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* Attack a relatively strong enemy near a restore/save point in the hopes it [[Randomly Drops]] a useful item to use or sell.
* Steal equipment from a temporary party member ([[So Long and Thanks For All
* Abuse a game's [[Item Crafting]] mode.
* Grind early mini-games as much as possible so that their (typically low) prize money adds up enough to swap for an item hiding behind a [[Cash Gate]].
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* Level grind and combine for hours to get the best [[Mon]].
More dishonestly, you can outright [[Game Shark|cheat]] with various popular "all items" codes, as many of these items can be (patiently) used to achieve the effects of other codes that may wreck your game by screwing with [[Event Flag
Depending on the game, this may be a form of [[Sequence Breaking]], since many adventure games rely on the logical order of obtainable equipment or abilities (to reach the boss you need the grappling hook, found across the lake for which you need the flippers, found behind the boulder for which you need the bombs, etc. all the way back to you at the very beginning with nothing but your wooden stick sword and good intentions) to maintain the game's geographical and plot linearity. The "Breaking" part of the term is a deliberate cautionary word choice, since doing this in some titles can cause the game to crash entirely and necessitate a complete restart, sometimes many hours of play after the sequence is initially broken.
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[[Level Grinding]] can theoretically get you to this point, but in most games it would take so ludicrously long that it's way more tedious than just getting on with the game. There are plenty of Disc One Nukes that exploit some aspect of the game to make grinding way more lucrative than it should be, however.
[[New Game
Compare [[Magikarp Power]]. [[Last
{{examples}}
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== Final Fantasy ==
* ''[[
* In ''[[
* ''[[
** Gau is a character built around the concept of a Disc One Nuke. He mimics the attack of monsters, letting him use level two magic long before your other party members even begin to learn first level magic, and from there until the second half of the game can usually consistently stay one-step ahead of the abilities of the rest of the party. The only catch is [[Guide Dang It|the game doesn't tell you which monsters teach him which attacks]], and finding a specific monster to teach him a specific attack can take hours.
** Edgar joins the party with the Auto-Crossbow, which lets him attack all enemies at once, doing more damage than a normal attack and ignoring row. Once Edgar joins pretty much every random encounter up until Zozo can be ended in a single round.
*** Once you ''get'' to Zozo, you can do a sidequest to get him a friggin' [[Chainsaw Good|CHAINSAW]] that's not only more powerful than his regular melee attack but has a 1/4 chance of scoring a [[One-Hit Kill]]. This is balanced by the fact that, later in the game, pretty much every enemy is immune to Instant Death, meaning the chainsaw is just a 3/4 chance of doing extra damage with a 1/4 chance of doing no damage.
** In the very beginning, when the Moogles help Locke rescue Terra in the caves of Narshe, you can unequip Mog for some decent equipment that will last you through a fair bit of the early game. (He doesn't need the equipment for his boss battle since dancing has the potential to end it in one round.)
** The Fixed Dice are something of a Disc Two nuke. Immediately after getting the airship in the ruined world, your 3-4 person party can sprint into Kefka's tower and get this incredibly powerful weapon, assuming they don't randomly encounter any enemies that can't be run away from. Doing so makes Setzer your most powerful fighter pretty much until you decide to do Kefka's tower (the final dungeon) for real.
*** You can also get Mog from Narshe first and do the raid without any random encounter risks since you get his Moogle Charm which has the "No Encounters" power. This is still practically in the beginning of World of Ruin.
* In ''[[Final Fantasy IV:
* In ''[[
** Then there's the Barehanded ability. This Level 2 skill from the Monk class gives any class who equips it the power of a Monk when fighting unarmed. Give this to your mage, and suddenly the wizards aren't squishy no more.
* In ''[[
** Gaining limit breaks is a matter of both enemy kills and how often you use a limit break. Making sure a given character gets all the kills can get them their level 3 limit breaks very early on. Aeris's invulnerability limit break plus the Enemy Skill Materia can let you learn Beta from the Midgar Zolom early on, making most of the early game a joke.
*** Getting Beta from the Zolom is even easier than that, and can be done as soon as you reach the swamp. Elemental + Fire Materia on the armour, get everyone in the back row, put everyone on Sadness with Tranquilizers, Poison the Zolom to add damage and he'll be chucking Beta down in no time. Some luck involved in not having the Enemy Skill Materia guy get tail-whipped out of the fight. Once learned, throw it right back at the Zolom to finish it off and proceed to nuke that first disc.
** As soon as you get the buggy, drive around in the desert until you encounter a Harpy, and learn Aqualung from them (You might have to get Mighty Guard to survive it, but that's no biggie - the Beach Plugs on the nearby beaches know it). Aqualung will kill practically every mob in a single shot from there to the end of disc one.
*** The [[Mega Manning|Enemy Skill]] materia is a disc one nuke in itself. If you know what you're doing, you can get Beta, Trine, Aqualung, Big Guard, and White Winds on one before the end of the first disc.
** The Chocobuckle skill from wild chocobos count if you're playing the original Japanese version. It's obtained when Beta is available and cost only 3 MP. The damage is equal to the number of times escaped '''multiplied''' by the caster's level. By escaping many times, you can easily do four-digit damage before you reach Junon. Being a [[Game Breaker]], later releases nerfed it by making the damage '''equal''' to the number of times escaped.
** Barret and Cloud's limit breaks can be obtained in the starting area. It is just a matter of patience. Soldiers will eventually drop potions to heal you.
** Cloud's level 3 limit break Meteorain (which getting is just a matter of killing 300 or so enemies) fires 6 shots doing 1.5x normal damage at random targets. Powerful against groups of mooks, but catastrophic when you're only fighting one enemy, such as a boss. Even the "hard" disc 1 bosses like Lost Number and Demon's Gate can go down in one hit.
** Get the Big Guard Enemy Skill from the enemies along the beach near Costa del Sol. It puts Haste, Barrier, and Magic Barrier on your entire team, much earlier than the Time and Barrier materias become available, and saves you the necessary [[Level Grind|level grinding]] to get those materia up to par as well.
* ''[[
** You can quickly grind out Siren's L-Mag RF (which barely takes twenty minutes of random battles) and spend your first couple of SeeD paychecks on Tents and Cabins, which refine into Curagas. It's really easy to have 3000+ max HP on one of your characters after the second dungeon. Then, keep your characters with 3000+ max HP in the 500-900 HP range (at least during Disc 1). This will allow them to use their [[Limit Break]] attacks frequently while still leaving them with enough life to survive most enemy attacks.
** On the topic of junctions, as soon as Attack-J becomes available and spells like Death or Break can become stockable, your characters can OHKO any non-boss enemy susceptible to those spells. Since the chance of the added effect is dependent on the number of spells you have stocked, stocking 100 of each (and never casting them) translates into a Death or Petrify chance of over 90% per attack. This is extremely useful for grinding and taking out enemies that are many levels above your party. The only danger is if your characters become confused, you have a ''very'' high chance to [[Total Party Kill|game over]].
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** With enough patience and leveling, one can gain 300 Water Spells as early as Pre-Fire Cavern to junction to Strength in Disk 1. Before the higher-end spells come into play, Water is the absolute best Damage junction available during Disk 1 and you're more than capable of killing any standard enemies you face.
** With about three hours work, you can get Squall's second best weapon before leaving Balamb. The cards needed are all held by the more difficult card players within Garden. The other characters cant get anywhere near as huge of a boost.
* It is also possible in ''[[
** And another Blue Magic spell does a guaranteed 9999 damage if your HP is 1. This is still a one-hit kill on bosses well into the ''second'' disk.
** And if you grind patiently at the earliest opportunity you can gain enough magic points for Garnet to be able to use her monster summoning abilities, a few discs before the ordeal where she actually learns to summon according to the plot.
** There's a [[Bonus Boss]] in Alexandria Castle's library, [http://finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Tantarian Tantarian]. If you beat this Boss, you will be rewarded with the Running Shoes, an accessory that teaches Auto-Haste status on your party. It's possible to fight Tantarian as early as Disc 2, although he would certainly be a challenge then.
* In ''[[
** If you're patient, by the time you leave Besaid you can abuse the sphere grid to the point where you can have Lulu and Yuna's ''Ga'' level spells which basically allows you to one shot or heal completely in every standard enemy encounter until at least half way through the game. You can also get hold of Tidus's Blitz Ace Overdrive by hitting the Besaid mooks 70 times with his regular limit breaks - something that's child's play once you replace his ''stoic'' default setting (which increases the Overdrive gauge every time he takes damage) with ''Warrior'' (which increases every time he inflicts damage.)
* In ''[[Final Fantasy X
** Crossing over with [[Peninsula of Power Leveling]], there's Shell Shockers in the dry plains, accessible as soon as you get control of your [[Global Airship]] (which in this game is as soon as you finish the prologue). While their 4,700 HP is intimidating, their only attack reduces HP by a fixed percent, meaning it can't kill you, yet it still gives a ''ton'' of experience. Taking out even one of these is enough to make the first chapters noticeably easier.
* ''[[
** The License Point system in Final Fantasy XII is a bit of a Disc One Nuke, although its effects diminish the further you go in the game. It's a board, somewhat reminiscent of FFX's sphere grid, which is filled with "licenses" for all of the game's equipment, skills, and magic, as well as a section dedicated to power ups for the character that has the license. Increased attack power, extra HP, significantly less wait time between turns, etc. The important difference between this and the sphere grid is that it isn't a straight line; as long as an adjacent square is activated, you can activate any square on the board whenever you want, provided you have the license points necessary. The game keeps you from getting any of the more powerful spells and equipment too early on, since you have to BUY them in a store as well as acquire the license, but there's no such restriction on the so-called Augment licenses. Add that on to the fact that every enemy in the game gives at least one license point, regardless level, and it is possible to grind wolves and cockatrices in the beginning of the game, and before reaching level 10, have exactly 1000 more HP than you're supposed to, have three times your base MP, cast an 8-MP spell with an actual cost of 5, and fly through many of the game's first bosses.
** The powerful [[Limit Break|Quickening]] attacks are available as soon as you buy them from the License Board. Without too much grinding you can have all 3 Quickenings for each character before Raithwall Tomb. You can then use Quickening chains to curb-stomp bosses well into the Act 2.
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* The wide-open, free-roaming ''[[Final Fantasy XIII]]-2'' has quite a few notable nukes.
** It's possible to get the Moogle Throw ability, which enables one to reach out-of-reach treasure chests, several hours before one is "supposed" to have it, which expedites sidequests significantly, gets you awesome loot, and opens up some otherwise inaccessible areas, which may be home to more nukes.
** But the real nukes are the monsters in your third party member slot. With the assistance of a FAQ or guide, you can find monsters that can last you the entire game in the ''first area'' where monsters can be
** Archylte Steppe. In its entirety. It is a treasure trove. For
** If you manage to max level the Dragoon from Augusta Tower 200AF, you will be able to use him through the rest of the game, short of Bonus Bosses. This is because it has ~600 Attack at a time you are at the 250s.
* The introductory RPG ''[[Final Fantasy]]: Mystic Quest'' has a sort of Disc 2 Nuke in the form of the Dragon Claw weapon, which causes Petrification. The nuke powers of this weapon play on the weaknesses of two [[Recurring Boss
* ''[[
* In the original ''[[
** Experience points are rewarded for performing any action on friend or foe, not by defeating enemies of a certain level. For this reason, it's actually possible to reach level 99 in any single battle in the game, since each action rewards 10 experience points, and it takes 100 experience points to reach a new level. Job Points, which are used to master job classes, are gained in the same fashion, so it's also possible to master any class in a single battle.
*** [http://www.gamefaqs.com/ps/197339-final-fantasy-tactics/faqs/23261 In fact, that's exactly what's required for a solo character challenge.] Hell, if you make it through the first few battles of the solo Ramza game properly, you can own the entire rest of the game with little problem.
** Stealing {{spoiler|Gafgarion's}} Blood Sword the second time you fight him will make any close-quarters fight from then until Chapter IV (including the [[Duel Boss|duel]] with {{spoiler|[[That One Boss|Wiegraf]]}}) a cruel joke, as it allows your strongest physical fighter (probably Ramza) to attack AND heal the same amount of damage simultaneously. With Counter or First Strike you can make someone invincible to any attack that isn't ranged or a [[One-Hit Kill]]. The problem with that is that {{spoiler|Gafgarion}} is [[That One Boss]] in his own right, and getting a thief close enough to steal the Blood Sword without being killed ''by'' said Blood Sword (or frozen in place by the two nearby Time Mages, or riddled with arrows by the Archers, etc.) requires a bit of work on its own.
** Making a unit a Monk and giving him/her the Knight's Equip Armor ability helps well in the early game, as the considerable boost to HP (the armor) and attack (the Monk class' properties) increases their chance of survival.
* ''[[Final Fantasy Tactics
** It is also possible, by completing the right quests, to gather the trade goods needed to unlock top-end equipment for purchase, right from the get go even.
** Several of the missions themselves, which were intended for mid-to-late game parties, reward powerful equips outright and can be beaten just a couple of hours into the game, by abusing skills like Mirror Items which are obtained very early with the (ab)use of the two mentioned tricks.
*** Among these are the 'Sequencer' sword and the 'Peytral' armor, strong items on their own right that become even more powerful each time you use a [[Limit Break|Opportunity Command]] in battles. With enough 'Opportunity Command' uses, the two items are [[Magikarp Power|effectively peerless stat-wise]].
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== Pokémon ==
* You can catch Caterpie in the Viridian Forest. A little bit of [[Level Grinding]] (and I mean a little bit- just a few levels), and it becomes a Butterfree with the Confusion ability. In fact, Yellow Version makes it even easier to obtain, since Butterfree learns Confusion as soon as it evolves in Yellow version (presumably to compensate for the fact that Pikachu cannot harm Brock's Pokemon, so you really almost NEED a Butterfree to beat Brock). Since Confusion is a psychic attack, it's strong on its own, exploits many opponent's weaknesses, and it inflicts [[Exactly What It Says
* You can also can catch either gender of Nidoran west of Viridian City, which is before you enter ''Viridian Forest'', and when it evolves into Nidorino or Nidorina at Lv16, you can use the Moonstone you can find in Mt. Moon after beating the first Gym and immediate evolve it into the powerful Nidoking or Nidoqueen respectively. While the two monsters didn't learn many moves thru level ups besides Thrash in the 1st generation, they make up for it in stats and the powerful TM/HM moves both of them can learn such as Dig, Hyper Beam, [[Game Breaker|DoubleTeam]], Surf, and several others.
* In the ''[[Pokémon]]'' games, one can trade for an extremely high-level Pokémon from another cartridge very early in the game. The game tries to prevent this practice by making the new Pokémon disobedient in the early areas, but the stat gap is so high that you'll crush your enemies anyway, despite your Pokémon only moving every fourth turn or so.
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* In [[Video Game Remake|HeartGold and SoulSilver]], by using the Pokéwalker, it's possible to catch Pokémon more powerful than what you would normally have access to.
** You can get a Kangaskhan at the very start of the game by doing so. Kangaskhan is normally an end game Pokémon, and as such has base stats comparable to fully evolved ones. Use it to breeze through the early Gyms, particularly Morty's.
*** You can get a Kangaskhan early on in the game in the Gen V versions as well, thanks to the Dream World. Likewise, you can get a Nidoqueen/Nidoking not long after the second gym through the same method.
** You can also to get powerful Pokémon like Dratini, Staryu, and Gastly this way.
** And even more Pokéwalker abuse is possible if you own two copies of the game. Supposing you have beaten the game on one copy, you have likely unlocked the National Dex, and with it, the later Pokéwalker routes that include decently high level Pokémon from Hoenn and Sinnoh. Now, supposing you start a new game on a new cartridge, you can use the gift option with the Pokéwalker from your original cartridge to gift your new game level 30+ rare Pokémon. And the kicker? They count the new game as their trainer. That's right. You can be running around the second town with level 30+ Pokémon that will always listen to you.
** A Pokéwalker can also give you access both to a Pikachu and a Light Ball as early as the beginning of the game. Considering Light Ball doubles Pikachu's Attack and Special Attack, you might be able to train an absolutely unstoppable beast before you win your first Badge.
** If you can get your hands on a Jirachi (a Disc One Nuke in and of itself) - which many players did before they even started the game, considering they were handed out for two weeks leading up to [[Heart Gold]] and [[Soul Silver]]'s launch - you can unlock a Pokéwalker course called Night Sky's Edge as early as the second town.With a lot of walking and a little luck you can get your hands on a TM for Psychic, one of the strongest Psychic-type moves and the strongest one with no real drawbacks to using it.
* Back in Generation I, you could get Dig before the second Gym, even though it had the stats of an endgame attack. Better yet, it was [[For Massive Damage|super-effective]] against several Gyms and most [[Mon
* In Platinum, as soon as the player has their first Badge, they can do a little backtracking with Rock Smash and, if they're lucky, find a Golbat. At level 10, when under normal circumstances Zubat evolves at level 22. And it evolves to the insanely fast and strong Crobat at max happiness, meaning that the player could have the final form of a three-stage family by the time they reach the second Gym. Oh, and both of Crobat's types are super effective against said Gym. Yeeeaaaahhhhh...
* It's also possible to get some of these in the ''[[
* Generation I had [[Good Bad Bugs|the Mew Glitch]], which could get you [[Olympus Mons|a Mew]] before you beat the second Gym. While it came slightly underleveled for the area and only had one move, Mew has [[Jack of All Stats|equal (and good) stats in everything]], and is capable of learning ''any'' TM or HM, putting those good stats to use.
** It gets better! Abusing that glitch a specific way allows you to catch your Mew at level 1. An impossibility normally, and if you look at the EXP count in its stats, it's got way more EXP than you'll ever need to max out any Pokemon. If your Mew happens to gain an amount of EXP less than that necessary to reach level 2, then the game glitches and all that EXP comes into play at once, auto-leveling your Mew to level 100. Sure, you have to click the A button about two hundred times, but after that you can just breeze through the game.
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** Also harder to do in Generation IV due to more type diversity. On the other hand, in Gen III with Mudkip...
** There's also "Muscle", the Machop you can get in exchange of a Drowzee in Gold/Silver and HG/SS at Goldenrod City. To elaborate: Pokemon obtained from trades grow up faster than normally caught ones but, as a trade-off, once they reach high levels they will rarely obey you - i.e. they will attack only once in a while. As early as the third gym, you can get a Fighting-type Pokemon that will grow faster than other Pokés you can catch normally and whose typing and moves will help you against at least three of the remaining gyms in the region. Not only that, you can train Muscle up to level 30 - by which point it'll have evolved into the stronger Machoke - and it'll still obey you; and, once you get the Fog Badge from the Ecruteak gym, Muscle can reach level 50 before it starts rebelling. Not even the ''Elite 4'' have level 50 Pokemon during your first playthrough.
*** Then trade it to another game and back for Machamp, who's both extremely powerful (especially for the early game) and top non uber tier in competitive play.
* Dream World adds a whole new arsenal of nukes to the fifth generation. To elaborate: right after defeating the first gym and retrieving a [[Plot Coupon]] (all of which can be done in less than two hours from the beginning of a new game) you have access to the DW. Through the website you're allowed to catch Pokemon not ordinarily available in the games themselves and who also carry very good abilities. This way you can obtain such things as Bidoof with the incredible ability Moody - making him [[Lethal Joke Character|a lethal threat even in the advanced metagame]]-, Nidoran male or female with Hustle - which, upon evolving into Nidoking, acquire the brutally abusable ability Sheer Force, especially now that TM's can be used multiple times -, Tangela with Regenerator, Taillow with Scrappy, among many others. All this after, again, a mere
** In fairness, the entire concept of Pokémon is that you can catch a weak one and it will eventually evolve into a strong one. Nidoran in itself being able to evolve into Nidoking over the course of normal gameplay isn't itself a disc one nuke in any shape or form. However! Most of the fifth gen natives don't evolve until much later levels than their siblings from bygone ages. Basic-form gameplay lasts a lot longer in Generation V, with Scraggy, for instance, not evolving until level 39. Being able to get a twice-evolved Pokémon as early as level sixteen - as in, before your ''starters'' have evolved - is absolutely astonishing. Nidoking, then, is very much a disc one nuke.
* By exploiting the Event Mon Arceus in Heart Gold/Soul Silver, you can get one of the Sinnoh cover art legendaries at level 1. While Arceus won't likely obey you, the legendary you get will. Needless to say, this requires likely two games, one of Diamond, pearl or Platnium, the event Arceus (or the Arceus at Spear Pillar only accessible through hacking), and the ability to trade in Heart Gold/Soul Silver.
* In Heart Gold/Soul Silver, there's the addition of the Voltorb Flip game as early as Goldenrod City. If you're good at the game, you can be pretty well off. They have some of the strongest technical machines, though they're more expensive, and a Dratini happens to be available for an amount pretty cheap to those who are good at the game. The Dratini has Dragon Rage, too, an attack that does 40
== Fallout ==
* ''[[
* In ''[[
** And then you go to the NCR, where the first merchant you encounter is very easy to steal from. This allows you to get several pretty good weapons along with the Bozar, one of the game's most powerful weapons, and tons of ammo for everything.
* ''[[
** For the melee player in ''[[
*** Averted when it comes to powered armor, though. You can get it at any
**** If you have ''Operation Anchorage'' installed, you can complete it straight out of the Vault and are awarded Power Armor Training, as well as a suit of Power Armor that never degrades. Alternatively, if you don't like power armor, there is also Chinese Stealth Armor in there, and among the stashed weapons is a Gauss Rifle and Jingwei's Shocksword. Oh, and please put the armor on immediately as [[Unfriendly Fire|Defender Sibley]] [[Boss Battle|and his mooks will turn on you]] shortly after.
*** Most [[Min
** ''Operation Anchorage'' itself is a [[Disk One Nuke]]
** Lincoln's Repeater can be found in a museum, but can be easy to miss if you are not reading a guide.
** The Xuanlong Assualt Rifle is a unique Chinese Assault Rifle with boosted damage and an increased clip size. It can destroy most low-level enemies and remains useful throughout the game. All it takes is completing a rather [[Guide Dang It]] unmarked quest to spawn it.
** With the DLC Broken Steel installed the companion Dogmeat which without the DLC has health around 500, levels with you and starts at 2,500
** The "Alien Blaster". Although the gun is very powerful, its ammo is very limited and it's impossible to obtain more (since it's of extra-terrestrial origin).
*** There are more alien weapons if you download the "Mothership Zeta" expansion. And more power cells, too.
* ''[[Fallout: New Vegas]]'' has, among others, the well-known Ratslayer, a unique Varmint Rifle with all the mods, found in a cave a little ways off the beaten path. The problem is you have to fight the bigger Giant Rats to get it, but it is well worth it if you can.
** At the start of the game, if you go east from Goodsprings to the Yangtze Memorial, you can use a shovel to dig up a grave, which usually has some form of mid-level weapon in it, ranging from Plasma Rifles to Incinerators.
** North of Nipton, you can find a dead Bright Brotherhood ghoul. If you're lucky, you can get a Plasma Defender, a small, light energy pistol that hits harder than a Plasma Rifle.
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** Smalltime. With judicious tailoring of your character, use of stuff given or found in the first town and the right perks {{spoiler|to max out your Lockpick}}, you can obtain the Gobi Campaign Rifle at level 4. 'Course, you'll be at least level 7 before you can fire it well.
* Ditto ''[[Fallout Tactics Brotherhood of Steel|Fallout Tactics]]'', it is possible to get some weapons early. You just need some poisons or drugs. You can try to get the brotherhood bunker encounter and kill the 2 guards using poison or drug overdose and get their miniguns, or poison the merchant and his guards to get Pancor Jackhammers and the Browning machine gun (though good chance you are not strong enough to use it yet, and ammo is rather scarce early game). If you get one of the merchant encounter, you can get EMP shotgun shells as well which let you easily bust the turrets in Preoria mission, along with a FN FAL rifle. If you get the Radscorpions fighting civilians encounter early enough and let the civilians die (which is easy, because they're fighting the Radscorpions with their bare hands) and loot the corpses, you'll find out that at least one of the civilians was carrying a Combat Shotgun.
** You can also use the gambling bug. Bet nothing for the merchant's entire inventory, click on gamble repeatedly, and after
== Action Adventure ==
* The classic ''[[The Legend of Zelda:
** The player could also get the second-strongest sword as soon as he had the item to the first Dark World dungeon, the hammer. It, along with the mirror, could be used to rush into the fourth Dark world dungeon, grab the upgraded glove, save the blacksmith south of the town early, and get your sword upgraded. This upgraded sword lets you kill the second Dark world dungeon boss in two hits.
** In [[The Legend of Zelda (
** One [[Good Bad Bugs|glitch]] from ''[[The Legend of Zelda:
*** Using the [[Good Bad Bugs|select-button warp]] trick in one room of the cave to the mushroom allows Link to enter a glitched part of Level 7 Eagle's Tower to get Level 3's power bracelet, then move over - then back, one can grab Level 7's upgraded Power Bracelet - which allows Link to go through several areas much sooner then he's supposed to and thus gain enough heart pieces/usable items/etc. to make many early boss fights much easier then they should be.
* [[Castlevania]]: [[Castlevania Sorrow|Aria of Sorrow]]. With one of three possible soul combinations, it is possible to acquire by far two of the most powerful equips in the game as early as the midpoint: the giant sword Claimh Solais, which has both incredible reach and speed, a high attack rating and is holy attribute, making it effective against most enemies, and 2) the Eversing Armor.
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** The Mystelain is one of the other holy swords, and while it's nowhere near as good as the Solais, it can be found in a secret room in the Clock Tower, which is a fair bit before that weapon. Again, it's the holy damage that's key, and it's very useful against Death, the boss of the tower.
** In the sequel Dawn Of Sorrow, the Mandragora soul throws a shrieking mandragora into the middle of the screen, which explodes like the enemy does. It can be obtained pretty early if you're willing to grind for it, costs little MP, has very good range, and does quite a lot of damage and remains useful for most, if not all of the game.
* Wouldn't the little trick in ''[[Castlevania]]: [[Castlevania: Symphony of the Night|Symphony of the Night]]'' count? You know, where you use a little glitch while playing a file using the luck code, and bypass Death's ambush- thus keeping your original equipment. This equipment is useful until well into the Inverted Castle, and makes the entire first half of the game a cake walk.
** More likely is the Jewel Knuckles. You're supposed to not get them until you've got the mist form, but there's a secret lift that appears if you wait a while in the room above it, allowing you to get them earlier. They have little range, but are quite strong. Mastering the Holy Water early on also counts as this - the sooner you figure out how you can own bosses in seconds with it, the better. Figuring out the button combinations of certain spells too - these spells are good throughout the entire game, if you can get used to the control scheme and have some MP left.
== Action Game ==
* In ''[[God of War (
* In the next-gen version of ''[[Spider
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* In the NES version of ''[[Double Dragon]]'', the player can level-grind his way through the first few fight scenes alone by simply spamming the same basic punches and kicks on enemies. This is due the fact that the player gains experience points, not by defeating enemies, but by landing attacks. Since enemies aren't killed until they're knocked down to the ground, it's possible to attack an enemy as long as possible while they're still standing up.
* In ''Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King'' from EA, a smart player will focus their skill points towards the purchase of the counter-kill "Bane" abilities, which is ridiculously easy to pull off and puts the character into Perfect Mode on a successful execution, making all resulting kills in that brief period "Perfect" kills, earning the player far more experience points.
* The Enchanted Falchion +1 in ''[[Demon's Souls]]'' can be obtained with some tricky jumping long before you would normally be able to get a solid weapon, particularlly for a magic based character as it scales based on intelligence. Certain builds can kill the Red Dragon early on and gain large rewards for doing so.
* The Drake Sword in ''[[
** While it isn't a weapon, being able to nab Havel's Ring (which boosts your equip load by a staggering 50%) before you fight any of the first bosses is a solid way to keep yourself in good equipment, and remain agile enough to dodge attacks, throughout the game. All it takes is either a lot of rolling and backstabbing, or a lot of arrows, to bring Havel the Rock down. And, unlike most of the game's dragon weapons, it never becomes useless.
** The Black Knight Sword, especially post Patch 1.5 where the drop rate was significantly increased, meaning players will most likely get the weapon from one of the three early nonrespawning Black Knights. Though the stat requirements are comparatively high (20 Strength, 18 Dexterity), but easily attainable. The weapon has extremely high damage throughout the entirety of the first playthrough and New Game Plus, scales very well with stats and is extremely easy to fully upgrade (Easily possible to do so before ringing the Second Bell of Awakening). It also has a very good, versatile move set with both wide sweeping attacks for attacking multiple enemies and a nice vertical combo when fighting a single opponent/tight areas.
** Evading enemies and lotting New Londo early can net an early Fire Keeper's soul (boosting your main source of healing) and some other stuff as soon as you leave the tutorial area.
** The massive skips the Master Key makes possible allow for several items to be obtained early
* In ''[[Dark Souls III]]'' a giant crystal lizard can be found in the starting area. Normally impossible for a low level and under equipped character to defeat, its favorite method of attack in a leaping attack that, with effort, can get it jump off a ledge a short ways away. This nets 4800 souls, enough for several early levels.
== Driving Game ==
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== Fighting Game ==
* In ''DBZ Budokai Tenkaichi 2'' for both Wii and [[
** Unfortunately (or not?) averted in ''Tenkaichi 3''. Dragon Balls are now randomly found among the rubble in the Story Mode fights, as there is no world map anymore. Then again, they won't be of much use as Story Mode characters have preescripted equipment, all the Potara system was reworked so that you couldn't max more than 2 stats out of four total, health not included, the high-level Tournaments are difficult for the wrong reasons (damage carries over to the next fight) and your skills matter way more than stats when playing online.
== First Person Shooter ==
* The GEP Gun in ''[[
** The player can also obtain the Assault Rifle (which normally isn't obtained until the end of the third mission) in the first mission by killing the (only non-invincible) UNATCO trooper walking up the stairs right after you interrogate the NSF leader. Combined with the mods you find on the first two missions, none of which are difficult to find, you can make the Assault Rifle a fearsome weapon (very accurate, with extended mags and a targeting laser) that can easily take down a crowd of targets by the time you get to the second mission of the game.
* In ''[[STALKER|S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl]]'', you can acquire the "Stalker suit" (later patched into a slightly weaker Mercenary suit) in the first town in the game, by climbing on top of roofs and searching for a hole in a roof with the suit inside.
** This is pretty much only a helpful nudge, considering the small portion of combat damage even the best armors in the game reduce and how annoyingly fast the same armors turn into Swiss cheese with zero protection.
** A better example would be the fast firing AK. It can be found with a bit of exploring in the third area and boasts a [[More Dakka|rate of fire]] that won't be matched until the final third of the game. At that point in the game, the most advanced weapon you can find is the standard [[AKA
** Speaking of NATO weapons... As soon as you reach Bar, you can head for Wild Territory and grab a [[T Rs 301]] from the enemies there; the only area it lacks much compared to the fast-firing AK is the fire rate, beyond that its stats are either near-identical or superior and it uses better ammo. After sticking a scope on it, and with a few trips to the Bar shop and a little luck (or/and exploration of Wild Territory) it's possible to get more than enough ammo (which isn't too expensive) for it to curb-stomp about half the game, even in areas that don't hand out ammo for it. Even better, as it's a [[Mook]] weapon it's essentially disposable and you can grab another as soon as your current one breaks down, unlike the Fast-fire AK that is gone as soon as it breaks down (even if that takes a while).
** Both of you are overlooking the greatest Disk One Nuke of all time: At the very start of the game you have about a 5% chance of being able to buy a unique, extremely powerful assault rifle that uses the same ammo as the patrols outside. And there's usually a silencer available within 5 minutes of leaving the shop. Only problem is that you have to search most of the map for supplies and pistols to get the funds you need.
*** You're referring to the OC-14 Groza (called "Thunder" in an unmodded game) chambered for 5.45x39 ammo. The problem is that it's behind a nontrivial [[Beef Gate|Cash Gate]], and no longer has a chance of appearing after you complete the intro mission, so you pretty much have to ignore the plot and spend a few hours lugging crap back to the trader to sell. Plus, the same weapon is carried by one of the Duty soldiers at the Bar, and he often wanders out and gets eaten by dogs.
** The subsequent games are even worse about this. In ''Clear Sky'' you can find your character's old Vintorez near the top of the first map where he dropped it, and while ammo is scarce for a while you can repair it for 9000
*** From the exact beginning of Call of Pripyat, a player can find; the second-best shotgun in the game, a nice mid-tier assault rifle, the best scoped rifle in the game, the second-best pistol and an upgraded version of the beginner armour set for free, without even talking to anybody. Or firing a single bullet. Through Nimble, however, a perspective player with some extensive artifact moneymaking can outfit himself with some of the best equipment in the game before he even begins the plot.
* ''[[System Shock]] 2'' has a somewhat mild form of this. By abusing an exploit in the training rooms in the tutorial level, you can start the game proper with- among other things- a Laser Pistol in perfect condition, maintenance tools, an assortment of healing items, a Standard Pistol, and a [[Psi Amp]]. The weapons in perfect condition are the biggest boon, since it takes a while to fully upgrade the maintenance stat.
** Additionally, you can unlock an armory very early on if you already know the code (which normally is given to you three levels later), gaining access to the game's best weapon before you could possibly have the skill to use it- but ensuring that you'll already have it whenever you ''do'' acquire the skill.
** Further abuse of memorization provides early access to other keypad locks. You can skip the ''entire first level'' this way, not to mention large sections of other levels.
* To an extent ''[[
* ''[[Metroid Prime]]'', at least the original, non-Players' Choice version, allows you to cheat the system and get the Space Jump Boots right as you land on Tallon IV. As a result, you can skip every single boss in the initial run of the Chozo Ruins except for the Incinerator Drone. It also allows skilled players to skip right through the Magmoor Caverns without the Varia Suit, a feat considered impossible otherwise. Basically, once you land on Tallon IV, you can snag the SJBs, speedily grab the weapons and Energy Tanks, and be in the Magmoor Caverns faster than you can say "Metroid".
* In ''[[Doom]] II: Hell on Earth'' if the player went backwards from where they started in the first level, they would find a [[Chainsaw Good|Chainsaw]], which is superior to both the fist and the pistol the player starts with. It is also possible to get the super shotgun in roughly the second level, lasting well throughout the game. It is even possible to find the [[
== Four X ==
* ''[[
* ''Civilization4'': Emphasize science and tech straight to Feudalism to get Longbowmen, a vicious defensive unit that can protect your cities well up until you unlock riflemen. This is doubly true of any cities you founded on hill tiles.
* ''[[Ascendancy]]'': Find a planet with xenoarcheological ruins? Drop a colony module right down next to the ruins, start digging them out, and on the day before the dig is complete, [[Save Scumming|save. Advance a day, and if you discovered tech you don't like, reload and let the RNG give you something else.]] Doing this can net you the various nano-level technologies, maxing out your civilization's propulsion, weapons, energy generation and shielding systems, potentially before leaving your home star system.
== Hack And Slash ==
* The Diablo-like ''[[
* ''[[Diablo II]]'':
** The game allows you to trade between your characters online. One neat trick is to make ''Khalim's Will'', which is usable by characters of any level (because it's a quest item) and provides obscene amounts of damage for most if not all characters below level 25 (when you acquire it, you're generally around level 21-24).
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== [[Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game|MMORPGs]] ==
* Heirloom items in ''[[World of Warcraft]]'' can make leveling [[
** In the [[Good Bad Bugs]] camp, there have been a few instances where Blizzard forgot to make quest reward gear Bind on Pickup, meaning that, since they have no level restriction, players could equip them on their low level alts. These bugs were quickly squashed, however.
** Another of those bugs involved Entei's Quenched Sword, a grey (lowest level quality) sword, basicly intended as vendor trash for high level players, but it had no minimum level to equip and so could be sent to a low level alt. While it's base damage was ridiculously low even compared to the weapons you started with, it still counted as a high Item level item, and could therefore have the high end weapon enchants applied to it, which when sent to a low level alt, gave him a VERY powerful weapon. Sadly the lack of a minimum level to equip was fixed in the next patch.
* In the original [[Guild Wars]] campaign, there was a lively economy of high level players who would party up, for a price, with low level players and run their party from the first non-tutorial town (or, more commonly from the last outpost before the high level enemies show up) to the [[Sequence Breaking|last large town]] where they could get the best armor in the game. Both the running service and the armor would cost much more money than a beginning character has, but since you can freely transfer money from all other characters on your account this was not much of a problem.
* In ''[[
* Formerly possible in ''zOMG!''
== Platform Game ==
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** In ''Super Metroid'', this was practically encouraged by the inclusion of the obvious but difficult-to-master Wall Jump technique, which lets Samus climb walls and jump way higher than intended very early on in the game.
** And in ''Metroid: Zero Mission'' this actually was encouraged, as there are pictures obtainable only by completing the game with a minimum percentage.
** By the time ''Metroid Fusion'' came out, Nintendo was well aware of the sequence breaking that had occurred in earlier
* ''[[Lego Harry Potter]]'' contains a nice little gem. After the second level in the whole game (the first one at Hogwarts) you have the ability to get to the "Collect Ghost Studs" Red Brick powerup, before the plot would normally allow you to. It only costs 50,000 studs, which can easily be obtained by this point, but it allows you to collect the "Ghost Studs" dropped by Nearly Headless Nick as he leads you to the next level/lesson/cutscene, which are worth 1,000 studs each. You can easily get the 4 million needed to get Accio (which makes a lot of the puzzles moot by just giving you potion items) as well as other spells in just an hour or so of grinding. Makes [[One Hundred Percent Completion]] extremely easy. Add to this a glitch that sometimes allows you to collect ghost studs after you finish year 4 (when you shouldn't be able to) and this really edges into the territory of [[Game Breaker]].
* ''[[Sonic the Hedgehog 2]]'' had a way for determined players to get hold of all seven Chaos Emeralds - and therefore, gain the Super Sonic ability - in the very first Act of the very first Zone through judicious use of the reset button.
** And even without the reset button, it's possible, [[Unstable Equilibrium|with skill and patience]], to get all 7 before the end of Act 2 of the first zone.
* ''[[Sonic 3 and Knuckles
* In Sonic 3, a skilled player can get all of the Chaos emeralds within the first two levels of the game. Angel Island contains two giant rings per act, so before finishing the first level a player could have four of the seven, then another four, two in each act in Hydrocity. Alternatively, one can wait and not get ANY of the giant rings the first two levels, and just use the ELEVEN chances available in the third level, 8 rings in the first act and 3 in the second. Needless to say that getting it on the first two levels means the rest of the game can be blown through.
* This occurs in ''[[
== Puzzle Game ==
* ''[[Puzzle Quest]]:Challenge Of The Warlords'' has the Knight class. Abusing the Divine Right spell (which collects every Purple Star on the board for + 1 EXP each) and putting all the upgrade points into Battle (Attack power) and Morale (HP and spell resistance) allows you to easily create a [[Cap|Level 50]] death dealer, before even reaching the Dragon Realms, the game's halfway point. And that's even if you don't get lucky with which Runes are being offered in the shops (in the PC version, at least).
** The game's [[Item Crafting|crafting]] and [[Mega Manning|spell research]] and skill buying systems also allow for severe [[Game Breaker
** Another skill combo that can be a [[Game Breaker]] is the ''Warrior'' skill ''Berserker Rage'' combined with ''Conflagration''. The former converts all red gems into skulls, and the latter changes all gems of a particular colour into red gems. With proper items it's possible to achieve turn one kills from level 20 onward, making for very disappointing boss and multiplayer battles.
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== Real Time Strategy ==
* Unusual for a strategy game, completing the second mission of James in ''[[Sacrifice]]'' in the 'good' (and most obvious) way gets you the support of [[Our Dragons Are Different|Siroco]], a hero-version of Persephone's strongest unit, in further missions. The fact that the player's avatar is needed to [[Keystone Army|permanently beat enemy wizards]] is pretty much the only reason why you can't point Siroco in the general direction of the enemy and win the next 3 missions while you go and get a drink.
* In ''[[Mech Commander]] 1'', the game allows you to salvage fallen enemy mechs, provided they aren't written off (i.e.: power core explodes) It's possible to salvage a Mad Cat mech in the 3rd mission of the game. The Mad Cat is one of the best mechs available - in the Heavy class, but with a speed of 24
** The developers did release a patch that gave you a Mad Cat at the start to reflect the opening cinematic (though that looked like a power core breach). Getting the second Mad Cat through sheer persistence (20th time lucky...no, 21st time lucky...no...) was still important though to split the enemy fire between two targets.
* In the sixth mission of ''[[
* In ''[[Dawn of War]] 2: Chaos Rising'' your Space Marines start at level 20 of 30. After the first mission you can reset and reassign their skill points and thus, through min-maxing, aquire the high-level abilities, such as infinite, stamina-based mines and frag grenades in bundles and artillery strikes. All of them are easy and safe to use and ''ridiculously'' powerfull. Except for some particularly nasty bosess, the game will become a walk in the park.
* For that matter, Dawn of War: Dark Crusade's Space Marines have a disc one nuke of sorts in multiplayer gameplay. By going straight for T2 and immediately purchasing Grey Knights and a Chaplain, you'll cripple your economy but gain a small squad that deals substantial damage and is extremely difficult to kill, plus possessing a snare (thanks to the Chaplain) and a high-damage, morale-breaking [[Ao E]] spell (thanks to the Grey Knights. The Chaplain's cost was intended to discourage players from purchasing him so early in a match, but it can be done and is very effective, often requiring the entire enemy team to coordinate to take out the squad.
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** The spell of Charm Monster for a Tourist (their special spell) or Wizard. No one ever does it because it requires spell-friendly armor to cast during combat, getting the spellbook is not guaranteed, and it takes even more patience than normal [[Nethack]] play. (Which requires a lot of patience.)
* [[Ancient Domains of Mystery]] has these en masse. There's a waterproof blanket guaranteed to spawn in a cave near the beginning, greatly helping the player against rusting from water. The cave does contain tougher-than-usual monsters though. Some chaos mutations may give a lot of advantage. Some characters may start with magical boots that make them outrun almost any monster. And finally, in early-midgame the player may find "Si", an artifact that duplicates itself and provides infinite amount of money for the player who wishes to take advantage this power.
* Even in the original [[Rogue (
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** Not to mention it's far cheaper later on as well. Though it's only two hours, not several, if you know the correct spots.
** Said store also sold the Magic Shield, the best shield in the game.
* The Playstation RPG ''[[
** Getting as far as you can in the tournament in Disc 1 nets you a sword which can only be obtained this way. All you need after that is two Mithrils, which you can get randomly by using particular items made via item creation. Customizing using the two Mithrils yields the Eternal Sphere, possibly the best weapon in the entire game, which renders Disc 1 a joke and everything up to the final boss (not including the [[Bonus Dungeon]]) at least easily doable.
** It is also possible to obtain at least 2 copies of the most powerful armor during the first disc. Get Ernest to join your group and you can pickpocket one from him in a certain town. You can also pickpocket one from Claude's dad (assuming you chose Claude as the main character). Any character equipped with this armor will be invincible throughout the first disc and probably throughout the entire second disc except the Final Dungeon and the [[Bonus Dungeon]].
** If you get your pickpocketing skill high enough in Disc One, you can pickpocket an item called the Treasure Chest from a guy in Mars Village. The Treasure Chest produces three items at random when used. It can potentially give you the Marvel Sword, which Claude won't have to replace for a stronger sword until halfway through Disc Two. It raises your offense ''and'' defense to extreme levels, effectively turning one character into a super tank.
** And on the subject of skills, a lot of other ones can fall under this trope on their own, even before they combine into abilities. Some of the best examples would be Biology (A boost of (skill level squared times 10) to your HP, meaning a 1000 HP boost at maxed level), Herbal Medicine (+ 3% to the effect of Blue/Blackberries per level, which start off restoring 22% of your max HP and MP respectively, but at max level will recover a much more useful 52%), Danger Sense (+ 3 Stamina per level, Stamina will recover HP and MP after battles, which is INSANELY helpful), and Playfulness (gives some cash upon gaining a level in the skill, giving HUGE amounts at the higher levels; maxing out this skill for ONE character will take care of your money problems for the entire first disc). The better ones are balanced out by extremely high SP costs, but by leveling the Perseverance skill and doing a bit of grinding, they can be easily be bought before leaving the first continent.
* The tradition continues in the Playstation 2 RPG ''[[Star Ocean: Till the End of Time]]''. It might be considered a [[Guide Dang It]], but some stumble upon it on their own. In ''Star Ocean 3'', you get bonuses for [[Cartography Sidequest|"completing" a map]] (walking every single portion of it), which is a rather tedious process. The rewards range from ostensibly lame to quite good. Early on, the rewards err on the side of lame. However, even the ones that suck sell for quite a bit of currency. If you complete all of the areas which can be completed up until a certain town not particularly far into the game, and fight the encounters that result from wandering around the map to complete it, you will have enough money to purchase one or two items that would otherwise be teaser gear in an improbably powerful shop. Normally, you would have to wait until later in the game to come back and buy the high-powered items. Needless to say, the difficulty takes a rather sharp dive at that point, and it could even be considered a sequence error due to sloppy programming under a liberal definition.
** In the middle of the first disk, after obtaining the second best alchemist in the game, you can obtain some Orichalcum. It looks useless, until you forge it into a weapon. It adds 500+ attack and gives you a 50% chance of surviving a fatal blow if you have Fury. They're also not that expensive to make (10,000 Fol)... Well you can probably afford four-five at most, but still, 2000+ attack to go around in that point is pretty darn impressive. They were likely put in for the sake of playing on Universe and 4D difficulty, where things like abusing selling the model bunnies and Orichalcum become rather necessary. Though one has to wonder if that is the case, why didn't they just lock them out in Galaxy mode...?
*** Said Orichalcum is available behind a hill you can access incredibly early. The theory is that you'll die a horrible death if you go there before the game expects you to. In reality, one of the random encounters there is a ball type enemy that does nothing but damage your MP. By rushing in and killing that enemy, you can gain dozens of levels in no time at all, then move on to beating up the enemies for the Orichalcum and other rare ores in the area behind the hill. And all of this is absolutely required on the [[Nintendo Hard]] higher difficulty levels.
* In ''[[
* In the first ''[[
* Also present in its spiritual predecessor ''[[
* ''[[Valkyrie Profile]]'' gives the player a number of staves that allow mages to use Great Magic early in the game, though they have a high chance of breaking after each use.
** Except, they only break if you do regular attacks with them. If you keep your mages only using magic attacks, they can use ludicrously overpowered weaponry way before you should get it, and you keep getting better overpowered ones til the end of the game.
** Also except if you do some roundabout moves, you can acquire the Unicorn's Horn, which is an unbreakable Great Magic staff, in Chapter 4. And it's more powerful than all but one of the breakable ones. Expect to hear the invocation to Celestial Star (by far the spell with the most hits and the fewest enemies that resist it) and Meteor Swarm (second-most hits and hits everything that resists Celestial Star) repeatedly after acquiring it. Quite a [[Guide Dang It]], though.
* In ''[[Kingdom Hearts (
* A little grinding on the tutorial of ''[[
** Additionally, stepping on to a save point and going to the world map while in a Drive Form will reset you to normal with a maxed out Drive Gauge(even if it was nearly empty), making it possible to stay in Drive Form nearly continuously and level up much more quickly than is intended.
* ''[[Kingdom Hearts: 358
* The first special attack you have access to in ''[[
* The very first level of ''[[
** The classic "infinite 1-Up trick" is also performable. However, the experience starts going negative after a certain amount of jumps.
* In the third chapter of ''[[
** You can get the money in other ways, though; in fact, you're ''required'' to earn several times the cost of the sword in order to beat that section of the game, and many fast-money tricks are specifically provided to this end. So if you happen to have the weapon appear, you can just call it a lucky break, leave your job, and come back halfway through the chapter to buy it... when it's nice to have, but not that overpowered. In later chapters you can just buy it from stores anyway.
*** But then again, the main reason to get the sword to appear isn't so that you can use it yourself, it's because it's also the most expensive weapon in the chapter and thus makes it a prime subject for the most effective of these in-game money tricks. So in other words, ultimately you'd want to buy as many of these swords from the original weapon shop as possible, sell them at your own weapon shop for 50% profit and repeat until your [[Bag of Sharing]] is filled with 99 copies of every item you can possibly acquire in the chapter. And after that's done, give yourself a huge amount of cash and use that to buy all the casino tokens you could ever need. If you're wondering why just not amass a huge fortune and not screw around with buying excessive amount of equipment to sell, that's simply because while money doesn't carry over between chapters, equipment will.
** A much better example from ''DQ4'' would be [[Save Scumming]] at the casino to win 4 Metal Babble Shields, 8 Meteorite Armbands, and a couple dozen Wizard Rings in Chapter 2.
*** You might also consider the fact that you can leave behind one of the Broad Swords in the Silver Statuette cave for the hero to pick up in early Chapter 5.
** ''[[
** In the [[Mons]] spinoff games, there are often several examples of powerful early or mid game monsters that are available if you understand the breeding system.
*** For example, in ''[[
*** Even better, if you do the same thing with 4 King Slimes, you get a Rank B King Cureslime, which will inherit the Cleric skillset, as well as the most powerful healing skillset in the game. Taking a Rank B King Cureslime and breeding it with a Rank F Bubble Slime (easily available early in the game, or breed-able using a slime and a platypunk, which is available right next to the slimes) will lead a Rank ''A'' King Bubble Slime, which gets Bad Breath, one of the best debuff skillsets in the
*** Not to mention that it's pretty easy as it is to synthesize a Rank A monster by the third island if you've scouted a good amount and already synthesized a couple times. I managed to get a King Bubble Slime early on without even needing four King Slimes. Once you really dig into the mechanics of the game it's possible to have a team of Rank A/B monsters by the time you hit Infern Isle, which is mostly comprised of C/D monsters.
* In ''[[Sword of Mana]]'' on the Gameboy Advance, playing as the girl gives you Light magic at the start of the game, bats are weak against Light magic and are found in the first cave area you come across. Grinding until you kill 1000 bats transforms them into Doomy Bats of Doom which can be hit with Light magic, which in turn grinds up your Light skill until it's powerful enough to kill them, thereby allowing you to level up really easily and quickly, making the rest of the game a breeze.
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** There's also a hidden shop you can get fairly early in the game through the side missions. It sells materia that let you attack with and defend against any statuses attached to the other materia you have equipped. The same shop sells the Hell elemental materia, which are essentially the top Ice/Fire/Lightning spells, with Death/Stop/Poison/etc. slapped on. With enough cash, you'll be simultaneously immune to and dishing out half of the most debilitating status effects in the game.
* A general [[Mega Ten]] example: [[Useless Useful Spell|Petrify and Charm]]. No, seriously. Charm can be obtained ''very'' early in pretty much every game, and doubles as one of the best ways to deal with bad [[Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors]] matchups you're bound to have, a way to deal with [[Goddamned Bats]] and a way to keep your party healed with low cost and, though rare, can also works on minor bosses. Petrify, on the other hand, kills pretty much everything non-boss, barring some rare occasions, with surprisingly high accuracy, even though it takes longer to get.
* In the [[Updated Rerelease]] ''[[
** Fusing the right 3 Persona (Pixie and Nekomata then the result with an angel) early on can give you a Lilim with the 4 main elements<ref>In this game, hitting an enemies weakness gives you an extra turn once per round</ref> by level 8. This lasts more than long enough for the next quad elemental persona (Pale Raider) which lasts till the right skills are accessible for specialists.
** A similar recipe exists to create a 4-element Yomotsu Shikome a Lv. 9 Hermit persona. It's slightly better than Lilim because Shikome has no weakness and is resistant to Darkness/Mudo.
* You can do a similar trick in ''[[
** There's also the "Victory Cry Kaiwan" trick. Kaiwan is a Lv. 24 Star arcana persona who starts with Tetrakarn. While it is a useful spell because it will reflect any Phys-based attack (except almighty) once, the true beauty of it comes when you fuse the persona on a day where the Fusion Forecast gives the "skill change" bonus. When it is fused with the least amount of passed-on skills, there's a random chance of Tetrakarn morphing into Victory Cry (full HP/SP restore after winning a battle). If Kaiwan gets Victory Cry, he makes great fusion fodder for passing the skill to other personas.
* ''[[Raidou Kuzunoha VS King Abaddon]]'' features Fiend battles. They are quite tough as per usual for the series as they start hounding you as early as Episode Three. However, with a little patience and demon setup, you can kill the White Rider (and Red Rider if you're lucky) and unlock it for fusion. What makes this so great is that Fiends do not have the level restriction as most other
* In later ''[[
** In Battle Network 1, simply acquiring the Pop Up chip can make you nigh unbeatable to most enemies and bosses because you remain invisible for the duration fo the turn. As long as you just use a charged buster attack (which deals a fair amount of damage), you can attack without being hit back unless you get careless. This tactic works best on the final boss when your effort is not timed.
** By the same token, in Battle Network 3, Mega Man has to fight FlashMan, the very first boss in the game. With a little trial and error, one can create a folder based around the chip and effectively destroy every boss in the game.
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*** There are in-game, legitimate codes that can be entered to grant you various cards, abilities, etc, which can be entered as soon as the opening cutscenes finish. One category of these is known as the 'leveling' codes, which give MegaMan more HP, a stronger buster, etc. The strongest of these gives you an HP count around what you might have endgame without it (+ 990, you start with 100), a standard buster that renders a fifth of your starting folder obsolete, and as many Giga Card slots as you can EVER (reasonably) have without it, among other things. At the START OF THE GAME. The kicker is that those loosened card restrictions and extra ~1000 HP are just as useful against the strongest version of the final boss, making this a bit of a [[Game Breaker]].
*** In the most literal example, there are cards called Blank Cards in the game that can be overwritten with essentially any card in the game. You get the first one fairly early on. There are cards in the game that, unmodified, can nuke the entire enemy area of the battlefield for about 400-500 damage. Most end-game bosses have less than six times that, so...
* ''[[
** Speaking of Mingling, using it around other players allows you to buy powerful pins and threads sooner than you'd normally obtain them. The catches? If you buy the entire [[Infinity+1 Sword|Darklit Planet set]], you can't fully utilize its power until you have six pin slots (you need all six pins equipped at once for them to inflict lots of damage), and in the case of threads, many powerful threads have a high Bravery requirement.
* Savvy players of ''[[
** Of course, doing this is pretty much a one-way ticket to the bad ending, and usually makes it impossible to get Zero's upgrade unless you're '''insanely''' lucky.
** [[Take a Third Option|I'll just input the]] [[
** A better, more "legal" example would be Zero's C-Sword skill, [[Mega Manning|obtained from Grizzly Slash]]. It has good range, and can strike multiple hits. To top it all off, defeating Slash also rewards you with the [[Double Jump]] ability, which, as many fans would know, is ''very'' useful. What makes it a Disc One Nuke is that Grizzly Slash is the easiest boss (and level) in the game, and a good choice to start on the 8 bosses.
* In ''Mega Man: Maverick Hunter X'', Storm Tornado is the most powerful weapon in the game, able to destroy nearly every enemy that gets hit with it. You can easily obtain this if you destroy Storm Eagle first.
* ''Contact'' features Blue Pillbugs, which show up in one room on the second island and are definitely something you'll want to avoid engaging normally until you're strong enough to kill them so that you can grab the Armor Breaker weapon, which increases the odds of triggering the Armor Break ability (if you have it) by twenty percent. However, thanks to [[Game Breaker|a trick involving
* ''[[Infinite Undiscovery]]'' released a few DLC (downloadable content, from Xbox Live's Marketplace) "vouchers" that allow you to purchase exceptionally rare materials from merchants anywhere in the world. Coupled with several profitable alchemy recipes to choose from, a player could raise the money for expensive components and craft themselves some of the best armors and weapons in the game before even finishing Castle Prevant (the third dungeon).
** Understatement. With Edward in your party, buy as many Sheep Hides as you possibly can, and turn them into Smiley Charms. Sheep Hides cost 120 fol apiece, and Smiley Charms sell for 1500, do the math. It gets even more ridiculous if you can download the ''free'' vouchers that let you buy practically every single material needed for item creation, from every merchant in the game, hrmm... Well, if you are stocking up on materials and feel as if the Smiley Charms aren't going fast enough, never fear, most likely during the process Edward will have become a level 6(max)smith, while you only have to be level 3 to make Horseshoes. They sell for 2600 fol, while you need one granite and 2 iron metal to make(which you can buy ANYWHERE after you download the vouchers)which collectively costs 750 fol. So, with the vouchers, you can legitametaly get pretty damn near getting the last equipment for all of your characters, in the first or second town. So while the ''vouchers'' help, you don't even need them if you want ridiculous amounts of money, all you need is a TV and some extra batteries.
* Obscure Game Boy Color RPG ''[[Lil' Monster|Li'l Monster]]'' has a Disc One Nuke from the first boss, Gyro. You don't have to beat him to advance the game, but if you do, he drops the one-of-a-kind Dowser gem. Dowser's power isn't that impressive, but it can be used to summon a different monster, who, while difficult to beat at an early stage, is still defeatable with [[Save Scumming]]... and the gem ''he'' drops ''doubles your damage delt.'' Plus, the Dowser gem itself can be used to make Gyro your [[Mon]], and his power is decent for that early game stage.
* ''[[
* In ''[[Legend of Dragoon]]'', it is possible to level up Dart's additions to max early on. This gives a huge heads up. Early disc 2 you have a chance to fight 00Parts, a high level minion that can insta kill, but also gives absurd cash on defeat, which can be used to buy the best armor and helmet in the game, and an accesory which makes the Additions automatic.
* ''[[Oracle of Tao]]'' has a way two ways to level to 20 in the first town. The first is beating a certain type of ghost near the graveyards, and the second is a random room which has a priestess that gives levelups to the party (up to level 20).
** Stealing from the second boss in the game yields a Dark Sword which is much more powerful than any of the current weapons before this point. Also, multiple copies can be stolen, giving a great deal of money for other items.
* ''[[
* ''[[SaGa 2|SaGa II]]'' (known in the states as ''Final Fantasy Legend II'') randomly awared new mutant powers at the end of battles based on the level of the monsters fought. One particular boss encountered relatively early in the was a class "9", more or less meaning that a little bit of [[Save Scumming]] would net you a power far more advanced than you were meant to have at that point in the game.
* The second and third parts of the ''[[Lufia]]'' series have those, in the second you need a bit of grinding to beat [[Bonus Boss|Gades]], but his blade [[One-Hit Kill|onehits]] every critter for some time, and it's special ability is among the very best in the entire game. The third game needs a bit more grinding, and [[Guide Dang It|a certain strategy]], but you can get a few very nice items by beating a few [[Bonus Boss
* In ''[[Suikoden I]]'', if you enter the forest beside Seika early you will meet Kobolds, monsters FAR stronger then what you should be facing. However you can wipe them out in one fire spell. Because you get more experience the bigger the difference in levels between you and the enemy, ten minutes of fighting can set you FAR ahead of the curve before you even have your fortress, which just happens to be where one of the hardest fights in the game is.
** In ''[[Suikoden II]]'', you have the opportunity to get through a gate into one of the later areas, Matilda, and pick up two characters that import from the first game. Your levels will jump significantly, making much of the rest of the game, at least until well beyond that area, nearly trivial.
* The first ''[[Persona (
* In the Gameboy Color RPG ''[[Magi Nation]]'', a basic healing item could be sold for considerably more (taking into account the low max-money cap) than it cost to buy it. It doesn't take half a brain to figure out the consequences of this.
* In ''[[
* The Mega Drive/Genesis game ''[[Light Crusader]]'' has two examples. First, you can get the best armour in the game from the Lily pad enemies, which are all over the place in the first two levels of the dungeon. Second, you can fill up your magic completely if you find the hidden green potion in the second level.
* In ''[[
* ''[[
* ''[[Magna Carta 2]]'' allows you to [[Bribing Your Way to Victory|buy a complete collection of gag weapons for the small price of 400MS]]. Not only are these weapons given to you (almost) straight away, but they're the most powerful weapons in the game and will destroy any semblance of challenge right up until the final boss.
* In ''[[Grandia (
* In the SNES version of ''[[Ys
* In [[Record of Agarest War]], there's a means of getting this without [[Bribing Your Way to Victory|DLC]]. Simply save up 250 TP, and buy 10 Vessels of Life from the Adventurer's Guild. Grab the title...and then sell them all. You now have 250,000 gold as early as Generation 1, and can easily get a few other titles with ease...and 3 pieces of Mithral. And the smithing guide for Mithral gear, which in turn means that you can create a few Mithral items as soon as Platinum gear is available. A bit of a late example, but it helps with trashing late Generation 2/Early Generation 3. Some of the actual items from the Adventurer's Guild can be this as well, provided you save up for them in lieu of manuals.
** In terms of characters, there's the [[Decoy Protagonist|first generation protagonist]] Leonhardt Raglen. Once you get him to level 10, he gets his first Willpower: Unleash All. What this does is that by having him at 25% HP or less, he gets a ''massive'' boost to his attack, defense, magic, and magic defense. Needless to say, any boss battle consists of having Leo killed (or at 25% HP), have an [[Limit Break|EX Skill]] handy and watch the fireworks. After his generation though, you lose him and you get his replacement, his son Ladius until you can find a Forbidden Tome to revive Leo.
* This is a later example, but ''[[Strange Journey]]'' has Black Frost and Frost Ace, both of which have no weakness and spells that demons of their level shouldn't have; namely, ''third-tier ice attacks and a [[Total Party Kill]]''. You can get them both as early as Delphinus if your level's high enough; having both of them only requires you to be at level 34 and having 5 specific demons in your party, which the game is generous enough to tell you.
** Unlocking the fusion for Frost Ace, which can be done a little earlier, gives you an extra
* In ''[[Touhou|The Genius Of Sappheiros]]'', it is possible to recruit Byakuren and Mokou, normally the last two characters unlocked, before starting Chapter One. Head to the Myouren Shrine and wait for an hour (of real time) to get Byakuren, and go to the Bamboo Forest Of The Lost and enter the [[Konami Code]] to trigger Mokou's arrival. Having five characters plus a commander makes the first handful of chapters much easier.
* ''[[Phantasy Star IV]]'' has this in the form of its [[Combination Attack|combo system]]. Set up a macro to use the techniques [[Kill It
* ''[[Hyperdimension Neptunia]]'' has dungeons ranging from level 1 to up to level 1000. There's nothing stopping you from going into a high level dungeon with a lot of care and grabbing a powerful weapon very early. There's also no level system with equipment so there's no reason not to equip it.
* In ''[[
** By using glitches to skip recruiting Mia and her Djinni and acquire the rest of the Djinn normally, you can use nine-Djinn classes (normally unattainable until TLA's endgame) in the first game. [[Curb Stomp Battle|Fusion Dragon didn't know what hit it/them.]]
** In ''[[Golden Sun: Dark Dawn]]'', there's an item acquired about a third of the way through the game called the Ice Queen Gem, which enables all stages of the Cold Snap Psynergy, including its pricy-but-powerful final form, Frostbite. Rief, otherwise despised for his [[Crippling Overspecialization]], has a large enough Psy pool even at low levels to just ''spam'' Frostbite on everything, up until darned near the end of the game when weapons outclass Psynergy altogether.
* ''[[Might and Magic]] VI'' actually has one as an intended feature. In the starting town of the game, you can find a hidden fly spell scroll, in the wall of one of the town's buildings, which you can use to fly atop another building, which, in turn, features a hidden portal to another map (Dragonsand), which is filled with the toughest foes of the entire game: dragons. This portal places you near the shrine of the gods, which greatly ups your stats (you can normally access the area, with extensive travelling through dangerous territories). It's not gamebreaking but it gives you a fair advantage to make things much easier, at least at the very beginning.
** ''Might and Magic VII'' gives you the opportunity to kill a dragon, in the first map of the game. You can either do it with a spell staff, which you can conveniently accept from one of the peasants (although this has implications, later on) or you can go by the process of exploiting the AI and employ the tactic of shoot and hide. This is a freakishly time-consuming process but dragons give of the best loot. Given the fact that you can multiloot the dragon, you can outfit your entire party with the best gear in the land!
* ''[[The Elder Scrolls II
* In ''[[The Elder Scrolls]] III: [[Morrowind]]'' it is possible to get one of the most powerful swords in the game with a little swimming, a little gold and a lot of waiting.
** In the town Balmora, you can easily steal a magical ebony broadsword by jumping * just* out of line of sight of a nearby guard. So, you can have a very powerful weapon only minutes after character creation!
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** ''Morrowind'', featured a very easily stolen Grand Soul Gem with the soul of a daedra in it in the Mages Guild of the second town. It could be used to either create a perma-enchanted item (provided you also had piles of cash), or alternatively was worth 50.000 gold by itself. Two catches however : no merchant in the world had that much cash on him (but that could be circumvented through outside-the-box bartering) and, more importantly, because of the way the "stolen" flag worked in that game, stealing that gem flagged ALL Grand Soul Gems as stolen, meaning you could later lose all of those you earned honestly just by talking to a guard.
** In ''Morrowind'' the amount of easily obtainable magic rings you can pick up just after the start of the game can also help make early levels a breeze. Denstagmer's Ring gives you 30% resistance to Fire, Ice and Shock. Mentor's Ring boosts your Intellegence and Willpower by 10 and the Ring of Phynaster grants 20% resistance to Poison, Magicka and Shock. All of them can be found in caves just outside of towns and are not too badly guarded.
** And of course, there are wonders of [[Game Breaker|Alchemy]], being able to cyclically boost your ability to make better and better potions right at the start of the game, culminating in utter unstoppability
* Spellcrafting and object-enchanting abilities in ''[[The Elder Scrolls]] IV: [[Oblivion]]'' can be exploited by low-level characters to craft [[One-Hit Kill]] weapons and highly unbalancing spells.
** In ''Oblivion'' it's possible to get one of the strongest swords (if not the strongest) in the game very early. It's held by a very strong NPC and it would normally require an intense battle with her to get it, but all one really has to do is attack her, and then hop on a horse and lure her to the nearest city and let the guards kill her for you.
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** Also, by completing an early Main Storyline quest, you are made Thane of Whiterun and given Lydia as a Housecarl. She serves rather impressively as a melee tank and can be relied on to deal with troublesome foes.
** The Mace Of Molag Baal is the only Daedric item who's quest you can literally initiate at level one and have an expectation of completing before level 5. It's enchantments aren't very notable, barring the ever useful soul trap, but that's not what makes it a nuke. It's raw physical attack with no upgrades is on par with a base Ebony weapon, and while you won't be able to improve it's base attack until you have smithing at level 60, it's still plenty powerful, and armor enchants to boost attack damage will still work to boost it. Plus, with the perks that allow maces to ignore enemy defenses, this makes it an incredibly useful weapon until you can make your own ebony and daedric weapons.
** The Oghma Infinitum can be [[Good Bad Bugs|exploited]] into an unintentional
* ''[[
** Also, in the section just outside Candlekeep, to the north, you usually will "randomly" meet Drizzt and a party of his friends. By saving the game here and having Imoen attempt to pickpocket him successfully before he exits the screen you could end up with BOTH of Drizzt's +5 named artifact scimitars!
** ''Baldur's Gate'' also featured Ankheg-infested farmland in the map just north of the first real haven of the game. Ankhegs being worth quite a chunk of XP, but being correspondingly deadly, a patient and/or lucky player could gain a few levels in short order. You can also sell the ankheg shells for gobs of cash and have good armor crafted from them. though you would need gobs of cash for the latter. All you have to do is avoid the ankheg attacks, which are slow but virtually [[One-Hit Kill|One Hit Kills]] at low
*** A better way to get a ton of XP early was to buy a Scroll of Protection From Petrification and then go kill the basilisks near one of the early towns. They gave about 7000 XP each and were fairly trivial as long as you couldn't be turned to stone. If you wanted to solo the game, you could gain a number of levels very quickly this way.
** Algernon's Cape grants the use of an at-will, instant-cast, virtually-unlimited-ammo Charm spell to a first or second level PC five minutes into the game through a ridiculously easy pickpocket or NPC kill (approximately 4 HP) - yeah, that's a game nuker. An easter egg, to be sure, and serious players who wanted to enjoy the game wouldn't use it, but still. There's nothing quite like turning an enemy party against itself. You could win the whole game with one character, never having to raise a fist. Of course, no kill XP, but then that's what quest completion XP is for.
** A bit less extreme, but there are a few [[Pixel Hunt|really well hidden]] secret containers in early maps. The first map after out from Candlekeep has a diamond, worth a good 500 gold; the Lion's Road map has a ''+ 1 ring of protection''; the Friendly Arm inn has a ring which doubles the wearer's first-level spell slots if they're a wizard; and though not precisely early, Nashkel still takes place in the first act and has half-weight ''+ 2 plate mail''.
* In ''[[
** With a little luck you can get the lich in the Dancing Crane to waste its spells. Send a single character with a Cloak of Non-Detection and some invisibility item in first. Wait until the lich cast Time Stop and Meteor Swarm then go invisible and exit the room. Wait around for awhile and the lich's protective spells will expire making him killable even for an unleveled party.
*** Aside from the nice XP (no lich in the game gives less than 22,000) ,the lich's loot includes Daystar a sword with that lets you cast Sunbeam, a high level spell which nukes Undead ''en masse''...and Undead are among the most common enemies in the game.
** There is also an incredibly easy exploit one can use to get more or less infinite money using nothing but a potion and a gem. First, go into your inventory and drink a potion that isn't in a quickslot. Then, without leaving the inventory screen, swap the potion with a single gemstone. Leave the inventory and unpause. Your character will appear to use an item, but nothing will happen. If you go back into your inventory, you'll notice the "1" in the gem's icon has disappeared. Do the process again and the game's math engine will have an aneurysm. You can now sell your sixty five thousand (!!!) gems for more money than you could ever possibly spend. Enjoy.
** The easiest way to level is located within the city that is under siege by giants. Go up the ramparts where soldiers are shooting arrows and getting killed, though your own characters are safe from harm there. Equip any infinite arrows/bolts items you have at your disposal and go into your character scripts menu. Set any character that has a bow/crossbow with unlimited ammunition to aggressive/ranged attack, and anyone else to doing nothing. Those characters will be able to kill giants unopposed, and there is no limit to how many you can kill. Go watch a movie while your characters earn enough XP to reach max level.
* In ''[[Fable
** An even faster way to gain money is by exploiting the game's economy, specifically the "Buy/Sell Maximum" buttons. Merchants in ''Fable'' adjust the price of an item based on how many of them they have in their inventory at the moment, without taking into account how many you're buying or selling. Gather a few dozen of any item, then sell them to a merchant all at once. The merchant now has many of them, so he sells them low. Buy them for a song. Now he has none, so he buys them high. Sell them for huge profit. Repeat until sufficiently wealthy.
** Compounding the ridiculous simplicity of getting gold here is the fact that the Slow Time spell affects the timer in the game, meaning that you would have to be in a coma to fail at the game.
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** There's also Wellow's Pickhammer, which you can get literally in the first 30 minutes of the game if you know what you're doing. It has about four times the damage of anything you can afford when you start the game, and remains the best weapon up to and including the Arena quest, which is about two-thirds of the way through the game. All you have to do to get it is murder one or two people in front of the Demon Door guarding it...or just eat 15 or so crunchy chicks.
** If one feels like it, it is entirely possible to get a character fully decked out in the best purchasable arms and armor before even completing the first quest. With a little more time, you can even go into this quest with a fully maximized character.
** In ''[[
** In ''[[
* In ''[[Gothic|Gothic 3]]'', after you gain control of the unnamed hero, you had the opportunity to buy a flaming sword for a ridiculously low price. This could be accomplished after rescuing a blacksmith (he's the one selling it). This was unfortunately fixed in a patch.
* In ''[[Neverwinter Nights]]'' you had the option of using a created character in a character battles optional side-game. However one of these arena's required level 10 characters or higher, and if you were less than that, it would automatically increase your level to level 10. So create a 1st level character, import, export and then load him into the game and you'd begin the game with 10 levels ready to go.
** In Hordes of the Underdark, the player was immediately given enough XP to hit level 15. Which could be used in the same fashion. Almost as egregious as making a module consisting entirely of user-created ubergear and weak monsters with a massive challenge rating, giving XP through the nose. Not that anyone would ever do this.
** You could easily make a custom module that did nothing but shot you up to an arbitrary level and gave you great gear. The developers were canny enough to prevent you from linking a script to any of these items to do ''whatever you wanted'', although those of us who wanted this power for good, not evil, were bummed. By far the worst, though, was the [[Game Breaker|Appraise skill]]. It decreased the amount you paid for items from vendors and increased how much they'd give you for 'em. If you had enough Appraise skill (which was by no means easy, but quite possible) you could make money by buying and selling an item ''ad nauseum''.
** ''[[
* Not quite a nuke but useful early game. In ''[[The Dark Spire]]'', from the tower entrance go north 6, east 9, south 4. You should be in front of a locked door. Save, open it, follow very short path to basement. Once there go north 1, west 2, south 1 and face the east wall. Behind a secret door you find a very good weapon you normally can't obtain for another 25% of the game or so. Careful though, as the enemies in the basement can easily annihilate you, especially if you're heading here at game start. Save anywhere comes in handy here.
* In ''[[Sudeki]]'', a sufficiently savvy or even just sufficiently ''nosy'' player can find all four characters' ultimate weapons well before the halfway point of the game. (They also tend to end up overleveled, thanks to one weapon requiring completion of [[That One Sidequest]] which requires 21 of a rare [[Randomly Drops|randomly dropped piece of loot]].)
* ''[[Secret of Evermore]]'' features a glitch which can be exploited for Disc One Nukedom-if you save the game while a character is buffed and quit, when you start the game again you'll still be buffed, but your actual stats will be at their unbuffed level. Since the game still thinks you're buffed, when the buff wears off it'll reduce your stat...and if it's low enough, it'll wrap around to be super high, and you'll be able to one-shot almost anything. Balancing this is the fact that if you level up your stats will increase as normal, meaning if you're not careful you could wind up with stats even ''lower'' than your starting baseline.
* There happens to be a fellow running a shop in a secret underground passage in the Docks district of Kirkwall in ''[[Dragon Age II]]'' who sells a ridiculously powerful bow for a reasonable price in the second chapter. Makes the game a lot easier, actually. Also, all you have to do to receive Hanlon's Razor, easily the best greatsword until Act II, is to beat the demo. Most of the DLC equipment and unlockable Extra equipment is this as well. Items such as the Staff of Parlathan, which can be obtained by registering for the newsletter, are powerful in Act I but are eventually outclassed in Act II. One exception is
* ''[[Dragon Age Origins]]'' has similar items. Completing (or simply having, in some cases) the various DLC packs gives you one of the better two-handed weapons, a pretty-good massive chestpiece, the best longbow, the best mace, a decent longsword, the second-best amulet, the best light armor, the best mage robes, and two great belts. The best mace can also be sold for 339 gold (or even more, if you're a Dwarf Noble) - enough to buy any two Cash Gated items. You get these items in your inventory right at the start of the game.
** Not to mention the two new Talents you can gain by drinking the diablery potion in the ''Warden's Keep'' DLC. The Mage's are particularly
* Lord of the Rings: The Third Age makes it possible, if insanely tedious, to grind ability points in single battles, purely by focusing on defensive abilities throughout combat, and healing whenever necessary- or not, since Berethor's awesome Leadership party buffs can regenerate health and power points. What follows is Berethor using a speed buff for more turns before enemy turns, followed by an action point regeneration buff, followed by a hit point regeneration buff- rinse and repeat until you have everything you need.
* In ''[[Mass Effect 1]]'', on Eden Prime, you can encounter some colonists hiding from the geth. If you talk to them, they reveal they have some smuggled weapons. You can confiscate a pistol from them, which turns out to be powerful enough to last you for quite a while.
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*** Similarly, the N7 Eagle combines the high fire rate and light weight of a burst fire SMG with the accuracy of a pistol.
* In ''[[Task Maker]]'' for the Mac, you're given an Ethereal Potion in the (optional) Tutorial level. It can either be sold for a high price to a shop, or used to phase through a wall and access a passageway with ''three'' of the most powerful weapons in the game — and while one of the three is in the same chamber as some highly powerful monsters, they will spawn far enough away for you to grab it without being hit.
* ''[[Lust Grimm]]'':
** The Paralyze skill, which normally has a medium probability of paralyzing an enemy for a few turns. The enemies in Hades Coast are ten to twenty levels higher than you when you first get access to the area, but they are all weak to paralysis and will be hit 100% of the time. This allows you to defeat them at no risk, gaining levels at an incredible rate.
** The Embrace skill is less powerful but obtained earlier than Paralyze. When used, it has a 100% chance of debuffing the opponent's stats and a low chance of inflicting other status effects (including ecstasy, which is functionally equivalent to paralysis). However, if you use it on an enemy twice the debuffs ''stack''. This similarly allows you to fight powerful enemies early on, though it requires more strategy since you can't completely shut them down like you can do with Paralyze.
* [[The Spiffing Brit]] has demonstrated on his [[YouTube]] channel how a player can vastly overpower a starting character in games like ''[[The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim]]'' and ''[[Elden Ring]]'' simply by knowing [[Sequence Breaking|the right places in the game to visit early on]].
== Shoot Em Up ==
* A rare [[Shoot'Em Up]] example: The [[Kill It
* An early Wave in old-school PC shoot-em-up ''[[
* The Tektite Blaster (T-Braster) in [[Gaiares]], which has a bit of a [[Guide Dang It]] on how to get it (Fire the TOZ 6 times, missing all of them, and then capture an enemy weapon with the 7th TOZ shot).
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* ''[[Mechwarrior]] 3'' had a salvage system which allowed you to get just about any enemy mech, provided you shot one of it's leg off (and anything could be equipped on any mech). As a result, you could end up with a 75 ton mech after mission 4 (that one is canonic, according to the novelization), and '''2''' 100 ton mechs after mission 8.
* ''[[Mechwarrior]] 4 Mercenaries'' features a gladiator arena, where you can play 24 missions very early on. When you get out, you have enough money to buy a few of the best mechs on the market, and the in-game time has advanced enough for them to be available.
* ''[[
** In the original ''[[
* In the first two ''[[Naval Ops]]'' games, blueprints for advanced ships (as in guided missile destroyers when the enemies are still using WWII tech) can be obtained fairly early on with the right research and come with weapons and auxiliary systems that would not be normally obtained until much later. Advanced anti-sub missiles for your battleship are especially welcome.
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* EA Sports is notorious for this
** In the ''NHL'' series, EA frequently inserts a Make-a-Wish kid as a free agent with extremely good stats and little to no salary demands. In ''09'' it was Sabrina Ladha, a 95 Overall goalie who wanted only $500k a year, a pittance. Virtually any team could become a Stanley Cup contender by picking her up and using their existing goalie and salary cap room as trade bait. And since she was a pre-teen, she'd be kicking ass for decades.
** ''[[
*** ''Madden'' games also have "money plays" — plays which will always work against even an All-Madden level computer-controlled team for a guaranteed five yards, at least. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXEYAiVp3Hg Here's an example play from Madden 10].
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== Tabletop Games ==
* In [[White Wolf]]'s ''[[Exalted]]'' RPG, it is entirely possible to create a character capable of hitting anyone, aywhere, with the spell "Total Annihilation". Or how about being able to create a curse that kills off everyone who falls within a broad category - say, humans? Or any number of combinations of spells, charms, artefacts and/or backgrounds that will make your character able to do one thing, and one thing only - but that thing will most likely involve a LOT of pain for whoever gets hit. In fact, most of the effort when creating a character goes into resisting the urge to crank up your favourite attack before you even begin playing.
* [[
** The game has plenty of more mundane examples and in fact a number of mechanics have been used at various times with low level survivability in mind. But third edition had some doozies, not the least of which was Haste, which was a result of the dev team not understanding the change in action economy from 2nd edition to 3rd, allowing wizards to cast two spells per round without suffering the second edition drawback of aging more rapidly (which itself could be mitigated somewhat by playing an elf but 3rd edition made that part unnecessary.) Of course the trade off is you blow through your spells that much faster but you can usually talk your party into letting you recoup after an intense battle.
== Third Person Shooter ==
* In ''[[
* An intrepid player can get a distressing amount of equipment within the first missions of the ''[[Crusader:
* ''[[Gotcha Force]]'' has the Barrier Girl. She has a fairly quickly charging normal attack, a melee attack that drills opponents (so it does several rapid hits, good for juggling), and a fairly quick charged shot that she can use if the situation warrants. All of that would make her decent if not spectacular, except for the "barrier" part of her name. Said barrier is a shield that will simply absorb a decent amount of damage, and can be redeployed. Granted, it takes a while (unless [[Super Mode|Power Burst]] is active) for said barrier to recharge, but Barrier Girl is one of the more agile combatants - she's quick enough that she can strafe opponents without taking damage even without the shield. Even the wonky AI can abuse her ability to tank unless the player abuses the only early attacks that can chip the shield quickly (drilling attacks... like the one a Barrier Girl does in melee), and the computer can't handle them without breaking out the very powerful opponents using a [[Wave Motion Gun]] or a [[
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** That's still lots of grinding, and still somewhat ineffectual as it only carries you to about episode 5 or 6 depending upon the amount of people you did get to 20. It's much easier to abuse the random dungeons in ''[[Phantom Brave]]'', mostly due to the entire fusion system. Getting to level 100 takes only a couple hours if you know what you're doing with your weapons, and in fact in that time you can also create a weapon that will demolish everyone up to and including the final boss, as once you have about level 70 or 80 and a good beefed-up weapon, you can pop a 'bad' title on a level 400-500 dungeon, stealing high mana items with your bottlemail, and supercharge that weapon to be totally invincible. Just remember to stay away from those fraggin' weapon-stealing mushrooms! (Or select a weapon whose final abilities have insanely large areas of effect to kill them all at once, like a bomb, egg, or vase. RES weapons work the best as they can complement Marona's own gigantic RES stat which renders her nigh-invulnerable to damage.) Also you gain much more experience for tilted-level kills, the only grinding necessary in the game is for facing down the final three EX bosses and building up the amount of attacks you can do. (Instead of SP your amount of attacks is tied to weapon experience level.) But with a + 28000ATK weapon in the first few hours of the game, who needs that! (At least to complete the initial game)
** The level 20 thing is a relatively small bonus, though, in comparision to having the funds to buy end-game quality equipment before the first map. Not to mention the the Muscle Star, Chaos Orb, and Testament, which will send the Attack, Magic, HP, and SP of whoever equips all three that early on through the roof, which makes all grinding until level 50 or so ridiculously easy. And it takes only about six promotion exams per chartacter to get that grinding over with, so it doesn't take ''that'' much time.
** Pleinair, in the [[Updated Rerelease|DS version]], is a [[Double Subversion]], as she can only be persuaded to join you upon starting up a [[New Game
*** In the PSP version of Disgaea 2, the game just gives you a level 100 Pleinair at the start of a new game if you've downloaded the free DLC pack she comes in. You can then use Pleinair to easily beat level 100 Sapphire (also a free DLC download) and have her join as well. Presumably this could be done with paid DLC characters as well.
*** The PC version nerfs Pleinar, but still game breaks in a different way, because you get her and all the other DLC characters from the PSP version at level 1 for free without needing to fight them, as well as some extra characters. Many still have obscenely powerful special skills even at Level 1, and with some clever grinding early on you can still turn them into this trope, it just takes longer since they start at Level 1.
** ''Disgaea'' has yet another easily abuseable method of game breaking. Go to the item world until you find one with an invincible geo panel. Level up Laharl's spear mastery to
** The second one has a more blatant example. One of the levels about a third of the way through pits you against a squad of enemies sitting on effect panels that level them up by 10% of their current level every turn. It takes a little mindless, repetitive turn ending, but after a while they get all the way up to the max level of 9999, starting at about 10. Because you can capture any monster that's at most 2-3x the level of your highest level character, this allows you to quickly build up to having a team of these 9999 level monsters within five hours of starting the game. By comparison, the final boss of the main story is level 90. The PSP version patched out this exploit in 2 ways. The first by not allowing you capture any monsters that you can't create, the second by not allowing you to capture anything whose level is higher than your highest
*** But wait, there's more. At the end of the third chapter, you are thrown into a [[Hopeless Boss Fight]] against an enemy who is on average one hundred times your current level, with the gear to show for it. Typically, you would now be resigning yourself to getting mercilessly ground into pixellated paste or trying to line up the odd [[Fastball Special]] maneuver to nab a few treasure chests. However, due to the way the item stealing probabilities are calculated, even the most basic stealing item used by the most recently-generated thief will always, always, always have a 1% chance to steal one (and only one) item from said opponent. Now, the item to go for here is something called a Testament. It gives any character equipped with it a whopping 200 points in every single stat, apart from health, which gets twice that bonus. At a time when your average attack stat is roughly 100. Add to that the fact that character equip multipliers add another ten percent at least on top of that, and you have yourself a character whose
*** And then, coming off that honking stat jack, we have the Item World.
* Speaking of ''[[Phantom Brave]]'', it's possible to get a Bottle Mail (a phantom that easily "steals" items it is confined into) as soon as you start a new game and create enough characters to make a human pyramid so that Ash can reach the highest point on the map (this also earns his first Changebook that allows for Phantom Brave's spin on the Reincarnation ability that resets a character level to 1 with stat bonuses equal to the number of levels he gained before). It takes only a little bit of grinding after that to start exploiting random dungeons to farm items, mana, money, and titles.
** Then there's the
* In ''[[Fire Emblem:
** Joshua can also be leveled up in the arena fairly easily. However, the usefulness of this is tempered by the fact that you have no class-changing items at this time and won't be getting a Hero Crest until Chapter 9. Of course, you're about to get a Guiding Ring, and sending Seth and Joshua into the arena so many times is bound to provide plenty of healing opportunities...and you can certainly afford to continually restock your healers with more staves...yeah, that's right, you can have a Bishop by the start of Chapter 6. As in, the class that absolutely ''pwns'' all of the monster enemies. This is totally broken.
** You can pull the exact same stunt in Fire Emblem 7, but thanks to a ''good bad bug'' involving Ninian, you can also have your character possess a godly defense boost virtually assuring they will never actually die in the arena.
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*** Why bother paying attention to the price? If you pay the gatekeeper, and don't like your chances against the opponent they put you with, hard reset the game. When you turn it back on, you're taken to the last thing that happened before you went into the arena. Enter the aren and you'll receive the same offer; turn it down and enter the arena again. You'll be presented with a new enemy to fight, probably one preferable to the one you just turned down (though not always). Repeat as many times as necessary to get a favorable opponent (but remember, if you didn't like the enemy you got after turning down the first offer, you'll have to turn down two offers next time, and so on). The gamble of the arena almost completely disappears.
** The "split story" nature of ''[[Fire Emblem Jugdral|Fire Emblem 4]]'' makes for an interesting one. The second half of the game begins at Chapter 6 featuring the children of the characters from the first half, and their equipment will be determined by what their same-gender parent had in their inventory at the end of Chapter 5 (except for Briggid's kids, who inherit from their opposite-gender parent instead). If Levn's son is a magic-user like his father, he'll inherit the ultimate wind magic, Holsety, as long as Levn received it near the end of Chapter 4. Tiltyu's son Arthur is a mage who arrives in Chapter ''6'', so if she was paired with Levn... On another note, [[Future Badass|Shanan]] gets the Balmung almost as soon as he joins up at the start of Chapter 7 and will be able to dodge pretty much everything due to the massive speed boost it grants, making him your premiere boss-killer until other legendary weapons are obtained.
*** Aless's Mistletain is somewhat of a [[Double Subversion]]. He arrives midway through Chapter 7, and he already has his legendary weapon, so it'll be one of your first and should kill just about anything. However, when he first arrives, it's almost a liability as it provides no bonuses to dodging or physical defense, it can't attack at range, and the AI seems to love to target Aless, not to mention the fact that since it ''will'' kill almost any enemy on the counterattack and enemies tend to come in large groups in this game, he's going to get mobbed and can easily be attacked 10-15 times in a single enemy phase. However, the final two chapters are filled to the brim with enemies that wield long-distance magic and/or Sleep staves (which in this game automatically hit if the target's magic resistance is lower than the wielder's magic), and many of the bosses are also magic-wielders, making Aless one of the most useful units in the
* In [[Super Robot Wars]] Z save your money until stage 10. Full upgrade [[Super Dimension Century Orguss|Kei's Bronco II weapons after this stage.]](upgradeing his Bronco is cheaper) When you get him back in his Orguss a few stages later, congratulations! [[Game Breaker|You now have the most powerful character in the entire game.]]
** Rand is debatably one too, and HE'S YOUR MAIN CHARACTER!
** Setsuko's route lets you get the [[Zeta Gundam|Mega Bazooka Launcher]] and [[Great Mazinger|Great Booster]] attacks MUCH earler, as well as most her early stages giving you [[Ace Pilot]] [[Zeta Gundam|Kamille]] [[Psychic Powers|Bidan]].
** In ''[[Super Robot Wars J]]'', the [[Original Generation]] are ''insanely'' powerful, especially [[Mighty Glacier|Granteed]]; you get them on the first (Toya's route) or second (Calvina's route) stage and never lose them.
* In ''[[
** [[
* ''[[Age of Wonders]] II'', courtesy of the [[Design
* ''The Crescent Hawk's Inception'' starts you off in a Chameleon training Battlemech. If you play out the story as intended, you're jumped by four Jenners and lose the 'mech, but escape with your life to begin seeking your revenge. Except that it's possible to simply run away as soon as the Jenners appear, letting you begin the game in a 50 ton Chameleon. Considering that the largest enemy 'mech you'll ever face in this game is only 35 tons, it makes you the biggest badass on the planet from the very start of the game!
* Completing the "Kurt Irving's First Mission" sidequest in ''[[Valkyria Chronicles|Valkyria Chronicles 3]]'' nets the SMG "Hilde". This mission uses its own units and is a prequel, rendering it trivial to clear regardless of game completion, but the Hidle it nets has stats appropriate for mid-game and exceptionally high range allowing the player to turn one Shocktrooper into a total powerhouse that also has the longest range of anyone that isn't a sniper. This mission was originally a pre-order bonus but is included in all copies of ''[[Updated Rerelease|Valkyria Chronicles 3 Extra Edition]]'' (the version the [[Fan Translation]] patch is for) by default and, unlike the other DLC missions in that re-release, is actually playable from the start.
== Turn Based Tactics ==
* In ''[[Jagged Alliance]]'' 2 right from the get-go you can hire the best mercs in the rooster armed with hig-end weapons. Sure, with your starting funds you can only afford a couple of days of their service, but that's enough. They'll curb stomp through the first several missions, and then you can strip them of all their fancy gear, hire some more available mercs and carry on with a substantial edge.
* In ''[[7.62: High Caliber]]'' mod ''Hard Life'' the government soldiers who attack you in the first two opening missions carry FAL rifles in poor condition with their selector switch removed and shoot underpowered ammo that can't cycle the action reliably or do the harm a battle rifle should. Nine "[[Fan Nickname|shitFAL]]" (the first two quests give more than enough) can be merged into a good version of the FAL by obtaining a FAL manual (the base quartermaster will give one for free if you ask what the hell is with the rifle you found) and cleaning kit (one of your first allies comes with one) while the ammo can be restored to good condition by cannibalizing cartridges at a 3 to 1 rate. A GudFAL will be a very solid weapon for the first leg of the game when everyone carries rusty lowest bidder AKs, hunting shotguns and broken WW2 submachineguns.
== Wide Open Sandbox ==
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** The off-track betting place can serve a similar purpose if you bet on the horse with the longest odds and abuse the save/reload system. Similarly, the drug-trading mini-game in ''[[Chinatown Wars]]'' can effectively render the in-game economy meaningless after a good hour or so of savvy trading.
** If you are pretty good at losing wanted ratings you can go to the UN building in [[Grand Theft Auto IV|GTA4]] and kill the guards to aquire their M4s long before they are made available in the game. Also works with getting the last available weapon, the Combat Pistol - attack a gun dealer and take it. Or if you'd rather play it safe, the Combat Pistol and M4 (as well as all other weapons with the exception of the Rocket Launcher) can be picked up at various locations even on the first open islands.
* ''[[
* ''[[Crackdown]]'' has two major Disc...erm...Island One Nukes. First off, [[Bribing Your Way to Victory|buying the DLC]] gives your character some ridiclously powerful weapons accessible at any time - including your first loadout screen. However, you can also get the most powerful weapons in the game by driving to the third island first and killing basic street thugs that have them - once you reach a Supply Point with them in hand, they're yours for the rest of the now significantly easier game.
** Blind luck can favor you as well. I got the best assault rifle(The Harlington HMG-90) in the game off one of the beginning enemies in the first island. Made the entire game a lot easier.
* In ''[[The Godfather (
** The sequel has [[Broken Bridge]] preventing you from getting the best henchmen and weapons early on, but you can still earn the cash needed to fully upgrade yourself not far from the start.
* ''[[Saints Row]]'' 2 has 2 possible disc one nukes. As soon as you get your first crib it's possible to store any ground vehicle at it and be able to retrieve it whenever you want even if it's destroyed. It's easy to get a high wanted level and steal an APC with a machine gun mounted on it then use it for the rest of the game. The second Disk One Nuke can be gotten as soon as you have your hideout. The hideout has a helipad on it and through a combination of skill, luck, and persistence it's possible to jump out of your own helicopter and parachute onto a SWAT attack helicopter that comes for you when you're at the highest wanted level. If done properly you can enter the SWAT attack helicopter and store it at your helipad where it can be retrieved later. The attack helicopter's secondary fire is laser guided/homing missiles that make any combat where it's usable ridiculously easy.
** Or, for the more feeble among you, simply head to the top of the Police Station and nick one. They don't always spawn though.
** Side quests that gives you infinite ammo perks. Doesn't really matter which one. Pick one that's the easiest.
* ''[[Saints Row]]'' 3 follows similar suit. Once you gain a garage, and access back to the National Guard Depot, you can enter the depot, and hang around until you gain enough wanted stars to spawn tanks, you can then steal the tank and take it to a garage. In Saints Row 3, you also have the option of using your own vehicle on some of the side-missions, which means you can do Drug Runs in tanks, operating the mounted machine gun (or laser gun, at later tanks) while the dealer drives around the city in the tank.
** Likewise, once you gain access to a HQ with a helipad, you can raid the National Guard depot again for armed helicopters.
* Because of random enemy equipment generation and a complete aversion of [[Unusable Enemy Equipment]], ''[[Mount
* ''[[Terraria]]'' has loads of them. Depending on world size, you could find iron, silver, maybe even gold as soon as you spawn. There's also a small amount of demonite that can be found throughout the world. Another way to nuke is to join any multiplayer server. Someone in the server WILL be either fighting a boss (who usually drop loads of items used in the making of the third best metal armor, or some better weapons/tools) or just giving out random things. One other way to nuke is to head to the dungeon. You usually have to drop down a few feet before you're really in trouble, so stay up in the lobby. You might find anything between a water candle (which are common), a water bolt (a pretty cool spell), or even a chest with dungeon loot.
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