On the latter half of the game (in Disc 2 and Disc 3), it's possible to rent chocobo stables, breed chocobos, and use your own chocobos in Golden Saucer Chocobo Square racing.
Successful chocobo breeding needs some preliminary steps:
- Gobs of cash. You can go to Mideel or go doing some quests. Advance plot or something. Extra loot and mastered materia is a good money source too.
- Stables. Go to the chocobo farm, rent all of the stables you can get. The people there will tell all you need to know about the technical side of chocobo breeding, too.
- Chocobo Lure materia. You can find them lying about (on Disc 1 when you first come to the farm) or you can buy them from the farm.
- Greens. You need greens to draw chocobo's attention during fight. Any greens will do.
Catching Chocobos
Firstly, to catch Chocobos you will need to have the Chocobo Lure materia equipped. You can buy this from Choco Billy at the Chocobo ranch. To improve your chances, level up your Chocobo lure materia as much as possible, and try to get your luck stat as high as possible using Luck Plus materia and the Amulet accessory, which you can purchase at Mideel before it is devasted by lifestream.
Once you are set up, find some Chocobo tracks (see the table below). If you're luck is high enough, and you have a good Chocobo lure you should run into a Chocobo 95% of the time. After that, there are basically two methods of catching your Chocobo:
- Feed the Chocobo greens to distract it (select greens in the item menu, and then select the Chocobo). Don't bother using anything more expensive than Gysahl Greens. Once the Chocobo is happily eating away dispatch the monsters accompanying the Chocobo however you like. Be careful not to harm the Chocobo, so don't use all magic. You should also be careful, as if an enemy dies and you still have attacks queued up on that enemy you may attack the Chocobo by accident. To avoid this, just attack one monster at a time.
- A much more simple way is to use the Odin summon materia. This will kill off all the monsters, but miss the Chocobo.
Once you have killed of the Chocobo's escorts you will get a message saying 'Caught a Chocobo!'. You can then ride the Chocobo around. Once you are finished, press X to get off the Chocobo and when prompted, select 'Send back to the stables'. You can keep up to 4 Chocobos outside the stables before moving them in/releasing them.
Tips for getting the 'right' Chocobo
- Firstly, consult the table below to get the right quality of Chocobo. You can tell the class of a Chocobo by the monsters accompanying it.
- The gender of the Chocobo is determined randomly when you move it into a stable. So to speed the process up, save the game outside the Chocobo ranch and then if you don't get the gender you want simply reload and try again.
Wild Chocobo Locations
| Monsters with Chocobo | Choco Billy's Comment | Quality |
| 1. Chocobo Ranch Area | ||
| 2 Mandragora | "This one doesn't seem very good" | Poor |
| 1 Mandragora + 1 Levikron | “This one doesn’t seem very good” | Poor |
| 2 Levikron | “I really can't recommend this one” | Weak |
| 2 Elfadunk | “I really can't recommend this one” | Weak |
| 2. Junon Area | ||
| 2 Capparwire | "This one doesn't seem very good" | Poor |
| 2 Nerosuferoth | "This one doesn't seem very good" | Poor |
| 3 Capparwire | "Mmmm, this one's not bad" | Fair |
| 2 Capparwire (side-view) | "Mmmm, this one's not bad" | Fair |
| 3. Gold Saucer Area | ||
| 1 Harpy | "This is a pretty average Chocobo" | Average |
| 2 Flapbeat | "This is a pretty average Chocobo" | Average |
| 2 Spencer | "Mmmm, this seems like a good Chocobo" | Good |
| 4. Rocket Town Area | ||
| 1 Velcher Task + 1 Kyuvildun | "This Chocobo's so-so” | Mediocre |
| 1 Velcher Task | "This Chocobo's so-so” | Mediocre |
| 2 Valron | "This is a great Chocobo" | Great |
| 2 Kyuvildun | "This is a great Chocobo" | Great |
| 5. Wutai Area | ||
| 3 Tail Vault | "This is a pretty average Chocobo" | Average |
| 2 Tail Vault | "This is a pretty average Chocobo" | Average |
| 2 Tail Vault (side-view) | "Mmmm, this one's not bad" | Fair |
| 3 Razor Weed | "Mmmm, this one's not bad" | Fair |
| 6. Mideel Area | ||
| 3 Headhunter | "Mmmm, this one's not bad" | Fair |
| 2 Headhunter | "Mmmm, this one's not bad" | Fair |
| 1 Spiral | "This is a great Chocobo" | Great |
| 2 Spiral | "This is a great Chocobo" | Great |
| 7. Icicle Area | ||
| 2 Bandersnatch | "I really can't recommend this one" | Weak |
| 1 Bandersnatch + 1 Jumping | "I really can't recommend this one" | Weak |
| 1 Jumping | "This... is a wonderful Chocobo!" | Wonderful |
| 2 Jumping | "This... is a wonderful Chocobo!" | Wonderful |
Chocobo ranks and colors
(Todo: To be written...)
Racing tips
(Todo: To be written...)
Breeding a Golden Chocobo
Getting a Golden Chocobo is actually quite easy, it just involves tons of luck manipulation.
For this, you need:
- A lifetime pass to Gold Saucer. Otherwise, this is really going to get expensive. (Plus, you know you are going to be addicted to Super Dunk afterwards anyway.)
- A Great Female Chocobo.
- A Good Male Chocobo.
- A Wonderful Male Chocobo.
- Three Carob Nuts. You can steal these from Vlakondrios (the red dragon thing) south of Bone Village.
- A Zeio Nut. You can steal these from goblins of Goblin Island (or kill them, all the same...)
- Tons and tons of Sylkis Greens. Easily the most troublesome part of this mission: You can buy these from Chocobo Sage (north of Bone Village).
- Shoulderbuttons+Start+Select. Or Alt+F4, if you're in Windows. You'll need to reset often because oftentimes in breeding, you get a completely different beast than you was looking for. Don't worry, the right one will show up one day!
Sylkis Greens
Sylkis Greens are the most difficult part of the process to get right. Basically, these are used to boost your chocobo's stats. This isn't necessary, strictly, but it makes getting a gold chocobo far more likely.
Firstly, there are number of theories on what chocobos should be boosted to A-S rank. It's definitely easy to get a gold chocobo with all chocobos at A or S, but some say that only the black female and wonderful yellow male need to be A or S.
Then, the amount. Some say 40 Sylkis Greens is all you ever need (to boost up the black female and the wonderful male). A proven theory is to feed all chocobos greens in bunches of 20 greens every time they lose a long round of racing. Some say that the best way is to simply feed each of them 99 Sylkis, but that may be serious overkill, because the stats will max after about 40-60 Sylkis fed.
Sylkis Greens are sold by the Chocobo Sage on the northern continent. They cost an arm and leg to get. Many people seem to buy one, then resort to the W-Item cheat to get tons of Sylkis. I abused a lot of Mideel critters and ultimately sold a mastered All materia.
Breeding and racing
Basically, you need to take your Great Female and Good Male, feed them some Sylkis, then race them on Gold Saucer until they're class A or S.
Then, you need to decide what you are after. You need either a Green Male and a Blue Female, or a Green Female and a Blue Male. Either way, you need to breed your Great Female with the Good Male, give them a Carob Nut, and the end result is either a green or a blue chocobo. Depending on what gender this chocobo is, you should then get the other color one and of opposite gender next, again breeding your Great and Good with a Carob. They won't breed again right away, though, so meanwhile, you should again Sylkis this colored chocobo up and race it to class A or S. And when you finally get to breed the other one, again Sylkis and race.
Now, you should breed the Green and Blue chocobos with the last Carob nut and you should get a Black Female chocobo. Sylkis and race. You should also Sylkis and race your Wonderful Male chocobo.
Once you have Black Female of class A or S, and a Wonderful Male of class A or S, breed them with a Zeio nut. The end result should be a golden one (slightly darker than yellow chocobo).
You can Sylkis it too, even if it won't grow much as a result. It should be pretty easy to get to S class with it or even win in S class. But if you can't stand listening to the race music any more times, try going treasure hunting. A lot of cool materia caves wait you.