Chocobo Racing 2.55

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Originally Posted by Aphel

If you read carefully, I did mention that no items nor abilities were used at all in my post. R300 is brutal in the sense that there's little obstacles so it's a straight up raw-power, stat-based race against NPCs who aren't crippled by the usual traps.

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Okay, when you used really nothing, then the only way that you reach the goal with 14% stamina is, that you did not sprint the whole way. But you will no win any race in R-300 without sprinting at least 90% of the race track. My chocobo wins races, because she can sprint all the way without a break. There is little, very little room to save some stamina, but it's not much.

Yes now that I've raced plenty of times now in R300, it's pretty evident that it's a mad dash from start to end. Everyone's sprinting almost at the speed of Dash (meaning Dash doesn't help you get out of that Briar because your opponents are basically running at the speed of Dash). This Dash ability helped a ton in the lower races but in here it's just an ability to partially overcome that Heavy and a stamina-saver, which is fair enough I guess.

Getting hit by a Heavy or a Baccus on you at this stage guarantees that you can't finish 1st unless you picked up a powerup to counter that loss in speed/stamina (RNG). This makes defensive abilities really useful, if not almost mandatory to consistently place 1st. I've always looked forward to R300 thinking it was some sort of ultimate racing bracket. But now that I'm in it, I'm not sure if I'm all that happy about it. Will have to race more to find out.

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Originally Posted by Aphel

On the 1/100 chance that you really do not know how to conserve stamina, maintain your speed just before lathered state (W then release, W then release, etc). You'll get the fastest speed without the extra stamina drain from Lathered.

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you might be the only one who does it like this... ive never seen or heared of anyone doing this with success. could you explain a little better? you dont see lathered state at all by anticipating when it hits and release W right before? when i do the press W + release thing i walk like a snail.. i have low endurance though.

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Originally Posted by Alexiell

you might be the only one who does it like this... ive never seen or heared of anyone doing this with success. could you explain a little better? you dont see lathered state at all by anticipating when it hits and release W right before? when i do the press W + release thing i walk like a snail.. i have low endurance though.

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You can play around with this a bit, to save some Stamina at the cost of speed, since it takes a little (little) while, until you reach normal walking speed. Problem is, that this does not work in R-300 anymore, because the NPC are that fast, that you MUST run - if you want to win or reach a good place. You can still save a little, little, little Stamina, but even less.

Hmm? I thought it was kinda common knowledge. I guess SE didn't explain the basics well enough.

Whenever a Chocobo is running (non-lathered state), stamina consumption is ideal - Economical. However you won't be able to reach your max speed potential.
Whenever a Chocobo is sprinting (enters lathered state), stamina consumption is drastically increased - Huge stamina drain. You can reach your full speed when you accelerate while in lathered state.

So yes, when you want to conserve stamina you'll want to maintain your Chocobo's speed juuuuuust before lathered state. So W, release, W, release, depending on the terrain: When you're running downhill your speed is faster and you'll hit lathered state faster (3rd Sagolii Box onwards, for example) so you'll have to adjust to that. You're consuming your stamina economically. You can last but you won't be that fast.

When your Chocobo accelerates for a period during lathered state you'll eventually reach your max speed. You're at the fastest state that your Chocobo can be, but you're essentially burning your stamina in favor of speed.

Your accelerate stat determines how long you have to push W (during lathered state) to reach your max speed.
Your endurance determines how high your speed threshold is before you hit lathered state (still unconfirmed but I'm fairly certain).

http://i.imgur.com/2X62qqZ.png

That's why I drew this up to illustrate. Keep your speed before that red arrow to conserve stamina, accelerate into lathered state to reach your full speed (but really burn stamina in the process). The higher your endurance, the further that red arrow will be.
If your endurance is low, you'll have to accelerate a longer period while in lathered state to reach your max speed. You'll have to burn your stamina inefficiently for a longer period of time before you hit your speed potential.

http://i.imgur.com/7sVw7rh.jpg

While this managing of lathered state is somewhat key in lower ranked races, it's rather useless in R300 like Robin said. Everyone's burning their stamina inefficiently, all running at the speed of Dash. Perhaps it's still viable in the longer races like Tranquil Paths but in Sagolii you'll be sprinting for your life (and missing Boxes because of that). When you stop to conserve stamina, the NPCs are right behind you. Not to mention that the NPCs at high levels are really good at blocking you; most of the time they all run the shortest line in the race. In order to overtake them you'll have to take a wider, more time-consuming route. Everything happens so quickly, you can't really afford to make mistakes.

Sorry for the image-spam.

The blocking can be annoying, especially since it is visually not very accurate. One NPC is going on your lane - behind you! - suddenly you slow down. Hu? What's up? Yeah, this guy (visually) behind you just started some grab attack! Also works really nice, when they are at your side, still blocking your movement. -.-

I got a 60kbit connection and normally no lag. So it's not really me. But you learn to live with it...

@Aphel
ok thanks. i read your other thread about this, but in your last post it sounded like you can reach max speed without lathered. thanks for clarifying

Uhm.. So much hate from my post eh Aphel.. I am only reporting in what I am experiencing, I got over 4000 races done and there is something that happens once you reach the 140~ races, it's like your stamina drain goes up alot or something.
Since I made my first post I did some more testing with letting go each time I see Lathered and let the speed glide by itself a bit before holding W a little and then letting go and I had better results. If the rain weather kicks in my max speed drops and stamina drain even faster, but its better than what it was pre 2.55 atleast.
But like in my first post, I am still experiencing problems with stamina, call me troll all you want, I dont understand where your sudden hate came from. I am here to learn how to do races better aswell~ So I really dont like it when you call me dishonest.

Edit: I read your post and its really nice info, so thank you for that~ Maybe I am doing something wrong so tell me that instead going out on me like that.
Also at 500 Speed, even with 500 End. you hit lathered quite fast, I would like to hear about your races once you get up to this stage aswell.

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Originally Posted by YakushiHinata

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I found it very unlikely that someone with a P9 Chocobo didn't know how to conserve stamina and so made a hasty judgement.

I sincerely apologize for my actions.

http://puu.sh/h3m9v/6369deee56.jpg


Just gonna leave this here :V

Are you the guy who posted this on reddit? Can you share what your breeding strategies were and what goals you set for yourself at each pedigree?

Yea, I didn't really record the breedings in detail but the gist of it went like this.

Grade 1: raise 2 to 40, to have lots of g2 offspring from covers to introduce 4 stars into the gene pool. Since I aimed for 40 stars from the beginning, all that mattered were how many 4 stars a cover could pass on, 3 star or less stats could be considered the same.
Grade 2: first generation of G2s had some 4/2 stats, breed these with g1 covers with respective 4 star stats to have 4/4 g2s in specific stats. I believe I got lucky with RNG and had one line with 4/4 in endurance, stamina, and acceleration and another line with 4/4 in speed and cunning.
Grade 3: Combine the grade 2 lines into lines so 4 star potential can be achieved in all the stats. I think at this point i had one chocobo that was 4/4 in every stat except one, unfortunately it ended up having 3/3 cunning so that had to be fixed in the next generation
Grade 4: Introduce 4/x cunning into this generation via one of the G3s, inbreed a bit to get all stats 4/4 except one which ended up being 4/3 (bad RNG) I had 2 of these birds with 4/4 in all stats by this point.
Grade 5: Breed the 2 G4s together, hope for 2 perfect 40 stars here. Unfortunately, I ended up with only 1 40 star, the other was a 39 star of the oppisite gender
Grade 6: inbreed G5s again, RNG finally smiled upon me and gave me 2 40 stars of opposite genders.

This strategy was in place day 1, staying at a lower pedigree allowed me to purchase a lot more covers since covers were expensive (even the g1 ones), and race the birds in an efficient manner because higher pedigrees sucked to level. Also, from the information i gathered while scouring websites early on showed that higher covers did not necessarily guarantee more stars, so g1s proved to be the most economical for introducing 4 stars into the breeding lines.

Congrats on beating RNJesus Senbiki! That's some awesome luck and effort you got there.

That aside, I have two questions for racers that participated in higher 200 ratings races. I currently have a P9 choco with 2/4/4/3/4 w. Dash 3. What do you think are the odds of winning in the higher ratings races by experience? I'm currently struggling on whether I should invest approximately 200k MGP on G3 food and Level Head 4 training manual as I'm worried I might get bottleneck by the stats. Is Dash 3 as useful as it is pre-patch?

On a side note, anyone noticed if the offspring have a chance to inherit the stars from the parents as well? Currently it is said that offspring inherit stats from the grandparents, but I have noticed at least twice that there seems to be a slim chance that the offspring can inherit stats directly from the parent. I haven't done enough breeding and documentation to confirm this though, maybe Senbiki can share her findings?

Pedigree:
Pedigree determines the maximum stat caps of a chocobo, along with stars. The pedigree of the result of a chocobo covering is determined by the lowest parent. The pedigree of the resulting offspring will always be that of the lowest parent increased by one level. For example, two P1 chocobos will give rise to a P2 chocobo. A P1 covered with a P9 chocobo will also result in a P2 chocobo, as the P1 parent is the lowest pedigree. Lower Pedigree chocobos take less EXP to level to 40, so staying at lower pedigrees while breeding for higher star ratings may not be a bad idea.

Stars:
Stars also play a role in determining the maximum stat caps of a chocobo. Star inheritance is a bit more complicated than pedigree inheritance, so this takes a bit of explaining. Chocobos have 2 pairs of stats, one inherited from each parent. When they are registered for races, each of the stats are independently selected at random, so they can end up expressing either all of one parent's stars, are a combination. The exact expressed combination of stars while racing is not necessarily the combination it can pass down. During covering, 1 set of stars (can be from mother or father) in every stat of each parent is passed down into the child, much like racing registration. Therefore, the result of a chocobo covering can be thought of as basically registering 2 chocobos of the opposite gender to race, and combining the set of stars together.

Color: 50% chance of inheriting from father, 50% chance to inherit from mother. Hope you get a good color from coverings.

Ability: 50% chance to inherit from either parent, if they're both the same it is guaranteed.

Weather: pray to RNG lol, 50% fair 50% foul. This is less of an issue as fair weather birds no longer get wrecked in rain.

Your chances of winning with a P9, 2/4/4/3/4 Chocobo goes down drastically as you reach R240/R300. I would say you will most likely have no chance of placing 1st in R300 brackets. Speed is arguably the most important stat for a Chocobo and since all R300 races happen so quickly, that 2-star speed will really pull you down unless something tragic happens to the other 7 competitors. R300 races have little obstacles to stop these bulldozing NPCs. Would be better to breed it at level 40.

Dash 2 and 3 are useful in lower bracket races because:
1. Quick acceleration at ~500 speed, dropping back down to your Chocobo's max speed. Allows you to break away from Briars easily.
2. 4-5 seconds of free stamina. Good to use during Frenzy/Heavy.

Point 1 becomes moot in R300. Since everyone's essentially sprinting at ~500 speed including that NPC who activated Briar, Dash won't burst you out of trouble. In the end it's a good, flexible skill to have I guess. If at all possible, try to go for Cure III. That 12% stamina refresh is absolutely amazing.

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Originally Posted by FUNgineer

Stars:
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That's.... complicated lol. What I was trying to say was, instead of pooling together the 4 sets of stats from the grandparents and picking 2, which will become the mixture of the offspring (this is what I used to comprehend from some post online saying only the grandparents stats will be pass down), I observed that the gene pool actually pick from 6 set of stats (4 grandparents and parents), in which 2 set will be selected and the resultant mixture will become the offspring's stats upon registration. However, from experience, it appears that the chance of parents stats to be selected appears to be lower than the grandparents.

Of course, my sample data is low and the accuracy is probably off, this will need confirmation from the other racers, but I'm just vocing this here in case there are others out there like me, who initially thought that only the grandparents stats will be selected. (Which doesn't make any sense now that I think about it.)

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Originally Posted by Aphel

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Thanks for the input Aphel, guess I'll try to breed a couple more chocobo and see how it goes from there. Another question, if you were to have 60k MGP to spent, between Level Head 4 and Increased Stamina 2, which one would you pick?

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Originally Posted by SokiYagami

That aside, I have two questions for racers that participated in higher 200 ratings races. I currently have a P9 choco with 2/4/4/3/4 w. Dash 3. What do you think are the odds of winning in the higher ratings races by experience? Is Dash 3 as useful as it is pre-patch?

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Hmm. Will be hard for you. Max Speed and Stamina are more important. Dash 3 is still a good skill, especially at the end of a race, when you run out of stamina, so keep it. I would not go for Level Head, but Increased Stamina (try to get 3, but at least 2). Choco Cure is fine, too.

But since your Max Speed will be 420... will be very hard for you, I think.

Don't buy the manuals. Use the lether waters first and hope for a good skill. Manuals are only a compromise, when you reach Rank 50 and still got no good skill, especially since you can only get the mediocre versions, not the best.

Which reminds me, as of now there's no way to refresh a skill at level 50 yet, are there?

I'm not certain how effective this Increased Stamina is. There's hardly any info floating around to concretely say that it's useful, so I would go with Level Head 4. That Frenzy immunity is invaluable.

At the moment something is very wrong with the R300 races. While Frenzy drastically affected NPCs pre-R300 (Frenzy them and watch their stamina drain like water through a sieve), in here they are nigh-useless.

For some reason R300 Frenzy hits you like an absolute truck ~30% stamina loss easily = Game Over. NPCs get very minimal (if at all) stamina loss. I trusted SE to be careful and fair but now I'm incredibly disappointed that they overlooked such a big and obvious problem in their testing.

I got Increased Stamina III and very seldom a problem to reach the goal sprinting and first, even when hit with some things like briars or frenzy.

Increased Stamina (or Choco Cure) will always help. Even one meteor won't kill you off (though of course can be a prob, if you are the only one it hit, because of the debuff).

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Originally Posted by SokiYagami

Which reminds me, as of now there's no way to refresh a skill at level 50 yet, are there?

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Don't know for sure, but normally not, since you only get a new skill when leveling up.

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Originally Posted by Aphel

I trusted SE to be careful and fair but now I'm incredibly disappointed that they overlooked such a big and obvious problem in their testing.

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With all due respect, but seriously... I can't help but lol'ed.
But I guess we should all be used by now with npc having an edge over players.

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Originally Posted by RobinRethiel

I got Increased Stamina III and very seldom a problem to reach the goal sprinting and first, even when hit with some things like briars or frenzy.

Increased Stamina (or Choco Cure) will always help. Even one meteor won't kill you off (though of course can be a prob, if you are the only one it hit, because of the debuff).


Don't know for sure, but normally not, since you only get a new skill when leveling up.

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I'm trying to get a mixture of Cure 3 / Increased Stamina 3 / Level Head 5 or at least one of these with something else that isn't quite useless. Time to have another 300 rounds duel with RNJesus.

Problem of Level Head is, that it may protect you from the stamina drain of frenzy, but it's still no bonus to your stamina in general like Cure or Increased Stamina. And you... yeah, must say, really need such a stamina buff.

Increased Stamina 3 means, that you got effectively ~17,6% more stamina.

isnt there an ability that cures frenzy and gives back stamina? it says 200 i think, but no idea how much that is in %.

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Originally Posted by Alexiell

isnt there an ability that cures frenzy and gives back stamina? it says 200 i think, but no idea how much that is in %.

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Yes, there is, problem is again, that it still only helps against frenzy. If none of the NPC attacks you with that, it's a wasted skill.

I got this once and it somehow felt like, as if they did not care to attack you with frenzy (or slow) anymore so much. At least for the slow->stamina skill, you can use the traps.

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Originally Posted by Alexiell

isnt there an ability that cures frenzy and gives back stamina? it says 200 i think, but no idea how much that is in %.

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Originally Posted by RobinRethiel

Yes, there is, problem is again, that it still only helps against frenzy. If none of the NPC attacks you with that, it's a wasted skill.

I got this once and it somehow felt like, as if they did not care to attack you with frenzy (or slow) anymore so much. At least for the slow->stamina skill, you can use the traps.

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^ This. Unless Chocobo Clam can restore up to 30% stamina, otherwise I would rather go for Level Head instead. In fact, I have just put a pretty decent stats covering choco with Level Head V into covering now. Hopefully I can get my (at least) 17/20 stars chocobo with 4 in speed and stamina with Level Head V in 6 hours time...

I'm not sure how people are running into so much stamina issues. While racing might be far from balanced right now, it is an improvement over the "hold-W racing" pre-2.55 patch. I have a feeling those having stamina issues are simply holding W down for too long in lathered state.

At R-300 racing I finish 1-3rd depending on treasure box RNG, and I don't have a perfect chocobo (4*, 3*, 3*, 3*, 3*):

http://i.imgur.com/0qgkXdA.png

Choco Shock III is incredibly useful especially at the start of the race when everyone is bundled together, it means for a third of the race NPCs can't use abilities. With Choco Ease III I purposefully step onto heavy-platforms to give myself a nice stamina boost. But a wide range of ability combos will work now after the patch buffs which is why I think racing is an improvement over pre-patch.

Well, obviously you got one of the strong replenish stamina skills...

You got Max Speed 500 and 3 star is okay too and no devastating difference. The salient point is "Choco Ease III".

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Originally Posted by RobinRethiel

Yes, there is, problem is again, that it still only helps against frenzy. If none of the NPC attacks you with that, it's a wasted skill.

I got this once and it somehow felt like, as if they did not care to attack you with frenzy (or slow) anymore so much. At least for the slow->stamina skill, you can use the traps.

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my new chocobo learned this skill (choco calm III), cures frenzy and restores 200 stamina. i get hit with frenzy pretty often, in about 60-70% of all races. you can leave bacchus water for the chocobo behind you and if they take the item, they will amost always use it on you right after. the 200 stamina restores 20% for me, maybe 1-2% less, its hard to tell because it restores stamina over a few seconds like the stamina potion. im not sure yet if 200 stamina = 20% or if it depends on your stamina stat. i will compare it once my chocobo reachs a higher level. if it stays at 20% then this skill is really great. of course it doesnt help in every race but frenzy is the main thing that changed in the last patch and made everyone complain. this skill will help you exactly in those races where you would usually struggle with your stamina.

Since it replenish a lot of stamina, it is indeed no bad skill, better than simple immunity against frenzy or choco esuna. While esuna helps against every buff, it does not help with the normal stamina problems you will have, frenzy or not, even with maxed Stamina and Endurance.

I got no way to cure frenzy, but I simply don't need to.

I am close to get the perfect one

http://puu.sh/h8UWv/261b72f011.png

I will breed with his father and get four stars on all atributes.

http://puu.sh/h97kL/db20c3b174.jpg

Just need to grind pedigrees now :V

Gratz :)

The efforts to get the perfect bloodline is worth it.

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Originally Posted by Wizel

My biggest issue is the NPC's seem to gun only for your choco and nothing else 80% of the time. I have seen NPC's not use any items even though they are packed with other NPC's but as soon as I go in to pass or get close, every item starts getting used, kind of unfair when the hold race is gunning for you. Also Frenzy is way to dang powerful now, until I can get something to resist it its just insane how much it cripples your stamina.

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Yeah I've seen that after r-80, NPC save their items to use it on you even when they are packed with other NPCs to briar them, or have NPCs ahead to frenzy/grabiball

not really I have Choco Calm III and I welcome the NPC racers to frenzy my bird 20% stamina and remove Frenzy