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[Mimitchi]

This is a different kinda log from me, but since I don't currently have an FFXI section that involves logs I've decided to just post it here. Let me stress that I will make sure that you can read and understand this log without having ever touched anything in the Final Fantasy universe.

Background
If you aren't familiar, Final Fantasy XI is an massive multi-player online role playing game. Towards the end of the year last year Square Enix (the creator and maintainer of this game) added Chocobo Raising - which is very similar to having an in-game virtual pet.

Chocobo's go through similar stages as Tamagotchi; egg, baby chick, adolescent and adult.  While you will always end up with an adult chocobo, the color, sex, size, physical attributes, mental attributes and special abilities all depend on how the chocobo is raised. Chocobos start out as eggs. These eggs be can gotten through merchants in the game or you can get an egg from mating two adult chocobos just like Connection. The "DNA" from the two adults can wildly effect the many attributes of a child born from the parents, so generally it is best to try get an egg from two breeding adults, rather then start with a fresh egg from a merchant.

I have raised two chocobo's before this one. The first one was right when this update came out and some flaws where found in the system so I retired that chocobo and waited for an update. I recently finished raising a second chocobo, his name was TempestStorm and he retired at the old age of 129. He was a yellow chocobo and a fast runner. I had him mate with a blue female chocobo who was also a fast runner. I received the egg and waited a bit to hatch.

And this is where my log starts...

Day Zero:
Two days ago I brought the new Chocobo egg to the Hume (human basically) city of Bastok (a mining, machine and technology town). I am hoping I will get a blue chocobo this time around, as they are beautiful. I gave my egg to the Chocobo Trainer Zopago and he took the egg into his care.

The chocobo trainer will keep my egg in the Chocobo Stables throughout the raising process. I must simply show up at least once every 24 hours to check in on my chocobo. There is no constant care needed like with Tamagotchi. However it is important that I visit my Chocobo every day or he will not bond with me or feel loved. He will get lonely and run away if neglected.

In the egg stage, my egg will be kept warm and watched over. I can't do much interaction with the egg except check in on it and make sure its doing well. Checking on my egg is "Watching over Chocobo" which increased the affectionate bond between my chocobo and I.


Day One:
Not much is happening today. My Chocobo is still an egg, his sex will not be known until he hatches.



The Galka on the left is Zopago, the Chocobo Trainer who helps taker care of my chocobo egg while I am away from the Chocobo Stables.


Day Two:
Again there's not much to report today, except for one thing. When I choose to watch over my egg, the egg shakes and moves a little bit, like the chick is moving about and wanting to get out soon.



You may or may not read the text. If the trainer has anything important to say, I'll be sure to type it out here.

My little chocobo should be hatching soon.

PS: All comments welcome. Also I tend to have a very high resolution on my monitor, so I can make these images smaller or much bigger, just let me know.

[crystyl]

  Cool I didn't know FF had an online game.  I vaguely remember chocbo's.  I remember Pissing my bro off as I would play with the chocobos rather than play the actual game, and it was his game and he would have to go back and do x tasks over again because I kept going back to the races to play with the chocobos.  He eventually gave up on the game though.  Dunno why 

[Jiro]

wow, this seems interesting, lol
I really love playing online games~
good luck with the Chocobo

(I love the pictures)

[mrsPiggy]

nice pictures! I can't play any of FF games - I get nausea  with those 3D moving stuff... ohh don't tempt me with the chocobo babies! 

I will live the "raising of chocobo baby" throu your log, since I won't risk a bad headache 

Thanks for sharing!!

[Mimitchi]

Crystyl: Yup it came out about.. i think 6 years ago in Japan, but it's only been in the US for 4 years. Hehe too funny about your brother The chocobo's are adorable, I don't blame you!

Jiro: Thanks

MrsPiggy: Thanks! I hope you enjoy, Chocobos are very sweet


Day Three:
Not much happened today, my new chocobo was still in egg form, but appeared to be moving about more restlessly wanting to get out of the egg.

Day Four:
My little egg finally hatched!



My little baby Chocobo is a female chick. We won't know her final adult color until she turns age 29, so there's some time for development before then. Until then she will be yellow. ^.^

Two great things were revealed up checking her stats: she had maximum affectionate bond with me - meaning I took good care of her and checked on her enough while she was in the egg. The bond of affection effects how my chick grows up - it's similar to the Happiness Hearts on Tamagotchi. Affection must remain high for my chocobo to live a happy and healthy life and to also consider me her parent and caretaker. Like Pokemon Pikachu 2, she would turn her back on me and not want to spend time with me if I were to ignore her and not spend time with her.

The second great thing in her stats was that she was born with a special ability inherited from her mother! She has the special ability called Burrow. When my chocobo is an adult, I can ride her around the FF world. While riding I can have her dig in the ground to see if there is anything special hidden in the dirt or grass that can be picked up. The ability Burrow will increases the chocobo's chance of digging up uncommon items - this is a really nice DNA inherited ability from the parent! I'm quite happy about this. This is the first time any of my chocobo's have ever had an ability.



Isn't she cute? I've asked Brendan to choose a name for this one, because my last one was named after one of his RPG characters. I can input the name into FF using a large list of name selections - I can have 2 word combined to make the name (if anyone is interested the list can be seen here). I'll let y'all know her name when Brendan decides 

Now that my little chocobo is born, I can interact with her. Today I took her out for a walk. We went outside of town and took a small short walk in Gustaberg (name of the area just outside of the town). Walks are good for exercising the chick and strengthen her muscles and teaching her to walk for longer periods of time.



That's me on the left, keeping a close eye on my little newborn.

While my chocobo and I were out walking, something interesting happened! We ran into a lost baby chocobo! The little thing had no parent with him and needed help.



I choose to take the little lost baby chick home with me - I wouldn't want to abandon the little guy. When I got back to the chocobo stables with my baby girl and the lost baby chick, I talked to Zopago the chocobo trainer.



Zopago said that he would take care of the chick in the stables until the new owner was found. He told me that it was up to me to find the new owner. I will gather clues throughout my visits with my chocobo every day that will eventually lead me to the correct owner of the lost chick. This mystery will be solved!


And that concludes todays log. If you have any questions or if I didn't explain something clear enough - let me know, I'm happy to talk about FF with anyone that is interested (yes I'm a big nerd) ^.^

[Mimitchi]

Day Five:

Brendan reviewed the list of names and choose Cerulean Breeze for my baby girl! A perfect name, since I aspire for her to be blue and in the very least blue is my favorite color and cerulean is a nice shade

My little chocobo was waiting and ready to play outside when I got to the Chocobo Stables. Everday I can schedule in advance a care taking schedule for the Trainer to follow while I am not there. Today on the schedule is just Basic Care, in which the Trainer provides a healthy balance of caretaking and feeding with no special activities. I see these updates when i first talk to the Trainer on a new day. I can schedule the activities a head of time. Right now there isn't much to choose from, but you will get to see them as we go along in logs.

So when I arrived at the stables today my chick was being well cared for, but nothing major to report.

Additionally to the Trainer providing activities for my chick, everyday I can spend time with my chocobo and we can do things together. As a baby chick my chocobo only has three caretaking options: Take a Short Walk just outside, Scold and Watch Over. Taking a walk of course improves strength and endurance as I mentioned before. Scolding is for when the chocobo acts stubborn and won't behave. I have rarely scolded my chocobo's in the past and it's only when the Trainer says it is a spoiled chocobo and needs discipline - I don't like to hurt them ^.^ And watching over my chick will increase that affectionate bond as I think I mentioned once. At this baby stage I can't do anything else unfortunately. But like with Connection, new activities are added as the pet matures.

After getting the initial daily report I decided to Take a Walk with my baby chick. We went outside to Gustaberg and took a while. While outside we stumbled into Zopago - he was walking his baby chocobo too! Zopago's chocobo is named Devil and made friends with Cerulean Breeze upon meeting up.



We took another walk shortly after that (it's very good to do as much walking as possible at this age, I want her to be strong) and we again ran into Zopago again and he said he had found some clues for us on the lost chicks owner. He said the owner was a Hume Male and his name began with an A. Zopago also let me know eventually that the person who owned the lost chick was a Guild Worker.



Zopago let me know this information very fast in the game, on my last chocobo the information was given to me over a period of over an entire week. I guess I got lucky here to obtain this information so fast.

While I was talking to Zopago he also gave me a new book to read my chocobo called "Story of a worrysome Chocobo." I can't read stories to my chocobo until she is a bit older.

Seeing as I had to get out and do some errands, I wrote down my clues and decided to wait until the next day to do some research.

Day Six:

Upon logging in I checked my plants today and found that all of my crops were ready to be picked. This is significant because I planted some special seeds specifically for growing Chocobo Foods. This is the cheapest way in the game to get chocobo food - to grow it yourself. So I have ten flower pots set up in my house and over the period of a week I grew some carrots and grass and other items to feed to my chocobo once she is out of the baby stage.



This picture is from within my mog house. As to not cause any confusion, the two "people" you see in the background behind these three flower pots are actually mannequins for displaying some of my armor. If you can read the text you'll see I got 11 Vomp Carrots from one of my plants - my preferred food for adult chocobos.

Right now she's in the baby chick stage, so Cerulean Breeze only gets fed baby food (which I made myself because I'm a Veteran Chef) - which I prefer Carrote Paste for it's strength and endurance enhancing qualities.

Next I went to check on my Chocobo Cerulean Breeze. Zopago, following the instruction I left him, took my chocobo for a walk around Bastok. He told me she "seemed interested in everything!".



We took some walks and I checked on her growth and she's coming along really well. She considers me her parent under the affection status - which is the highest status meaning she is at her happiest and healthiest.

Finally I needed to take care of one more thing - the investigation of the lost chocobo! Being that there are 3 Guilds available in Bastok, Goldsmithing, Blacksmithing and Alchemy, my choices were narrowed down a bit. Being a bit of an Alchemist in the game too, I remembered that there was a Hume Male in the Alchemy guild. I went online to check for the names of the Alchemist Guildworkers and found that indeed there was a Hume Male by the name of Abd-al-Raziq working at that guild.

So I ran my character through Bastok over to the Alchemist Guild rooms and approached this fellow in particular. The game prompted me asking if I should inquire about the lost chocobo or not to this particular person. I selected Yes on the menu.



Abd-al-Raziq the Alchemist said:

"You've...you've got my chocobo?
...What a relief...
I thank you for your kindness, ma'am. As thanks let me teach you a story I often tell my chocobo..."
[that text is from the screenshot]

He then gave me a book called the "Story of a diligent chocobo" as a reward for my efforts.

I'm happy I helped the little lost baby chick find it's correct owner 


And so that concludes my logs at this time. I am considering doing some video and adding it onto these logs. I'm new at creating animated videos, so this'll be fun. I have all the software I need to take direct video capture from the game, so it could turn out really well. These still images don't do justice to Cerulean Breeze's cuteness! I make no promises on this though!

Thanks for reading

edit: fixed image

[Mimitchi]

I have updates to add and I will do so soon. The baby stage is, in my opinoin, a bit too long and the teeen stage should be longer. This is because there's not a whole ton of interaction options in the baby stage, so it's quite repetitive. I'll post pictures really soon - I have a ton.

[Jiro]

so cuteee
I wish I could play the game If I find the game and can connect to the server there, that would be great~
but the game is so rare to be found here...

Poor lil Chocobo ^^ Glad you finally found his owner

[Mimitchi]

Okay well quite frankly moments ago I was seconds from pressing Post on this log. I was finishing spell checking when the power to our apartment suddenly goes out for no known reason.This especially makes me angry because I always write these on my laptop and today is the first I am on my desktop and this happens. I cannot tell you how maddening that is since I've been going through pictures and writing for almost 2 hours! 

Below is a much more condensed version of what I had before. As by you can tell by the amount of images, this was a substantially huge log. It's really difficult to try and rewrite what I had before because I just don't have another two hours in the day and I put so much effort into it, it's just so frustrating to have this happen...

I hope it's still somewhat enjoyable...

/rantoff

Day Seven - Day Eight

While I haven't been posting here, I continue to take care of Cerulean Breeze on a daily basis in FFXI. I feed her, play with her and make sure she's doing alright.

These two days Cerulean Breeze was ill. She hung her head mostly and wasn't too happy to be doing much of anything. The Trainer told me I needed to feed her Tokopekko Wildgrass to help her feel better. Since I have grown this along with her food, I already had some in my house ready to give to her. I fed her some of this wildgrass but she continued to not feel so good for the next couple of days.




Day Nine

Today the Trainer proclaimed to me that Cerulean Breeze is feeling "pretty perky" and will respond to anything I give her. Meaning that she is very susceptible to learning and growing faster during this time when she is feeling perky.This is wonderful because she will progress faster in her mental learning which I want her to gain a whole lot of skill in before I try to teach her another ability when she's an adult.

I will continue having Zopago play music for her each day to strengthen her mental abilities.




Day Ten

Wonderful news! Today Cerulean Breeze has gained more skill in Receptivity! This means that she will get along well with another chocobos better. This comes with the mental training we are developing in her care taking each and every day.

Today was also an important day because FFXI had a huge update in the game. Added was a brand new feature for chocobo raisers - a chocobo racing arena! Right now it is nonfunctional, but in each of the major towns the building has already been put in place. Below you will see the picture of the chocobo racing arena entrance for San d'Oria (my home town):




Day Eleven

While taking Cerulean Breeze for a few walks today, each walk she found an item on the ground and brought it back with her. She is getting good at spotting these things! She brought back a Quadav Backplate, Flint Stone and Goblin Mask. These items don't have much value and aren't used for anything in Chocobo raising. When she finds them out on our walks she brings them back to me, because as Zopago says, she brings items back to her parent and that is me. With time perhaps she will get better at finding even more valuable and useful items?

Today was a big day for me. As I mentioned FFXI had a big update that introduced new content into the game. This involved the expansion area Missions. I love these missions. Vysala spent much time adventuring in the world of Vana'dial trying to carry on with this continuing story line. I had to face this fierce enemy while doing these missions...




Day Twelve - Fifteen

As I continued my adventures with my new Missions I still made time for little Cerulean Breeze. On Day Thirteen when I visited her she and I took a couple more walks. This time she found Millioncorn and Tokopekko Wildgrass! This is wonderful since both of these items are useful to me. The millioncorn is used for cooking and Tokopekko, as mentioned before, is used to cure a sick Chocobo.



I continued with my daily care of her, never once missing a day to visit her. Since coming out of her egg she has yet to say our Affection bond is less then a parent/child bond. Meaning that she is at maximum Affection. Affection is the most important stat for raising a chocobo. If she were to grow away from me she would get depressed, sad and might even run away. So it is very important that I check on her once a day at least.


Day Sixteen

Zopago let me know today that once again Cerulean Breeze is feeling "pretty perky"! This is wonderful. My last chocobo, her father, rarely had this condition of excelled learning. He never had it so often as his little girl. I am quite happy with her progress and I'm thrilled that things seem to be coming along so well.

I continued to have Zopago play music for her each day to strengthen her mental abilities.


Day Seventeen

To continue building her strength, I walked Cerulean Breeze several times. Once of the times she found a Pebble outside - a worthless item. That's too bad, maybe it's random what items your chocobo finds for you? I have no idea at this time.

Also while taking a walk we ran into Zopago and he had his little chocobo, Devil, with him too! He said that Cerulean Breeze is getting along with Devil and to keep up the good work.




Day Eighteen

Today while going on a walk Cerulean Breeze found a Garidav Wildgrass! Now this is an improvement. This item is fed to chocobo who get tummyaches. We don't need this yet, but it's great to have if she gets sick with a achy tummy.


Day Nineteen

Cerulean Breeze grew! Today she progressed into the next stage of her childhood. And something wonderful has happened - the tips of her wings now show a blueish color! This means there is a chance she will be a blue chocobo when she becomes an adult! This is simply awesome.

Her dad, TempestStorm, had white feathers on his body at this stage and he became an orange chocobo. This happened with my first Chocobo as well. I'm very excited with this change!




Day Twenty

While taking a walk today we ran into a group of guys who challenged Cerulean Breeze to a race! They insisted that only their chocobo would win because of the training they've given him. Well we aren't one to stand for that attitude! A new option on the Caretaking menu appeared called "Compete Against Other Chocobos". I would like to note briefly that this competitive race and the Chocobo Racing Arena are not the same thing - this is against computer players while the Arena will hold races between real ffxi players.

I selected the racing selection and the two competitors lined up. During the race Cerulean Breeze appeared to fall behind but right at the end she caught up!


(I wish i had take a better picture, she is moments from jumping into the air with joy)

After we were done playing together I checked on her one last time. She was happy to see me!




Day Twenty One

Another item that appeared on the caretaking list that is new is "Take A Long Walk". This walk is longer, further away from town, uses more of the chocobos energy and gives the chocobo more exercise. So today we went on a long walk and a short walk.



Upon going on a walk we ran into Zopago with his chocobo, Devil!



I don't know if you can see it, but his chocobo has white tips on the feathers of his chocobo - very likely meaning he will get a regular colored chocobo - the orange.


Day Twenty Two

Poor little Cerulean Breeze is ill again. I fed the poor sweetie more Tokopekko Wildgrass to help her feel better. I only took her for some short walks but did not have her compete today - I didn't want to make her any more uncomfortable then she already must be.




Day Twenty Three

She recovered from her illness very fast! It only took a day this time around for Cerulean Breeze to stop feeling under the weather. So today I took her on another competitive race.

She won yet again - she's a fast little chocobo for having almost no strength training! Below you will find a much better picture of her happy winning.



Today Taycee and me decided to go on some adventuring together. Taycee is more commonly known as LeAnne in my tama logs. She and I have been good friends IRL for over ten years now. While we live much closer then we used to, we still don't get to see each other too often so we play online games together such as ffxi.

Here you can see us posing for a picture in North Gustaberg (an area adjacent to where my chocobo goes walks at). LeAnne plays a mithra character (a cat girl) and is a White Mage for her main job (a healer or monk as it is known as in other games).




Day Twenty Four

Today again I raced Cerulean Breeze. In the first race she easily beat the other team. They then talked about how they had been reading stories to their chocobo and maybe should concentrate on non-mental abilities. They then shared the story "A Story of a Happy Chocobo" with me! This means when she's an adult she might learn the ability "Auto Regen" if I read this to her. Auto Regen increases the rate in which the chocobos energy is restored. I doubt I will use this option on Cerulean Breeze but maybe another Chocobo down the road perhaps.

From there I took her on another race. This time I took many pictures to show how a race is done from the beginning to the end. The race takes place in a small area in the town of Bastok. It is a very short race, for the younger ones should not be racing long distances. When she's an adult she will race against others for longer distances.



And they begin...


Cerulean Breeze appears to fall behind here...


But she's a strong one and catches up to take the win right in the end!


That's my little sweetie!



Day Twenty Five

Today her stats are looking great! She has "A Bit Deficient" in both Receptivity and Discernment! Pretty soon Cerulean Breeze will have Average rating in Discernment and then I'll be able to teach her a new ability to go along side with her already inherited ability from her mother.

I'm really pleased with her progress and can't wait to see if she will be a beautiful blue chocobo when she reaches adult hood. Just a couple of days to go.

Until then I shall continue to travel around the world with her dad, TempestStorm. Here I am with TempestStorm, in Jugner Forest, during a storm.




Day Twenty Six

Cerulean Breeze continues to be doing well. She listens to music everyday, thanks to Zopago the trainer and we continue taking our walks outside of the city with the occasional competitive race.



Little Cerulean Breeze is continuing her growth and appears to be happy and healthy. I always visit her every day, even though I don't do these logs everyday. I always look forward to seeing her every day. While she's not a Tamagotchi and she's within a game, I still think of her as a virtual pet. She goes through stages that are similar and have similar requirements as a virtual pet. She is much like the Tamagotchi CD ROM from back in 1997. I adore her just as much too.

Cerulean Breeze and I hope you enjoyed reading our adventures together. More to come down the road as she continues her evolution to adulthood and beyond.



/wave



Edit: many edits after posting.

[Without]

It's... TOO CUTE! 

I would play FF XI but since I'm cheap, I don't want to pay for it all the time, however I love Final Fantasy games. This one reminds me ALOT of FF XII because of the races and things.

I hope you get your blue chocobo!

*remembers FF7 days*