Chocobo (Final Fantasy VII)



Chocobos are a major form of transportation and entertainment in Final Fantasy VII. They can only be encountered in the wild in special areas on the World Map covered in chocobo tracks. Once captured, chocobos can be kept in chocobo stables in the Chocobo Farm. The stables cost 10,000 gil and six can be bought at once. On the farm the chocobos can be bred with other chocobos to create new breeds or be used in the chocobo races at Gold Saucer. Several locations and items can only be reached by using a chocobo. The player can also board the Highwind while on a chocobo (see also: Vehicles Glitch).

In Final Fantasy VII, chocobos seem to be able to create and cough up Materia. For example, the Choco/Mog Summon (which features a chocobo and a moogle, or a rare alternate attack with a Fat Chocobo) is obtained from the chocobos at the Chocobo Farm, while the Contain Materia is only obtained by giving the white chocobo in Mideel some Mimett Greens, then tickling it behind the ears.

When riding a chocobo the player encounters no enemies. The player can capture a chocobo near the farm in order to cross a swamp due to it being fast enough to evade a giant snake in the area.

Unlike later games, the chocobo cry in Final Fantasy VII is "Wark", not "Kweh".

Chocobo Tracks
To the right is a map of the areas where chocobo tracks – although only showing those with worthwhile chocobos – appear on the world map.

Around the world, there are chocobo tracks where wild chocobos may appear in random battles. They only appear when the Chocobo Lure Independent Materia is equipped. The Materia can be bought at the Chocobo Farm on disc 1, or found lying around the farm later in the game. The maximum Chocobo Lure rating is 32. Level 1 Chocobo Lure adds +8, Level 2 adds +12 and Level 3 and Master add +16. The effect can be stacked to the maximum of 32 by equipping multiple Chocobo Lure Materia at once. Different tracks have different chances of attracting chocobos to appear in battles, the track near the farm being the easiest.

With a Level 1 Chocobo Lure Materia, the player has 75% chance to enter a chocobo battle on the tracks near Chocobo Farm, 50% chance on the tracks in Junon area, and 25% everywhere else. With a Level 3 and mastered Chocobo Lure Materia the chance to encounter a chocobo in a battle on the tracks near Chocobo Farm and in Junon Area is 100%, but is 50% everywhere else. With two Level 3 or higher Chocobo Lure Materia equipped, the player will always encounter chocobos on all the tracks.

Along with the chocobo are several enemies. The enemies must be beaten without scaring the chocobo away in order to capture it. To do this, the chocobo must be pacified with some Greens, otherwise the chocobo will get scared and run away. Attacking it will cause the chocobo to attack the party with weak pecks or the Enemy Skill Chocobuckle before retreating. It is notable that the chocobo cannot be defeated in battle. If all other enemies are defeated, the chocobo is captured.

Greens (see below) can be used to keep the chocobo occupied for a number of turns and to reduce the chance that it runs away. The default chance that a chocobo will run is 50%.

Chocobo Racing


In the Gold Saucer resort, chocobos are used in a racing sport in the Chocobo Square. The inmates from Corel Prison can only escape the jail once they have successfully come in first in a chocobo race. Cloud Strife wins his party's freedom this way after being captured while hunting for Sephiroth. He is taught how to race by the Chocobo expert, Ester. Cloud is the default party member to take part in the chocobo races, although Tifa and Cid may also volunteer to race when they are in the party.

This is a mini-game the player only has to win once in the storyline. The chocobos in the races have two stats, Stamina and Speed. Speed determines how fast they run, and Stamina determines how long they can run at top speed. On the left side of the screen is a red meter that shows how much Stamina the chocobo has left. When the chocobo runs out of Stamina, they will slow down to a crawl and are easily overtaken. To restore Stamina, the player can hold down the two right shoulder buttons (R1+R2), which means one can push the chocobo harder throughout the race. While riding a chocobo, two forms of control can be used: Manual and Automatic. Automatic gives complete control to the chocobo, while Manual gives the player control.

For winning a chocobo race, the player receives an item which can either be kept or be traded in for GP, the currency of Gold Saucer. There are four classes for the chocobo race: Class C, Class B, Class A and Class S. Each one is more competitive than the last, and requires better and better chocobo to win. To advance to the next class, three races in the current class must be won.

A talented jockey named Joe and his black chocobo, Teioh, infrequently appear in Rank B races, occasionally in Rank A, and frequently in Rank S. He is more of a challenge than the other racers because Teioh always has 25% higher stamina and 10% higher speed than the player's chocobo.

Stats
Choco Billy at the Chocobo Farm can rate the strength of a captured chocobo for the races. If he does not give a positive adjective in his rating ("Good", "Great", "Wonderful"), the chocobo is not worth the effort of raising.

Below is the strength of the caught chocobo compared to the rating Choco Billy gives it:

A chocobo has several stats, and only some of them are visible to the player. By feeding the chocobo greens, its stats will be increased. Every time the stats are increased, the Final Fantasy VII version of the "Victory Fanfare" plays.

The stats the player can see are speed and stamina.


 * Speed = [Dash/34] (Max = 6000/34 = 176)
 * Stamina = [Stam/10] (Max = 9999/10 = 999)

Newly caught chocobos fall in one of the aforementioned eight categories; these ratings determine the chocobo's stats. It is possible to get fairly good racing chocobos by feeding greens to caught high-rating chocobos, but their stats will never go as high as bred chocobos' stats.

Greens
Greens can be given to chocobos in battle to reduce their chances of running away and keep them occupied for a number of turns. When fed to chocobos in the Chocobo Farm stables, the greens boost the chocobo's stats making them better racers in Gold Saucer.

Sylkis Greens are twice as good as Reagan Greens and are the best greens to raise Dash, Run, Stam, and Co-Op. Pahsana Greens are the best to raise Int. The only Greens that raise Accel are Mimett Greens, and there's only a 25% chance for an increase. Feeding a chocobo greens can improve its stats, but only to the maximum of the chocobo's potential. The only way to attain higher maximum Run and Dash is by breeding.

Greens can be bought from the Chocobo Farm and from Chocobo Sage.

Chocobo Breeding
Chocobos come in various breeds and are either male or female. The chocobo's gender is decided when the captured chocobo is moved into a stable from the yard; the player can save their game and reset and try again, if they get an undesired gender.

Male and female chocobos can be bred together to make stronger chocobos with better stats and sometimes new abilities. To breed a chocobo, special items called Nuts must be used. Most of the Nuts in the game are useless, and the lower grade Nuts have a chance to produce chocobos whose stats are lower than those of its parents. The only Nuts worth using are Carob and Zeio Nuts: The Carob Nut is used to breed first blue and green chocobos and Zeio Nuts are the best Nuts in the game when it comes to stats. Carob Nuts can be obtained from Vlakoradoses or from Wonder Square for 500 GP, and Zeio Nuts are obtained from Goblins.

The racing class and stats of the chocobo being bred help decide what type of chocobo will be born. Adult chocobos can breed again after 3-10 battles have been fought and newborn chocobos can breed after 3-18 battles; for a battle to count it must be won, fleeing won't count. The higher the class, and the greater the stats, the more likely a strong chocobo will be born. Special-colored chocobos are needed to find the treasures inside the secret Materia Caves. There are five colors of chocobos in Final Fantasy VII. To get the ultimate chocobo, a long sidequest of racing and item finding must be undertaken. The Chocobo Sage gives hints on how to get through the sidequest in his home on the Northern Continent.

Because the game determines on whether or not a chocobo is ready to be bred by the number of battles, when the player reaches a very high number of battles this system gets glitched. The game can't use a key-number higher than 32767, and so uses numbers from -32768 to 32767. This means that if the player fights 32768 battles, the game considers, when it does calculations for chocobos, them have -32768 battles. 32769 battles will be transformed to -32767 battles and so on until 65535 battles, which will overflow the counter and reset it back to the start. When the game considers the player to be at -32768 battles, the baby chocobo would need whopping 32766 battles to mate.

However, if the player comes near to the amount of battles where the game begins to consider the number as negative, they can find themselves in a situation where they can mate the chocobos over and over again without needing to fight any battles in-between. At 32767 battles the game will calculate the player will need some new battles, but it'll be always higher than 32768 battles (as that is actually -32768), meaning the player doesn't need to fight any battles to mate the chocobos.

Here is how a newborn chocobo's stats are determined when the parents have been mated with a Zeio Nut:

If the player breeds a gold chocobo that would normally have below 5000 maximum Dash, it will get a bonus to its MDash in the following manner:


 * 7/16 chance -> MDash = 5000
 * 2/16 chance -> MDash = 5100
 * 2/16 chance -> MDash = 5200
 * 1/16 chance -> MDash = 5300
 * 1/16 chance -> MDash = 5400
 * 2/16 chance -> MDash = 5500
 * 1/16 chance -> MDash = 5950

These values will get increased/decreased by a number between 0 and 25.

Yellow
All wild chocobos are yellow. They are the most common breed, and have no special abilities to speak of other than being a faster alternative to traveling by foot on the world map. Yellow chocobos cannot travel through water, high mountains or ocean. However, "Good", "Great" and "Wonderful" chocobos are required to breed chocobos of different colors. The standard chocobo Cloud is given in Gold Saucer in his first chocobo race is yellow.

Blue and Green
Blue chocobos, also called river chocobos, have the ability to run over rivers and shallow water, but not deep ocean or mountains. Green chocobos, also known as mountain chocobos, can run over mountains and cliffs but cannot enter water. Both types are born from great and good chocobos using a Carob Nut. The player can breed two great chocobos, two good chocobos, or breed the great and the good chocobos with each other.

Great chocobos can be found by Mideel (those accompanied by one or two Spirals) or Rocket Town (those not accompanied by Velcher Tasks), and good ones by the Gold Saucer (those accompanied by two Spencers).

The player can mate either two great chocobos, two good chocobos, or use a mix of both. Once one colored chocobo of either blue or green has been born, the player can mate the colored chocobo with its parent for a chance to get either green, blue, or yellow chocobo. The player can try and breed the chocobos, and if they get an undesirable result, reset the game and try again.

It is typically advisable to get two sets of parents so that once one of the two special chocobos is born, the player can save and keep trying with the second set of parents until they get the complementary chocobo. Otherwise the player has to wait until the parents of the first are ready to breed again. Chocobos that have advanced in ranks in the Gold Saucer races have a much better chance of producing colored offspring than if the chocobos haven't been raced at all.

In the Gold Saucer races, green chocobos are unaffected in the space section of the short course, but blue chocobos don't have any advantages, even if the long course has a slowing water section. This is likely a programming error.

Black
Black chocobos (also called mountain-and-river chocobos) are born when blue and green chocobos are bred together with a Carob Nut. They inherit all the abilities of their parents. They can travel over both shallow water and high mountains, but are limited by not being able to cross ocean. They have freedom from being slowed-down in both the undersea and space sections of the chocobo racing track.

Gold
Gold chocobos (also called sea chocobos) are unmatched in the races, naturally coming with impressive stats. A gold chocobo can be born when a black chocobo is bred with a wonderful yellow chocobo, which can be captured near Icicle Inn (accompanied only by one or two Jumpings), with a Zeio Nut. Because they are descended from green, blue, and black chocobos, gold chocobos can travel anywhere around the world map: over mountains, through shallow water, and even across the ocean, thus they are the only means of obtaining the Materia for the ultimate summon in Final Fantasy VII, Knights of the Round from Round Island.

The player can also obtain a gold chocobo from the Kalm Traveler by offering him the Desert Rose Key Item; however, in order to get the Desert Rose, the player must have beaten the Ruby Weapon.

Obtaining the gold chocobo earns the player an achievement in the PC version re-release of Final Fantasy VII.

Other Breeds
In the chocobo races, other breeds of chocobos can be seen, including white, pink, red, dark blue, and purple. Though they are of a different color, they effectively function as yellow chocobos. There is no way for the player to acquire chocobos of these colors in Final Fantasy VII. A single white chocobo can also be seen in Mideel, and when given Mimett Greens and tickled behind its ears, it gives the player a Materia.

Musical Themes
There are five separate themes associated with chocobos. "Electric de Chocobo" is a version of the "Chocobo Theme" that plays during random battles when chocobos appear. "Waltz de Chocobo" plays during the dance the chocobos in front of the Chocobo Farm perform just before they give the Choco/Mog Materia. When the chocobo is ridden on the world map, "Cinco de Chocobo" plays.

Finally, "Racing Chocobos - Place Your Bets" plays during the menu screen just before the chocobo race, while "Fiddle de Chocobo" plays during the actual race. Two variations of the classic victory fanfare play after the player has finished a race: "A Great Success" or "Tango of Tears", dependent upon whether the player wins or loses the race.

Trivia

 * Chocobos made out of snow appear in the snowboarding minigame.
 * Gold Saucer appears to use chocobos as a kind of mascot, with staff dressed in chocobo costumes in the venues, and there is a chocobo painted on the background of the Event Square and a chocobo mascot on the ticket office in Round Square.
 * The chocobo breeding tutorial in Final Fantasy VII is incomplete compared to the original Japanese version. For example, Choco Billy will only mention the necessity of Nuts if the player picks the "Mating Chocobos" option while not having any Nuts in the inventory. In the Japanese version Choco Billy also explains that newborn chocobos and chocobos caught from the wild start on rank C but can improve their rank by racing. Players of the English version had to discover this game mechanic by themselves.
 * Unused text from the game data indicates that Choco Billy was originally intended to judge newborn chocobos' stats. In the final game, only Chole judges the chocobos' stats when asked.