Random Drop: Difference between revisions

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"--which—which is where the "random" comes in.

** ''[[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.

** 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.

* 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--verythem—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 sense--whysense—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?

* 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]]--and—and Blizzard loves doing that, especially for mounts. Sabertooth mount anyone?

** Of course, there are also the "world drops"--rare—rare items which have a very small chance of dropping from ANY monster of the given level range. Acquiring them comes down to pure luck. Or having a ton of money to spend on the AH.

** And let's not forget the game's "ultra-rares"--the—the player base STILL isn't sure how it works. The game's fansite says your best bet for getting, say, a 17-ball (erases your [[Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors]] worries) is to save your money.

* ''[[City of Heroes]]'' cheerfully chucks all this out the window--prettywindow—pretty much any enemy that gives you experience points also has a chance of dropping pretty much any loot (within certain confines--mostlyconfines—mostly level ranges and loot types, neither of which prevents them dropping the 'good stuff'), although more difficult enemies have a slightly higher chance of dropping higher-quality whatevers.

** 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]].

* ''[[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 -- 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. 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.

** 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 list--resultinglist—resulting in a [[Disc One Nuke]] if you got one of the more rare items early (like a Nugget or a [[Rare Candy]]). Later games balanced it to make the list level-dependent, removing the [[Disc One Nuke]] status but adding a reason to [[Level Grinding|level grind]] fairly weak 'mons. The potential rewards? Greater chances at getting a [[Rare Candy]], some otherwise-rare evolution items, and the rare chance at acquiring items otherwise [[Too Awesome to Use]]. Plus, you always have the chance to get the item--sureitem—sure, the odds are astronomical, but there's the chance your level 100 Ambipom can find five Earthquake TMs. In a row, even.

** Not ''that'' heavily stacked, though -- bythough—by the time the rarest drops become available, you're going to be at a high enough level that losing 20 or 30 levels doesn't hurt that much, even on Ultimate difficulty. At that point, chaining five or six battles (which doesn't increase enemy stats that much) will give you a good chance of obtaining even the rarest items.

** 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|Bonus Bosses]]es, and that's roughly 30 possible drops; most enemies in the game can drop upwards of 80 different battle cards via IDA, so getting what you want can be ''extremely'' frustrating, nevermind that most of the ones you do want, you'll want ''5'' of!

** Triple-whammy of random drops in its predecessor, though--thethough—the original ''[[Suikoden]]''. First, as in Suiko2, the upgraded elemental runes (Rage, Flowing, Thunder, Cyclone, and Mother Earth) are rare random drops from specific enemies in the endgame, and just like in Suiko2, they are useful and you want them. Secondly, most of the best armor and accessories in the game are random drops that cannot be bought in any store--itstore—it's bad enough trying to equip a single six-person party for taking out the [[Final Boss]], God save the poor bastard who wants to outfit his ''entire army''. Thirdly, those of the [[Rare Candy|Rune Piece stat-boosters]] that aren't in limited quantity throughout the game are random drops from various enemies. So, if you want to do something about, say, [[Mighty Glacier|Pesmerga]]'s lead foot, get ready to farm like you've never farmed before--becausebefore—because, you see, the best part has been left for last: The odds of a monster dropping any item after combat in ''Suikoden'' are generally abysmally low, but everything described above--runesabove—runes, equipment, rune pieces--haspieces—has drop rates starting at around 1.5%, and going as low as a quarter of a single percentage point. Hope you didn't have anything better to do with your day.

* In the ''[[Etrian Odyssey]]'' series, monsters [[Money Spider|don't drop money]] -- you—you get raw materials from their corpses, which you can then sell back to the local shops both for cash and to help create even better weapons, armor and other supplies. This is your primary source of income. However, monsters don't always leave things behind, and many monsters also have Conditional Drops, which require you to [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|meet certain conditions to trigger]], like defeating it in a single turn or finishing it off with a certain element/status effect. Even if you meet the conditions, they ''still'' don't always drop, unless it's a boss... and many times, getting a boss to drop their special item also blocks the ''regular'' drop.

=== Non-video game examples: ===

* 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.