How to Color Your Chocobo in FFXIV

There are many ways in Final Fantasy XIV for players to customize their character through glamours, the aesthetician, and fashion accessories. Their trusty chocobo companions can also strut their stuff by equipping different bardings, but the feathered friend has another method of personalization — its color.

There are 84 different colors in FFXIV that a chocobo's feathers can be, each based on the game's various clothing dyes. Changing your companion's color is more complex than using a dye and calling it a day. You'll need careful planning, resources, and time to achieve the desired results.

How to change chocobo's color in FFXIV

When receiving your chocobo companion from the level 30 quest "My Feisty Little Chocobo," its color will default to Desert Yellow. If the classic color isn't a good fit for your feathered friend, you'll need to stable them in a Chocobo Stable. These stables can be placed in housing plots that you own or share, whether personal or for a Free Company, and can be found outside an Apartment you own.

Chocobos use different numerical values of red, green, and blue, or RGB, to determine their feathers' color. Feeding them certain fruits while they're stabled will change these RGB values, and each fruit has a specific effect on each numerical value. These fruits are grown in Gardening Plots and Pots available through housing and can be bought and sold from the market board.

For example, the default Desert Yellow has a red value of 219, green value of 180, and blue value of 87. Feeding your chocobo a Xelphatol Apple will increase its red value by five while decreasing its green and blue values by five, bringing its RGB values to 224, 175, 82. If there is a color closer to these values than Desert Yellow, your chocobo's feathers will change after sitting in the stable for six hours.

When feeding your chocobo companion the fruit required to transform into the desired color, the best practice is to alternate fruits to avoid "overcapping" any particular color. RGB values in FFXIV have a minimum numerical value of 0 and a maximum of 255 for the game to determine the intensity of a color. Obtaining some colors may require dozens of any specific fruit, but feeding your Chocobo 15 Xelphatol Apples in a row when their red value was near its maximum would have no effect after reaching 255 and not increase any further. Since the feather-changing fruit affects all three values, your companion's red value would stay fixed at 255, while the green and blue decrease each time, resulting in an undesired color that's likely far from what you hoped to achieve.

The simplest method of ensuring you're following the right pattern is to begin with the default Desert Yellow color for your companion. If you've already changed your chocobo's feathers before, you can feed it a Han Lemon to reset its plumage back to its original state after six hours, where you can begin the process. While waiting an additional six hours to reset lengthens the overall process, you'll save yourself from frustration later by starting with the ideal scenario. 

Here are all of the possible colors your chocobo's feathers can be, along with their associated RGB values and the required fruit to feed them if starting from the default Desert Yellow: