You're going to need a lot of money, patience, and luck if you want
to
raise chocobos. The payoff is that you can breed chocobos that
can fly,
swim, climb over mountains and go to places normal vehicles can't reach.
a) Go to the Chocobo Farm once you've accquired the Highwind.
Enter
the house (not the barn) and talk to the person
there. Choose
the first option, then choose the top choice.
Doing this will let
you purchase one of the stalls in the barn.
You'll need to purchase
all six, but they cost 10000 gil a pop. If
you want, you can do
the process with only four stalls, but you'll have
to kick out the
chocobos you don't need to make room for the newer
ones.
b) Leave and get on the airship. Fly to the northern continent
and
land near the lone house surrounded by grass (it's
exactly to the
northwest of the farm). Equip one character
with a Steal (yellow)
materia and keep walking around on the grass until
you fight a
large red reptile (Brachosaur?) Try to steal
from him until you
get a Carob Nut (you'll get a message with an exclamation
mark
if you stole something). Run away or beat
him, then repeat the
process three times so that you have three Carob
Nuts. You can
also get this item from the same enemy if you go
to the tip of the
penninsula near the excavator's village on the Northern
Continent
where the dark grass is.
c) Now, go to the chocobo tracks near the Gold Saucer (by the
shore).
Equip someone with a Chocobo Attract materia and
walk along the
tracks until you enter a battle with a Chocobo.
Don't kill the
chocobo, but do kill the other enemies. When
the battle is over,
press X to dismount and select the top option to
make the chocobo
return to the farm.
d) Go to the tracks on the Southern Continent, near the forest
where
you found Cloud in Disc 2. Unlike the walking
kind, you can get
running chocobos here. Just repeat step (c)
to catch one. Wait
a second--save your game. If you didn't get
the right type of
chocobo (more about this in part e), you can reset
the game and
try again: the chocobo's gender is determined randomly
each time,
so you can end up with the correct gender if you
keep resetting
and naming the Chocobo until you get the one you
want.
e) Return to the chocobo farm. Talk to the guy standing
still in the
barn and choose the 3rd option, then the first choice
twice. Name
your chocobo, then repeat with the other bird.
This will also place
your chocobos in the stables. You can tell
by their stance (walking
or running) if they are the right type. To
tell your chocobo's
gender and race ranking (more on this later), go
up to them in the
barn and press O.
You'll want to make sure that the running chocobo
is female and
the walking chocobo is male. If you have a
chocobo walking with
his head down, put it in a stall, then talk to the
man again and
choose the 6th option from the top. Pick that
chocobo and choose
the top option twice, then the bottom option once
to let that bird
go so you can get another one. If the sex
of the chocobo is wrong,
just use the trick in the above section to change
it.
f) Do you have the correct type and gender? Talk to the
man in the
barn again and choose the fifth option from the
top. Choose one
of the chocobos by walking up to it and pressing
O. Pick the top
option, then repeat with the other chocobo.
When you get another
choice, pick the top option. A list will appear.
Remember the
items you stole from that reptile in the north?
It will appear
as the item 7th from the top (there should be a
3 next to it
since you stole 3 items). Choose and and choose
the top choice.
g) Hopefully you got a green Chocobo! If you got a blue
one or a
yellow one, reset and try to mate the two chocobos
again (repeat
step f). You'll want a blue chocobo, but if
you get one right
now, it's harder to breed a green one -NSS-.
Keep note of your
chocobo's gender--it's important.
h) At this point, you can't mate the yellow chocobos again or
the
green chocobo. If you don't want to wait,
repeat steps (c)
through (f) and try to breed a Blue Chocobo who
is the opposite
gender of your Green Chocobo. If you have
time on your hands,
though, waste it and come back later. You
can re-breed your
two yellow chocobos and try to get a Blue Chocobo.
Either way,
it will take _a lot_ of tries, but you save the
trouble of
capturing and renaming chocobos if you waste some
time and just
re-breed your two yellow birds. Remember the
item that you
used (Carob Nut), will now have a '2' next to it
since you
already used one. Don't worry, it will still
stay in the same
place on the menu.
i) Okay! Now, you should have a Blue chocobo and a Green
chocobo of
opposite genders. If you caught another pair
of yellow chocobos,
you won't have any more stall space and you'll have
to let the
two yellow ones go. If you simply breeded
them again, you'll
still have two stalls left open. Since the
Blue chocobo is a
newborn, you'll need to waste some more time before
you can breed
it to the Green one. Hop in the Highwind and
fly back to the
house on the grassy patch in the Northern Continent.
Talk to the
purple geezer and choose the first option.
He will offer to sell
ou items; buy 40 of the ones that cost 5000 gil
(Shirukisu
Vegetable).
Return to the Chocobo Farm and give ten of them to
your blue
chocobo and 10 to your green chocobo. You
can do this by picking
the fourth option when you talk to the man, then
picking the
Sylkis Greens (it's the next to last one).
Pick the chocobo
you want to feed it to and press up or down on your
controller to
increase the number. Then press O twice to
feed the chocobo.
j) Go to the Gold Saucer (you can get there from the sky lift
in
North Corel). Go to the Chocobo Square, enter
the main
building, and talk to the girl in front of the 'STAFF
ROOM'
door. Choose the first option and pick either
your green
chocobo or your blue chocobo to race. Then
pick the top choice
two times and press Start at the next screen to
start the race.
The point of racing is to improve your chocobo's
race ranking.
Remember what happened when you checked your chocobo's
stats?
Underneath the gender was the race ranking.
You need to improve
it from a C to an A-class ranking, and you can do
so by racing.
It doesn't matter if you lose; just keep racing
until you gain
new classes. Refer to the chocobo-racing tips
in section 3o if
you need help, although it's easy to win the races
using
Automatic Sequence Mode. Every time you win
a race, pick the
top option to get an item, the bottom option twice
to get an
item, or the bottom option, then the top option
to get some GP.
Remember, to raise a class level, you have to come
in first place
(and even then you may need to get a high score
such as 1-2 or
1-2 a few times before you'll gain a level).
When you do raise
a race ranking, the girl will tell you. You
can see your
chocobo's class every time you race it (at the screen
before the
race starts). Obviously, it will take quite
a few races before
you can hit class 'A' (it took me around 3 races
to raise to
the next class each time).
k) Fun, wasn't it? Get back in the Highwind and return to
the
Chocobo Farm. Refer to step (f) and breed
the blue and green
chocobos together. With a little luck, you'll
find a black
chocobo in one of the empty stalls the following
day. Yes,
you may have used up your last piece of Karabu,
but you won't
need it anymore. Once again, take note of
your black chocobo's
gender.
l) There's an elongated island with a forest on it northeast of
the
Chocobo Farm. Go into the forest and wander
around until you
run into a tiny monster wearing boxing gloves (Goblin).
You can
steal a Zeio Nut off of it--you only need one.
After you
get it, fly to the chocobo tracks on the west edge
of the Northern
Continent and capture one; you can get the dashing
kind here.
Then go back to the farm, name your yellow Chocobo,
and put it in
the stalls. If it isn't the opposite gender
of your black chocobo,
reset and try the naming process again. Refer
to step (e) if you
forgot how to do this.
m) You should have 20 Sylkis Greenss left, so feed 10 of them
to
the dashing yellow chocobo and 10 to your black
chocobo (just like
how you did it in step i). Now for the real
fun part--you have to
get an A-rank class for both the yellow and black
chocobos! So,
just repeat what you did back in step (j).
It will take a while,
but when they're both at race ranking A, leave the
Gold Saucer and
return to the Chococbo Farm.
n) Now, breed your yellow and black chocobo together. This
time,
use the Zeio Nut (it's at the very bottom of the
list).
Once again, refer to step (f) if you have trouble
navigating
the menus. It may have to retry a few times,
but you'll end up
with the gold chocobo eventually. Now you
can go anywhere on
the World Map!
YELLOW CHOCOBOS can go anywhere you can normally get to on foot.
The
sole advantage is that a chocobo is a lot quicker than walking.
BLUE CHOCOBOS can walk along rivers, but they can't go past waterfalls.
They can also walk in shallow water, just like Cid's airplane could.
GREEN CHOCOBOS can run over mountains, even the pointed mountains by
Nivelheim. They can also dash over _most_ cliffs and drops.
BLACK CHOCOBOS can walk along rivers and move around in shallow water.
They can also run over mountains and cliffs. Unlike the blue
or green
chocobos, the black variety can go over any cliff or drop: even
walk up or down waterfalls, enter the canyon surrounding the Ancient
City, or walk _over_ the ice forest that you have to traverse in Disc
2 after the snowboard scene!
GOLD CHOCOBOS can do everything a black chocobo can--they can also
walk in the ocean, allowing you to go anywhere you want, even into
the dirt pit surrounding the Gold Saucer (just like the Saucer
vehicle). Truly the ultimate in transportation!
In case you didn't know about it, you can rotate the chocobo you're
viewing when using the various options in the Chocobo Farm by holding
the R1 or L1 buttons :)
Unlike chocobos that you capture and ride around on, the ones that you
ride out from the Chocobo Farm are a little tamer. They'll stay
where
you get off them until you ride them again, and you can do this as
much
as you want and return them to the Farm whenever you want (although
you
can only have one chocobo out at a time). If you're riding a
chocobo
and you try to enter the Highwind, you'll find it in the 'Chocobo'
area
of the the ship. You'll automatically be riding the chocobo when
you
land the ship, too.
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8 . 1 2 u n c h a r t e d i s
l e s
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Head due south from Cosmo Canyon in the Highwind, then go a little to
the west. You'll see an island that's part dirt, part grass,
with
a smaller grassy island nearby. This isle doesn't appear on the
Map,
but if you land the Highwind on the grassy plain and run around in
the dirt long enough, you can fight Sabotenders (better known as
Cactrots; those little cactus guys from FF3)! You can't get Rename
Cards from them or anything like that, but it's kinda fun fighting
them. Actually, the name of this island is 'Cactus Island' so
it
makes sense to find them here.
To get to the second isle, head for the two islands near to each other
on the northeastern edge of the map. Then go north (and a little
more
to the east), and you'll come across an oval-shaped island surrounded
by mountains. There's a cave entrance here, but you can't land
there
in the Highwind. For more about the island, refer to the Bonus
Areas
part in section 6. The name of this place is 'Round Island'.