feed it immediately as the Sessions available will stack up over time.

Each Session training your Chocobo will increase the stat in relation to its maximum amount. So for a max 500 stat, when feeding Grade 3 Feed you will gain +15 points in that attribute.

This means that it is possible to overfeed your Chocobo, so make sure you plan out carefully what feed to use on what attribute. It’s unlikely you will get all stats maxed, so try to focus on 2 or 3 that seem the most important to you.

Your training will not affect your Chocobo Rating and it will not carry over to your newly bred Chocobo either. It is purely to gain an edge at your current rating against opponents.

Each Attribute has a correlating feed.

Acceleration, Balance (Cunning), Endurance, Speed and Stamina

In addition to that, there are 3 grades of feed.

Grade 1 increases the attribute by 1% of the stat cap, Grade 2 by 2% and Grade 3 by 3%

Generally it is recommended to wait for your rank up attribute gains before feeding, so you can make sure to not overfeed and focus on specific attributes that are important to you.

If you’re not working on your end Chocobo just yet, you don’t necessarily need to spend your MGP on Grade 3 food. Grade 2 or 1 will do as well to keep it balanced for the races without investing too much until retirement.

You can acquire food from:

Culinarian Recipe

Tack & Feed Trader in the Gold Saucer

Quest: Like Sire Like Fledgling – Chocobokeep in Chocobo Square (X:6, Y:4)

Challenge Races and Racing Rewards

Challenge Races

There are 15 Challenge Races you can participate in.

All 15 Challenges are played Solo against AI. Each course has a different Theme and special AI Opponents that you will need to beat. The special Opponents will be displayed in Red and the ones you need to beat. It doesn’t matter if you come in first during the race, it only matters that you come in before your red opponents.

Beating each Challenge comes with a reward. Sometimes this is only MGP, other times it unlocks Abilities for your Chocobo and future Chocobos to learn. Beating the Final Challenge rewards you with the Race Barding.

Beating all Challenges will grant you 445,000 MGP. This can be influenced with MGP Buffs as well, so make sure to activate those if you have to gain even more MGP.

Since the Challenges increase in difficulty each time, you will need a high rated Chocobo to be able to do them all with.


 

Other Rewards from Racing

There are several other goodies you can obtain from racing.

FINAL FANTASY XIV Online - Chocobo Gameplay and Tips Guide - Challenge Races and Racing Rewards - 2A5F1A9

Titles:

TItle
Requirement
Bug Boy/Girl
Participate in 1 Chocobo Race
Senior Jockey
Participate in 300 Chocobo Races
Veteran Jockey
Participate in 3000 Chocobo Races
The First Across
19
Chocobo Breeder
Unlock Chocobo breeding and breed your first Chocobo
Chocobo Trainer
Breed a Chocobo to a rating of 285. You will need a minimum of 17 Stars for this

Other Goodies:

Goodie
Requirement
Race Barding
Beat Race Challenge 15
Chocobo Mask
Breed a Pedigree 9 Chocobo
Achievements and MGP
Race Challenges and Races in general as well your Challenge Log and breeding

 

Closing Words and Chocobo Fun Facts

Aside from your Companion Chocobo and your Racing Chocobo there are several more mounts you can acquire in the game that are Chocobo related, as well as minions, items and furniture.

If there is an interest in this, I can include an extra section in this guide for such things.

Hopefully the Guide was helpful, let me know if you have any questions!


To close this off, here are some fun facts about the Chocobos in FFXIV!

All Free Company Chocobos are male!

This is because all of them are being bred in Ishgard, who do not want to lose the monopoly on breeding Chocobos! Therefore they never give out female Chocobos.

Why are Racing Chocobos allowed to breed with females then?

It’s said that they’re too nimble to ride into battle and therefore don’t threaten to steal the monopoly of the ishgardian bred Chocobos.

Also, not all Company Chocobos are the same breed! Most Chocobos are Rouncey, medium sized fierce tempered Chocobos. Meanwhile Lalafell get Belah’dian Jennets, tiny but speedy Chocobos!

And Roegadyn and Hrothgar get Destriers, massive and strong chocobos capable of carrying heavy weights.

Thanks for reading!

FINAL FANTASY XIV Online - Chocobo Gameplay and Tips Guide - Closing Words and Chocobo Fun Facts - 99A76D7

Written by Dr. Permixtus

Hope you enjoy the Guide about FINAL FANTASY XIV Online – Chocobo Gameplay and Tips Guide, if you think we should add extra information or forget something, please let us know via comment below, and we will do our best to fix or update as soon as possible!


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