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{{quote|"''How fortuitous! Evil doom-chicken #3 (second from the left, but otherwise indistinguishable from doom-chickens #1, 2, and 4) had a Great Big Nasty Sword of Serious Hurtfulness + 5. Funny, I didn't notice that sword anywhere on its feathery person while it was still alive. If it was so heavily armed, why didn't it use it in the fight?''"|'''Ernest Adams''', [http://www.designersnotebook.com/Columns/044_Bad_Game_Designer_3/swords044_bad_game_designer_3.htm Gamasutra.com]}}
A gameplay mechanic used principally to give a sense of reward to the players by assigning enemies a list of items you might gain if you defeat them. These items are called "drops" because the foe drops them when they die, and there's a probability table assigned to each item the enemy can drop--"Okay, 30% of the time you get a Potion, 5% you get a Red Shield, and 3% you get Cod Liver Oil"
If a drop is especially rare, it goes under the [[Sub-Trope]] [[Rare Random Drop]].
The rewards can vary from game to game, but their range is pretty wide. This makes the trope come with a large dose of [[Fridge Logic]] attached, usually in two varieties:
This often results in [[Impossible Item Drop]] and [[Organ Drops]]. Relative of the [[Luck-Based Mission]]. See also [[Money Spider]] and [[Exclusive Enemy Equipment]]. When combined with [[Hundred-Percent Completion]], you could end up with [[Fake Longevity]].▼
{{examples}}▼
* Enemies dropping things that [[No Ontological Inertia|ought not be random at all]] -- such as [[Organ Drops|their organs.]] Every boar should drop a liver, as a boar cannot survive without one. But often, organs will only be randomly dropped. This at least can be [[Hand Wave|Handwaved]] by the idea that it's difficult to get an ''intact'' liver.
* The enemy carries something that shouldn’t be carrying, like weapons or pieces of equipment. When this happens it’s an [[Impossible Item Drop]].
▲This often results in [[Impossible Item Drop]] and [[Organ Drops]]. Relative of the [[Luck-Based Mission]]. See also [[Money Spider]] and [[Exclusive Enemy Equipment]]. When combined with [[
== Action Adventure ==▼
▲{{examples}}
== [[Video Games]] ==
▲=== [[Action Adventure]] ===
* The ''[[Castlevania]]'' series has a lot of examples:
** ''[[Castlevania: Curse of Darkness]]'' has any number of items that only very rarely drop from enemies. This is the ''only'' way to acquire many of the materials needed to make weapons and armor. However, most of the materials can be stolen from ''other'' enemies, so it's not quite so bad. That being said, since stealing in this game works by locking onto an enemy and then pressing a button when they do a specific action that leaves them open for stealing, some of the items can be even more of a pain in the ass if you can only steal their item with a ridiculously good timing, using obscure gimmicks or avoiding a hard-to-dodge attack with perfect timing and be positioned correctly right afterwards.
** ''[[Castlevania: Circle of the Moon]]'' was particularly egregious in two respects. There is an item that increases the rate of random drops, but this item was also a random drop. There's also a spell that boosts your luck (and thus increasing your odds of getting a random drop), but to get the materials for the spell you needed '''two''' random drops (although the odds of getting those drops was much more
** ''Castlevania: [[Dawn of Sorrow]]'' takes random drops to new extremes, with most weapons coming from randomly dropped souls... and the soul that increases Luck having 9 levels, so you need to get the soul 9 times. However, this particular iteration is not at all bad, as the creatures that drop the Luck increasing souls are plentiful, easy to kill, and drop the soul quite frequently (it's a two-star drop).
** Similarly, in ''[[Order of Ecclesia]]'', enemies can drop money, materials used in side quests and Glyphs, ''OoE'''s equivalent of Souls. Enemies also cast glyphs, which means that you'll have to absorb them quickly while the enemy is preparing the attack. On the plus side, absorbing the glyph ''stops'' the attack, gives you five hearts, and briefly stuns the enemy.
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* Enemies in ''[[The Legend of Zelda]]'' games usually have pretty consistent drops, but ''[[The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword|The Legend of Zelda Skyward Sword]]'' introduced "treasure" items, like slime blobs, that drop infrequently from certain monsters. Some, like the Gold Ornamental Skull, are rare enough that you'll probably only find two or three during the game (not counting the ones from chests) despite killing hundreds of the enemy that drops them.
=== [[Fighting Game]] ===
* In ''[[Super Smash Bros.]]. Melee'', there is a 1 in 151 chance of getting Mew from a Poké Ball, and a 1 in 251 chance of getting Celebi. Disappointingly, they only appear and fly away, but reward you with a lot of points, and an alert after the match is done telling that you met them for the first time.
** This also happens in ''[[Super Smash Bros.]]. Brawl'', but with severely decreased chances of getting any legendary Pokémon at all. This being the case, however, most legendary Pokémon are much more lethal; Mew drops CDs, Celebi drops trophies, and Jirachi (who wasn't in ''Melee'') drops a ton of stickers.
** For all those die-hard completionists, Brawl's Subspace Emissary will be HELL. To get [[One Hundred Percent Completion|all the trophies in Brawl]], you have to play Subspace Emissary, and have a trophy stand randomly drop during all the [[Boss Battle
* The ''[[Tekken]] 6'' Scenarion Campaign has this with clothing items. While you'd pretty much always get at least one item per stage, the effects they give off and how powerful those effects are is also random, so getting something useful was even less likely to happen than in most games with [[Randomly Drops]].
=== [[Driving Game]] ===
* A rare racing game case, the third [[Gran Turismo]] game has a prize system in which, starting with the late game beginner races, there are four cars that you can win. Too bad you can only win one of
===
* ''[[Borderlands]]'' is the [[FPS]] equivalent of this (its initial pitch: "[[X Meets Y|Halo meets Diablo]]"). It, too, has a list of super-rare ([[Downloadable Content|DLC]]-exclusive) weapons known as "Pearlescents". These [[Infinity+1 Sword|super-strong]] firearms drop at a rate of 1 for every 60 orange (the previous highest-level category) items. Of course, they're a ''little'' more prevalent than you might think, thanks to a [[Good Bad Bug|multiplayer glitch]] that allows for easy item duplication.▼
▲* A rare racing game case, the third [[Gran Turismo]] game has a prize system in which, starting with the late game beginner races, there are four cars that you can win. Too bad you can only win one of them--very frustrating since the endurance races are long as hell, you can't save in the middle of them, and there's a good chance that you'll get stuck with a crappy Renault instead of that [[Game Breaker]] F686/M.
* ''[[STALKER|S.T.A.L.K.E.R.]]'' does this in a really silly fashion, sending you to collect the Eye of a Fleshie or Foot of a Snork. Which makes no
▲* ''[[Borderlands]]'' is the [[FPS]] equivalent of this (its initial pitch: "[[X Meets Y|Halo meets Diablo]]"). It, too, has a list of super-rare ([[DLC]]-exclusive) weapons known as "Pearlescents". These [[Infinity+1 Sword|super-strong]] firearms drop at a rate of 1 for every 60 orange (the previous highest-level category) items. Of course, they're a ''little'' more prevalent than you might think, thanks to a [[Good Bad Bug|multiplayer glitch]] that allows for easy item duplication.
▲* ''[[STALKER|S.T.A.L.K.E.R.]]'' does this in a really silly fashion, sending you to collect the Eye of a Fleshie or Foot of a Snork. Which makes no sense--why fight potentially dozens of them for a single item to drop rather that just using your knife to cut off the body part from the first one you killed? What, did it take several tries to get it right?
* The folks at Valve have decided to throw the unlockable weapons of ''[[Team Fortress 2]]'' into this category with rates based on time played, and made the achievements "useless" (weapon drops were previously linked to class-specific achievement milestones). The first day had absolutely horrendous drop rates, and most of the time it was weapons you already had, so [[Sarcasm Mode|you can imagine how fun that was]]. It's since gotten slowly but surely a lot better:
** Right before the system was implemented, two of the nine classes had just been provided with unlockable weapons, meaning players had six new toys to earn (three each) and zero ways in which to earn them. The system was so hopelessly broken that Valve has since brought back the achievements, then later revamped the drop rate entirely. Currently, the drop rate is one item every 25 minutes minimum, 75 minutes maximum, which is much more reasonable.
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* Robots in ''[[Descent]]'' can release energy or shield boosts, or various weapons that your ship can use. The probability of the item appearing is always out of 16, unless a robot is customized so that a certain drop always occurs. Customization can also enter [[Impossible Item Drop]] territory— which generally happens with the unarmed [[Pinata Enemy|Supervisor Droids]], but other examples include coded "clones" of enemies like the Omega Spawn and Green Spider in ''Descent II'', which look the same as their regular counterparts but sound different, are worth slightly more points and can drop missiles (usually Guided Missiles) that are bigger than they are and not part of their arsenal.
=== [[Hack And Slash]] ===▼
▲== Hack And Slash ==
* The ''[[Diablo]]'' games feature items that aren't just randomly dropped, but ''randomly generated'' from thousands of potential combinations of attributes, special abilities and base weapon types. Runes (items you can place into other items to make them better) are particularly glaring, with some high-level runes having such tiny chances to drop (1 in millions, and even that requires finding enemies even capable of dropping the runes in the first place) that most hard-core players have never seen a legitimate one (ones created by hacks, of course, are another matter entirely). In fact, one person apparently estimated that one has a better chance of getting hit by a falling plane that was struck by lightning than one does of finding the rarest rune. Nobody knows if that estimation is true, but you get the idea.
** The rune example is fairly straightforward, but it can get much more complex: A base sword, for example, might have an inherent range of say 5 +/- damage and 10 +/- quality. So, just getting a "max" sword would take at least 15 rolls of that sword, of which, the top swords are also rare. Then, the top prefix is "Cruel," which varies between 200-300% added damage. The top suffix is "of Eviscration" which also varies by 20 points. It is estimated that maybe 1 sword has ever existed that was truly "perfect." You would need 10's of thousands of rolls to get a perfect roll, but you would probably need somewhere around 100 million of that sword to get 10k with that roll to even have a chance at the perfect stats. And then, there's the "Etheral" version, which is 1/3 as common as the regular version. Only 1 300% Cruel, Etheral, Elite class, 2 Socket sword has ever been found.
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* ''[[Ninety-Nine Nights]]'' is a terrible offender in this category, with the final boss being almost unbeatable without an item which randomly drops (Or more likely does not drop) from one of the finite number of enemies within the last level, often forcing you to restart the mission hundreds of times over before it finally drops.
=== [[Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game|MMORPGs]] ===
* ''[[Final Fantasy XI]]'' has a couple items that are stupidly rare. Not only is there The Ridill (average drop rate: about one every 20 kills of Fafnir at best), but it also has Defending Ring (about one every six months) and Hauteclaire (about one every three months). Dynamis often falls victim to this due to the fact that every monster in a Dynamis zone has an extremely low chance of dropping one of many different armor pieces (which is made up by the fact that these zones contain hundreds of monsters). Many linkshells end up with a particular set of pieces that are rare, while three jobs (usually Beastmaster, Dragoon, and one job that is actually desired at first) tend to drop at a fast rate. And this is just endgame. Listing all the things that eat a ton of time due to ridiculously low drop rates would take up too much space.
** Also worth noting are the respawn times on these monsters. Fafnir takes a whole day to respawn, the other two spawn every three days. And there are other groups competing with you. Even worse would be Voluptuous Vilma and Defoliate Leshy, which only spawn if other rare monsters are not killed for a long time. The existence of these monsters was unknown until a small group of players went onto the test server for a tournament and saw them.
** Rarely do drop rates in ''[[Final Fantasy XI]]'' drop below 7%... except in Salvage. The premise of Salvage is that collecting 3 like pieces of equipment (3 mage gloves, 3 warrior boots, etc) from the ancient ruins of the Alzadaal civilization could allow a player to restore a piece of Salvage equipment, which constituted (until fairly recently and with few exceptions) [[Infinity+1 Sword|quite a bit of the game's Infinity Plus One gear]]. The first two pieces are generally easy enough to obtain, with the first piece (level15) being 100% and the second piece (level25) usually being around 25%. Then you have the third piece (level35)... If it happened to drop in the Silver Sea Remnants section of Alzadaal, chances are you're ''still'' looking for it. Or not, because they've almost all since been replaced with better and more immediately satisfying equipment.
* Played seriously straight in [[Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game|MMORPG]] ''[[Maple Story]]''. Monsters have a very good chance (roughly 50~75%) of dropping some money (Mesos) and an "ETC" drop unique to the monster (or monster type). They have about a 1-in-10 chance of dropping potions or material ores, a ''very'' rare chance of dropping equippable items, and an ''extremely rare'' chance of dropping scrolls (which are used to upgrade equipment) or throwing stars. A coupon in the game's cash shop doubles the drop rate of monsters killed by the user. It doesn't help that sometimes only one particular enemy drops a particular item. Or that there's no indication that a miscellaneous drop is needed for a quest you don't have. Or quests that ask you to get an item, but don't say what enemy drops it. Then there's the major bosses Zakum and Horntail, who are guaranteed to drop at least one Zakum Helmet or Horntail Pendant each time they're killed, it's ''how many'' that drop that's random. All of their other drops are subject to Random Drops.
** The Malaysia exclusive map (guess what it's called) has somewhat broken drop rates- i.e. something around twice or thrice that of the original maps. ''This stacks with the event bonuses''.
** This aspect is where some quests become truly, stupidly hard. For instance, there's one quest where you have to find a little fairy's lost glass slipper. The slipper was stolen by the fire boar enemies in the mountains around Perion. No one is quite sure of the drop rate, but you can stand there and kill - quite literally - ''thousands upon thousands of fire boars'' and never see the item.
** It doesn't help that they randomize the drop rate at least once a week so you can't even figure out what the drop rates are.
** Worst of all is Nexon's recent "solution" to the botting problem that has plagued the game for years. Rather than implement ways to prevent such cheating, EXP and droprate is based off of character level, making it impossible for high-level characters to obtain items from low-level monsters.
* Several dungeons in ''[[World of Warcraft]]'' include rare magic items with drop rates of under 0.01%. One instance, Shadowfang Keep, includes a set of items that possess a drop rate of roughly 1-in-''7000''. Previously Baron Riverdare's Deathcharger, an epic mount, was an example, but the drop rate for it was raised to 1% in the 3.0.2 update, also considering you can easily solo the Stratholme instance with a level 80 or even 70 character. Still, quite some work for some [[Bragging Rights Reward]]
** Of course, there are also the "world drops"
** In Wrath of the Lich King, high level leatherworkers need Arctic Fur in quantity both for buying and for making high-end patterns. Arctic Fur is randomly skinnable from any skinnable Northrend mob, with a drop rate more normally associated with the above-mentioned "world drops." Many patterns require more than two.
** There are also some items that are easy to get but useless unless you get the correct version. What is essentially one item can have about 12 different sets of stats.
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* ''[[Phantasy Star Online]]'''s most powerful weapons often have drop rates ranging from 1-in-72 to 1-in-''22000''. Add that to the fact that the 1-in-22000 monsters usually only show up singly, and only in certain map variations...
** And only for certain characters, as a character gets 1 of 12 possible dropcharts permanently assigned to it upon creation based on the character's names, class, and even gender, with some items having a 1 in 299594 chance from only 1 chart, from 1 monster, that can only be found in 1 area, with the monster being the rare form of an already rare monster.
* Beaten to death in ''[[Anarchy Online]]'', an [[Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game|MMORPG]] where you will find that some of the most powerful and sought after items in the whole game (and since this game deals also in quality levels per any given item, in that as well) are so rare, they could be the poster child for this trope. The number of times that one specific item, the Sparkling Scimitar of Spetses (a stupidly rare item dropping from a semi-boss from the 2nd hardest area in the known game) is so ridiculously rare that it is counted among the forums. The numbers are kept as to which dimension (of the 3 this game has) has dropped how many... at last count, it was STILL IN THE SINGLE DIGITS for dropping after at least 3-4 (maybe longer) years of play in the game that allowed the zone. Though if you want similar horror stories, ask hardened, end-game players about the Spirit Shroud, anything regarding Alien boss drops, or really anything valuable in the game in question. As a result of this, of course, [[Adam Smith Hates Your Guts]].
* ''[[Kingdom of Loathing]]'' uses this extensively. Also, certain quests require you to get items from standard enemies, which will never drop those items until you get the quest. The dread of this class of random drop is mitigated by the ability to buy some of them. But by no means all. This has been justified by the creator as "you did not know it was important so you didn't pick it up" which, considering the item is a {{spoiler|twig}} is believable.
** And let's not forget the game's "ultra-rares"
** Then again, the game also lets you play with the drop percentages. It's not much, but the game's guides do show how to maximise item drops.
** Most of the very-rare drops in ''Kingdom of Loathing'' are just icing on the cake for most players, which is helpful; most of the best equipment in the game is acquirable by playing through a "hardcore" ascension. A few rare random drops usually become the purview of [[Speed Run]] players who use them to shave a few more turns off of their ''next'' game.
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*** And finally, by crewing with someone radically more powerful you actually hurt your drop rate by a significant amount. Trust me, [[Surprise Difficulty|this game is harder than it looks.]]
** On the main site itself, there's Chance Items that, when opened, can net the user anywhere from cheap commons to rare, exclusive items that usually go for millions on the market. The rarest of these items is almost always a cute animal companion for your avatar.
* ''[[City of Heroes]]'' cheerfully chucks all this out the
** Still counts though, as it has Purple Recipes. These only drop from enemies around 50 (the cap), getting one your character has any use for is another thing entirely, and getting the one you actually want quite the exercise in patience. Thankfully with so many players and a Market, the one you want is usually for sale, and although it'll likely be pretty expensive, the Purple that was trash to you might be a treasure to another.
* ''[[Ace Online]]'' goes almost into orbit with this trope: In addition to a normal Item drop table, rarely-spawning gold-named mobs have a supplementary Gold Mob Drops table, and Boss Mobs have ''their own'' Boss Drops table. The latter two are '''not''' affected by the regular item drop bonus given by regular Happy Hours (but are affected by Nation's Growth and Mothership Victory happy hours).
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*** 3. Combine the two items, ''which has a 50% chance of failing''. If you fail, both items are, yep, [[Lost Forever]].
*** 0. The zeroth prerequisite to these is that you must be above a certain level to equip this in the first place.
** The Episode 3 Part 1 however, makes it somewhat easier; there're three bosses in Pandea Maps that can drop any one of the unfinished boss armor. The corresponding item has the same quirk. There's only one slight problem; the entire Pandea maps are [[Scrappy Level
* Even kid-friendly MMORPGS like ''[[Toontown Online]]'' have this. Many "Toontasks" (quests) have you go fight certain kinds or levels of Cogs (the main antagonists) to get certain items. Even worse is if the type of Cog that drops it is found exclusively in one of the * shudder* Cog Headquarters. Here, it's downright evil because you only get items and experience points that you earned at the ''end'' of a boss fight. Including defeating the [[Big Bad]] after destroying all his [[Mecha-Mooks]] (Technically, they're ''all'' Mecha Mooks.) If your connection drops out, or you lose all your Laff Points (hit points), you don't get '''''anything'''''. And if you failed by droping to 0 LP, you lost all your gags (weapons) as well. Horrifying if you had just earned a Level 7 Gag (which you can't buy; after you max a type of gag, you get one every 500 EXP). Some tasks are more benevolent versions of this trope, only making you go fishing (yes, fishing) at a pond in a certain area to get X number of whatever item was requested. (The game gets really mean by coupling this with other sub-tasks, mostly involving the meaner example of this trope. No more Cashbot Mint fights, please...)
* Almost every monster in ''[[
* In "[[Dynasty Warriors Online]]", random drops are interesting. How it works is 3 LAYERS of random drops, but done fairly so you can actively seek out such drops without going "please, lord let this be it or kill me. but not both." The actual fighting aspect is done via arena setup. So you start a room, up to eight people (4 vs. 4) live players can join, but you can just go with a Dumb computer in it's place, and there can be as many as 7 comps in a game. In the field, there are named officers that appear to be mooks but have a slightly more unique look and are stronger than mooks. They will drop one of three things. Random layer one is what officer has one of the 2 items on that side, there are four total but unless you can kill friendly players then you can only get two. Layer 2, for each of those drops there is a random chance that you will get either an armor/clothing piece, or a weapon that you can pick up during the battle. Layer 3, after the battle, and if on a choice above newbie level pairings then losing means you also lose all found items, but the enemy doesn't gain them, then there is a random chance what the weapon/wearable will be, and of what quality.
** Depending on how many weapon updates there are, the chance that you get a certain weapon lowers but there are no "rare" weapons, all weapons have a chance to show up. Armor is slightly different in that you must fight a certain faction to have a, or possibly a greater, chance of getting certain armor.
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* [[Dungeons and Dragons Online]], of course, also has these. They can be found by killing monsters, breaking items, or more commonly by finding sparkling objects (cabinets, alters, plants, etc.). There's also the loot system for chests; every time you open a chest, there is a random chance of between 3 and 10 items appearing that depend on your level and the difficulty of the quest. The weapons and armor in turn are generated in such a way that, once the base item is generated, it has a random chance of having certain effects and attributes. Quest rewards can be random, but many give you access to the whole list of available items.
=== [[Real Time Strategy]] ===
* Played absurdly straight in ''[[Dawn of War]] 2''. Space orks, space elves and space bugs all have similar chances of dropping ancient [[Space Marine]] equipment neither of them should have needs for or (in case of Tyranids) means to carry.
* ''[[Kingdoms Of Camelot]]'' on Facebook is this way. You have a random chance of getting Crests or Seals from wilderness attacks, and once enough are accumulated, you can start another city. Incredibly annoying if you get the crests out of order; you can have all of them but lack crests for an earlier city deed and have to wait until you get the missing ones to get both cities. There is also a chance of items from Dark Forests that go toward crafting items in the Fey Tower and gaining the seals needed for the Fey City. Additionaly, Throne Room items can be gained by attacking other players' cities.
* ''Wasteland Empires'' has this as well. You attack other players' colonies and hope for random drops of items needed to build up your own. Good luck hunting down higher level items like Old Books, though. It's not easy.
=== [[Roguelike]] ===
* In ''[[Nethack]]'', enemies will randomly drop their own body. Bodies are food. If you're [[Wizard Needs Food Badly|hungry]] and the wild boar you just clubbed does not drop a dead wild boar, you may starve. Only large monsters like rothes and [[Demonic Spiders|Leocrotta]] are guaranteed to leave a corpse.
** For items, this trope is mostly averted. Monsters always drop their entire inventory on death, so when you kill a spear-wielding elf you can count on looting an elven spear. The "mostly" qualifier is because there's a very small chance of a monster dropping a item that wasn't there before on its death, so a centipede just might drop a broadsword.
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** The boar skull is much easier to find than the scroll of danger needed for the same quest. Boar skulls about a third of the time from giant boars, so any character over level 15 can find them pretty easily. You can go through the entire game twice and never see a scroll of danger.
=== [[Role Playing Game]] ===
* ''[[Final Fantasy IV]]''. Pink Tails. They are held by one enemy, found in one room, with approximately a 1-in-64 chance of encountering it ''and'' a 1-in-64 chance of dropping the proper loot once
▲* ''[[Final Fantasy IV]]''. Pink Tails. They are held by one enemy, found in one room, with approximately a 1-in-64 chance of encountering it ''and'' a 1-in-64 chance of dropping the proper loot once defeated -- and that's the only way to get the best armor in the game. For those of you who didn't study math, that's a whopping 1-in-4096 chance per encounter. This is ameliorated somewhat if you've accumulated a stockpile of Alarm items, which trigger encounters; in the room in question, they trigger an encounter with these particular monsters. This is made worse in the DS remake since the newly added optional bosses are impossible/near impossible without said armor... on all party members. Also in the DS version are Rainbow Puddings. Some people have attempted three days with none of it dropping... and some people get tons of pudding without even trying.
** Additional...fun in relation to pink tails. The only way to find the monsters that drop it in the DS remake is to use an Alarm item. Otherwise the room is completely clear of random encounters. So, at least now you have a 100% chance of encountering the enemy, right? Well, you now have a 1/64 chance of the Princess Flan dropping any item AT ALL, and a 1/64 chance of it being a Pink Tail. So the odds are the same (1/4096). But you can only hold 99 Alarms at a time, and each time you need more you have to trek ALL THE WAY OUT of the dungeon (or teleport), use your airship to reach the one shop in the game that sells them, and then walk all the way back to that one room. Remember, every 100 encounters, you have to spend 10ish minutes walking, even with the teleport and no random encounters. And the chance is 1/4096. Have fun spending on average 6.5 ''HOURS'' walking back and forth per tail. If you don't teleport, or run into lots of encounters, expect 13 or more hours just walking. And that's not even taking the fight with the flans into account.
* Its sequel, ''[[Final Fantasy IV: The After Years]]'', seemed to be guilty of the above as well, but then it was discovered that thanks to its cellphone roots, its RNG is comparable in ''[[Golden Sun]]'' in its simplicity and people have already found methods to get pretty much any and all 1/256 items every time. There's also items that increase the droprate normally, and change that drop to the next item on the rarity list. Due to the way this works, you'll be seeing a lot of supposedly rare items and zero common ones just by playing the game normally with the best items of each category equipped.
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** ''[[Updated Rerelease|FES]]'' corrected this: if you kill at least one monster of the required type in a battle, you'll always get at least one item of the required type, guaranteed, though at the expense of other possible drops.
* [[Alter AILA]] Genesis: In the core of the [[Bonus Dungeon|Orbital Prison]], there is a chance that you will fight watermelon enemies that use a countdown. They drop Enhancer ABC's (Improves all stats except speed) and they will ALWAYS drop them. The problem is the encounter rate.
* ''[[
** If you try for the Sword of Kings (or any 1/128 item), your levels will likely be pumped up to some ridiculous number. But if you abuse the [[Game Breaker|Rock Candy]], you don't ''need'' no stinking [[Randomly Drops]] weapons. [[Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?|You could beat Giygas to death with your bare hands]].
** ''[[Mother 3]]'' is a bit nicer, with a 3% to 5% chance of getting good weapons from certain enemies.
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** Don't forget the Pokérus! It behaves like a virus (once your leading Pokémon has it, it can easily infest everyone else in your party, etc.) but its effects are very beneficial. Without getting into stupidly hardcore hidden values in the game's deep arcane math algorithms, suffice it to say that you want the Pokérus. Too bad that any random encounter you finish has a '''1 in 21,845''' chance of giving it to you (in Gold and Silver). Luckily you don't have to ''catch'' it for it to spread, just battle. More luckily, now that you can trade online, it's very easy to achieve as you only need one and you're set for life.
** The enigmatic Mirage Island of Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald! Every day a number between 0 and 65535 is generated. In order to access the island, you have to have a Pokémon in your party with a personality value that matches the number of the day. Did we mention that the Personality Value of a Pokémon can be anywhere from 0 to 4,294,967,295? The only thing worthwhile about Mirage Island is a particularly rare berry tree.
** Oh, and then there's Pickup, the ability to add even more random drops in your life. Basically, there's a 10% chance that a Pokemon with the ability gets an item after a battle. In Gen. III (the first games where Pokémon can have abilities), it always culled from the same
** Thanks to the addition of natures, getting the best possible specimen can turn into this. There are 25 different natures, so that's already a 1-in-25 chance of trying to get the one you want. Then there are Individual Values, which can range from 0 to 31. Rerolling these to get decent values makes the odds even worse. If you want to get perfect IVs, the best way would be breeding. In the best case, two IVs would be randomly generated, and the odds of getting a perfect value on those would be 1 in 1,024, which combined with getting the nature you want would be 1 in 25,600. Good luck if you're trying to get them with a wild 'mon.
* ''[[Wizardry]]'' games use random loot lists - every time creatures are defeated, items appear from an assigned list with probability given to each item (or set of items in which case also one of several is picked).
** In ''[[Wizardry]] 8''
* Both ''[[Golden Sun]]'' games have rare weapons and armor that drops from certain monsters across the world, and since store-bought equipment is horribly mundane in these games, acquiring this equipment could certainly be handy. The problem is that each item only has a ''0.4%'' chance of dropping, upped to 1.6% if you kill it with a djinni attack of the correct element. However, given the rather simplistic nature of the random number generator in both games, it's possible to fix encounters to up the drop rate to 100%. Guess which method most sensible people pick?
** Don't forget that some randomly dropped items can be forged into new, powerful equipment. A whole range of different equips per item, actually. How does the game decide which you get? Randomly, of course!
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* Averted in ''[[Shadow Hearts]]'', where enemies simply don't have rare or valuable items to drop. This has the interesting side effect of averting [[Money for Nothing]] - since you aren't going to get much out of the enemies ''but'' money, shops and the items within become more important.
* ''[[The World Ends With You]]'' seems to be initially guilty of this, and the game blatantly taunts you with drop rates that ultimately go as low as 1/30th of a percent. However, this doesn't matter much as you can initially increase the drop rate by as many times as your current level in exchange for a lowered maximum HP (i.e. your current level is currently 30, you can drop it to 1 to multiply all drop rates by 30), then further increase it by chaining together battles and multiply it with the number of battles you chain in exchange for increasing enemy stats for each successive battle. As if that wasn't enough, there's also [[Rare Candy|expensive and relatively hard to get food items you can consume to permanently increase your base drop rate by 1 or 3]]. Thus, in the end it's not as much of a question of lucking out with ridiculously small odds as it is a question of being able to win a battle with odds heavily stacked against you, which is far more acceptable.
** Not ''that'' heavily stacked,
** If you're planning on time-attacking, raising your base drop rate is [[Blessed with Suck|a very bad idea]]; instead of finishing the battle once you deplete the enemy's HP, you have to wait for your dropped items to spiral around your characters and get collected.
* While not technically drops, ''[[Yume Nikki]]'' has random events throughout the game with varying percentages of encountering. In the case of the [[Nightmare Fuel|infamous]] Uboa event, the randomness of it actually heightens the suspense and makes it more terrifying when it appears.
* In ''[[Mega Man Battle Network]]'', many of the games require you to have used each [[Wave Motion Gun|Program Advance]] at least once for [[
** This is especially annoying in ''Battle Network 4'', where you're forced to bump up the difficulty level which in turn levels up the enemies. Good luck getting the Level 2 Chips once you hit difficulty level 3, they're reduced to rare encounters and only in one or two locations.
** And then there's the Battle Mystery Data, items that appear on one panel and have 1 HP, and it must survive to get the item. Most of the time, these are placed in such a way that you must risk either the data or damage to make sure it survives. Then there's ShadeMan Omega's EvilChip, which can get randomly destroyed if the bat he turns into after any 10 HP or higher attack goes in that row - or you destroy it with a missed shot. At least LaserMan Omega keeps his attacks toward you.
** And in ''[[Mega Man Star Force|Mega Man Star Force 3]]'', there's "Illegal Data Aquisition". Overkilling random enemies or attacking bosses with a specific subset of cards (Non-elemental, non-time-freezing) and then not shifting into your super form will allow you to receive a random drop after battle. And it really is random. You could get almost any standard card in the game, or a bug frag for trading; but most importantly you can get Illegal Cards that are unobtainable every other way in the game. And there's more illegal cards than there are normal battle cards! The ''smallest'' pool of random drops for any enemy in the game, however, goes to the already stupidly rare and powerful v5 [[Bonus Boss
* Refreshingly averted in ''[[Gothic]]''. If the player kills a wolf, and he has the 'skin wolf' skill, ''he will skin that wolf''. Of course, this doesn't stop people wondering exactly how much skill it would take to pull the wings off a giant mosquito, or why wolves only seem to have four claws, total.
* In addition to randomly dropped items, ''[[Valkyrie Profile: Silmeria]]'' has randomly dropped party members; when you recruit an einherjar, unless it is plot-critical, the game will pick one at random from a list, usually 2-3 possible characters to a recruiting item. Highly annoying if you want to get specific spells.
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* ''[[Raidou Kuzunoha VS King Abaddon]]'' features Ukemochi liver, a useless item that's necessary for exactly one sidequest, which in turn is necessary for [[One Hundred Percent Completion]]. The only way you can get it is by donating money to a shrine, at 300 yen a pop, for a roughly 1/256 chance of getting it. Cue an hour and a half of standing there throwing money at the shrine hoping to get it.
* ''[[Suikoden II]]'' has this with the upgraded forms of Fire (Rage) and Lightning (Thunder) Runes. If you wanted more than one you could freely attach (and you did, as they were useful in many ways), you had to hope for a drop from specific enemies near the endgame.
** Triple-whammy of random drops in its predecessor,
* Monsters in ''[[Shining in the Darkness]]'', although using the confusion spell "Muddle" can also make them give you their items.
* In the ''[[Etrian Odyssey]]'' series, monsters [[Money Spider|don't drop money]]
** The third game, ''The Drowned City'', has an [[NPC]] who frequents the local bar called Scavenger Toma. His whole purpose is to [[Guide Dang It|tell players how to meet most of these conditions]], all for the low-low price of a drink or two.
* ''[[Opoona]]'' has many monsters with rare drops attached to them. Some of these are equipment, which is expected. A few drop stat-boosting items. However, some of them drop items necessary for sidequests, and the ''only'' way to get said items is by beating up monsters until you get lucky. Having the sidequest does not, sadly, make said drops more common.
* ''[[Paper Mario|Paper Mario: TTYD]]'' has this in spades with its random badge drops. Most HP-related badges, as well as attack and defense-boosting ones, can be eventually found on an enemy, then stolen off of them, but if you want any FP-related or special-attack badges, you'll likely have to kill several hundred of a specific enemy to get them.
* Averted but with the same effect in ''[[Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura]]''. The items found in most chests change from character to character, but this is determined purely by that character's name (so additional playthroughs with the same character will always find the same items).
=== [[Simulation Game]] ===
* In ''[[Animal Crossing]]'', virtually all shop items change from day to day based on luck. Fossil identifications and offers of foreign fruit in both versions are also based on luck.
* Although not an RPG, ''[[
== Turn Based Strategy ==▼
▲=== [[Turn Based Strategy]] ===
* ''[[Final Fantasy Tactics A2]]'' '''breathes''' this trope. What you can buy is determined by what pieces of loot you bring to the Bazaar, which is determined solely by how much of a lucky bastard you are. This means that it's almost impossible to tune your team to your liking until much, much further into the game, since most classes require that you have enough abilities in others to unlock them... and abilities are granted by these same items you depend on luck for finding. So you end up having to get by with whatever you have available.
** Or by looking at the ''guaranteed'' loot given for completing a mission.
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* Happens occasionally in [[Heroes of Might and Magic]], generally justified by the fact that you have to fight a big creature like a dragon or a whole group of enemy units to get it.
=== [[Wide Open Sandbox]] ===
* ''[[Minecraft]]'' has mobs drop their materials and other items at a random rate when killed. Sometimes you can get a handful of the items and other times mobs drop nothing. A few mobs after an update were given rare drops where they can drop better items like weapons and raw materials.
* Parodied in ''[[Sluggy Freelance]]'' when Torg plays an [[Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game|MMORPG]] and is beyond frustrated with his first quest.▼
▲== Web Comics ==
▲* Parodied in ''[[Sluggy Freelance]]'' when Torg plays an [[MMORPG]] and is beyond frustrated with his first quest.
{{quote|'''Torg:''' "I've been putzing around for ''hours'' beating little salamanders to death with a stick in the hopes of getting a tongue out of them. And it's annoying because apparently not too many of them actually ''have'' tongues."}}
* In ''[[Cheer]]'', Alex and Lita get trapped in an MMORPG world (thinking that they're dreaming) and are asked to get a Rat Tail that is "dropped" from rats. Lita, who has played the game on her computer, [https://web.archive.org/web/20140829144808/http://www.cheercomic.com/?date=2009-02-27 tries to get the item drop through the normal methods]. Alex, who has not, gets tired of waiting for the "drop" and [[Cutting the Knot|just uses her newfound magic powers to remove the tail from a dead rat]].
== Web Original ==▼
* ''[[Neopets]]'':
** Random Drops can occur whenever you load a page. However, there exists a wide variety of these Random Events, which have many more effects than just giving you a rare item.
** There are certain avatars that can only have a chance of being given when you preform a certain event. Some of these events can only happen once every 24 real-time hours. Coupled that these avatars are infrequent in distribution, it makes avatar-getters frustrated in collecting them all.
==
* Sweepstakes where prizes are won by collecting a specific set of game
▲* Sweepstakes where prizes are won by collecting a specific set of game pieces--for example, McDonald's Monopoly or Subway's Scrabble games. One of the pieces in each set is rare: the amount of those pieces are equal to the amount of prizes available for that set. The other pieces are common, so you are enticed to keep playing the game to find the rare piece. The rules usually list the odds of winning the prize, which is also the odds of a given game piece being the rare piece for that set.
** In the Scrabble variation, it's easy figuring out which letter is the rare to win which prize: just look for a letter that occurs ONCE in a given prize's name and doesn't occur in any other prize names. If you live in french Canada where the contests runs in english AND french, then the SAME rare letter must fulfill both conditions in TWO languages. Fun time being the guy who has to figure how to prevent the game from being [[Unwinnable By Mistake]] while simultaneously avoiding giving out half a million cars.
* Three words: [[Trading Card Game]]. Or [[Collectible Card Game]]. Whichever you prefer.
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