Chocobo Companion levelling speed: Is it fine as it is?

[Cenerae]

I personally feel like anything that your chocobo gets after learning choco cure is just a bonus. It keeps me topped up while I'm on a DPS or a tank so I don't have to pause every couple of kills to let my health recover. It lets me concentrate on dealing damage when soloing as a healer. I don't need it to deal large amounts of damage, and I don't need it to hold aggro. If it is able to do either of those things, then that's nice, but it's also not a very big deal to me.

So, as far as I'm concerned, the chocobo levelling rate is fine. But then I say this as someone with only a rank 6 chocobo, on account of me just not seeing enough merit to focus on levelling it.

[JunseiKei]

Chocobos could use a little bit of love. They are way inferior to player characters and the amount of work needed to get them to max rank is truly abysmal. Considering they are locked to only open world content, I can't see why they can't be buffed or their experience gains increased again.

Aside from challenge log and feeding every hour, they only gain experience from normal mobs. Your chocobo takes half of your total experience you gain from monsters and chocobos reduce your overall experience gain by 20%. If you would get 100 EXP solo, with a chocobo out, you will only get 80 EXP.

Their utility is pretty pathetic, too. There's hardly any reason to have anything other than a healing chocobo (they can't hold aggro for squat and their DPS is not even 1/4 of a player, but at least it's just complimentary, right?). However, even their healing is a tad lackluster. I'm not saying buff them up to be able to keep up with Stormblood hunts, but being able to at least do FATE bosses would be nice.

My only hope as to why they haven't been buffed is simply because they are waiting for enough people to care about them again. Right now, I'm sitting at a rank 18 chocobo and for how much you need to spend on them, it's not worth it. Just get a rank 10 chocobo all in healing at this rate.

[Dustytome]

Your chocobo takes half of your total experience you gain from monsters and chocobos reduce your overall experience gain by 20%. If you would get 100 EXP solo, with a chocobo out, you will only get 80 EXP.

Chocobos don't cost you any experience. I just tested it, got 1425 experience without the chocobo out and 1425 with the chocobo out. Also the chocobo got 510 experience from the kill, so a little more than 35% of the experience.

[RaquelleAvarosa]

My Rosa's been rank 20 since before Heavensward came out. Just remember to constantly bring it out when you're doing fates, complete the challenge log, and feed it every hour.

[JunseiKei]

Chocobos don't cost you any experience. I just tested it, got 1425 experience without the chocobo out and 1425 with the chocobo out. Also the chocobo got 510 experience from the kill, so a little more than 35% of the experience.

Ah, they fixed/changed that then. I remember that being a thing from spiritbonding in Urth's Gift.

[Dzian]

Tips for leveling your chocobo:
Always have them out while doing things: Hunt marks, fates, sidequests.
Weekly challenge log is awesome too.
if you have access to a stable (as was mentioned before, there are stables at the apartments):
Train your chocobo with Curiel roots for a while and they'll become their favorite food, after that you can summon them with the curiel roots and they'll get an XP boost per kill .

More recently one of the major flaws with chocobos was fixed.

You can know have them out while queing for the duty finder which seems to hgelp people a lot. because you're nolonger forced into a decision of a 30 minute queue or having your bird out.

My bird gets used so much more just because of that. where as before that fix all my bird ever did was sit in stables because having it out would interrupt my queues.

The Choco challenge logs aren't to bad either. even if you only do the r3 vetern hunts each day. you'll have 70 / 100 kills for the challenge log each week. if you do other bills you'll easily do the challenge log without much effort.

I'm lazy and only do the r3 ones for 15 centurio seals each. the r1 and r2 I don't bother with for like 3 seals...

But it's real easy to just pick up the daily marks and knock em out during queues for your roulettes.

EDIT:-
If I recall at some point during 4.1 or so it's going to be possible to take your chocobo into dungeons with you. I'm curious to see if that would be a good way of levelling them.

[MistyMew]

Experience gain could certainly use a bit of a boost. I have had mine maxed for quite a while now but didn't enjoy the process, weekly log challenge was the only part that seemed somewhat right. not the hourly feeding nor exp gained through "grinding"

Would have liked to have a lv boost though even if its still draggy to do, a stronger chocobo for all stances would be nice

[worldofneil]

I personally think it's fine as-is. My main has been at level 20 for what must be well over 2 years now and I'm (very casually) levelling up chocobos on my alts, one of which is 19 and I've hardly put any effort into it (as in I haven't actively been working on it).

If you really want to do it quickly, as others have said just make sure you do the weekly challenge log and feed it as much as possible in a stable and ask FC friends (or apartment friends?) to do the same.

For the challenge log, I usually use the fates around Summerford Farm (or similar low level areas) simply because a lot of low level fates like those have tons of enemies with very little health and when you sync to the fate it will still count.

[Fynlar]

Chocobos don't cost you any experience. I just tested it, got 1425 experience without the chocobo out and 1425 with the chocobo out. Also the chocobo got 510 experience from the kill, so a little more than 35% of the experience.

If this is the case then it probably got fixed back when they changed them to be more like a pet instead of a party member, because I know for a fact they definitely used to reduce the experience you obtained (which made sense back then, seeing as how they were treated as a party member)