Chocobo Racing 2.55

[thendcomes]

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?

[FUNgineer]

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.

[SokiYagami]

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?

[FUNgineer]

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.

[Aphel]

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.

[SokiYagami]

Stars:
-snip-

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.)

-snip-

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?

[RobinRethiel]

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?

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.

[SokiYagami]

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

[Aphel]

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.

[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).

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

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