Does anyone know exactly how chocobo bonus exp works?

This has been a mystery and I've not run into anyone in the game that seems to have a 100% perfect idea that fits. The closest thing that I've seen is if you have X number of chocobos near yours, you get 25% bonus for each one. But one thing I don't get is you can get 75% 5 times in a row, get nothing, then 25%, and again back to 75%. I've had all my guys keep there chocobos close together, and it still seems to vary. We saw 100% for 6 straight mobs, then last killed mob was 0%. I noticed while doing fates solo, and chocobo out, that often times I'd get 100% and indeed there was many chocobo's around not in my group, so there does seem to be some kind of a proximity thing going on with other chocobos.

It depends on how many links you get on your pull, and the number of links you get depends on the size of your party, your level, enemies level, and the location of the enemies.

There is also bonus exp for killing mobs quickly after each other. Maybe that is put into account as well here.

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Originally Posted by TomTom1968

There is also bonus exp for killing mobs quickly after each other. Maybe that is put into account as well here.

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Specifically, chocobos share the chain bonus you receive for killing multiple enemies of your level or higher in a timeframe. This applies even if you yourself don't earn that experience (from being level 50). That means you have to be hitting enemies at your level or higher for it to be worthwhile.

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Originally Posted by TomTom1968

There is also bonus exp for killing mobs quickly after each other. Maybe that is put into account as well here.

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I'm not sure this is accurate. If you ever sat and leveled your choco for a long period you know. That there are times you kill 6 mobs in quick succession. Sometimes it will say 25%, 50%, 25%, 50%, 25%, 50%. And sometimes it will say 75% 6 times in a row. With no real difference in kill time. And it even doesn't build up to the 75%, it immediately starts out, first kill = 75%.

However your description is accurate if your talking about how a player earned EXP, but for chocobo's, the system is different. You can get EXP chains on your character solo, and get no bonus at all on chocobo. I do lots of SBing, and I like to do it in castrum occidens, when I'm solo. I've done that for a long time. And I never got any bonus on my chocobo, for grins I gathered up about 7 mobs on blm, and AoE nuked all of them, and got nothing. But the other day recently, for grins I asked a WHM friend to join me with their choco. We frequently would get 25/50%, I think we even saw 75% but I can't confirm that. Also a odd thing last night, we were calling it a day, and decided to dismiss two of the 4 chocobo's in the group. It seemed to have no effect at all on the bonus exp. People were still getting 25%,50%,75% bonus's.

I'm wondering if possibly it could have something to do with claiming and participation. You know when your getting exp on monsters, or your killing quest monsters, if someone else is also killing that same monster you both have to do a certain % of damage, in order for the game to register you did enough to earn exp or a mark off your quest objective? It would be interesting if that is the magic answer. It would possibly explain the seemingly random EXP bonus sometimes, and the EXTREME rare case of you seeing 100% bonus. Because in a 4 man 4 chocobo party, its going to be extremely hard for all 4 players to register enough damage for all of them to get credit(and each earn the added +25% bonus).

I know when doing a party in Urth's Gift, or w/e a lot of the times a couple of the party members are already killing the pulled mobs before the other two catch up and start to AoE. And that could possibly be why you only get 25% or 50% bonus, because 1-2 players are doing most of the damage, and the other two are only doing 10%-25% damage to the mobs, therefor not earning credit. I'm worried that it could have more to do with what the chocobo is doing. I don't think so because we tried with all choco's on follow last night and no change. I want to test some things to see if you have everyone time their AoE all together, that way everyone gets hits in, to see if that improves the bonus.
And the times you see it bouncing between 25%, 50%, 25%, 50%, 25%. It could be that 2 members of your group are killing one group of mobs, and not far away 1 member is killing another group of mobs, and as each monster is dieing off, your getting the appropriate bonus.

If this turns out to be the way the bonus truly works. It's almost starting to sound like a bug in the game design. Because why is 100% bonus exp designed into this system, if its going to be extremely hard for all 4 players to do enough damage to register the participation, sense the mobs don't have much HP. If we had lv 55 mobs with more HP this system would work fine. Maybe that's why I saw 100% bonus on my chocobo in FATEs a LOT. Because those mobs typically have a lot more HP and everyone is able to do more damage to them. Well that's assuming a steam roller of players doesn't come through and annihilates the mobs.

TL;DR I believe chocobo bonus exp is determined by the number of people actually participating in the death of the monster(killing it not just standing around soaking exp). Much in the same way two players fighting the same quest monster must both put in a unknown amount of damage, in order to get credit for killing that monster. I'm going to test this and report back.

Well for one your chocobo doesn't get your rested exp bonus, so if you are getting 50% more exp and your chocobo isn't, that is why. Second, as others mentioned, there are lots of ways to get bonus exp. Experience chains are killing a monster of equal or greater level and then killing another equal or greater level monster within a certain time frame. That time frame gets shorter as the chain progresses, as well as the amount of experience earned gets larger as the chain progresses. Link bonuses are applied when you pull one monster and another monster automatically links on to that monster to attack you. This will only happen if you have at least a few levels on the monsters or are in a group (in open world. Dungeons have set groups of monsters that link together). This bonus is increased with every link that is added on to the original pull. I'm not sure if the link is limited to 5 as it was in 1.0, but that would be my assumption.

4 player , 4 chocobo PTs at Urth's Fount water elementals are still the best xp if you want to grind some xp. Pull every last elemental around the crystal and kill them at once with aoes to get 250~375xp per kill. Makes the first 5 or 6 ranks go pretty quickly. If it were not for the challenge log bonus xp, I do not think I would ever hit rank 10. 1.2 million to go from 9 to 10 is no joke!

Ya Doki that's where I go a lot with my FC. We were just trying to figure out how the bonus worked. And it seems to be that the linking is likely the only bonus the choco will get. The water elementals are lv 50, so I'm not sure if they are at the right level to prove, or disprove that a "Chain" bonus can/cannot be applied to them. But the idea that linking mobs giving the bonus makes a lot of sense to me. I'm gonna feel real bad about going nuts about my theory above, if its just linking bonus I'm seeing lol. But it seems very plausible.

But this also means that for you to maximize your exp potential you need to be choosy on how your pulling the mobs, and make sure that when you scroll over that first mob, that its going to link 3-5 other mobs.(50%-100% bonus respectfully). I'm wondering if the players in the party can be any distance from the mobs, or, if they need to be really close to trigger the maximum linkage. I remember in 1.0 you could be in a full group, but if you were the only one close to the mobs it wouldn't link anything. I wonder if the game only uses the 4 players, to determine the amount of linkage, or if the chocobos count in some way. If its based on linkage, then a area where you can constantly Link 5-6 mobs, is going to be the better camp. The elemental camp is ok, but theres downtime, and a max of maybe 2-3 groups that you can pull. And the way the monsters are scattered, you will usually only be able to link 2-3 monsters. Which equates to 25-50% bonus usually. Is there other areas, with denser patches of monsters that anyone can remember? Even if the level is a little lower, if its a lot more mobs, and you can get 75%-100% bonus, it will be more worth it. Slightly lower level mobs will also make it easier to get more links too. I forget, does anyone remember the level of the spriggans in that abyss type area in central shroud? The higher level NW area, Spriggan Dig.