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In a game with [[Random Drop|Random Drops]]s, the one that will refuse to appear. A Random Drop with a very low probability, something that frustrates the player that tries to get it.
 
The range in which a drop becomes a [['''Rare Random Drop]]''' can vary widely. Depending on the game, the common drop may have a 70% chance and the "rare" a 30% chance; in others the rare drop may be a 1 in 1000 chance, or even worse. In any case it usually means that you'll spend [[Level Grinding|hours killing monsters]] until you get it, which can be bad if you just want the object, but it's worse if you ''need'' the object to continue with the game.
In a game with [[Random Drop|Random Drops]], the one that will refuse to appear. A Random Drop with a very low probability, something that frustrates the player that tries to get it.
 
Sometimes a [['''Rare Random Drop]]''' applies to a boss and you have to endure the same fifteen minute battle (and accompanying cutscenes) over and over again until you get lucky. Bonus if the boss in question is [[That One Boss]], and you barely survived the ''first'' time you killed it. Fortunately game designers usually don't make the dropped object an absolute necessity in such cases, so unless you really want the object there will be no need to go through the fight again.
The range in which a drop becomes a [[Rare Random Drop]] can vary widely. Depending on the game, the common drop may have a 70% chance and the "rare" a 30% chance; in others the rare drop may be a 1 in 1000 chance, or even worse. In any case it usually means that you'll spend [[Level Grinding|hours killing monsters]] until you get it, which can be bad if you just want the object, but it's worse if you ''need'' the object to continue with the game.
 
If you're lucky, there'll be an item or special method that increases your chances of getting these drops, but there's the chance, if it is an item, that ''that'' item is a [['''Rare Random Drop]]''' too. Have fun getting [[Hundred-Percent100% Completion]] if there is no way to improve your chances.
Sometimes a [[Rare Random Drop]] applies to a boss and you have to endure the same fifteen minute battle (and accompanying cutscenes) over and over again until you get lucky. Bonus if the boss in question is [[That One Boss]], and you barely survived the ''first'' time you killed it. Fortunately game designers usually don't make the dropped object an absolute necessity in such cases, so unless you really want the object there will be no need to go through the fight again.
 
While it's called [['''Rare Random Drop]]''', the trope also applies to objects found in chests, treasure and other random things where the chances are very low, but those cases aren't as prominent as the [[Random Drop]] implementation.
If you're lucky, there'll be an item or special method that increases your chances of getting these drops, but there's the chance, if it is an item, that ''that'' item is a [[Rare Random Drop]] too. Have fun getting [[Hundred-Percent Completion]] if there is no way to improve your chances.
 
Related to [[Luck-Based Mission]]. In [[MMORPGMassively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game|MMORPGsMMORPG]]s, if players fight among themselves to get one of these it becomes [[Loot Drama]]. If you need lots of dedicated item-hunting to get anything remotely fun, see [[Earn Your Fun]].
While it's called [[Rare Random Drop]], the trope also applies to objects found in chests, treasure and other random things where the chances are very low, but those cases aren't as prominent as the [[Random Drop]] implementation.
 
Related to [[Luck-Based Mission]]. In [[MMORPG|MMORPGs]], if players fight among themselves to get one of these it becomes [[Loot Drama]]. If you need lots of dedicated item-hunting to get anything remotely fun, see [[Earn Your Fun]].
 
{{examples}}
== Video Game Examples ==
 
=== [[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, waiting for them to do a specific action that leaves them open for stealing, getting right next to them and then pressing a button, 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 realistic--norealistic—no worse than a 10% chance). Remember too, in this game there is no other way to get ''any'' items other than through random drops. Even the most basic Potion is a rare drop from just a handful of enemies. The people who made this game hate you and your family.
*** Even worse is the skeleton athlete. It drops the rare bear ring, but in order to get it, you have to kill it before it commits suicide and there is no feasible way to kill it other than to use the Speed boost skill. Did I mention that you have to STOP to whip? Unless you can kill it with a knife or get lucky enough to actually hit it, you might kill it. But there is no guarantee the item will drop at all.
** In ''[[Aria of Sorrow]]'' "Tsuchinoko," which spawns in the far corner of one room maybe half the time, and immediately tries to burrow out of sight, and drops his soul maybe one time in fifty kills. There are other bad ones, but he's the worst. Many players have killed it once out of curiosity after killing the boss before its room, gotten the soul, and wondered if that was actually the boss-fight reward.
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** Every relic except two in ''Lament of Innocence'' are found throughout all the levels, like good hidden items should be. With the exception of two. These two are the rare drops for somewhat difficult to kill monsters and it's rather frustrating to try to obtain 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|Boss Battles]]s. When it comes to Meta-Ridley, it's incredibly frustrating - not only is there a ''time limit'' on the battle, but unless you have ABSOLUTELY PERFECT timing, the trophy will most likely drop into a bottomless pit if you're not fast enough. Luckily, trophy stands appear much faster in this battle.
 
=== [[First Person Shooter]] ===
* 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.
* ''[[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.
** 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|Boss Battles]]. When it comes to Meta-Ridley, it's incredibly frustrating - not only is there a ''time limit'' on the battle, but unless you have ABSOLUTELY PERFECT timing, the trophy will most likely drop into a bottomless pit if you're not fast enough. Luckily, trophy stands appear much faster in this battle.
 
== First Person Shooter ==
 
* ''[[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.
* 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." 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]].
** Also realize that 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. Currently both the broken drop rate and achievement systems are active. Currently, the drop rate is about one an hour, so not so bad.
** You also can get purely cosmetic hats for the classes. There are 9 classes. Your odds of getting a hat (any hat) is .5%, or 1/200. Your odds of getting a particular hat of 1/1800. To have a 50% chance of getting a particular hat, statistically you need to log 1250 hours. That's 52 ''days'' of play. That's more play time than all but ten of the official ''maps'' have.
*** The players back lashed by using Steamstats to "simulate idling without actually having the game running." Valve turned around and took away the ill-gotten hats, gave the non-cheaters halos, and then increased the drop rate. You can read all about it here [https://web.archive.org/web/20150401114139/http://www.journalfen.net/community/fandom_wank/1220007.html\]
** And now with the Engineer Update, Valve has decided to gift 100 Golden Wrenches to the community, which you can find by chance for every time you use the crafting system. Given that well over 20,000 people are playing TF 2 at any given time, and the fact that you need items to craft in order to craft, the chances of finding one of these Wrenches is exceptionally low. This hasn't stopped the community from complaining about it, of course.
 
=== [[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]]'' is such an offender that we won't bother to list any of these drops, there are just too many.
* ''[[World of Warcraft]]'' is another major offender. No need to add examples, the list would be nearly infinite.
* 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.
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** 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.
* In ''[[Anarchy Online]]'' the greatest example would be 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.
* ''[[Ever QuestEverQuest]]'' had some mean ones. One otherwise uninteresting newbie zone had a high-level halfling that spawned every few days in a random location, disappeared after two minutes whether anyone killed her or not, and had a one in eight chance of dropping a very expensive item.
* In ''Everquest 2'', in most zones, monsters will drop an "exquisite chest" (a chest containing the best kind of treasure, Fabled) 0.0126% of the time. Of course, which Fabled treasure drops depends on random chance and which monster dropped the chest...
* A staple of ''[[Ragnarok Online]]''. Each enemy has a 1/10,000 chance of dropping a "card" (with rare exceptions like porings at 1/1000) which can be permanently placed into a "slotted" weapon or armor, which also have an extremely rare chance of dropping. The cards give bonuses to you when you wear armors with a card equipped. They range from completely useless in the case of most ordinary monster cards, to boss cards which have downright [[Game Breaker|Game Breaking]] stats such as ''immunity to spells and abilities''. The catch is, since bosses only respawn once per hour in one location, if you were to kill a boss every hour on the hour for a ''year'' you would only have a 58% chance to get their card...
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* ''[[City of Heroes]]'' 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]]'' has the Boss Armors. The items needed to craft them come from bosses that spawn only three times a day in places where you can fight the opposing faction (so you'll probably have to fight them too) with insanely low chances to get them. Not only that, but when you try to combine them there's a 50% chance of failure and you lose the items if that happens. There are more examples, but no one is as insane as this one.
** 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|Scrappy Levels]]s made of [[Everything Trying to Kill You|aggro, aggro]], and... [[Serial Escalation|more aggro]]. [[Department of Redundancy Department|And more aggro]].
* ''[[RunescapeRuneScape]]'' has too much of this to count; the Draconic Visage from almost all dragons, the godswords from the God Wars Dungeon, various high level armor from boss monsters, the sigils... At least It's one of the best moneymakers in the game. It can get frustrating in that many of the bosses are hard to kill solo and you need a team to effectively farm them. This by itself isn't so bad, but you have 3 options for dividing the loot: Player who deals most damage gets drop, (not very fair) all players get the value in coins divided amongst the group, (Witch can lead to some small payouts) and 1 player gets the drop, while the other players get an increased chance of getting a drop. (This does not always go as planned.)
** Although this is sort of justified as every drop affects the economy (slightly) each drop. Considering those bosses are killed thousands of times a day (bar the boss that drops the sigils), one of the items being adjusted to drop a little too much would make them a lot cheaper.
* "Dynasty Warriors: online" has such a horrible way to deal with its [[Random Drop|Random Drops]]s that if you want something special you’ll probably have to deal with this trope.
 
== Roguelike ==
 
=== [[Roguelike]] ===
* In ''[[Nethack]]'' this trope is primarily averted: every enemy will drop everything it carries upon death, and maybe something else that it wasn’t carrying too.
* ''[[Ancient Domains of Mystery]]''. Many items that are important for various quests (notably the amulet of life saving) are random drop items. Where the Creator really extracts the urine is when you are required to find a boar skull as part of the Ultra ending quest. Said boar is [[Random Encounters|only encountered infrequently]], is in the highly-dangerous overworld and even ''then'' rarely leaves a skull. Low-to-mid-level players frequently starve to death or spend 60-''320'' game days trying. Higher-level players resort to dooming themselves to increase the encounter rate, or hunting for an item that grants one wish (also only available by random drop, and extremely rare).
 
=== [[Role Playing Game]] ===
* ''[[Final Fantasy IV]]''. Two words: 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 -- anddefeated—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. Alarm clocks trigger an encounter with them 100% of the time though, but you can only carry 99 of them.
 
* ''[[Final Fantasy IV]]''. Two words: 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. Alarm clocks trigger an encounter with them 100% of the time though, but you can only carry 99 of them.
** 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). And since you can only carry 99 of them you’ll have to travel a lot to the shop in order to replenish.
** In the DS version Rainbow Puddings are quite difficult to get too.
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* ''[[Persona 3]]'' has Elizabeth's requests, in which she usually asks you to kill a specific enemy and bring back a number of parts from it. The trick is that if you don't kill the enemies with the protagonist, the item drop rate is extremely low.
** ''[[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.
* ''[[EarthboundEarthBound]]''. Its 1-in-128 items have become the focal point of several [[Self-Imposed Challenge|fan quests]]
** ''[[Mother 3]]'' is a bit nicer, with a 3% to 5% chance of getting good weapons from certain enemies.
* The ''[[Breath of Fire]]'' series. Numerous examples of this.
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** Don't forget the Pokérus! Each encounter 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, and it can spread to the rest of your team after getting it. It will double the amount of Effort points you get in each battle.
** 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.
** Pickup is an ability that gives you an object 10% of the time after a battle. It’s charts can give you tons of different useful objects depending on your level, but their chances range from 50% of the common ones to 1% of the rare ones, which include Rare Candies and [[T Ms]]TMs.
* In ''[[Wizardry]] 7'' many good drops (in early game it's mostly good weapons/armor) have low rates, and/or drops randomly select from a list with cheap (Potion of Lt. Heal, bite daggers) and good (cure poison, poison darts) items, so grinding random encounters in hope to get some good loot is not unusual. Chests are randomized, too.
* In ''[[Wizardry]] 8'' enemy drops and chest contents are determined when loading an area. So after a 15-minute fight, if the monster doesn't drop [[Infinity+1 Sword|Excalibur]], you can't just reload and fight again. You have to reload from before you entered the area, then make it all the way back to the monster, ''then'' fight it again.
* ''[[Golden Sun]]'' series can either work this way or the opposite, thanks to how easily you can manipulate the RNG.
* ''[[The World Ends With You]]'' seems to be initially guilty of this, but one of the things you actually learn about in the game is to manipulate the drop rates (which are shown in the bestiary) to the point that even the rarest ones (there’s one that is only dropped '''0,03%''' of the time) become guaranteed drops. The drawback is that you’ll have to drop down your level and chain multiple battles, sometimes with bosses included, in order to do that. And the only way to get rid of the drawback is… you guessed it: get a lot of those rare drops, so it can be useless after you get [[Hundred-Percent100% Completion]].
* ''[[Mega Man Battle Network]]'' series brings this with the Mega chips (you’ll have to fight bosses a lot) and the [[Guide Dang It|Program Advances]].
** It’s successor, ''[[Mega Man Star Force]]'', does it too.
* ''[[Monster Hunter]]'' has tons and tons of drops, but the most rare ones will inevitably be those that the most difficult bosses have. Lao-Shan Ruby and the Big Elder Dragon Jewels are famous ones.
** Carried over for the [[Crossover]] in ''[[Metal Gear Solid]]: Peace Walker''. Rathalos drops plans for the Taneshigama, one of the most useful weapons in the game, and Tigrex and Gear Rex drop parts of the most powerful Co-op weapon in the game. With a 1% chance. Enjoy your grind.
* In ''[[Kingdom HeartscodedHearts coded]]'' this can happen, but you can unlock a special cheat that allows you to multiply the drop rate of the various command chips dropped by enemies in exchange for lowering your maximum HP, up to 16 times its normal rate. The difficulty level of the game also affects enemy drops. A few of the game's strongest enemies will drop stat-boosting chips on Critical mode, the highest difficulty.
* ''[[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.
** ''Suidoken'' did it before, but much worse, as the best armor and accessories are [[Rare Random Drops]] too.
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* Although not an item, recruiting a Metal Slime or its family members in ''[[Dragon Quest V]]'' is ''hard''. For the first one you recruit, you have a 1/256 chance of recruiting it and a 1/1054 chance of recruiting a second and third. Considering how tough they are once they reach their cap, that's fair. However, keep in mind that they are hard to find. The ordinary Metal Slime isn't too hard to find (they appear commonly in Whealbrook Cavern), but the Liquid Metal Slimes are very rare and typically appear with a bunch of Metal Slimes or other recruitable monsters, meaning if you get a crit on another recruitable monster after you killed the Liquid Metal Slime, you ''won't'' be able to recruit a Liquid Metal Slime for that battle. Fortunately, they aren't required, but they are very helpful against the bonus boss.
 
=== [[Turn Based Strategy]] ===
* ''[[Final Fantasy Tactics a 2A2]]'' murders you thanks to 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.
 
* ''[[Final Fantasy Tactics a 2]]'' murders you thanks to 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.
* ''[[Eternal Eyes]]'' has many different items available as drops, but one of the most valuable is Magical Puppets; they're the raw material for your [[Mons]], and each one you get equals a new unit. All monsters can drop them, but the chance is ''very'' low, and if you don't waste a turn opening the treasure chest it's in (no way to tell until you open it, of course), it stands a good chance of being destroyed by one of its former allies. A few chapter ends will simply give you a new puppet, so you ''will'' gain new units if you progress through the story normally, but if you want to expand your army further? Get to grindin'!
 
=== Non-video[[Video gameGame]] examples: ===
=== [[Web Comics]] ===
 
* 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 ==
{{quote| '''Torg:''' "I've been putzing around for ''hours'' beating little salamanders to death with a stick in the hopes of [[Organ Drops|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]].
* 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 [[Organ Drops|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]].
 
== Web Original ==
 
=== [[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 perform 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.
 
=== [[Real Life]] ===
* Sweepstakes where prizes are won by collecting a specific set of game pieces--forpieces—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.
 
* 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.
** 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 much 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 to give out half a million cars.
 
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[[Category:Video Game Items and Inventory]][[Category: Video Game Tropes]][[Category:Videogame Culture]][[Category:Video Game Items and Inventory]]
[[Category:Rare Random Drop{{PAGENAME}}]]
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