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Metal Slime (view source)

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Most of the time, the enemy will give the reward for its defeat, making the challenge to kill it before it escapes. A variation is an enemy that [[Video Game Stealing|is lucrative to steal from]]--in this case, the issue could be that the enemy gets itself killed before you have a chance to relieve it of its [[Infinity-1 Sword]] or [[Rare Candy]].
 
Assuming it's not of the "strip it bare before it dies" variant, there are many ways a [[Metal Slime]] can be difficult to kill. If the enemy has a very high chance of escaping, [[Luck -Based Mission|it may be a feat to take action against it at all]]. It could also have high defenses, such as a 98% chance to dodge attacks, or defense power so high it reduces all your attacks to [[Scratch Damage]]. Alternately, some enemies can disable your party's attacks outright, leaving the player with no way to take effective actions against it. Depending on the combat system used, there may be methods of survival that are even more unusual, of course.
 
A [[Metal Slime]] is a specific [[Sub -Trope|variant]] of the [[Goddamned Bats]]--it is more annoying than deadly.<ref>When you think about it, this is because the "standard" [[Metal Slime]] typically act in a relatively intelligent fashion, realizing that they are outclassed and fleeing with both their valuables and their lives.</ref> Though most [[Metal Slime|Metal Slimes]] lack significant offensive output, enemies are only excluded from this trope due to power level if they pose a significant threat to a party at the appropriate [[Character Level|level]] for the zone.
 
Given the nature of the [[Metal Slime]], it can be a major target for players working on an [[Elite Tweak]] or [[Hundred -Percent Completion]]. If an item/cash-type [[Metal Slime]] ends up having an esoteric weakness that gives the player a decent chance of killing it (or if the rewards are ''just that good''<ref>say, a [[Disc One Nuke]]</ref>), it can also become a [[Pinata Enemy]].
 
This trope is named after the Metal Slime from the ''[[Dragon Quest (Video Game)|Dragon Quest]]'' series. Despite being most common in [[RPG|RPGs]], a [[Metal Slime]] can appear in games of other genres. Not to be confused with a [[Metal Slug]], although finding ''those'' is a [[There Is No Kill Like Overkill|fun reward in and of itself]].
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* The Mini Smiles in ''[[Killer 7]]'' fly at you at high speed. If they hit, they explode and temporarily blind you. Shooting red ones gives you a great deal of Thick Blood (which you use to power up), and shooting a yellow one heals you fully. The Camellia Smiles, likewise, run away as soon as they're shot and explode a few seconds later; killing them before they escape (which requires hitting their [[For Massive Damage|weak spot]] or a ''very'' fast character) rewards you with large amounts of Thick Blood.
* The Takkuri in ''[[Majoras Mask]]'', which drops a lot of money, but may decide to steal one of your items and run away with it, forcing you to wait until nighttime and buy it back from its owner. Yeah.
** The game also crosses this with [[Die, Chair, Die!]] in the Keaton nests, where you can destroy a hexagon of seven shrubs, one green rupee for the first six and one red rupee for the last. The [[Metal Slime]] part comes in where they start running away as soon as you attack the first one, and are just barely too far apart to get in one sweep of the [[Spin Attack]] before you get the final sword upgrade, and bombing them requires very careful placement of the explosive.
* ''[[Castlevania Aria of Sorrow]]'' had the Tsuchinoko, which would flee as soon as you entered the room about 90% of the time. If you didn't kill it fast enough, it would flee anyways. Compounding this is the soul it [[Randomly Drops]] which is, of course, needed for [[One Hundred Percent Completion]]. Making it better: Tsuchinoko Soul decreases the buying cost of items, including the ludicrously expensive accessory that makes Souls easier to get. So, um, you can grind money for the Soul Eater Ring to make it easier to get Tsuchinoko, or you can camp Tsuchinoko to make it easier to get the Soul Eater Ring.
** And, of course, Tsuchinoko requires that you go back into a boss room, which you have no reason to do. And it doesn't always show up, either, potentially making this a [[Guide Dang It]].
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** ''[[Order of Ecclesia]]'' has the Sasquatch (which is basically the same monster mentioned above). Once it sees you, it panics and leaps into the background. Getting a picture of it for a villager mission is easy enough, but killing it for the Bestiary is another story.
* In the Capcom-produced ''Zelda'' games (''[[The Legend of Zelda Oracle Games (Video Game)|The Legend of Zelda Oracle Games]],'' and ''[[The Legend of Zelda the Minish Cap (Video Game)|The Legend of Zelda the Minish Cap]]'') there are extremely rare "Golden" versions of regular enemies, which not only have far more HP than regular enemies, but also move at crazy speeds. They only appear after certain events--but when defeated, they drop buckets of Rupees. They also appear in ''[[Freshly Picked Tingles Rosy Rupee Land]]''.
** In ''[[The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (Video Game)|The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time]]'', one of the sidequests involves you searching the whole of Hyrule Field for Big Poes. You can only find each of them in ''very'' specific spots, you have to be riding [[Powerup Mount|Epona]], and you have all of 5 seconds to kill them with arrows before they vanish and you have to try again. Hope your aim is good.
 
== [[Driving Game]] ==
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* The ''[[Pokémon]]'' series has no true Metal Slimes, but it does have a number of Mons that have the ability to escape from battle before you can capture them:
** The Abra species are commonly encountered and have fairly high catch rates (comparable to [[Com Mons]], in fact), but their sole combat skill is to Teleport out, ending the battle on turn one. Unless you can put it to [[Standard Status Effects|Sleep]] before this or use a skill or ability to block its escape attempts (Mean Look, Arena Trap, etc.), you can only attempt to catch it at full health before it runs off. Abra also comes with a lesser extent of [[Magikarp Power]], learning no actual ''attacks'' without the aid of a TM (Teleport being their only naturally learned move) until it evolves into [[Glass Cannon|Kadabra]].
** All Pokemon encountered in the Safari Zone can flee from battle at any time, and your only options besides attempting to snag them at full health are to throw bait (making them stick around, but more difficult to catch) or rocks/mud (making them easier to catch, but more likely to flee). This goes double for ones like Chansey, which are rare encounters ''even in the Safari Zone'', and have a low base catch rate -- just like the Pokedex entry says, catching one successfully is a [[Luck -Based Mission]]. At least some of them can be caught in non-Safari areas, where you can wear them down and capture them normally. The first generation's [[Good Bad Bugs|Missingno glitch]] could also be exploited to encounter Safari Pokemon in normal battles.
** Starting in [[Pokémon Gold and Silver (Video Game)|Generation II]], some legendary Pokemon roam the region, and when encountered, they [[Cowardly Boss|immediately flee from battle]]. However, their HP doesn't regenerate between battles, so catching one involves wearing them down through repeated encounters.
*** When hunting for Entei, Raikou, or Suicune, even if you do use Mean Look to prevent them from escaping, they can just blow ''you'' out of battle with their Roar.
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* Ghosts and spirits in ''[[Wizardry (Video Game)|Wizardry]] VII'' toe the line between this and more conventional [[Demonic Spiders]], being very resistant to damage of all kinds, wielding the most devastating [[Standard Status Effects]], vanishing at the drop of a hat, and late in the game, dropping Gorror Keys, necessary for challenging the [[Bonus Boss|Bonus Bosses]]... and thus getting the best loot in the game.
* The Silver Kelolons from ''[[Lost Odyssey]]''. Give out huge amounts of XP & some fairly rare pieces for the game's [[Item Crafting]] system, but nearly always run away & have tremendous defense. Fortunately there's a trick involving the defense-ignoring spell Gamble & the Casting Support skill that allows you to waste the little fuckers just about every single time. Coupled with the fact that there's an area where the only enemies that appear are Silver Kelolons & one other type of monster & you get a relatively painless way to level your party up to obscene heights in fairly short order.
** And then there's the Diamond Kelolons in the DLC only Experimental Staff Remains. They don't run away 100% of the time, as they may choose to cast [[Exactly What It Says On the Tin|Death]] with a 3-turn charge-up first. However, that 3 turns window isn't much when they're immune to all magic and items, and complement their expected high evasion rate with a high chance to counter physical attacks, negating the damage. You can increase your chances with the Counter Seal skill, which allows a character to strike an enemy once without activating its counterattack but it remains a [[Luck -Based Mission]] trying to kill one. They're a guaranteed level up until about the mid 90's, and give the most SP in the game.
* Gold Koopeleons in the second ''[[Mario and Luigi (Video Game)|Mario & Luigi]]'' game fit this trope to a tee. There's also the Golden Beanies in the first game, which only appear in one early area of the game and actually appear to be an entirely ''different'' enemy at first, running away almost immediately after their guise is destroyed. They also drop a badge that, while seeming fairly useless at first, makes a later area of the game much easier.
** Infuriatingly, the enemy that spawns Golden Beanies appears later in the underwater area. When you kill them there, however, the Beanies (and their golden variants) just float away.
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* The Shiro Tail, a fluffy critter inhabiting the White Dragon Cave in ''[[Lunar]]: Silver Star Story Complete''. Runs away a lot, drops a rare item and a ton of EXP.
** ''Lunar: Eternal Blue'' had Ice Mongrels: two variants with each specific to a single location. Both had high dodge rates, a high tendency to run away and defense that rendered it near invulnerable to anything except the main character's sword skill attacks. The second type encountered actually gave 65534 XP divided amongst the party; if only the main character was in the party at the time (possible during the [[Playable Epilogue]]), any monsters defeated in addition to the Ice Mongrel would cause an overflow, and actually LOWER the total XP given for the battle (essentially negating the all of the XP from the Mongrel). Since levelling up never required more than 65534 XP, fighting them once powered up enough to defeat them reliably is a very efficient way to level grind.
* ''[[Dungeon Siege]] II'' has the "???" (sic), basically a high-level thief who'll teleport in when your party has acquired some great items. He'll try to steal items from you, but if you attack him quickly enough he'll drop some good items himself, and rapidly disappear. It is possible to actually kill the thief (or rather, "defeat" him by getting his [[Hit Point|hit points]] down near 0) several times during the campaign, in which case he'll drop a series of items required to unlock the [[DevelopersDeveloper's Room]], which further gives access to some [[Infinity+1 Sword|powerful ass-kicking gear]].
* ''[[Tales of Hearts (Video Game)|Tales of Hearts]]'' have Apple, Peach, and Grape Gela. Found on one island in the game. Their HP is paltry, but they have 9999 defense and tech defense. They drop perfectly normal Apple, Peach, and Grape Gels, but their ''steal'' items are stat-boosting herbs.
* ''[[Tales of Symphonia (Video Game)|Tales of Symphonia]]'' has the Bacura. "Hey, you can't fight the block thing in the mines!" Well, no, you ''can't'' fight it... in the mines. Instead, you have to fight it [[Guide Dang It|on the path by the SE Abbey, and due to their low spawn rate it helps to have a Dark Bottle active]]. It takes 1 damage from every single attack and runs away after a set amount of time. For defeating it, you get 11 to 35 Grade (depending on [[Guide Dang It|various things]]). For comparison, most enemies give you no Grade for merely defeating them (as the name implies, Grade is awarded for fighting ''well''), most bosses give you 10, and beating the game gives you a whopping 1000.
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* ''[[Star Ocean Till the End of Time]]'' has Mecha Scumbag, a more powerful version of the common Scumbag enemy that runs away when low on HP. Defeating one earns you a Battle Trophy.
* They return in ''[[Star Ocean the Last Hope]]'' as the Metal Scumbag, who can only be found once on a single floor of a single dungeon, and possibly appearing as an unexpected fifth wheel beside a group of normal enemies (there are about 30 of these on the floor and no way to guarantee which group he'll appear in)). Upon being seen, he immediately runs away. Killing him nets a boss-sized EXP increase, his Monster Jewel is capable of increasing Fol spoils by 25%, and Lymle has a Battle Trophy for killing 99 of them.
* In ''[[A Witchs Tale|A Witch's Tale]]'', all card monsters love to run away and any attack (including ancient [[Game Breaker|game breaking]] magic) will do 1 point of damage on them. [[Luck -Based Mission|Hope you score a critical hit.]] Or use one spell from [[Guide Dang It|March Hare doll]].
* The Forbiddens in ''[[Xenogears (Video Game)|Xenogears]]'' fit this trope nicely. They appear in a location that's accessible only temporarily, give you 2 turns to beat them before they break loose, and will drop Gold Nuggets or Gold Bullion if you beat them before they break loose. Oh, and they take a ton of hits to kill. About the only way they differ from a traditional [[Metal Slime]] is that once they break loose, they're actually pretty deadly.
* ''[[Dragon Quest Heroes Rocket Slime (Video Game)|Dragon Quest Heroes Rocket Slime]]'' has a few metal slimes that you have to save, but you don't fight them. There is, however, a monster called the Goody Bag. It appears in every level, albeit in very specific locations, very rarely. (There is a mid-game level where it is the only monster that appears.) It runs from you when you see it, and Elasto Blasting into it will cause it to drop money. If you can catch it and throw it back to town before it casts Zoom and warps away, do this ''30 times'', and go see it in front of its statue in the Museum, then you will have a [[Disc One Nuke]] that warps right into the enemy tank, steals the ammo, and walks back to your tank. There are other characters that do this, but this one is the best because not only is it available early, it also has the most HP of these characters and is fast. (Also, if you go to the enemy tank at the very beginning, you can sneak in as the Goody Bag sneaks out with the enemy's ammo and break the machine keeping you out, saving the trouble of bashing the barrier over and over for a few minutes.)
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[[Category:Video Game Characters]]
[[Category:Metal Slime]]
[[Category:Trope]]
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