[Genryu]

I've recently started to raise a new chocobo, and wanted to focus on digging to try somthing new, and also to help supliment my tradeskills. However I'm not really experienced in either choco raising or digging, and a few things are confusing me.

When raising my own bird, do mental stats actually affect digging in any way, other than learning abilities?

The choco raising guide on Wiki says if you are raising a digger you should focus solely Discernment and Receptivity, and completely ignore Strength and Endurance, however they dont make any mention of how these stats affect digging. From there own description of the stats:

Discernment: Affects the Chocobo’s potential to learn abilities. Also allows your bird to leave the gate early in a Race, and lowers rate at which Endurance is lost.

Receptivity: Affects the Chocobo’s ability to communicate with fellow chocobos, and increases the chances that the offspring will inherit its abilities and stats. Also improves chances that the bird will dodge attacks in Races.

I can see why you would want to level Discernment on a digger choco, as it will speed up learning abilities like bore and burrow. But I cant see any benefit to having a high Discernment or Receprivity once you have learned your abilities, unless they failed to mention somthing in there descriptions.

Would it be more beneficial to me, to focus on mental stats until I have the abilities I want, and then switch to a physical training program so I can travel around a little faster, or would that negatively affect my digging in some way?

[Trollox1]

I wonder the same things, I am also in the process of raising a digger. She is day 16 (unless she is born yellow, i'll keep the bird) Anyhow, My plan is to raise disc to FC, a by product of this is Rec will also raise to impressive I would imagine, once my Disc hits FC, I'm going to switch the care plan over to the plan that raises Str and drops Rec. My GOAL, is to have my bird STR/END/DIS = FC. I understand END will have to be raised using chocobucks since it will not lower the DIS, I have been planning that I have 600 chocobucks and the bird isn't even a adolscent. It's cheap if you race a bird just til each race hits 1000 entry fee then stop. my racer is a beast, but he cant touch the Sbirds but never loses otherwise.

thats my plan and goal, will it work? who knows.

[Ladymist]

Good luck to the two of you both. First off yes Disc affects digging as does receptivity from my knowledge. I am not a digger, i raised my birds for speed and riding time. Given that heres my advice.

I would presonally raise str first to FC then switch to Disc raising and use chocobo buck to raise the stat higher. Reason being is this allows you to ride faster and longer (str and end) so in my mind this would allow you to benefit from being on the bird the most. There is a thread about digger birds, i will try and find it. http://forums.ffxiclopedia.org/viewtopic.php?t=5150
theres the thread about speed/riding time and a suggested digger bird stats.

So raise your physical stats then use chocobobucks to raise disc. A bird will cap out at 21-22 "points" and those points from from the lvl, ie fc str is lvl 8 so 8 points, Average is lvl 4 so 4 points. My best bird is FC(8)/Impressive(6)/Better than Average(5)/Substandard(2) for 21 points and she is maxed out. She actually wins against the supers is 2 of the 3 single supper races and comes in 2nd in the one with all three. Never tried her digging though.

On chocbobucks you need 560 chocobobucks per stat lvl you plan on raising. 7 trainings at 80 chocbobucks each training. Yes it is cheap to race, it costs 3350 gil per the 8 race set and at first i earned 26 chocbobucks for these 8 races.

Hope this helps even a little bit and good luck!

[Genryu]

Thanks for the responses, turns out my bird ended up hatching with Gallop ability, so I'm in half a mind to start over.

Would anyone recommend just picking one digging ability rather than two? Looking at the treasure pools for both abilities it looks like bore would benefit me more than burrow anyway, it may actually turn out beneficial to not learn burrow, I'm not sure.

Do they serve any other purpose other than having there own individual treasure pools? The Bore item pool looks more appealing to me than the Burrow one, would anyone ever recommending picking just one ability over another, or would I be better off starting over, and trying to raise a bird with both abilities?

[Deo2]

Raise the Gallop bird on Str/End FC, race/retire, then pimp it out to breeders (bazaar its chococard).

Use the chocobucks from racing and hot'n'cold for future stock.

From my experience, never swap plans on a bird with a personality stuck on the first plan. An Ill Tempered bird that I started doing Digging Plan was perpetually lovesick. In addition, using the top-tier plans is risky unless you balance out the stamina bar and keep affection high.

Additional Notes for Diggers:
Whistle recharges are 1k each. You have a chance of picking up a refill cupon from hot'n'cold. Sometimes, they're in stock at the AH. Otherwise, train up that invisible choco-dig skill on rentals before using your expensive birdies.

[Vigilia]

To add to what Deo said, it's not cost-effective to start off digging with a self-raised chocobo. Rental chocobos are 50-250gil to take out each day and until you are high rank your odds of digging up the uncommon and rare items that come with Bore and Burrow are very slim. So if you're not already a digging Veteran I'd suggest you get started on the cheap rental birds. For leveling up skill it makes no difference which bird you use.

There's a guide on Wiki on Chocobodigging, check it out for details but long story short: You can not powerlevel chocobo digging as SE implemented a "fatigue" that kicks in after a while to stop the botting. It will take you several thousands of stacks of Gysahl Greens worth of digs to rank up to even the middle levels, someone did the math that if you dig to fatigue to every day it'll take two years to cap. If you want to breed a useful chocobo though, may I suggest raising one with Treasure Finder ability to help with Hot and Cold? Also, playing Hot and Cold is a free way to obtain chocobucks.

[Wirtsfinger]

IMO its not worth raising a digging chocobo, cause you will just gimp yourself. I was a10 and raised one, but it just screwed up my digging in the desert - instead of getting a coral fragment i got something worthless, and lost to the competition. You really have to get down the respawn timer to the second in the desert to get your coral fragments, digging up something that you wouldnt have dug up if you had a normal chocobo is no good idea.

Also try to dig up goblin digger items if you want to level up faster, i did that and im pretty sure it worked. Anyway, i dont think digging is worth leveling anymore with the 100-item rule, you should invest your time into something else.