The last thing I dug before I skilled past level 0 was a bone chip, fyi.

case in point. The bone chip is a commonly dug low level item. its hard to figure out weather that means that it is the skill cap item, or if its just the last thing you dug up.

Bone chip was not the last item I dug up before my second lvl, it was a pebble or zinc ore.


Lets get off of this topic it isn't going to go anywhere untill someone finds a place where they can't dig up a bone chip and only digs there untill they lvl up.


Now lets talk about good digging times and other items they have dug up that isn't listed or is the ??? part, or low and high lvl digging areas

I don't know if anyone else has noticed this, but my digging rate success (for all of my levels) is 10x better in the expansion zones (Altepa and the Jungles).

I meant to address this earlier and I never really did, about my supposition of zone elements that I make on the chocobo digging page. No, I have no proof. It's just what makes sense to me. And yes, I understand that some zones have 2 elements, but I can't see why that would disprove my little theory?


Also - what about the colored rocks you can dig up in zones? You can dig up these on ANY day, not just the day of that element.


Just today I dug up a purple rock in Batallia (on watersday) and a green rock in East Sarutabaruta (on earthsday).


And as far as "generally good days" go (i.e. Firesday and Lightsday), I don't find that to be true. They're different for me for each zone.

Here's a theory.


It's based on 3 things.


1. how game mechanics appear to work with other aspects of the game, and how coders like to "recycle" code.


2. how Chocobo digging, Hot & Cold worked in FFIX (yes, that's FF-9 for the roman numeral challenged)


3. how programming logistics works


In FFIX, you would dig up items, each item counted for a certain number of points to "make the chocobo's beak stronger" so you could dig up more items. Certain regions would require a strong beak in order to dig "further". Take the same concept, and it might mean certain zones require a stronger chocobo in order to get at better items available.


Fishing skill appears to be the closest skill relative to digging, but it is not exactly like digging. First of all, there doesn't appear to be a skill attached to digging like there is for fishing, but they may have recycled the code for whether digging is successful for not.


Right now, instead of multiple bait, there is only 1 type of greens, Gyshal Greens. They didn't add the 3 other types of greens you could feed chocobos from previous Final Fantasies... at least not yet. So if you treat the code like a fishable body of water, and digging as a "fish cast", and the green as bait, it's easy to see how the coder could've recycled the same mechanics.


The only thing they could've tweaked is the skill gains. Either they used the same system like fishing where you can dig certain items, and also dig VERY high skill items like fishing. Fishing is one of the few crafts in which you can successfully fish up a fish that's much higher than your current skill level.


So you've got 2 methods, it's like fishing where you've just got a hidden skill value, and certain items can increase your skill by 0.1 through 0.5, but you never see it. Or digging is like FFIX where you got X number of points for each item dug up, with higher items giving more points. The "stronger" the beak, or the higher your chocobo digging level, the more successful you will be at getting the better items, hence the more points you get in return... and increasing your level.


If people who have higher digging levels see a consistantly better return on their digging within the same "starter" zones, then you have to think it's like fishing, and certain zones require a higher digging level to get the same items. If digging is similiar to "Hot or Cold", then higher levels should get some of the same items as before, but also higher chance for better items, and less of a chance for no items per dig.

Ok, I just started chocobo digging friday, asked around about it, was told to level up you have to go through 100 stacks of greens.


This seemed far too simple to me after all the speculation I read on these boards, but I decided to check it out.


Sure enough, after 100 stacks of greens, my digging time was reduced to 11 seconds.


I checked to see if I had advanced in skill frequently (by trying my 11 second digging macro). Over the course of my digging, I dug up apprx. 5 stacks of bone chips, after the first 2 stacks, I stopped checking every time I dug one up, and just checked periodically, but the skillup came at almost exactly 100 stacks, so either it was a freak occurence, or the person I asked about it was correct, and your digging level is based *entirely* on the amount of greens you've used.

Another constant seems to be success rate. 11 sec wait time = 33% success rate on digs no matter who i talk to. We'll see how the rate goes at 6 sec wait. That could be the best indicator of how digging skill helps...

Just to tell you about the ??? ore in Meriphataud Mountains is Adaman ore. It requires very high digging skill to get it. You will need at least Area15 to really get it 'constantly'.


Btw I'm Area25 now ^-^. It took me about 4 months to get this lvl. I dug about 100~200 stacks a day, so you can have some idea of how fast the lvl up can be.

the ??? in rolanbeey fields is Orichalcum ore.


You can dig up king truffle in Sanctuary of Zi'Tah