A couple of people have recently been asking how to dye their riding chocobos, so here’s a short guide on how to do that!
1. First, you must have the ability to stable and train your chocobo before you can dye it. To gain this ability, you must:
- Be level 30 on a battle class.
- Speak to Docette in Camp Tranquil and pick up the blue quest “My Feisty Little Chocobo”
- Visit Luquelot at Bentbranch meadows and complete that quest.
- Pick up the quest “Bird In The Hand” from Luqeulot and compete it.
- When you see a message saying “Chocobo Raising Now Available” you will be able to stable, train, and dye your chocobo.
2. Next, go to https://ffxivchocobo.com/ and you will see the following screen:
3. Select your chocobo’s current color in the “Current Colour” box. The default chocobo color is “Desert Yellow.”
4. Select your chocobo’s desired color in the “Desired Colour” box. In the screenshot, Snow White is the hoped-for final chocobo color.
5. Click the “Calculate” button and you will get a list of info similar to the following:
The most important info on this screen is the list of dye fruit you will need. For example, to change a chocobo from Desert Yellow to Snow White will take: 5x Cieldalaes Pineapple, 13x Valfruit, 16x Doman Plum. Write down the list of fruit you will need.
6. Next click the “View Feeding Order” button and you will get a list like this:
This tells you the best order to feed these fruits to your chocobo for your best shot at having the dye job work out perfectly the first time. Write down this feeding list. This order isn’t STRICTLY required — don’t freak if you mix up a Valfruit and a Doman Plum once, it will probably still be fine — but it’s good to stay close to this. The fruits act by adjusting the R-G-B (Red-Green-Blue) values of your chocobo’s feathers, but it is possible to either bottom out or cap out one of those values by feeding too many of the same fruits in a row, which will mess up the final values you get and result in a different dye job than the one you were hoping for. There’s no need to panic and abort your dye job if you mess up the order though — just try and alternate fruits as much as possible to avoid hitting the limits of the RGB values. Also, it would be a good idea to clean your bird’s stable before you begin as the cleanliness of the stable appears to have an effect on the outcome of the dye job, for some mysterious reason.
7. Ask an FC officer or Firebrand to get the fruits you need from the locked tab of the FC chest. We usually have plenty in stock. If you are reading this guide and you’re not in our FC and yours doesn’t stock this fruit, you can get it from the Market Board, or you can grow it yourself in gardens or flower pots. The seeds are only available with Allied Seals from the Hunt Billmasters at the Grand Company HQs. They cost 15 seals per pack of seeds and the seeds are not tradeable – you will have to plant your own seeds! No one else can do this for you! There is no other source of choco dye fruits in the game other than those grown by players.
8. Put your chocobo in the stable, click “Tend to my chocobo”, and then “Feed”. Start feeding the fruit to your buddy bird in the suggested order (or something close to the suggested order.) You will have to feed each fruit individually but keep going until you’ve shoved the whole pile into your poultry pal. Expect this to take a few minutes. You will get some text messages every now and then during the feeding indicating that your chocobo has “started to grow new feathers.” This means a color shift has taken place. Don’t stop feeding until the fruit is all gone though — your bird will most likely go through several sets of new feathers during this feeding process.
9. Once the whole fruit salad has been devoured, LEAVE YOUR CHOCOBO IN THE STABLE FOR SIX HOURS REAL TIME. Not Eorzean time, REAL TIME. It’s often best to do this just before you log out for the night if you typically have your chocobo out of the stable while playing. If you disturb your chocobo before the six hours are up, you will interrupt the color change process and the dye job will fail, which is a huge waste of time and fruit. So don’t do it. Just let your chocobo digest his huge fruit meal in peace.
10. After the six hours (real time!) have passed, go get your chocobo from the stable. You will get a very brief cut scene showing off your bird’s new color plumage! Hopefully you will get the color you were after with only one feeding, but sometimes you might need to do another round to tweak the shade if it didn’t work out quite right. Some colors are notoriously difficult to hit with the first feeding, Soot Black in particular. But most colors are fairly easy to hit. Tweaking the color should only take a few more fruit, so you can go back to the color calculator, figure out what you need, feed it, and wait another six hours.
11. Enjoy your beautiful birb!
Astral Flames of Gilgamesh 