Part 82: Update de Chocobo

Chapter 81 - Update de Chocobo





So last time we got to the southeastern side of Corel, found some tracks and now we're onto it. Our Chocobo hunt.



The good thing is that we'll be dealing mostly with common enemies who are gonna get one-shot by our magic, so there's that.



And we've got our first Chocobo. Hoozah!



After we get our Chocobo we can dismount and send it back to the farm. But first we need to buy stables. They may not look like the cheapest thing in the world but the sad reality is that this is gonna be a relatively tame investment when it comes down to Chocobo breeding.



You need at least three spots to get some breeding going, but we'll just buy all 6 and be done with it.



Also, look what we have here, another [Chocobo Lure].



And this is our Corel Chocobo after we got the stables (technically I bought it before going to Corel).




Let's check up on him. We need to breed a "Great" Chocobo with a "Good" Chocobo.



Yeeea... I don't think this is the Chocobo we're looking for. Sorry, mate.



Back to Corel. This time we find a Chocobo surrounded by these two flying things.



Alright, awesome! We've got ourselves a Good Female Chocobo. The neat thing is that they have different animations in this screen depending on their type - the Average Chocobo stays still, the Good Chocobo walks, etc.

Now we just need a simple naming convention that makes it easy for us to know if the Chocobo is Good/Great, Male/Female etc.



No, the worst.



Now we look for the tracks west of Corel. I assume he's talking about the Rocket Town area. Let's look around.



Huh. This is quite far away from Corel, but I suppose it matches the directions. Let's see.



So, the secret to Chocobo catching is actually quite sneaky.



Although it might have crossed your mind by now, I remember a lot of magazines in the late 90s saying that which Chocobo you got out of the area was random, which is pretty much misinformation.



You see, the battle is random, but the outcome isn't. Which means each battle match-up will always yield the exact same type of Chocobo. Only the gender is random.



It took me a while to actually notice this back then. But once you figure it out it's easy to keep track about which battles to skip, etc.



These have all been in that Rocket Town area. I don't actually know the match-ups by head. I don't even remember their locations, to be honest - I'm pretty much literally following the in-game instructions on how to breed Chocobos.



Oh well, a female.



Hi Greata. We still need a male Chocobo though. I could do a save/load trick (the Chocobo gender is decided when you move the Chocobo to the stable, not when you catch it) but I decided to do this the honest way.



So yeah. We're back to hunting. There's a common misconception that each specific Great/Good gender combination will yield a different Chocobo so you need to have two different couples to get both River and Mountain Chocobos.



This is not really true. Even the Chocobo Sage just says "Great+Good" and doesn't specify whether they need to be female or male.



Technically (as far as I know) even Great+Great works, but we're going by the book here.



Anyway, now that we have the 4 Chocobos that we need it's time to feed them. Chocobos have a pretty complex set of attributes. Some you can see in game, some you can't. We bought some Sylkis Greens for a shitload of our money.



You see, the Chocobo offspring inherits some of their attributes so it's not a bad idea to start getting them up right now so each generation is stronger than the last. I'm pretty sure I'm overfeeding them here but I'm going by gut feeling.



Also, during the process we got two Female Great Chocobos. Since Chocobos have different stats each I sent her to the stables to see which one had better attributes.



Which means I'm sorry Greata, you have to go.



We're not done yet. Basically, the more victories you have with your Chocobo couple, the better the breeding result will be.



For the River/Mountain Chocobo we need 4 wins to have 100% breeding chance. Those 4 wins can be split in any way we want.



Which means we're gonna get like 50 wins with each one of them for no real reason.



Hi Ester.



This is our first time riding with a Chocobo of our own.



Taking a look at the competitors you can see that our Chocobo, being "Great" and overfed with some crazy greens, is better. Not THAT much better, just better. He'd probably be around the level of the competitors if we didn't feed him, which makes me think of how bad the "average" Chocobo must be.



Greato sucks but yea, as you can see in the map, the C-Class races are pretty much are breeze.



And we win. Hooray!



You have no idea how long those C-class bozos take to get to the end so have another screenshot.



These are some of the worst prizes in existence. Congratulations, you're a winner! Have a tranquilizer.



It's worth like 10 GP but seriously, we got a Phoenix Down. GP is harder to come by.



Anyway, we run 3 more times. Have some more of the color extravaganza that is the Chocobo race. I have no idea why I took the long course, it just makes the waiting longer in the end.



Well you know what? Let's see how we fare in the Class B rac...



Oh for fuck's sake.



Go away Teioh GO AWAY.



Look at the map. I'm pretty sure they had to use a slow-motion high FPS camera to prove that I was the winner. Meanwhile everyone else is "running" at a snail's pace.



Ok fine, I play some more races.



And this would be our cue to get the hell out of here. In Class A, the normal competitors are very hard for our first generation Chocobo, and Teioh is just impossible.



Anyway, it's time for us to mate our Chocobos. We followed every instruction the game gave us. First you choose the Chocobos...



Then you pick up the Nuts. The nuts are all pretty much worthless except for the Carob and the Zeio Nuts. Which is pretty sad because they have an actually fairly elaborate system. Each Nut has its own algorithm for deciding the attributes of the newborn Chocobo.

Alright, time to breed them. Cross your fingers, and...





























Aaand there we go! We got a Green/Mountain Chocobo!






Greena is our first second-generation Chocobo. Its attributes are noticeably better than her parents but, the most important part as you can plainly see - she's green. We'll take her out for a ride.



Making sure it's all working out. Greena can indeed cross over mountains.



It feels strangely good to walk on the mountains, crossing territories you shouldn't be able to. It almost feels like you're breaking the game.



Let's see. Cave north of Corel... nope, we can't access it yet.



What we SHOULD be able to access now is this cave, though. Since it only has a mountain blocking it.



And there we go.



And we just found our first secret Materia cave.



[Mime] is one of the most important Materias for the "end-game". What it does is literally repeat the last command given in battle. Which means anything - magic, attacks, summons - even Limits.

Naturally you can't Mime the limit of someone else, but this allows a character to repeat his Limit indefinitely as long as no one else uses any command in battle.



Just to show you - the game forces you to wait some time (as in, forces you to go do some 10 battles, but you don't know that) before you can mate the same couple again. Anyway, we still need a River Chocobo, sooo...



HOORAwait, another female. Let's reset and try again.



There we go! Blueto, our second second-generation Chocobo.



And as the name implies, it can walk over shallow water areas. Awesome!


NEXT TIME:

More Chocobos! More Chocobos. Chocobos.


Music >I< had to listen to throughout this update:

Electric de Chocobo - This is what the Battle theme sounds like when there's a Chocobo in it.

Fiddle de Chocobo - What I have to listen for 50 seconds while I'm waiting for the Class C Chocobos to get to the end.