Is there a way to powerlevel your chocobo companion?

So, I had something fortuitously weird happen last week that I haven't been able to duplicate, and I think this might fall under "things I don't understand as well as I thought I might," not being a regular in this game.

I check my chocobo companion regularly like a kid weeks out from christmas hoping for skill points to spend waiting under the tree. One day out of the blue, there were like five, which was like winning the lottery. I hadn't done anything much out of the ordinary in sticking to the MSQ and maybe leveling a gather glass while waiting for a story dungeon to pop... and since then it's back to almost never seeing any progress on the companion's points to spend. Like I see the number is moving on the XP bar as I bring him out to kill things, but it's soooo slowww. Did I trip over a lesser known powerleveling strategy or something to get that win of five points? Now that I type this out, was it the rapidly ascending gathering levels? Does the companion gain XP when I gather if I just happen to have him out? Literally that's the only thing I can think of.

What are you rapid chocobo-leveling strategies?

Come to think of it, I did stable him for a day in the FC stable to change his color, and there was a quest where I fed him some treats. Do treats give XP?

Anyway, thanks in advance for any and all helpful replies :)

Feed the chocobo with curiel root as much as you can and chain kill regular enemies at your level, or when doing max level treasure maps.

The challenge logs involving the Chocobo gives a good amount of XP.
A lot of times I never notice when Happy levels up and I am pleasantly surprised when I open her page and I see points! Of course I am working on rank 11 now and it is VERY slow going.

Treats do give the Chocobo a set exp under the Train option at the Stables, there are restrictions:
Only the Chocobo's owner can stable it or give it Color Change foods, however if it's in a FC stable, the FC members can Train it
There is a hour cool down on training, you can't stable it and then repeatedly Train it
The Condition of the stable directly effects the amount of experience gained
If you Train the Chocobo with Curiel Root, not only does the Chocobo gain experience, but it will also give the Chocobo an experience gain buff, which is more effective once it becomes the Chocobo's favorite treat
https://ffxiv.consolegameswiki.com/wiki/Chocobo_Raising

If you had stabled the Chocobo for the color change, maybe one or more of your FC mates decided to keep up a Training regiment while your were away, resulting in a lot of experience for it.

As for "power leveling", probably the fastest way is via FATEs that are the type where you have to kill many monsters.
As you sync to the FATE's level, so does your Chocobo, so you are going to be getting very good exp per kill for both you and your Chocobo (or just your Chocobo if you are already capped)
Just find FATEs (any level) that you can blast through easily and have your Chocobo with you.
Also, weekly, the Achievements/Challenge Log gained for kills within you and your Chocobo's level that you are both participants in is a massive experience reward to your Chocobo.
https://ffxiv.gamerescape.com/wiki/B..._I_(Challenge)
https://ffxiv.gamerescape.com/wiki/B...II_(Challenge)

Each time your Chocobo ranks up, it gets Skill Points equal to the Rank to spend in the Skill Tree, so at Rank 1 he gets one SP, Rank 2 he gets 2, and so on up to Rank 10.
Once your Chocobo hits Rank 10, you will need to feed him a Thavnairian Onion in order to unlock the ability to gain experience for the next rank. https://ffxiv.gamerescape.com/wiki/Thavnairian_Onion
From Rank 10 on, the amount of points earned per Rank up is:
10 SP is earned for each level 10 - 16
11 SP for level 17
12 SP for level 18
13 SP for level 19
14 SP for level 20

Max rank is Rank 20 and at which the Chocobo will have earned enough SP to "buy" all Skills.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Kirika-

Treats do give the Chocobo a set exp under the Train option at the Stables, there are restrictions:
Only the Chocobo's owner can stable it or give it Color Change foods, however if it's in a FC stable, the FC members can Train it
There is a hour cool down on training, you can't stable it and then repeatedly Train it
The Condition of the stable directly effects the amount of experience gained
If you Train the Chocobo with Curiel Root, not only does the Chocobo gain experience, but it will also give the Chocobo an experience gain buff, which is more effective once it becomes the Chocobo's favorite treat
https://ffxiv.consolegameswiki.com/wiki/Chocobo_Raising

If you had stabled the Chocobo for the color change, maybe one or more of your FC mates decided to keep up a Training regiment while your were away, resulting in a lot of experience for it.

As for "power leveling", probably the fastest way is via FATEs that are the type where you have to kill many monsters.
As you sync to the FATE's level, so does your Chocobo, so you are going to be getting very good exp per kill for both you and your Chocobo (or just your Chocobo if you are already capped)
Just find FATEs (any level) that you can blast through easily and have your Chocobo with you.
Also, weekly, the Achievements gained for kills within you and your Chocobo's level that you are both participants in is a massive experience reward to your Chocobo.

Each time your Chocobo ranks up, it gets Skill Points equal to the Rank to spend in the Skill Tree, so at Rank 1 he gets one SP, Rank 2 he gets 2, and so on up to Rank 10.
Once your Chocobo hits Rank 10, you will need to feed him a Thavnairian Onion in order to unlock the ability to gain experience for the next rank. https://ffxiv.gamerescape.com/wiki/Thavnairian_Onion
From Rank 10 on, the amount of points earned per Rank up is:
10 SP is earned for each level 10 - 16
11 SP for level 17
12 SP for level 18
13 SP for level 19
14 SP for level 20

Max rank is Rank 20 and at which the Chocobo will have earned enough SP to "buy" all Skills.

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This was very helpful, thank you! I also didn't know that the SP per level scaled up!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Kirika-

Only the Chocobo's owner can stable it or give it Color Change foods, however if it's in a FC stable, the FC members can Train it
There is a hour cool down on training, you can't stable it and then repeatedly Train it

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There are two separate 1-hour timers for stable feeding, so your chocobo can be fed twice per hour. One timer is for you personally, the other timer is for everyone else. Make an alt character and and have it join your FC, and you can double feed.

Back in the days in ARR, what I use to do was after I did all that I could with feeding and challenge log XP, was farm Water Sprites in Urth’s Fount in the South Shroud. They were level 50 and gave out the Maximum XP in the open world. After a while , it was getting popular with Chocobo XP hunters, so I moved on to the Northern Thanalan and farmed the Level 50 Magitek Robots (I cant remember their exact name). That was better for me as I use to sell their drops which sold for a decent amount back then. I had already a predetermined path to walk around and kill all the Magiteks and by the time I made my round, the 1st one spawned back. I just kept at it like this until my Chocobo hit level 20. It took some time, but I found it efficient. As far as today, maybe you can farm whatever mob you want in the Tempest. I don’t know if there are any level 80 mobs, but any Level 79 would do. Fates are Ok, but you lose time flying around from Fate to Fate. I just stick to a group of mobs and cycle through them as they respawn. I don’t recall Fates giving Chocobo XP for completing the Fate like you get, but I wish they did as that would’ve helped more. They only get XP per each kill and that’s based on the level of the mob which is usually lower level than the non Fate mobs in the area, so I would just stick with regular non Fate mobs if Chocobo XP is what you’re after.

Remember to use multiple sources of exp, as if it were your actual player character. Settling on small lumps of "the biggest" exp is going to slow things down.

Use your companion section of the challenge log.
Use stabling and training. You do not need to keep the chocobo stabled during the timer. Feel free to train and then take the chocobo with you.
Some foods give enhanced mob exp when used to summon in place of gysahl greens.
Never underestimate mob exp. It looks like virtually nothing, but surprisingly adds up fast when you grind fates and do other things in the overworld.
Remember that the gysahl green summon timer operates like food timers. Using a second gysahl green will increase the duration by 30 minutes, and more can be used at any time. (For example, if the timer drops to 15 minutes, using another gysahl green will increase the timer to 45 minutes.) I'm mentioning this because if you make a habit of keeping your chocobo summoned at all times when not being trained, they seem to start "phantom-leveling" on you.

If it still works, unless it was patched, Chocobo experience while playing as BLU was insanely fast back in Stormblood release. It's the reason why Onion prices went from 100k to 1-1.4 mil for a good while

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Dreggit

If it still works, unless it was patched, Chocobo experience while playing as BLU was insanely fast back in Stormblood release. It's the reason why Onion prices went from 100k to 1-1.4 mil for a good while

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If it was, it was only patched recently. I was leveling my Blue Mage to 60 right after the new Blue Mage patch released, and the mob exp boosts applied to the chocobo as well.

I would suggest doing fates in Shadowbringers zones. I got my chocobo maxed out very quickly. It was like the BLU exploit, but better (and also not an exploit). I never took advantage of the BLU exp buff before the nerf, but what we have now is so much better.

I don't know if it's been patched, but when I leveled BLU to 50, my choco was getting crazy amounts of XP. Since BLU has massively increased XP gain, that transferred over to my Chocobo, too.

Best way is to kill as many mobs as you can at the highest level you can handle. If you can find other players also trying to rank up their chocobos, group up for the FATEs that will increase the number of mobs spawned based on the players present.

In Stormblood, our hunt community was using the Dataqi Chronicles FATE chain for chocobo leveling groups. We'd get 20-30 players showing up and turn those FATEs into an AoE fest (the 9th being especially good since adds would keep respawning as long as we left the boss alive). Haven't done any excessive FATE grinding in Shadowbringers yet to see if any of the new FATE chains has a similar benefit for chocobo leveling. Something like the Tarichuk FATE in Rak'tika would be good since the mobs will keep spawning as long as no one turns in the feathers to fill the quota. Just keep killing until the FATE is about to expire.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by CazzT

I don't know if it's been patched, but when I leveled BLU to 50, my choco was getting crazy amounts of XP. Since BLU has massively increased XP gain, that transferred over to my Chocobo, too.

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If you leveled BLU when it first came out, it's been nerfed. It was reduced about a month later along with a corresponding boost to chocobo XP when using a job other than BLU. It's still better than the XP we were getting pre-BLU, just no longer at those crazy levels.

When blue mage released, I was getting a chocobo level every ~20 minutes of AE'ing in NShroud.

Its significantly slower now, but it might still be better than a lot of the alternatives, especially solo.