How do I go about breeding chocobos?

[Zorafin]

I'm pedigree 4, so I should start thinking about working towards a pure 4* chocobo sometime soon. I'm not exactly sure how to proceed, despite all the guides telling me how it works.

From what I can tell, I want to keep every 4* I have in my bloodline. My current chocobo has three 4*s, and keeping them all for my next breeding session will take 2^3=8 tries average, ignoring what my covered chocobo has. So it seems natural that I'll lose a bunch of my 4*s on my way up.

But my real question is, once I hit pedigree 8 and start breeding in earnest, how do I proceed? With my first lv8 chocobo I can assume my stars will be messed up, as will the stars of any covers I buy. Do I just want to produce a child with a different gender, and breed those until I get a pair of breeding partners with a guaranteed chance of getting a 4* of a particular stat? Then from there, how do I introduce a new 4* without messing up the genepool I just purified?

The whole thing just seems like a mess. I'd understand it if I didn't only have 10 tries to breed, but it seems like if I make a mistake I'll have to start again from pedigree 1.

[Torvald]

You don't have to start again from P1 unless you threw out all your fledgling registration forms. Raising and breeding one of the 10 fledglings, even if it's not perfect stats, would be much preferable to starting over from P1.

A strategy that warked (!) for me was just to spend extra money each generation on finding a cover with decent stats. I averaged about 8-10 covers per generation before finding one that I liked.

I really liked this quote by Momomi Momi.

When starting out, a successful covering is one that introduces 4 star stats into the gene pool. Anything else ultimately doesn't matter. The eventual (middle) goal is to introduce 4 star genes for all stats. And then you want to get "guaranteed" 4 stars, where both the mother and father pass on 4 star stats.

At P4 you still have a long way to go, and having 3 '4' stats already is way ahead of schedule, I think. You're doing great and keep it up!

[ChiiSoSeriouz]

A strategy that warked (!) for me

Lol good pun.

[Zorafin]

Well I just got my pedigree 5 chocobo, and it has 4*s on all stats for its parentage. I'm thinking of breeding my pedigree 4 a few more times to see if I can get one with better stats, but I guess I won't register it until my current 5* is retired.
Maybe I should use this time to start breeding? Everything seems ready.

[Torvald]

Do it! And if you don't get what you want for a particular generation, don't sweat it too much. It's not like the bloodline has to be perfect by the time you hit P9 or anything.

[Zorafin]

Yes. Yes it was.

It looks like I'm good to go at pedigree 5 already. My female has a 4* parentage in all stats in her genes, and I have a male with 4* parentage in all but one. Looks like I should get them both to 40 and buy them a box of viagra for the weekend, and see what I get from their ten children. If I do that for four more generations, I may be able to purify their bloodline by pedigree 9.
On the other hand, there's a less than 1% chance of me getting an offspring with the genes I want this generation (per breed). So maybe it might take longer than that. I guess as long as I work with the best I have, I'll be alright.
Back to the plus side, I like its color.

[Torvald]

Back to the plus side, I like its color.

The most important point!
Really though, so long as you get slightly better with each generation (of course there is a chance of that not happening) you're good.