This guide is intended for Sonic Adventure 2 Battle. This is a Laymans' guide intended for beginners, which skips over many intricacies - if you are interested in the nitty gritty details of Chao Raising, then you may find Chao Island interesting.
Chao have two life stages - baby, and adult. After around three hours after hatching of in-garden time (you must be in the specific garden as the chao) the chao will enter a cocoon and evolve into a chao of one of three allignments, and five types per allignment. The main types are Neutral, Hero, and Dark - the subtypes are Normal, Swim, Fly, Run, and Power.
How to influence Allignment
You can influence the type/allignment of a hatchling chao simply by petting the chao with a Hero Story character (Sonic, Tails, Knuckles) to turn its' allignment towards Hero, or a Dark Story character (Shadow, Eggman, Rouge) to turn its' allignment towards Dark. A neutral-leaning chao will be cyan blue with a yellow top. Its' wings will be pink, and its' tail will be a circular bob.A hero-leaning baby chao will turn white, and in most stages, two little leafs will form on its' head. Its' wings will resemble pink/yellow angel wings, and its' tail will resemble a heart. A dark-leaning chao will slowly turn black, and in most stages, the back of its' head will elongate and form a zagged sweep. Its' wings will turn red and bat-like, and its' tail will resemble a devils' tail. You CANNOT influence the allignment of an adult chao.
As a hatchling chao gets older, it will slowly start to resemble the second type more, so the colours and patterns displayed may change over time.
How to influence Type
The second type of your chao is influenced by Chaos Drives and Animals. This guide focuses on Drives, and will not cover Animals. The easiest way to evolve your chao into the type that you want is to exclusively give them chaos drives that correspond to the type you want. For a normal type chao, do not give any drives until your chao has evolved. To give a chaos drive, simply pick up the drive in the garden, and walk over to your chao. As a hatchling chao gets older, they will slowly resemble their type more. You CAN influence the type of an adult chao.
Yellow drives give Swim points.
Purple drives give Fly points.
Green drives give Run points.
Red drives give Power points.
Where to get Chaos Drives
One of the easiest methods for getting chaos drives is to enter the Eggman level, Iron Gate. (1P PLAY -> STAGE SELECT -> IRON GATE). Here, you can easily destroy enemy G.U.N robots, who will drop a glowing tube - this is a chaos drive. You can hold up to ten Chaos drives at any time - collecting any more will shove the oldest out of your inventory. As long as you do not close the game, you will hold onto chaos drives even if you lose a life, or quit the level. To deposit your chaos drives, simply enter the chao garden - you must use these immediately, as the chao garden can only hold ten chaos drives at a time, and they will not be permanently stored. Note: You must enter the garden with a character of the same allignment as the character who obtained the drives - I.E, if 10 drives are collected in an Eggman level, then you must enter the garden with a Dark story character - Eggman, Shadow, or Rouge.