Your Chocobo Buddy is special and you want it to stand out, right? In a sea of yellow desert chocobos, yours might be a striking royal blue chocobo! Imperial purple! A… green mud? The choice is yours, here’s how to change your chocobo’s beautiful plumage.
What colors are available?
The colors available for the chocobos are (mostly) the same colors that you can dye your clothes in the game. Some exceptions, of course, include dye labels with “generic” color names. This is the section that includes Pure White, Inky Black, Metallic, Pastel and more. Unfortunately, shiny metal chocobos are not allowed. I think if you want that shiny look you can always give them some plate style chocobo troopers.
If you’re looking for a reference of what a chocobo might look like, I found this Tumblr post with screenshots of the game in different colors. This must have taken a long time to compile and is definitely a very popular resource!
Use the file view if you want to quickly browse and compare them. Note that for some colors the preview is just text. If you’re interested in these color names, or if you’d like to see a side view of any chocobo, be sure to click on them.
Can you get your chocobo to have the new dye color?
In patch 5.21, new dyes were added, available through the Ishgard Restoration content. Some of these are in the Fancy Stains section (Gunmetal, Pearl White, and Metallic Brass), probably because they have a similar metallic look to other stains in the same category. I don’t think anyone expected these colors to work on Chocobos, at least for now.
However, some of these dyes are added to the regular color section. New red tints included ruby red and cherry pink. Yellow labels now include Canary Yellow and Vanilla Yellow. Finally, they added Dragoon Blue and Turquoise Blue to the blue palette. Maybe these are new options for chocobos?
My tests say no, these Chocobo colors are not available. My attempts at getting a ruby red chocobo ended up being plain blood red (see color change mechanism for details). I hope that our feathered friends can also have such bright feathers in the future.
How to change the color of a chocobo
After unlocking the Chocobo Companion, you can change its color immediately, as long as you have access to the Chocobo Stable (in the player’s home) and can buy the necessary fruit from the Market Board. For new low level players, it’s probably easier to join an FC with a mansion and stables.
If you don’t have FC, or just don’t have an Estate, you can also use a Chocobo Stable if you have a condo. Each apartment building has its own stable outside the building where you can interact with your fellow chocobo.
The way to change the feathers is to feed it fruits, which are grown through horticulture and regularly sold in the market. The seeds to grow these fruits can be obtained from the Grand Company Hunt Billmaster for 15 Allied Seals each. They are very productive, especially with Shroud Topsoil, but they only have two days to grow. Remember to take care of them so that they do not wither.
They are easiest to grow in the garden outside the house, but can also be grown in containers in apartments. If you can’t wait two days, or if you don’t have or like gardening, it’s easiest to buy all the fruit you need on Marketboard. After selecting “Take care of my chocobo”, you must select “Feed” and then give it a fruit to start the feather replacement process.
You then have a six hour window after which your chocobo will change color based on which combination of fruits it has eaten. I usually feed my chocobo friend all the fruit at once, but you technically have a full six hours to do it. You can only feed one fruit at a time, so keep in mind that tapping is a bit tedious.
You can go back and look at the “Caring for my Chocobo” window to see how much time is left before the color changes.
The best tool available is FFXIV Chocobo Color Calculator created by Chop Chop. Enter your starting chocobo color and your desired chocobo color and the calculator will tell you how much of each chocobo to feed.
The default color for your Chocobo is “Desert Yellow”, but if you’re not sure what your Chocobo’s current color is called, check your partner’s details in the “Appearance” tab. In stables, this is found under “View Details”. If your Companion is unstable, you can check it from the menu. Character > Companion > Appearance. This navigation can only be accessed if your Chocobo is unstable.
troubleshooting
If you don’t get the color you want, there are a few things to check. When you try again, either use the new color as the starting color or reset the Chocobo to the default “Desert Yellow”. To do this, feed him a Lemon Ham. You can get Han Lemon very cheap from Marketboard (at least on my server). You don’t have to wait another six hours to reset the color this way; just exit the Chocobo Stable interface and come back.
If your initial color is the default desert yellow, you probably exceeded the limit on one of the RGB values (0-255) somewhere in the middle of the feed. Be sure to follow the recommended feeding sequence at the bottom of the color calculator results page. There’s even a handy checklist you can check off as you go so you don’t lose track.
If you’ve dyed a chocobo before, the chocobo’s initial color may not accurately represent its “true” color (ie its RGB values). I recommend resetting with Han Lemon before trying again, as your RGB values will be accurate.
discoloration mechanism
Each color has an associated set of RGB values, listed here. For example, your chocobo starts out as a yellow desert with RGB values of (219, 180, 87). Higher numbers produce bright, light colors, while lower numbers produce dark, dark colors.
The way to change a chocobo’s feathers is to feed it fruit when it is stable. Each fruit will increase or decrease the RGB value, so a certain amount of each fruit will take you from the starting value to the target value.
| fruit | Increase (+5) | decrease (-5) |
| Xelphatol Apple | Red | Green Blue |
| mamuk pear | green | Red Blue |
| O’Ghomoro Berries | blue | Red Green |
| valfurt | Green Blue | Red |
| tame plum | Red Blue | green |
| Cieldales Pineapple | Red Green | blue |
Of course, there are only so many color options available, but there are many more value combinations, so if the chocobo’s RGB values don’t exactly match the values in the list, an approximation will be made to get the closest color possible.
So I tried to see if the new dye colors would work for our chocobos. By maximizing the red value and minimizing the green and blue values (255, 0, 0), it should produce a very bright and vibrant ruby red. Unfortunately, the result was a pretty distant blood red (145, 59, 48), so I think it’s safe to say that Chocobo didn’t approve of the new dye color.
It’s also important to note that (255, 0, 0) still appears to be my chocobo’s “true” color, not the (145, 59, 48) of its blood-red phenotype. When I changed its color, I calculated the number of berries needed to go from its “true” color to lavender (131, 105, 105) and that got me there with no problem.
I used 21 Doman plums, 2 Mamook pears, and 2 O’Ghomoro berries (-125, +105, +105), while the calculator would recommend 12 Doman plums, 6 Valfruits, and 4 Cieldalaes pineapples (-10, +50, +70) . That would leave me at (245, 50, 70), which I suspect could represent itself as Colibri Pink or Coral Pink or something. This could explain why some color changes fail, and is a good reason to use Han Lemon to reset RGB values if you can’t seem to get the color you want.
resume
Have fun with your chocobo and change its color if you haven’t tried it before. If something goes wrong, you can always use Han Lemon to reset it to the default “Desert Yellow”. Remember to use the color calculator and follow the feeding order for the most efficient (and least tedious) results.
I’m curious, what color is your chocobo? What influenced his decision? Let me know in the comments.
Categories: Gaming
Source: HIS Education