a) Go to the Chocobo Farm once you've acquired 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.
OPTIONAL NOTE: If you're having trouble getting the right
offspring, try racing your Chocobos at the Gold Saucer (see
below for details). The higher their class, the better the
chance of getting the color of Chocobo that you want. This is
not required (it is later on), so if you prefer, you can just
keep breeding them until you get the kind you want.
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 bred 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
you items; buy 40 of the ones that cost 5000 gil (Sylkis Greens).
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 Carob, 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 Greens 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 Chocobo 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.