Breeding for perfection

[Halion]

I've been a but too noncommital to the actual system of chocobo raising thus far so I have been trying to raise a first class STR/END with abilities from scrath, but now I know it needs to be bred and there's actually a bit more to the whole system than I realized. So my question to those of you with experience, what do you think of my plan-
I have a first class str/end male card so what I need is a female with abilities canter and or gallop. From what I understand it is possible to learn gallop, and then raise str/end to first class after, but not so with canter, so canter would be most desirable. If I can't someone with a female with them then I have to raise a female with them of my own so the grey ares becomes, how high do I raise that chocos stats before breeding, and when breeding for abilities do I need to focus the plan on the female for a good chance to get them. My worry is that if I focus on the female for the plan that I will lose the benefit of breeding her with a first class str/end and that the choco will be predetermined to struggle with physical plans.
Thanks for any input or advice

[Sabaron]

Re: Breeding for perfection

The abilities your chocobo attains is dependent upon the parents, the date, and the care plans. Here is the vision of the "Perfect" riding chocobo as I see it:

1. Gallop (Medium Walk)
2. Canter (Long Walk)
3. 1st Class Strength
4. 1st Class Endurance
5. "Enhanced" Receptivity

I have not included a set level of Discernment as it an Endurance are fairly mutually exclusive. The care plan combinations (this is the object of my current experiment, so your results are by no means guaranteed):

0. The Egg: Breed two High-physical ability chocobos on Sports Plan.
1. Place chocobo on the highest available plan to raise Discernment to Impressive.
2. Learn Gallop
3. Learn Canter (Long Walk--Adolescent)
4. Change care plan to Deliver Packages.
5. Once 1st Endurance is reached, depending on the number of days remaining in the 149 day cycle, you will alternate Deliver Messages and Act in a Play to raise Receptivity as high as possible.

Of the two physical abilities, Gallop and Canter, I consider Gallop to be of greater value. 99.9% of the time, you will not be riding a chocobo for its maximum duration if it has high Endurance. If you get Canter, you still have to raise Discernment to "Average" to get Gallop. Canter may be learned at "Average" but I can't determine this as my chocobos reached Impressive at about the same time they learned the story.

Some notes from my ongoing Red Chocobo experiment:

When you are able to go on long walks, and need a story from this walk, you will want to make sure your chocobo's careplan is arranged such that you can do two walks in one day. The alternative is feeding of Chocolixir which will completely fill your chocobo's "satisfaction", so make sure you use it last. The Chocolixir feeding cycle would be: Feed 2 Gysahl Greens, followed by a medicinal grass if necessary, and finally 1 Chocolixir to maximize affection, correct any malady, and restore the chocobo's energy bar.

The chance to learn an ability is based on your Discernment. There appears to be "tiering" but you can learn a story at lower levels of Discernment. Again, I cannot tell you what the minimum learning level is for Canter, but Gallop can be learned at Average.

Long walk stories are difficult to obtain. You will want to seriously consider Chocolixiring for this phase if you undertake it. I got lucky on 3/4 of my reds and they all got their story in 4 days or less.

Make sure that you maintain Parent level affection. Affection combined with the chocobo's current abilities determines it's success or failure on the care plan, but the chances appear to be heavily weighted in favor of affection over ability. This does not mean that a Parent-level chocobo with Poor strength will have any luck delivering messages. Basically in order to undertake higher-tier care plans, some ability is necessary depending on the size of the increase. The special stat-related statuses (Bursting with Vitality(?), Extraordinarily Focused) will also increase success.

Since there is a good deal of randomness involved in breeding chocobos, you have to adjust to compensate for the unforeseen or when you notice that your care schedule is not going well.

I have noticed, as well, that it is not necessary to scold a spoiled chocobo. The Spoiled status will wear off (usually in 1-2 days). Since you are raising Endurance, you cannot use Cupid Worms without harming the plan of care and must stick exclusively to greens. Scolding can take up to 3 tries to correct and it will reduce your chocobo's affection by 1 level each time you use it. It takes 3-4 days to restore affection from this lowered level especially if you're getting decreases from care plans. It may even be necessary to change to a different, less satisfactory, care plan to allow the affection level to rise back up. Therefore, I recommend that you avoid scolding the chocobo even though it is suggested that it is beneficial. The loss of affection and care-plan changes may not be worthwhile.

[Halion]

Re: Breeding for perfection

Thanks for this information but there's still a few things. Raising a chick with a mental based personality type on physical plans doesn't work very well, I have seen that for myself with en Enigmatic personality. I also read this which seems widely supported "Considering most chocobo hit STR/END first class at the ~40-45 days mark, and stats lock is at 63 or 65...it really doesn't leave much time to build Discernment, learn ability, and recover END." And I also tried to the opposite way which is learn ability first then switch to physical and it leveld out at above average.

[Sabaron]

Re: Breeding for perfection

The stats don't lock ever. The bonus rate from being prime goes away, but the chocobo still gains ability just fine.

I forgot about the personality

If you wanted, you could lock the personality early by using Walk in town.

[Halion]

Re: Breeding for perfection

It doesn't stop completely but it slows down the effectiveness of care plans significantly to the point where raising one more than few lvls of stats will take as long as raising a new bird with good breeding background. I'm still raising my day 70ish bird but I want to do it right from the start this time with breeding, not waste time on mental, and get ready for racing asap on my other character.

[Sabaron]

Re: Breeding for perfection

I don't think you can get the desired results in one breeding. It may take 2 to 3 generations to get the bird you want. My current generation of birds is a precursor round to some more advanced chocobo children which will come once I have maximized their development.

I'm not sure if anyone has gotten a double-inherit yet, but if it is possible to get a double-inherit, then tossing eggs until it comes up with both abilities would be the way to go. If you need both abilities, then you have to raise discernment at least to Average just for Gallop. My San d'Orian Bird got the Gallop story when he was a baby, so I got to drill it many times each day until he learned it and he did not learn it (using a full bar of stamina) until he reached Average.

The basic question here is this:

If it is not possible to inherit two abilities, and Average Discernment is necessary to learn Gallop, then is the value of learning Gallop on a Canter-inheriting physical chocobo better than inheriting Gallop and forgoing any learning with respect to the future chocobo racing feature?

Obviously this cannot be answered at this time as we have no idea how racing is going to work exactly. All I can tell you is that Canter is less desirable in a riding chocobo than Canter unless it's possible to maximize physical abilities and acquire Gallop in a 2nd generation (San d'Orian) chocobo. I haven't tested the "unless" nor have I seen any studies on it, so I think you may have to experiment yourself.

[Halion]

Re: Breeding for perfection

I probably will ignore canter because I have alot of good birds with gallop, guess I just have to hope for luck.

[WishMaster3K]

Re: Breeding for perfection

Question: Sabaron, would what you said in your first reply on this thread apply to my situation here?

[Spider-Dan]

Re: Breeding for perfection

Of the two physical abilities, Gallop and Canter, I consider Gallop to be of greater value. 99.9% of the time, you will not be riding a chocobo for its maximum duration if it has high Endurance.

On what basis are you evaluating Gallop vs. Canter (and excluding Auto-Regen altogether)?

My understanding is that none of these abilities apply to normal riding, only racing (which has yet to be released).

[Sabaron]

Re: Breeding for perfection

I'm evaluating them on the basis of what has been noted as their effect on the wiki, which is possibly incorrect. As stated there, Gallop increases speed and Canter increases riding time. Since 1st Class Endurance Riding Time is generally more than adequate, Gallop's speed factor is more useful unless 1st Strength is the speed cap in which case it is completely useless.

You must understand that all of these evaluations were made without any regard to racing. Placing them in that context is completely invalid since no one knows how racing works yet wrt any ability.