Feeding Your Chao

Chao love fruits. If Chao eat fruits, they will grow up to be healthy Chao.

There are a number of trees inside the Chao Garden that grow fruit regularly on it. Sonic Adventure 1/DX have five trees per garden, and all the versions of Sonic Adventure 2 have three trees per garden.

Trees in the Station Square Garden

You should feed your Chao regularly! To do this, go up to a tree and grab hold of it by holding the action button, then move the directional keys to shake the tree. Once some fruit falls down, you can pick it up with the action button and give it to your Chao to make it start eating it. Feeding the Chao fruit will speed up its time to evolution and increase its lifespan overall.

Garden Fruit

GameGardenFruitEffect
Sonic Adventure 1 (Dreamcast)All GardensSA1 CoconutHP +0.4
Sonic Adventure DX (Modern)All GardensDX Garden FruitStamina +4.8 (child) / +1.6 (adult)
Sonic Adventure 2 (Dreamcast)All GardensChao Garden Fruit Hero Garden Fruit Dark Garden FruitStamina +40%
Sonic Adventure 2 (Modern)All GardensChao Garden Fruit Hero Garden Fruit Dark Garden FruitStamina +40%

From Sonic Adventure 2 Dreamcast onwards, the Chao eating the fruit will do so in stages. The fruit will get smaller as the Chao eats it, and will sometimes not finish it fully. Every time the fruit gets smaller, we call it a “bite”. It takes four bites to finish a fruit, and so for example, the fruit on the modern games will give 10% stamina per bite.

Note!

There is a glitch on Sonic Adventure 2 HD ports (Steam, PS3, Xbox 360) where the garden fruit in the Hero Garden raises the stamina bar by 99% instead of 40%! There is also a glitch on the Steam version where trees may disappear and show different textured fruit. Please read the glitches section for full details.

Dreamcast

On the Dreamcast version of Sonic Adventure, the fruits in the gardens are coconuts! When shaking coconuts down from the trees in the garden, take care as the falling fruit can hit your Chao and hurt it! Fruit also increase the tiredness of your Chao. If your Chao wakes up from sleeping, feeding it 4 garden coconuts will make it go straight back to sleep! Lastly, feeding the Chao coconuts will speed up it’s lifespan and therefore make it evolve quicker.

Note!

In Sonic Adventure 1 on the Dreamcast, the Chao will grab the food and begin eating as soon as there is any contact! That includes Chao casually walking around that might happen to walk into a Coconut, or even by pushing a Coconut into a sleeping Chao! The Chao will never ever reject food and will keep eating until it’s all gone.

You can get more fruit from the Chao Adventure mini-game. These fruit can then be transferred back into the garden to be given to other Chao. For a full list of fruit that can be obtained, please see the Chao Island Wiki pages for Fruit.

Tiny Chao Garden

The Tiny Chao Garden has fruit you can buy from the shop with rings. For full information about this you can check the Tiny Chao Garden Guide.

Non-Garden Fruit

These are fruit that you can bring to the garden by other means. For example, all versions of Sonic Adventure 2 can grow new trees using seeds, which will bear fruit. In the Dreamcast games, you can earn new fruit on the VMU mini-game Chao Adventure, and then transfer the fruit back to the garden. Note that when eaten in the garden, some fruits have different effect on the Chao compared to eating them within the mini-game! Please see the Chao Adventure Guide for more information. Chao Adventure 2 allows you to obtain seeds which can be planted in the main game (and not usable in the mini-game). In the Modern games you can buy seeds and fruit from the Black Market which you can take to the gardens.

A full list of all fruit obtainable can be read on the Chao Wiki, along with how they affect a Chao’s stats. Here are a few common ones:

FruitGameLocationEffect
Lifenut or Heart Fruit
Lifenut / Heart Fruit
Sonic Adventure (Dreamcast)Chao Adventure 1This will make your Chao ready to mate, blooming a circle of flowers (if an adult)
Sonic Adventure 2 (Dreamcast)Chao Adventure 2
Sonic Adventure DX (Modern)Black Market
Sonic Adventure 2 Battle (Modern)Black Market
Chao Fruit
Chao Fruit
Sonic Adventure (Dreamcast)Chao Adventure 1Increases all four primary stats, Swim, Fly, Run, Power.
Sonic Adventure 2 (Dreamcast)Chao Adventure 2
Sonic Adventure DX (Modern)Black Market
Sonic Adventure 2 Battle (Modern)Black Market
Hero Fruit
Hero Fruit
Hero Fruit (GC)
Hero Fruit (GC)
Sonic Adventure (Dreamcast)-Will shift alignment of your Chao slightly to the Hero side
Sonic Adventure 2 (Dreamcast)Chao Adventure 2
Sonic Adventure DX (Modern)Black Market
Sonic Adventure 2 Battle (Modern)Black Market
Dark Fruit
Dark Fruit
Dark Fruit (GC)
Dark Fruit (GC)
Sonic Adventure (Dreamcast)-Will shift alignment of your Chao slightly to the Dark side
Sonic Adventure 2 (Dreamcast)Chao Adventure 2
Sonic Adventure DX (Modern)Black Market
Sonic Adventure 2 Battle (Modern)Black Market