Learning abilities. Is there a trick? ; ;

[Taskmage]

I really want to get my first chocobo the Bore ability before I retire him. I've been spamming the Youthful Chocobo story on him down to about 15-20% of his energy bar for the past week, but so far I haven't had any results. His discernment is average and his receptivity is a bit deficient, and his affection has been steadily at parent level this whole time. Has anybody been able to teach their chocobo an ability yet, and if so under what conditions?

[Kitalrez]

Re: Learning abilities. Is there a trick? ; ;

My suspicion on this is that you'd get the best luck on abilities when you have the "should be receptive to anything you give it" state. I'm not exactly sure how to provoke perkiness, but I suspect it has something to do with maxxing out your affection for the the day before with walking/watching, and then putting him on a low energy plan the next day, like "Listen to Music" for mental chocos. This seems to work wonders on my current chick for getting her into this state, so we'll see. I'd keep playing around with walk/watch care options for awhile til you get your chick into this state, and then try a story spam once you get it there.

[Bricklayer]

Re: Learning abilities. Is there a trick? ; ;

I finally got Auto-Regen about two days ago. There was a cutscene that day saying something about doing an excellent job raising my chocobo and this would be the best time to either "increase its stats" or "increase its abilities". I only had to tell the happy chocobo story twice to get the ability. Haven't tried for anything since then, as I don't want to go for gallop (currently have impatient chocobo and worrysome to tell).

[Sabaron]

Re: Learning abilities. Is there a trick? ; ;

I've been drilling Impatient, because I don't have Curious yet. No results so far. I'm also working on getting Receptive state; I've had SolarWind on a 4 day vacation taking walks around town (mixed with Azouph Greens and Walks) which was adequate to achieve receptive every couple days or so when he was a baby/adolescent. The plan is to depete his bar with stories and feed him a Parasite worm. If he doesn't go Receptive tomorrow (day 4), he goes back onto his regular care plan with no future vacations....and gets the story treatment daily with a Parasite worm off-receptive.

[Jei]

Re: Learning abilities. Is there a trick? ; ;

why parasite worm?

[Sabaron]

Re: Learning abilities. Is there a trick? ; ;

1) Because no one knows exactly what it does

2) It has been suggested that, in exchange for a decrease in stats now, you receive a greater reward in stats over a day or so.

3) If it helps my chocobo learn to Gallop, I'm game.

Primarily experimental...

I'm also banking on the fact that a Receptive day will reap a greater reward from the worm than a normal day.

[Nakti]

Re: Learning abilities. Is there a trick? ; ;

Burrow seems to be learnable at Impressive Discernment. Maybe Bore is the same way?

It would be nice if "perky" gave a chance to learn the abilities at 1 level below. That would make things a little easier.

[Antivomit]

Re: Learning abilities. Is there a trick? ; ;

I'm gonna teach my chocobo Firaga IV by feeding it charcoal.

[Taskmage]

Re: Learning abilities. Is there a trick? ; ;

Burrow seems to be learnable at Impressive Discernment. Maybe Bore is the same way?
It would be nice if "perky" gave a chance to learn the abilities at 1 level below. That would make things a little easier.

You think each ability has a stat requirement to learn then? That would make sense, but he's a looong way from impressive discernment.

[Bricklayer]

Re: Learning abilities. Is there a trick? ; ;

It's possible. I tried to learn Auto-Regen for the longest time. Once I hit Average Dis/Rec, I got it.

[Taskmage]

Re: Learning abilities. Is there a trick? ; ;

I hadn't been telling my chocobo the Happy Chocobo story before because I didn't want to "waste" an ability slot on something that wouldn't help me in the field. At this point in the chocobo's life (and given that I only ever got two stories in the first place) that seems rather silly, so I gave it a try and learned it on the 4th tell. Still average discernment and a bit deficient receptivity. I told the youthful chocobo story another 5 times today to no avail, so I guess it may be true that my chocobo just doesn't meet the discernment requirement.

Has anyone's chocobo learned Gallop or Canter? I wonder what level of discernment is involved for those. Since they sound like movement abilities, it seems like you would want them on chocobos with high physical stats, but if you had to raise discernment also to learn the abilities at all, that would be quite a challenge. Canter would be especially hard, since you can't even get that story until adulthood. For Gallop you could take a mental-focused approach as a chick in San d'Oria and then change tack for a physical-heavy plan after the ability is learned.

[Macht]

Re: Learning abilities. Is there a trick? ; ;

I've been hearing that it's nearly impossible to get the chocobo to learn an ability until it's discernment is Average or higher. Anything below and it's success rate is like 1%.

Because of that I've been seeing people doing more of starting with raising Discernment and Receptivity first and as fast as possible. Once the chocobo learns two abilities they change direction and go pure Strength and Endurance.

[Bricklayer]

Re: Learning abilities. Is there a trick? ; ;

I've been hearing that it's nearly impossible to get the chocobo to learn an ability until it's discernment is Average or higher. Anything below and it's success rate is like 1%.

Because of that I've been seeing people doing more of starting with raising Discernment and Receptivity first and as fast as possible. Once the chocobo learns two abilities they change direction and go pure Strength and Endurance.

My chocobo's receptivity hit Better than Average today, but his discernment is still Average. I'm hoping to get Youthful Chocobo tomorrow, and I'll try telling it to BladeFeather a few times when I get it to see if he can learn this ability at his current discernment level.

[Ayrlie]

Re: Learning abilities. Is there a trick? ; ;

my chocobo discernment is better than average (on day 41). i did not get the story of worrysome chocobo until day 33, and have yet to get the one of youthful chocobo. my basic care plans emphasize discernment to a great extent, and receptivity to an lesser extent. update: day 42 the discernment rose to impressive. i gave chocobo the worrysome chocobo story and it learned burrow.

[klvino]

Re: Learning abilities. Is there a trick? ; ;

On my first bird, it learned Gallop and Auto-regen easily after it hit Average Discernment, only had to read each story one time. On the second bird, Bore and Burrow were getting spammed, but the bird didn't learn them until Impressive Discernment.

Yes, discernment plays a role in learning abilities, since you only need about lvl 4 discernment for Gallop, Auto-Regen, which are racing abilities, you can then switch your bird food and care plans to raise racing stats instead of Discernment which was needed to get the stats in the first place. It very possible to do so, made First-Class Discernment on day 40, flipped the plans around and am now working on Strength for speed. I should probably go ahead and retire the bird and begin working on a pure racing bird.