Mass Monster Slaughter Sidequest



Sidequests are intended to give the player a break from the main quest, Level Grinding, or both. This is especially common in MMORPGs to give the player an alternative to simple, mindless grinding. So what better way to do that than give them a quest that... is simple, mindless grinding?

A Monster Slaughter Sidequest is a quest to kill a certain number of a given monster or monsters. Why any monsters of these types didn't count as kills before the quest is rarely addressed. Nor usually is how the quest giver knows how many you've killed (or why they care).

Despite the name, this does not necessarily have to be a Sidequest. This may be required for the progression of the main game itself. This type of quest is often a type of Fake Longevity.

This quest can be combined with Twenty Bear Asses, either as part of the same quest or occurring in the same game. These are sometimes also called "Pokémon Missions: Gotta Catch Them All!"

Supertrope to Rat Stomp, one of the most common starting quests of this type in Eastern RPGs.

Action Adventure

 * The Hunter's sidequests in Brutal Legend.
 * Borderlands has several of these. Even more with the DLC
 * The Pixie hunting in ZanZarah is this, except you don't have to slaughter Pixies, just catch them (which is all the same, since they are gone forever afterwards).

Eastern RPG

 * In Final Fantasy X, the Monster Arena gives you a quest to capture 10 of each unique monster in each area. Doing so unlocks the ultimate Bonus Boss at the arena, but the player is also rewarded along the way as they reach milestones in the collection such as capturing every monster in each individual area/dungeon or every monster of the same species.
 * In Final Fantasy XII you can only complete the Clan Primer by killing a certain number of every single enemy in the game.
 * Similarly in Rogue Galaxy, you have to kill a certain number of almost every enemy to get a particular achievement/prize/what have you.
 * One of the troubles you can take on at the Trouble Center in Paper Mario the Thousand Year Door is "Roust These Cads!", in which you are expected to fight all the enemies in the Boggly Woods for a reward of 20 coins (plus drops and Star Points).
 * However by the time you get this quest you can have the First-Attack Badge (if you attack a monster in the overworld that would no longer give experience, it dies without entering a battle) and even the Bump-Attack Badge (kills enemies if you even TOUCH a monster that would no longer give experience, it dies). This also one of the earliest areas so its possible to complete this mission by just walking down the path.
 * If you want to progress through the plot of Agarest Senki 2, you'll need to do this trope.
 * Atelier Iris 3 has one of these as one of the last sidequests available.

Freeware Games

 * Progress Quest has multiple quests along the lines of "Eradictate the Elves", "Murder the Pink Elephants" and "Neutralize the Motorbike Goblins".

Massively Multiplayer Online Game

 * The most common quest bar none in La Tale. Annoyingly, quests to kill X Monster A always comes before the Twenty Bear Asses quest for Monster A. That is, after you've sold the Vendor Trash you're supposed to collect.
 * Extremely common in Grand Fantasia as a sidequest.
 * Kingdom of Loathing: the Bounty Hunter Hunter exists to give out quests of this type. You can choose one of three quests every day, all of which are "go kill X of this monster." Somewhat of a parody, since giving out these quests is literally his job despite it being pointless, but it's still tedious. See Twenty Bear Asses for more...much more.
 * Runescape players who slay enough chompy birds with a special luring technique will be rewarded with fancy hats.
 * Maple Story. Either you're committing genocide on the order of hundreds of creatures a quest, or you're collecting random drops at the same rate.
 * World of Warcraft: Guaranteed to take up large amounts of your game experience.
 * Occasionally parodied. This quest is basically your player character giving him or herself a quest to kill some more eels for absolutely no reason at all.
 * Dofus has these.
 * Ace Online has monster hunting sidequests in their own folder (with some overlap with Twenty Bear Asses).
 * This one's also common in Adventure Quest Worlds, though AE does try to make the quests fit the general storyline of a quest chain.
 * Killing X amount of monsters with a specific technique in order to unlock certain skills or get achievements is as close as Vindictus gets to the trope -- the main quests mainly have you focusing on clearing dungeons and instances, which pretty much entails killing everything.
 * Dungeons and Dragons Online works similarly to Vindictus in that the main focus of quests is clearing out dungeon instances instead of "kill X amount of monsters then return to me," though there are some situations that qualify:
 * There's the Slayer bonus, which gives you XP for killing X amount of enemies in a wilderness instance.
 * Certain dungeon quests, such as Butcher's Path, will also have you killing X amount of monsters as one of your objectives on the quest, either as a main objective, or as an optional objective for extra XP.
 * This and Twenty Bear Asses are the most common mission types in Wizard101.
 * Perfect World is no exception from this. Features these that are repeatable within a certain level range. May even overlap with other (side/)quests ie. killing a criteria mob will tick one kill to all currently active quests requiring a kill count of that mob.
 * Although later content tends to move away from this, these still crop up in City of Heroes. They're usually in older story arcs, and dressed as your character beating a lead out of them on the whereabouts of a certain villain or plot. Generally speaking, the improvement is that newer content now longer sends the character to defeat ten enemies far too strong for him in a distant zone far too dangerous for him. The classic example from the older game was being sent to defeat Circle of Thorns enemies in the twisted and deadly Perez Park.
 * In Champions Online, this pops up a couple times in Canada - you're given 3 separate missions requiring taking down 150 enemies of a given faction - Justiciar gives Terror Halt (150 Hunter-Patriots), and both Douglas McKenzie and Mark Derringer give missions to take out 150 Viper Agents (Snake Harmer and Make Snakes Moan).

Platform Game

 * Some of the missions in Shadow the Hedgehog were of this variety: kill all aliens, soldiers, etc.
 * Also, the Extra Missions for Team Dark in Sonic Heroes have you blowing up a couple hundred Mecha-Mooks.

Western RPG

 * The Elder Scrolls likes to do this from time to time.
 * Gothic often finds some rather creative justifications for this type of missions.
 * Fallout: New Vegas has kill challenges, which tally your kills of certain categories and awards you special perks if you kill enough - kill enough bugs and you get the Bug Stomper perk, and so on. It also has the "Lord Death", "Lord Death of Murder Mountain" and "Apocalypse Ain't Got Nothing On Me" challenges, which requires you to kill, well, anything you can find. And requiring 200, 700 and 1000 kills respectively. In other words, you need to kill 1900 opponents to fill your death quota.