- Chocobo Racing Guide -

This guide was made using what was mentioned in the piggyback strat guide and my person results and experimenting in the races. I know there have been numerous topics ranging from best chocobo to use and where to get materials for leveling. So I am making this to cover everything in one area.

1. Get the Silver Chocobo. This one is located in Acedamia 4xx in the room with Hope and Alyssa. Use enhanced mog throw to toss mog towards the green projection of cocoon.

2. Next you need to obtain materials to level your bird. I use only potent items because you will still get the highest speed and stamina without having to use materials that are better used on other monsters. You will need 36 potent orbs, 42 potent essence, and 24 potent crystals. I may be off by a few numbers on those but it is in those ranges.

3. Where to get these items you ask? All of them can be farmed in the Archlyte Steppe.

Level 3 Materials: Buccaboo, Buccaboo Ace (30%)
Level 4 Materials: Hedge Frog (15%), Mud Frog (15%), Swampmonk (20%), Caterchipillar (5%)
Level 5 Materials: Microchu (30%)

Make the weather rainy and go to the marshes. There is a small island in the center with a red cactuar stone next to it. Just run around the island and fight. It should not take you too long. .

4. Once you have your materials go ahead and level your chocobo to 45. This will give you an A in both stamina and speed for the races.

5. Next you want to capture the following monsters if you haven't already:
-Pulse Gladiator (Archlyte Steppe-Cloudy Weather-spawns near the gate you unlock after fighting the 3 giant cactuar)
-Cactuar (Archlyte Steppe-Sunny Weather-spawns in the Plains of Eternity area of the map. This is a rare spawn so when you do fight it use your feral links to boost chances of getting it. The monster drop rate for it is 33.33%
-Microchu (Archlyte Steppe-Rainy Weather-spawns on the small island where you farmed the materials in the marshes. You most likely have it by now after the farming you did.

6. Go to infusion and perform the following:
-Infuse the lvl 1 gladiator to your chocobo to get the Second Wind Racing ability.
-Next select the lvl 1 cactuar and infuse it to your chocobo to get the Sprinter Ability.
***Now this next part is optional in my eyes but some people say you should do it. I personally did not fuse this last monster and was able to stay undefeated in my racing career. I recommend it if you are having trouble with the longer races***
-Level the microchu you caught to 24 and infuse it to your chocobo. This will give you Marathoner and Health Nut racing abilities.

7. The final step is putting an adornment on your awesome silver chocobo, giving it a cool name like Flapper, and registering it for the races. ***Always use the last racing strategy and do not use your boost until Blue Streak is activated***

8. Closing comments
-The reason I did not infuse microchu is because of the Health Nut ability. What that does is makes sure your chocobo never falls below normal mood. While that means you will rarely if ever have to use a chocoboost/chocobull, your payout odds for betting on yourself will stay the normal 2.2 so if you care planning on making casino coins I don't recommend fusing a lvl 24 microchu. With the amount of coins you will be making you can easily purchase, not to mention win in races, mood boosting items.
-Now if you find that you are not doing well in the 1200m and 1800m races, level a microchu to lvl 5 and infuse to your bird to get marathoner

In my personal experience, I did everything listed in this guide other than infusing microchu and still go undefeated in all the classes including the Fal Cie class.



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As posted by aminthemachine on the gamefaqs board.

Feel free to add to your page man. Nice work there. I just posted this so I don't have to search through that horrible gamefaqs board. All useful guides under my very own 'my neoforum' ;]

What happens when you infuse a Yellow, Red, Blue, White, Green and Blue Chocobo into a Silver or Gold Chocobo? Does anything happen? Has anyone tried? Do you get any special 'abilities' or anything like that?

I infused a level 24 Microchu with my Silver Chocobo and never got Marathoner or Health Nut. This leads me to suspect I may have accidentally fused something else with my Chocobo... The Marathoner and Health Nut abilities do show up along with 'Sprinter', 'Blue Streak' and so forth - right?

With the Sprinter ability, if you follow the guide exactly you can win any 600m race in any class by using the 'lead the race' strategy. You might need to use boost in FC class, but if you're in the inside lanes you might not even need it.

I find it's much easier and more profitable to deliberately lose by choosing the 3rd strategy. With a Silver Chocobo, you have to be careful in the 1200m (don't touch the controller) because unless you're in poor condition, you can still easily win without touching the controls. It's basically impossible to lose the 600m, so the real money is made in the 1800m races.

Bet on the closest rivals (although I don't bother unless the odds are higher than my Chocobo's), and make sure you use the 3rd strategy and never use boost. In this manner, I regularly win 5-7 times my money. I think I earned about 28,000 coins in 3 careers doing that (although I would deliberately win every time the race with the collector's catalogue came up).

If you do this, you have to look at the your minimum winnings from the Chocobo you bet on with the lowest odds (often around 500 coins), and make sure you don't exceed that amount betting on other chocobos. I try and limit myself to only 2 bets, but if I see a certain Chocobo who I know pulls surprise wins out of nowhere I will always bet on him too (for me this is Foul Break).


By the way, so you can judge whether or not to bet on the 'secret' starred Chocobo, here's a guide to their stats (taken from the LE strategy guide, I hope the OP doesn't mind me adding this):

I can't format, so on the left is the name, in the middle is its speed stat (from 1-5) and on the right is its stamina (1-5).

Eden's Champion/4/4
Hades' Sovereign/3/5
Lightning's Rose/5/3
Sazh's Afro/5/4
Sweet Snow/5/4
Little Hope/3/5
Sweet Vanille/5/4
Wild Fang/3/5
Graceful Rosch/4/4
Crafty Nabaat/4/5
Endless Raines/5/4
Bathandelus X/5/3


It doesn't matter if the Cactuar or the Pulse Gladiator were over level 1. They say level 1 because it has the ability required to pass on Sprinter/Second Wind to the Chocobo as a passive ability, so there is no levelling up needed to bestow Sprinter/Second Wind upon the Chocobo.

Also, as far as I know, fusing other coloured Chocobos with the Silver one only gives it passive battle abilities - nothing that results in any Chocobo racing skills. I tried it out myself in a seperate save and got no extra abilities apart from the passive battle ones I mentioned.

The rewards change once you win the 1 time only award on some races (such as the Onion Knight Helm). Typically these rewards are the monster adornment awards.

Also, I would just like to say that if you are like me and don't want to ruin your silver chocobo (in case you hope to use him in combat someday) I suggest using a White Chocobo as your primary racer. They have just as good of stats and the biggest downside is that you will have to get Dark Horse (roughly 20 bonus coins per race if you bet on your chocobo) and Blue Streak but you will also get the Rocket Boost Choco-Skill as a bonus. I don't know about you but I definitely do not have 100% success rate on sprinting starts so rocket boost would be beneficial, particularly if you are going for an underdog monster adornment.

Additionally almost any chocobo can be viable but you may need to infuse it with +35% strength or magic which burns one of your possible Choco-Skill slots. White is the only one other than silver that will naturally hit 800, 800, 5000. (even gold requires a stat boost passive to hit the max stats)

quote Crazy Dave

quote R a i n

8. Closing comments
-The reason I did not infuse microchu is because of the Health Nut ability. What that does is makes sure your chocobo never falls below normal mood. While that means you will rarely if ever have to use a chocoboost/chocobull, your payout odds for betting on yourself will stay the normal 2.2 so if you care planning on making casino coins I don't recommend fusing a lvl 24 microchu. With the amount of coins you will be making you can easily purchase, not to mention win in races, mood boosting items.
-Now if you find that you are not doing well in the 1200m and 1800m races, level a microchu to lvl 5 and infuse to your bird to get marathoner

If Gil is not an issue here, will Health Nut benefits my racing chocobo, Rain? I just want my Skywalker (ahem) Silver Chocobo to win 99% of the time. How does blue streak works?

Consider a White Chocobo for racing man! Saves you wasting your one time only Silver Chocobo! See this thread - http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/619315-final-fantasy-xiii-2/62013912


And for abilities - http://finalfantasy.neoseeker.com/wiki/Chocobo_Racing_(FFXIII-2)


Blue Streak reduces the cost of the Boost command. Health Nut is not important. There maybe other better abilities. Note that if you follow this instructions from this neoseeker topic, your chocobo will have trouble winning 1800m and maybe some 1200m races. That White Chocobo topic should have more details on it, as I didn't spend much time racing. Only did it for getting Collector Catalogs and some Dark Matters/Adamantites.

It should be noted that a couple of other chocobos can achieve the same quality as a white chocobos because they have 1 less red locked passive than white. If you give them strength or magic +35% passive ( depending on which one does not hit 800) then it will be able to perform just as well as white. (can acquire the same number of racing Passives and hit 800 str 800 magic 5k hp). I am not near my guide right now but I believe blue chocobo is one example. For these chocobos you can follow most of the white guide and just remember to add 1 passive to get their weak stat up.

cant you gain RP back though in some form?