Chocobo breeding (Final Fantasy VII)

Chocobo Breeding is a sidequest in Final Fantasy VII involving Chocobos. It is a very rewarding sidequest which can allow the player to breed several different Chocobo breeds which can cross different terrain on the World Map and access Materia Caves, as well as breed chocobos with higher stats for us in Chocobo Racing.

Chocobo can be caught across the World Map by following their tracks. Once caught after a battle when all enemies but the Chocobo are killed, they can be sent back to the stable and bred with nuts. Generally, the ultimate gain of breeding chocobos is to breed a Gold Chocobo, to access every Materia Cave and gain Knights of the Round.

Catching
Wild chocobos can be encountered in special areas on the World Map covered in chocobo tracks. Once captured, chocobos can be kept in stables in the Chocobo Farm; the option to buy stables opens after the party has acquired the Highwind. The stables cost 10,000 gil and six can be bought at once. On the farm the chocobos can be bred to create new breeds - which can access the Materia Caves on the World Map, or to be used in the chocobo races at Gold Saucer.

Nuts
Males and females can be bred together to make stronger chocobos with better stats and sometimes new abilities. To breed a chocobo, 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 the 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 in 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 hints on how to get through the sidequest in his home on the Northern Continent.

While the party can begin breeding chocobos any time after the Highwind is obtained, they won't be able to race in Gold Saucer until Cloud returns. Without promoting chocobo classes via racing, the probability of getting a colored chocobo is only 10%.

Cooldown and Stats
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 glitches. The game can't use a key-number higher than 32767, and so uses numbers from -32768 to 32767; thus 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 will overflow the counter and reset it. When the game considers the player to be at -32768 battles, the baby chocobo would need whopping 32766 battles to mate.

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.

Below 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.

Through breeding, the player can gain access to each of the chocobo breeds, beginning with the blue/green chocobos, and finishing with the Gold Chocobo. This is needed in order to access the Materia Caves.

Materia Caves
To access the Materia Caves, which contain the Mime Materia, Quadra Magic Materia, and Knights of the Round Materia, the player needs to gain chocobos that can access each. This can be done one of two ways, either breeding chocobos to gain access to each of the chocobo breeds which can access the Materia Caves, or by defeating Ruby Weapon to immediately gain access to a Gold Chocobo when presented to the Kalm Traveler.

RNG Manipulation
There is a way to breed a gold chocobo without needing to race at Gold Saucer. This means the earliest the player can get the gold chocobo is after obtaining the Highwind, before even reuniting with Cloud. With the right chocobos being bred there is always a small chance the player will get the desired chocobo, but it relies on the game's random number generator. Random number generation progresses in a predictable way, and therefore it is possible for the player to manipulate this to get a gold chocobo fairly quickly (under an hour). It relies on resetting the game to reset the random number generation, minimizing the tasks that generate new numbers (such as when traveling on the World Map), and orchestrating tasks that generate new numbers in a predictable way to ensure getting the correct color and gender.

The party needs 70 Krakka Greens and 1 Saraha Nut (can be bought from the farm), 2 Carob Nuts (stolen from Vlakorados) and 1 Zeio Nut (obtained from Goblins), and to buy 6 stables at Chocobo Farm. After catching a "wonderful chocobo" from Icicle Area (appears with one or two Jumpings) and a "great chocobo" from Mideel Area (appears with one or two Spirals), the player must send them to the stables. The player should save their game next to Chocobo Farm and hard reset the game (not using soft reset).

After reloading the game the player must immediately enter the Chocobo Farm, run in to talk to Choco Billy and ask to move chocobos. The player should move the "great chocobo" into the stable. If done correctly, the chocobo will be female. The player should immediately move the "wonderful chocobo" into the stable as well, and it should be male. If the chocobo genders were not correct, the player must reload their game and try do the sequence faster; the aim is to move in immediately as the game loads. After getting the correct chocobo genders the player must head outside to save and hard reset again.

Upon reloading the game the player must rush back in and feed one Krakka Green to any chocobo, then immediately mate the "wonderful" and "great" chocobos with a Carob Nut while selecting the female first. The result should be a blue female. Next the player must head onto the world map and fight six random battles, then save next to the farm and hard reset. When the game reloads the player must rush inside and talk to Choco Billy. The player must now feed 50 Krakka Greens to a chocobo, then mate the "wonderful" and "great" chocobos again using a Carob Nut while choosing the female first. The result will be a green male. The player must now head onto the world map to fight eight random battles, then save next to the farm again and hard reset the game.

After speeding in and speaking to Billy the player must feed 5 Krakka Greens to any chocobo, then mate the blue and green chocobos with a Saraha Nut while choosing the blue one first. The result is a black female. The player should fight three random battles on the world map, save next to the farm and hard reset. If the three battles were not enough to make the black chocobo ready to mate, the player should fight further seven battles and this should do it. As the game loads the player must run inside and talk to Billy and feed six Krakka Greens to a chocobo, then mate the black female with the "wonderful" male with a Zeio Nut choosing the black one first to breed a gold female chocobo.

Musical Themes
The theme "Chocobo Farm" is used on the Chocobo Farm, which is the main location visited when breeding Chocobos.