CHOCOBOS
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Ah, the
fluffy, cute birds that can motivate you to waste time like few other things
in this game. I once spent some thirty hours doing nothing but dinking
with the chocobos. For those of you who only want the utility side
of the birds, there are two ways to find out how to get the special chocos:
You can make runs to the Chocobo Sage, who lives in a small area just west
of Icicle. He remembers things slowly, so you need to wander around,
get into a few battles, and get at least one character up a level so he'll
think it's later. Or, you can simply read this.
The first
special chocobos you can get are the River
and Mountain Chocobos. The river choco
is blue, and the mountain choco is green. For these two, you need
to wander around the plains near Mideel until you get a Good chocobo and
a Great chocobo. Then, you find a nice grassy area near Bone Village-I
suggest one of the islands just south of it-and start running around.
Sooner or later, you'll run into a big, red dinosaurian monster.
The Sense command will not work on it. I refer to it as the Third-Rock
Monster ("It looks just like that thing-you know, that thing on that planet-where
we just kept hitting it, and hitting it, and it JUST WOULDN'T DIE!!!!"
Tommy+Harry, Third Rock From the Sun) This creature does not do that
much damage on any attack. Its most damaging attack is a Bolt Ball
that does between three hundred and five hundred damage, electrical.
However, it has loads of hit points. I have seen these things go
through a Knights of the Round and live. I have once done two Cosmo
Memories and about five 2000-point attacks. When I'm hunting them,
I run around until I hit one, then set a paperweight on the OK button.
While the battle rages, I get a cup of tea and a cookie and watch some
TV. If you're lucky, you'll get a Carob nut out of it. You
can also Steal Carob Nuts from them.
You can
try getting the Mountain or River chocobos now; however, you have a better
chance of getting them if you can put your parent Chocos up a rank.
Feed them. Feed them a lot. Then head for the Gold Saucer and
race them in Chocobo races. When you win three races, you'll go up
a rank. The higher ranking the parent birds are, the better your
chances of getting a special chocobo. Once you get the Mountain and
River chocobos, you may want to either buy two extra stalls or release
the parent birds. Try and get Mountain and River Chocobos of opposite
genders. A quick tip:Only Sylkis, Reagan, and Gysahl greens will
add to Speed. However, you can win just as easily on ridiculous stamina
as you can on ridiculous speed. If the message, "Intelligence Up",
shows up when feeding, you've improved the choco's ability to run the race
itself on automatic. If the message, "They're getting along better",
shows up, this means the choco will listen to your controls more often.
Once you
have a male and a female choco where one is a Mountain, the other a River,
start the whole process over. Gather some Carob nuts, race the green
and blue chocos up a few ranks, and try for a Mountain-and-River
chocobo. They're black, by the way. Once you've
got a black chocobo, go up to the snow fields. There'll be some chocobo
tracks out in the snow; run around them until you catch a Wonderful chocobo.
Head out to those islands in the northeast of the map, and run around the
forests until you meet goblins. The little buggers aren't that tough,
and they give up Zeio nuts. Mate the black and wonderful chocos using
the Zeio nut, and you'll have a chance of getting a gold
chocobo. I've noticed that you often need to drive one of
the chocobos all the way up to S rank to get the Gold Chocobo. S
rank is what you get when you win three races on Rank A.
A few more
notes on the races: If Tifa or Cid are in your party, they'll occasionally
ask to run the race for you; as far as I can tell, this has no real effect
on the race, so don't worry about it. The other random phenomena
attached to the races is a jockey and chocobo: Joe and TEIO. You
may remember Joe as the jockey who meets Cloud on his way up from Corel
Prison. His black chocobo, TEIO, follows a simple criteria:
He'll always be about twenty km/h faster than you, and always have between
50-100 more stamina than you. The more consecutive wins you have,
the more likely he'll show up in the race. If you've been barely
scraping out your wins, and your current chocobo is below or equal to the
median in that race, he'll hang back and let you beat him. If you've
been playing "Beep-Beep the Road Runner" and blowing everyone away, and
your current chocobo is better than the chocobos you're racing against,
he'll speed past you so fast, all you'll see of him are dust clouds.
He'll also go all out to beat you if you're racing in S rank, which he
seems to regard as his territory. I've heard that there's a prize
package if you win three races in a row in S rank; I have yet to see this,
because every time I win two races, Joe shows up.