Chocobo Digging is a hobby in FFXI where adventurers use Gysahl Greens to coerce chocobos into digging up items. To participate, an adventurer should make sure they have Gysahl Greens in their inventory, be riding a chocobo in an eligible area and use either the /dig command or dig from the sub-menu. A chocobo must move a minimum of 2 yalms in any direction between digs and wait 16 seconds before being able to dig again. When entering a zone you must wait 60 seconds before being able to dig. That wait duration decreases by 5 seconds with each rank. Until rank-ups are gained there is a 100 items per real life day limit in effect. Each rank-up grants an additional 10 items per day.
Skilling-Up
| Digging Rank
|
Area Delay (seconds)
|
Dig Delay (seconds)
|
Daily Item Limit
|
Greens per rank (approx)
|
| Amateur
|
60
|
16
|
100
|
137.5
|
| Recruit
|
55
|
11
|
110
|
300
|
Initiate 
|
50
|
6
|
120
|
500
|
| Novice
|
45
|
1
|
130
|
750
|
| Apprentice
|
40
|
0
|
140
|
1050
|
| Journeyman
|
35
|
0
|
150
|
1350
|
| Craftsman
|
30
|
0
|
160
|
1750
|
| Artisan
|
25
|
0
|
170
|
2250
|
| Adept
|
20
|
0
|
180
|
2750
|
| Veteran
|
15
|
0
|
190
|
3250
|
| Expert
|
10
|
0
|
200
|
N/A
|
Digging on Horizon differs from retail Final Fantasy XI in that players can expect to receive skill-up messages in their log. This makes it easier for adventurers to track their digging progress. At this time, there is no option within the menus to view what the adventurers skill is.
Ranking up follows the same pattern as crafting ie the 'amateur' rank is followed by the 'recruit' rank once, level 10 is achieved. Upon ranking up adventurers will notice 3 digging improvements: the daily item limit is increased by 10, the delay between digs decreases and the zone delay before digging can begin is reduced. Please see the table to the right for a breakdown. Any rank with a tag is awaiting verification but can generally be assumed to be correct, judging from other players reports on discord.
The final and less noticable digging improvement is an increase in dig accuracy. This increase isn't obviously noticable due to it only being minor and other factors can also affect it (see moon phase below). However, the higher the level of digger, the more visible the increase will become.
Equipment
Whilst chocobo digging requires the use of no equipment, there are several items which adventurers may wish to use to enhance the hobby by extending chocobo ride duration (to a maximum of 45 minutes).
Moon Phase
The current Moon Phase plays a significant role in the accuracy of your chocobos digging. As a rule of thumb, the closer the phase is to 50% the lower your accuracy will be. The current moon phase can be checked by using the command /clock.
Generally adventurers looking to make the most profit will dig during a full/new moon as their accuracy will be at its highest. Adventurers who are looking to acheive the most amount of skill-ups before they hit their daily limit will prefer to dig as close to 50% as possible. Lower accuracy results in more dig attempts and thus more chance of skill-ups.
Elemental Ores
Elemental ores are rare, highly sought after items which can be found in digging pools. There are several conditions that must be met before they may be found within an areas pool:
- The adventurer must have attained at least the "Craftsman" digging rank (rank 6).
- The moon phase must be in "Waxing Crescent" and between approximately 7%-24%.
- There must be an active weather in effect in the area.
When these conditions are met then elemental ores may be dug up. The type of ore found will correspond with the current day of the week eg. only fire ores will be found on Firesday, earth ores on earthsday, etc etc.
Further Information
HorizonXI's chocobo digging largely follows the ASB code which can be found here, although how accurately is unknown at this time (due to Horizon being closed source). There are some known about key differences, such as changes to item pools which are documented on this page. This page has been written to reflect how adventurers can find the digging on the server and the ASB link should be used as a reference only.
Item Pools
Each area has it's own unique pool of items that can be dug up. These pools are shared amongst all adventurers and once empty, no further items may be dug on that particular in-game day. They refresh at the start of a new Vana'diel day (00:00), at which point items may be dug up once again.
Diggers can also expect to find crystals and crystal clusters whilst digging in areas with active weather in place. Single weather equates to crystals whereas double weather clusters.
See below for a list of each diggable area and it's pool of items. All abundance data listed has been collected on HorizonXI.
