Chocobo Racing and Weather Effects

[Natsuno]

I've on G5 and it's my 1st fair weather chocobo. And as someone mentioned before, I've been on the receiving end of a heavy whilst on a foul chocobo during rain. It only slowed me down to their pace, and as we were going the same speed, I stayed ahead. This was one of the later birds, so I assumed it was the results of breeding (better stats, high max speed, etc), or being a higher level. Either way, regardless of weather, I could sprint the entire length of sagolii/costa and I'd rank high unless I got badly screwed over during the race. Rain seemed to be a rarity (anecdotal).

Now though, as I've said, I'm on my first fair weather, and I've noticed what a huge difference the weather can, and does make to these birds. Also, anecdotaly, it seems to have brief showers in nearly every race at the mo.

On a side note, does anyone know if prefering foul weather is hereditary? Because if that's the case, then I'll just breed my foul weather chocobos with each other.

[Gallus]

On a side note, does anyone know if prefering foul weather is hereditary? Because if that's the case, then I'll just breed my foul weather chocobos with each other.

I can't confirm, but I think yes. This is however, horrendously annoying to test, given how SE decided not to share weather info on the chocobo registration cards, which means you have no possible living way to test this if you decide to breed with Gold Saucer chocobos (which is what everyone does until P9). Also, given how you can only have 1 registered chocobo at once, you don't know if your fledging's preferred weather is fair or foul until you retire your current racing chocobo. SE really needs to fix a lot of things up.

[Nyghtmarerobu]

One major offender in the theories thus far, in my opinion: everyone (OP aside) seems to compare total time the race took.

Thanks, and I agree with this. Only way to get an accurate reading on how it affects your chocobo is to have it rain the whole race. This is why I think it better to test running to the first chest. Its hard to track time wise except for maybe the clock on the side.

The most telling moment for me, is how once the weather clears up in the wet weather race, the rider gets heavied, but is still moving faster than when it was raining.

The one thing I noticed in the video at right about 4:05 and 4:06 you can see that the 2 birds she passed weren't sprinting. She was already running at a high speed so once the weather cleared up, her acceleration most likely drove her to max speed faster than the 2 npc's who weren't sprinting and trying to conserve stamina. As for the heavy, the NPc that was behind her, passed those other 2 with ease, but if you noticed, hit the red pad, and also took the turn far to the outside, kind of why she stayed in the lead.

I will continue to watch, just hit pedigree 3, so got a ways to go yet. I like all the feedback in the thread, if anybody has anything else to add, I'm all ears, and I'm sure others want to hear as well.