Chocobo Companions and You: A Guide

[Luinne]

Hmmm...you forget to mention one critical benefits of Chocobo in Final Fantasy:

Q: "What is a Chocobo good for in Final Fantasy?"
A: "Emergency Ration."


Okay I am just kidding, don't hate!

This made me truly laugh out loud so you got a thumbs up from me. morbid humour is the best!

[Maelwys]

Addendum: From the Patch Notes for 2.1

The following changes have been made to chocobo companions:
+ Players can now examine chocobo companions to view their rank and barding.
+ Enmity generated by the actions Choco Drop and Choco Strike has been increased.

Tested: "Choco Drop" (the first Defender Stance attack) now generates noticeably more hate.

My Chocobo has the first three ranks in Defender Stance.
If I put it into Defender Stance so that it spams Choco Drop, it can now hold hate over my Paladin as long as I'm not in "Shield Oath" or using my enmity combo.
Whilst it's certainly not a "proper tank", this should be enough to force your Chocobo to grab hate for you whenever you need it to.

(I made it tank a Fate boss for me, just for giggles)

[Solfleur]

I cannot get my legacy choco to equip any of his four, no this one has three, barding sets--in mount mode. I summon him to fight and everything's fine, but to ride, totally vanilla...grrrr!

To answer the obvious question: yes, I do know how to switch out armor sets, as I've been swapping out pieces with my other two characters. I've seen others riding with BLM barding so I know that's not the issue.

Sorry for off topic question. On-topic, I prefer the slow-buff heal/protector build too and hope they expand the skill tree/utility range beyond (literally LOL) emergency rations unless they can "regen" those vestigial wings 'course.

[Solfleur]

I had to vote you "up" just for the image of big bad you giggling! (...and it doesn't hurt that I agree with you). Cheers!

Addendum: From the Patch Notes for 2.1



Tested: "Choco Drop" (the first Defender Stance attack) now generates noticeably more hate.

My Chocobo has the first three ranks in Defender Stance.
If I put it into Defender Stance so that it spams Choco Drop, it can now hold hate over my Paladin as long as I'm not in "Shield Oath" or using my enmity combo.
Whilst it's certainly not a "proper tank", this should be enough to force your Chocobo to grab hate for you whenever you need it to.

(I made it tank a Fate boss for me, just for giggles)

[Solfleur]

We get such a limited number of points to spend on our companions which at this point can not be done over; a little heads-up would have been nice. Not everyone has time in their lives to spend poring over every single tidbit the great and powerful Yoshi-P lets slip from his gilded lips...which it often takes weeks to translate in its entirety to those not in Japan anyway!

Ugh.. this is just one of those "very last straw" kind of days as far as this game build goes. So much could have been done so much better with such minimum effort--it's just AGGRAVATING as all hell. If I do my job wrong premature infants DIE, but I guarantee I make several zeroes less in salary per year than these bozos do! Thankfully I also make fewer (zero and counting) mistakes, given the stakes are so high. If people cannot do the job right, they should take themselves OUT of the job.

I thought that was the time honored Japanese way.

[Maelwys]

The HP should stack in "free" stance; what a rip off!

It does.

Passive "Traits" (such as +HP%) stack across trees. Selecting a stance will make your Chocobo unable to use weaponskills/abilities from other trees, but it will keep all passive stat boosts.

Note the link to OmegaXtc's thread: a post where I claimed that passives stacked across stances, was called out on it, and subsequently proved it.

Any passives that you pick will always be in effect regardless of what stance your chocobo is in- the only thing changing stance does is prevent your Chocobo from using certain abilities (and auto-attacks, in the case of 'Healer Stance').

It's easiest to see this for HP% passives since you have exact numbers to look at... but by checking the attack/heal numbers in the battle log you can see that this works for other passives such as Strength and MND.

[distant-cubix]

Will you add some information posted 2.3 plz

[Espritduo]

Word to the wise: If you are thinking of using Reagan Peppers to get all three bardings quick and easy, think again. I had the white mage barding and used the pepper to switch to the attacker role. Used the SP to level all the way to Attacker 10 and the final ability and got nothing for it. Same when I reset again and switched to Defender. I assume the only way to get all the bardings is to legitimately level your chocobo all the way through every ability by raising it to level 20 or whatever level it takes to learn everything.

[Alpheus]

Getting additional bardings requires you to break the level cap it was mentioned in the patch notes.

[Espritduo]

Where exactly in the patch notes was it mentioned? Just looked over them again and there's no mention of needing to break level cap to get the additional bardings, or reagan peppers not giving you the bardings.