Random Drop: Difference between revisions

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 [[100% Completion]], you could end up with [[Fake Longevity]].

{{examples}}

* 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.

* 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.

* 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.

* 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]].

* 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.

* ''[[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?

* 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.

* 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.

* ''[[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.

* ''[[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.

* [[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.

* 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.

* 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.

** 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.

* ''[[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.

* ''[[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.

* 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, ''[[Sim City|Sim City 4]]'' has this as "randomly develops" and "randomly awards" with city development.

* ''[[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.

* 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.

* ''[[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 [[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, [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]].

* ''[[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 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.