A tutorial about Chocobos pop up after you beat mission 14 meaning that you can now ride a Chocobo to roam the Archylte Steppe. There are some places previously inaccessible, but with Chocobo, you can now hop on those areas. Also, you'll notice feather marks across the land on mini-map where you can pick up a Chocobo for a ride. Alright, let's take a break from the mission  because there are some optional quests we wanna do first. 

There are two items in this area around the ponds, simply walking around and you'll see them.

• ITEM (T-01): Water Charm (x1)
• ITEM (T-02): Seapetal Scales (x6)

You may have notice there is an object of interest flying around in the mini-map, it is a Chocobo chick. If you stand in the water close to its flying track next to a treasure (T-01), it will stop for a while in front of you and "EXAMINE" button will appear. You will either get "Chocobo Tail Feather" or "Chocobo Plume". These rewards can be obtained infinitely by get in and out of this area.

That's all in the Chocobo's Hideout, let's talk about Chocobo treasures.

Whenever you ride a Chocobo across the plain, you may come across a specific area where it shows (!) mark on the Chocobo's head. This means that you are in the radius of a buried treasure. The closer you get to the treasure the faster the (!) mark bobbing and "DIG" button will appear when you find it. These treasures are random but when you dug up to a certain amount of times, the reward is predetermined. One thing to note is that the buried treasures are always in a spot without green grasses.

Here is the list of one-time rewards after digging X amount of times:

• 1 time: Gold Nugget
• 5 times: Tetradic Crown
• 10 times: Tetradic Tiara
• 15 times: Entite Ring
• 20 times: Ribbon

And this is the list of random rewards you can obtain infinitely:

• Millerite
• Rhodochrosite
• Cobaltite
• Chocobo Plume
• Chocobo Tail Feather
• Gold Dust
• Dawnlight Dew
• Dusklight Dew
• Gold Nugget
• Moogle Puppet
• Chocobo Plush

Let's pick up a Chocobo and start our treasure-hunt quest. Your goal here is to dig up the treasures 20 times (you can dig up more if you want random treasures above). The buried treasures appear randomly all over the steppe every time you get in/out the area. To make it easy, I'll only number the treasure locations in Archylte Steppe Central Expanse and draw a loop, once you complete the loop, use the Waystone at the mission 9 Cie'th Stone to warp out to somewhere then warp back to reset the treasures. Repeat the loop until you have dug 20 times.

As I mentioned in our mission section that some accessories that provide buffs during a battle do not reduce target time of the mission and one of most useful accessory is Sprint Shoes. Having Auto-haste at the start of battles not only great for doing missions but also any battles too. We'll need 3 for our party and we just happened to have enough ingredients for the 3 Sprint Shoes from the treasures you dug up earlier.

Check your Inventory -> Accessories, and sort by "Categories", you should see two "Tetradic Crown" and one "Tetradic Tiara". We'll transform them into Sprint Shoes and don't worry about how the upgrade works because I have a whole section explaining about this later. But before you upgrade, make sure you save the game first in case you mess it up.

First of all, we need money to upgrade, you probably have around 10,000 gil but we need at least 70,000 gil. Go to any shop and sell 1 "Gold Nugget" which will net you 60,000 gil plus your original 10,000 gil, that should be enough.

Tetradic Crown -> Hermes Sandals -> Sprint Shoes

1. Go to "Shop" and buy the following components (you may already have some of these components in your Inventory, so check it first before buying): 
   • Ferroelectric Film (x1) - buy from Lenora's Garage
   • Turbojet (x5) - buy from Lenora's Garage
   • Perovskite (x1) - buy from Motherlode
2. Upgrade "Tetradic Crown Lv. 1" with 1 Ferroelectric Film and 3 Turbojets. This will give you "Tetradic Crown Lv. *".
3. Dismantle the "Tetradic Crown Lv. *", you'll get "Hermes Sandals Lv. 1".
4. Upgrade "Hermes Sandals Lv. 1" with two Turbojets, This will give you "Hermes Sandals Lv. *".
5. Upgrade "Hermes Sandals Lv. *" with one "Perovskite" catalyst, it will transmute into "Sprint Shoes Lv. 1".
6. Repeat the process with another "Tetradic Crown Lv. 1".

Tetradic Tiara -> Sprint Shoes

1. Go to Inventory -> Components and check if you have 6 "Bomb Core". If not, you can use other components instead.
2. Upgrade "Tetradic Tiara Lv. 1" with 6 Bomb Cores, this will max out "Tetradic Tiara".
3. Dismantle the "Tetradic Tiara Lv. *", This will give you another "Hermes Sandals Lv. 1".

Now you have 3 Sprint Shoes, immediately equip them on Fang, Lightning, and Hope (you should have a new empty accessory slot). At this point of the game, I hope you are about to max out the last primary role of each character too.

You probably have picked up some treasures across the steppe even if haven't mentioned anything about them. The reason is that some treasures are guarded by powerful monster like tortoises that's why I want to wait until you are strong enough to take one of them down.

There are 5 types of tortoises in order of strength. Adamanchelid, Adamantortoise, and Adamantoise. One you completed mission 56 to 62 (circle stones). the 3 types of tortoises above will be replaced with Shalong Gui (same model as Adamanchelid) and Long Gui (same model as Adamantortoise and Adamantoise).

At this point you can only take down Adamanchelid which is enough to collect all treasures in Archylte Steppe. So, whenever you fight Adamanchelids who are guarding treasures, use the follow strategy:

• All tortoises are weak against debuffs, so start the battle with SAB/MED/SYN. Cast Slow, Deprotect, Deshell, and Curse.
• Switch to SEN/MED/MED if you think Lightning cannot provide enough healing.
• When the preparation is done, switch to COM/RAV/RAV until staggered. Then switch to COM/COM/RAV.
• Again, if you need healing, use SEN/MED/MED.

Now follow the map below by starting from mission 9 Cie'th Stone, some of them require riding Chocobo:

• Dotted lines mean you have to run without Chocobo, because you'll have to fight some monsters.
• Solid lines mean that you need a Chocobo to access those area.

It is time to get back to our missions.