Chocobo Breeding




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'.