Basics of Chocobo Breeding¶

You can begin breeding Chocobos anytime after acquiring the Highwind, but until you can race (and hence, improve your chances of breeding rarer birds) it’ll be an incredibly tedious, if not nearly futile process… at least, when you’re dealing with the rarer breeds of Chocobo. To complete Chocobo breeding as simply as possible, it’s best to wait until you have Cloud back, hence the placement of this section in the guide.

To get started, there are a few things you should do, first of them being to pay a visit to the Chocobo Ranch and talk to their grand father. Now that the Chocobos they had originally are gone, they’re willing to rent out barn space to you… not because they need the money, of course, but because raising Chocobos can apparently be… uh… a stress relief? In any event, like all woo-woo forms of stress relief, this one comes with a hefty price tag; 10,000 Gil per stable. You might as well rent all six, which shouldn’t strain your pockets if you sold even a single bit of mastered All Materia.

Once you’re rented all six, head to the barn and talk to Choco Billy, who will tell you all about raising Chocobos. Simply put, you’ve got to catch them, send them to the corral, put the ones you want to breed in the stables, raise their stats by feeding them Greens, improve their stock by racing them (because Chocobos are apparently the only critters that actually follow the rules of Lamarckian Evolution) then feed them the right Nut to breed them. If you get the right Chocobos, feed them the right Greens and Nuts, improve them enough through racing, and have a bit of luck, you might just get a rare type of Chocobo that can cross various terrains.

If all this sounds dreadfully expensive and time consuming, it’s because it is. Greens will raise their stats, hence making them perform better in Chocobo races, which in turn gives them a higher chance of producing superior chicks (their racing rank correlates to their breeding quality). At first this is unnecessary, but once you’ve got the first two breeds of Chocobo, you’re going to want to race them to improve your chances of getting the next, rarer breed. Given that the best greens to use (and the only ones really worth using) are Sylkis Greens, which are sold by the Chocobo Sage for 5000 Gil each… getting race-quality Chocobos can get expensive.

One might ask, why bother? Simply put, some of the best Materia in the game can be obtained only by riding rare Chocobos. Also, Chocobo racing earns plenty of fine rewards in its own right, but it also allows you to stock up on GP, which can be spent on the Battle Arena, which has its own set of prizes. If that’s not enough, you’ll need a rare Chocobo to get Vincent’s ultimate weapon and Limit Break, and rare Chocobos will also allow you to enter a high-level, very lucrative dungeon early. Simply put, there are lots of very worthwhile rewards that can only be obtained, or more easily obtained, by racing Chocobos.

Catching Chocobos¶

So… you bought your six stables, what next? Well, you have to get us some birds. If you remember from earlier in the game when you had to evade the Midgar Zolom, this can be done by killing the foes that accompany Chocobos, which can be encountered if you have the Chocobo Lure Materia equipped. Don’t attack the Chocobos and feed them Greens (the cheapest are the best in this case) to distract them and prevent them from fleeing. Once the enemies are dead, the Chocobo, if it’s still around, will be yours. Just disembark and send it to the Chocobo Ranch. If you return there, you can talk to Choco Billy and pick the option “Moving Chocobos” to view them and send the ones you want into the stable, or turn the bad ones loose. Just remember that you can only store four Chocobos in the corral, and only six can be in the barn at any one time.

In between battles you can check in with the Chocobo Sage to learn a bit more what to do, and he’ll explain (although in less detail than this guide) what to do to breed different types of Chocobos… which brings up an earlier point; why would you ever let Chocobos go? Well, not all wild Chocobos are created equal. There are, in fact, eight grades of them, but for the purposes of breeding, only three matter. When you move the Chocobos at the ranch, Choco Billy will evaluate them automatically. Only “Good”, “Great” and “Wonderful” Chocobos are worth keeping, which significantly narrows down the places you need to hunt.

To simplify things even further, it’s worth noting that Chocobos of different quality keep different company. Knowing what monsters will accompany the birds of quality will save you a bit of running back and forth the the Chocobo Stable, and perhaps spare you some Greens and effort. The “Good” Chocobos near the Gold Saucer travel with Spencers, while the “Great” Chocobos will accompany Spirals (near Mideel), but will never be found associating with Velcher Tasks. Finally, “Wonderful” Chocobos prefer the company of Jumpings. There is only one place to get “Good” Chocobos; east of the Gold Saucer. “Great” Chocobos can be found near Mideel, or north of Rocket Town, and “Wonderful” Chocobos can be found south of the Icicle Inn.

Breeding Green and Blue Chocobos¶

Right, time to get to it, then. To breed a Blue (River) or Green (Mountain) Chocobo, you need any combination of either “Good” or “Great” Chocobos (both “Good”, both “Great” or one of each), and for obvious reasons, you need two of them; a male and a female. All in all, the best spot to do this is near Mideel. The Joker enemies near the Gold Saucer can be annoying, and the ones near Nibelheim just are rewarding enough. Why settle for just catching some birds when you can gain a hefty bit of XP, AP and Gil by hunting near Mideel?

Get whatever Chocobos you can and put them in your stables; try and get two mating pairs. There is a bit of randomness involved in this, so more breeding pairs gives you more chances, otherwise you’ll have to wait, as newborns chickabos and Chocobos who just mated can’t immediately mate again (fight battles until they’re ready to mate again). Or… you should save/load and try different combinations, feed the potential mates some Sylkis Greens to see if that has any effect.

Before that, however, you’ll need the correct nut to give them, which, if you talked to the Chocobo Sage enough, he’ll tell you about. Fly to some islands south of the northern continent (south of the Icicle Inn) and wander around the grasslands to encounter a Vlakorado; red dinosaur with a hefty amount of HP, but relatively weak attacks. You can obtain the nut you need, a Carob Nut , by stealing from them, after which you’ll just need to pummel them to death (“Laser” will shave off quite a few HP). Repeat as necessary.

When you have a stock of Carob Nuts (if you’re incredibly lucky you should only need three) return to the Chocobo Ranch and talk to Choco Billy and ask him about mating the birds. After this, talk to the two you want to make and give them a Carob Nut, and the magic should shortly happen. Again, your odds will be better if you raced them enough to improve their rank (see the “Racing Chocobos” sub-section below), but it’s not too uncommon to get a colored Chocobo without racing. If you’ve followed the steps about, you may get a Green or Blue Chocobo by breeding two “Good”/“Great” Chocobos together and feeding them a Carob Nut. If you get one, you can get the other by breeding the colored Chocobo with another “Good” or “Great” Chocobo (yes, even its parents) and feeding it a Carob Nut… or you can just try breeding the two “Good”/“Great” ones again and see if they give you something else. After you have both a Blue and a Green Chocobo, you really should start racing them, which will be covered in the “Chocobo Breeding and Racing” subsection, but first…

Mime Materia¶

Take the Green Chocobo out for a ride by talking to Choco Billy, then, while riding the Chocobo board your airship and fly to Wutai. Disembark and ride the Chocobo to the eastern coast near the center of the island and use the Chocobo’s ability to run over mountains to find an isolated sea-side cave, wherein you’ll find the rare and potent Mime Materia . This is seriously good stuff, and you should equip it as soon as you get it with the goal of mastering it so everybody can have it. Mime does pretty much what you’d expect; it causes the character to mimic their ally’s (or their own) last attack or spell even if they don’t have the Materia to do it. Since this doesn’t cost MP to do, it can really make certain fights much easier. Why waste huge amounts of MP to summon the awesome, game-breaking, enemy-destroying summons when you can just Mime somebody else who did it? You can’t Mime the Limit Breaks of other characters, but you can Mime your own Limit Breaks, and yes, you can Mime Mimes for an infinite progression of awesome.

Quadra Magic Materia¶

Pack your Blue Chocobo onto the Highwind and fly to Mideel. Or rather, to the sprawling islands east of Mideel that run north-east. At the north-eastern most tip of these islands, about equal horizontally with the Chocobo Ranch on your map, is another Materia cavern, wherein you’ll find the Quadra Magic Materia . You’ll need to land the Highwind on low grasslands to be able to ride the Blue Chocobo over the shallows to reach this cave. Quadra Magic is when combined magic starts to get interesting, since not only are the support Materia you’ve been finding (including Quadra Magic) starts to get powerful, but the spells you can pair it with are, too.

Quadra Magic, as the name suggests, lets you cast a spell four times with a single casting (for the cost of one casting’s worth of MP). Each spell does half damage (or half healing, or has half as much chance to inflict a status effect) as normal, but the overall effect is to double the effectiveness of a casting. If you combine the effects of this with, say MP Turbo, MP Absorb, or HP Absorb, the effects can be quite devastating. If you remember, you can do this by equipping two pairs of the Materia you want to modify (say, Fire Materia) to give the Materia the effects of both Support Materia. For example, equipping Fire + Quadra Magic and Fire + MP Turbo on the same character would allow them to cast a Fire spell that was effected by both MP Turbo and Quadra Magic.

Death Penalty and Chaos¶

With the Green Chocobo you can score Vincent’s ultimate weapon and limit. To do so, ride your Green Chocobo onto the Highwind and fly to the western continent. West of the Gold Saucer and east of Nibelheim you can find a circular mountain lake fed by a waterfall. Ride the Chocobo up there and dismount on the narrow strip of grass on the western side of the lake and head behind the waterfall. Make sure Vincent is in your party and, if so, you should encounter a figure from Vincent’s past in a cave behind the waterfall. Isolation seems to be a popular form of atonement for people connected to Sephiroth. Seems like trying to make amends would have been more productive.

After the scene go fight some battles (about ten battles in all) then return and approach where Lucrecia was standing to find Vincent’s ultimate weapon; Death Penalty , and his ultimate Limit Break; Chaos. You must have Cloud back in your party for this encounter to occur, it will not trigger beforehand.

Ancient Forest¶

The Green Chocobo can allow you to reach and elevated, forested plateau south of Cosmo Canyon, overlooking the river that separates Gongaga from Cosmo Canyon. On these verdant highlands you’ll find an odd structure, which is an optional dungeon called the “Ancient Forest”. It’s a lucrative spot to explore, filled with somewhat potent enemies. If you don’t bother with Chocobos, you can reach this location later in disc three through another method, but there’s no harm in exploring it early. In fact, it can be very, very beneficial to do so, as you can find one of the most powerful weapons for Cloud in there, which also happens to be one of the best Materia-leveling weapons in the game. If you want to explore this area, check out the “Ancient Forest” section of the guide, which can be found after “Chocobo Breeding and Racing (Black and Gold)” .