------------------------------------------------------------------------- R A I S I N G C H O C O B O S ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This section is based upon a summarized guide written by Nikki. Some information is also taken from a more detailed guide written by Crow. Their addresses can be found in the Special Thanks section near the end of the FF7 FAQ. 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.