this is my p9 chocobo vega, her lore is that rather than just being inbred to shit like all racing chocobos she's another escaped garlean science crime
she is forever missing 5 from the actual stat cap total because i'm sleep deprived and fat fingered a grade 2 for one of her training sessions instead of a 3, but whoops! super sprint is so busted it literally numerically doesn't matter!
oh there's a really good guide on wordpress i was basically using as a bible! it's never not rng even when you finish your own cheaty endgame build but i found it really helpful
basically i tossed a few rental coverings at the wall every generation until i had scraped together at least 1/4 chance of a 4star in each stat, which finally came together around pedigree 4, then started raising 2 birds per generation (scrapping and retrying with a different form if it had less than 4star stam) and inbreeding them
by p7 i had perfect stam, endurance and speed with a decent chance of 4stars in the other stats, and then the rng factor settled down quite a lot both in breeding (bc they no longer had chances of bad stars in the important pre super sprint stats) and in races (bc big stam+endurance means big resilience to comets/hazards/other cpu cheating)
the guide is very very thorough which intimidated me but it was also nice to have a single resource that covers almost everything because god knows thats lacking in this community
- skim the beginner's section of the guide after doing the tutorial but dont stress very much - steer to cut corners whenever possible - stamina is the most important stat always so you dont want to race a bird with 1-2 stars after the first one if you can help it - sprinting ahead early is best, right at the end is ok with items/skills, middle is no good
- give each generation of breeding a few different covering attempts to try and get 4stars into the gene pool - but don't go ham on inbreeding until p4/5 because you'll have to race 2 per generation in order to level
- the challenge races are even cheatier than normal npcs so prior to p9 i would only bother up to 4 (r-101), which unlocks super sprint - all the way up to p8, just use books & inheritance to put choco cure 2 and choco dash 2 on everything instead of fucking with rng skill gains - retire immediately at rank 40
my current bird has a bunch of 3/4 stars in the bird itself + its parents, I just need to make sure Cunning gets a 4 star rank for the next pedigree rank
- when both your p8 birds retire, erase your acquired skill and inherit super sprint instead - the "generalist" builds in the guide are absolutely not worth it compared to how busted super sprint becomes with a p9 high stamina bird, you can still use them even if you queue random instead of sagolii (you just have to pop it later into the course)
the tier 3 versions of good skills like choco dash and choco cure are locked behind beating incredibly difficult, incredibly high stat npcs which are possible at p7 or p8 but only if you already have near perfect stars and splurge on grade 3 food despite knowing you won't keep that chocobo afterwards
but race 4 is low enough that you can brute force it fairly easily once you improve your genes so if you come back to it every now and then you'll unlock the super sprint book, which has no higher tiers, and can inherit that from any chocobo if you erase its skill and learn super sprint instead right before retiring it
it is not that useful a skill until you have a p9 bird with perfect stamina, but once you do you can treat it as basically a hero tonic to be used only at the end of the course to outspeed stragglers at the last second
and then as your stamina improves you can start just popping it for the last leg of a course, then halfway through a course, then potentially even earlier - the shortest course is sagolii desert where with maxed stamina and a single stamina-improving skill you can super sprint the entire course, that's the ~meta~
this way your hereditary skill on your final chocobo is guaranteed not to be outclassed, you skip all the frustating rng of grinding for a particular skill like head start or choco cure 3, and you can swap in choco cure 2, increased stamina 3 or choco cure 3 as you unlock them or feel like it
it does lock you into a super sprint build on your final chocobo instead of the generalist build but i really dont think there's a good reason to run anything else if you just want to clear out the challenges for the mgp and barding, it's so straightforward to use and train once you finally get there
the only reason the advice is to try maxing stats before then is, p9 chocobos start off with higher ratings naturally and if you end up in the r-300 race bracket without fully pimped out stats before rank 40 you're really screwed over, since you barely get exp for coming 8th and you will always come 8th
lower pedigrees are easier to lvl and will not risk reaching r-300 even with perfect stats prior to p7/8 or so, so the more good genes you scrape together early the less hassle later
but it sounds like people often only look up guides when approaching p9 and beginning to struggle in races more, and the process of breeding better kids is the same, just a little bit slower to level as long as you stay out of r-300
the tips from the guide are very helpful for at least consistently placing decently! as long as you have high stamina, sprint most of the course and throttle only when you can't avoid hazards otherwise that's the greater part of the levelling process all the way up to r-240, you still get decent exp for being 4th or higher
can attest that choco dash 2 and choco cure 2 are more than good enough a build for everything except the challenge races, which as i mentioned i wouldnt bother with past r-101 until the end anyway
in costa and sagolii you pop dash at the start to get ahead of the pack and manage your stamina from there, in tranquil you want to hold dash until near the end when all the npcs are low on stamina and overtake as many as possible at the last minute, but dash also mitigates frenzy+heavy and can provide one last burst of non-minimum speed when you run out
you hold cure in reserve until the end and/or when you really need it because up until the moment you pop it no douchebag npcs can erase it with 3 meteors in a row
playing around with other skills for fun is one thing but on a ruthless efficiency / minimal rng basis i really think dash+cure until p8 and then hereditary super sprint on p9 is the way to go
blessed screencap from while my last chocobo was still levelling: if you're lucky enough to max stam before exiting the lower brackets you can just..... outrun the npcs so badly that they time out before they can finish the race like normal
oh yes and another note is make it rain is actually a great time to grind out the first few generations because every player in a race gives you an exp bonus which adds up tremendously over the shittons of races you need to do to retire 2 birds per generation
and make it rain applies to challenge logs this time around for some absurd reason too so you can rake in a lot extra by getting 10 wins per week, which is always an rngfest but not an abysmal requirement when you get into the swing of it
make it rain doesn't apply to the challenge rewards though, only the fc/squadron mgp buff does anything, so thats just another reason to leave those until you have a solid p9 bird instead of ramming into them repeatedly
but it was productive i think! definitely feels Doable with enough time and consistency even though i had no idea what was going on in general, which, i havent set foot in an ultimate before so that was reassuring
if you're consistently 8th then reviewing the tips in the guide might be useful, esp around skill builds and stamina management! the npcs literally cheat (they know what skills you're carrying and have better stats than a player can ever get) so in almost all cases they and their item luck are your biggest problem
there are often times where an item or a course hazard are unavoidable because of bad luck so placing consistently 1st or 2nd isn't something to expect until you have your final superbird, but top 5 still gives pretty good exp and a decent amount of leeway to be smacked around by bad luck
yeah super sprint is a highly situational skill until you have a massive amount of stamina, as in, 500 (even 460 which you have on a perfect stat p8 isn't quite enough)
consider the choco dash 2 + choco cure 2 build, like other generalist builds it usually gets you in 1st or second right from the start and staying in 1st is much much easier as long as you have the stamina and aren't slammed by multiple meteors in a row than trying to overtake later in a race!
choco cure 2 is the more widely useful skill because its literally free health that can't be stolen by npcs until you press the button, but choco dash has a great amount of utility & helps your stamina management slightly too
with tranquil you def have to pay attention to stamina more because it's the longest and npcs don't get hit by course hazards as much as they do in sagolii, but the same techniques and builds work on every track! since there's only 3..
- steer to cut corners whenever possible
- stamina is the most important stat always so you dont want to race a bird with 1-2 stars after the first one if you can help it
- sprinting ahead early is best, right at the end is ok with items/skills, middle is no good
- but don't go ham on inbreeding until p4/5 because you'll have to race 2 per generation in order to level
- all the way up to p8, just use books & inheritance to put choco cure 2 and choco dash 2 on everything instead of fucking with rng skill gains
- retire immediately at rank 40
- the "generalist" builds in the guide are absolutely not worth it compared to how busted super sprint becomes with a p9 high stamina bird, you can still use them even if you queue random instead of sagolii (you just have to pop it later into the course)