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 [[Hundred Percent Completion]], you could end up with [[Fake Longevity]].

 

== Action Adventure ==

** ''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.

** ''Aria of Sorrow.'' Souls. Incredibly common from some enemies (you'll have ten copies of the Bat soul by the time you hit your second boss), incredibly rare from others. The worst? "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.

** 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...

** This goes back all the way to the original ''Castlevania'' and most of the non-[[Metroidvania|MetroidVanias]] in the series that followed. Enemies would randomly drop hearts, money, or even subweapons, if the game was feeling generous. [[Nintendo Hard|Which wasn't too often.]] Maddeningly, sometimes a subweapon you didn't want would be unavoidably dropped, especially when dealing with aerial monsters. Thankfully, most games since ''Rondo of Blood'' have allowed you to pick up your old weapon, as long as it didn't ''fall down a pit''.

** ''[[Harmony of Despair]]'' takes this trope and runs away with it. Soma's souls make a return appearance, as do Shanoa's glyphs (though they're easier to get here). However, Shanoa only gets new weapons from chests dropped by bosses, meaning that, unless you want to go through the whole game with her default rapier, you'll be doing some grinding to pick something up. Jonathan also only gets subweapons randomly, which is problematic considering that he doesn't get stronger without using subweapons. Charlotte also suffers, as she only gets spells by using a shield to absorb them from enemies, meaning that you might sit in front of an enemy absorbing fireballs for the full [[Timed Mission|thirty minutes]]. And then she has to absorb the same spell to get stronger.

 

== Fighting Game ==

== First Person Shooter ==

 

* ''[[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 (Video Game)|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:

* ''[[Final Fantasy XI (Video Game)|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.

* Played seriously straight in [[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''.

* Beaten to death in ''[[Anarchy Online]]'', an [[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.

** 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.

* ''[[Final Fantasy VIII (Video Game)|Final Fantasy VIII]]'' is an unpleasant offender, too. Several of the items required to get Quistis's best Blue Magics (Shockwave Pulsar, for example, though Ray-Bomb is a worse offender) require either hours and hours of card-playing, at least a couple hours of stealing from enemies, ''or'' (in the hideously egregious case of Ray-Bomb), attempting to steal a 12-in-256 drop from an uncommon monster.

* ''[[Final Fantasy IX (Video Game)|Final Fantasy IX]]'' has a variation on one of these: Eiko's Fairy Flute can stolen from Hilgigars on disk 2, a full disk before it becomes available in a Mogshop. Not hard - equip Bandit and spend a few turns trying to steal it, right? Wrong. It is quite the hardest item to steal in the entire game, and Hilgigars isn't an easy boss, either. Most walkthroughs advise just giving up on the Fairy Flute and buying it later. Not necessarily a random drop, but the difficulty and time required in getting the item definitely qualifies.

** Let us not forget that the vast majority of ''treasure boxes'' in ''Final Fantasy XII'' were random drops; sometimes, the chest wouldn't be there, and most of the time, all the treasure you'd get from most boxes was a paltry sum of Gil. Worse, most of the chests that were fixed caused the Infinity Plus One Spear to become ONLY a random drop, with a chance of 1-in-1000.

*** The Chest that contains the aforementioned spear is in the Bonus Dungeon and has a 10% chance to be there. The Spear has a 1% chance of being in that chest. It can be obtained through this even if you've already got the one that's in the fixed chest in another [[Bonus Dungeon]]. If you're INSANELY lucky, you can get 6 or more Z. Spears allowing you to outfit every character in the game with the Best Weapon in the game.

*** However, a method has been found to trick the game's "pseudo"-RNG into getting a guaranteed Zodiac Spear from the chest in the Henne Mines, making this a subversion. This troper got 6 Zodiac Spears within a single hour.

* In the ''[[Rune Factory]]'' game series [[Item Crafting]] is a major part of the game. To create the vast majority of powerful equipment and potions requires many battles with the various monsters, to get the [[Randomly Drops]] components you need.

* ''[[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. And even if you ''do'' kill said enemies with the protagonist, there will be a few times where you'll kill five of the same enemy in one battle... and get nothing at all.

** ''[[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.

** ''[[Mother 3 (Video Game)|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. In fact, ''Breath of Fire 3'' features a rare enemy, the Goo King, that has a 1/256 chance of dropping a GooKingSword (1/128 if the chance is upped), which incidentally is (in raw power) the best weapon for the main character. This item is so rare it has become a running gag that it's really a hoax and not actually in the game.

** 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--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--sure, the odds are astronomical, but there's the chance your level 100 Ambipom can find five Earthquake TMs. In a row, even.

** 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.

* Both ''[[Golden Sun (Video Game)|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!