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Twenty Bear Asses: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
[[File:twentybearasses_5449.png|link=Cheer
{{quote|''That's all? One quest? Surely you jest. Are there not [[Ascended Meme|bear asses]] to collect? Perhaps a rare flower that I could pick from which you will make some mildly hallucinogenic tonic which you will then drink, resulting in visions of a great apocalypse? Perhaps the local populace of mildly annoying, ill-tempered gophers are acting up and need to be brought to justice? No? Nothing?''|'''[[This Loser Is You|Johnny Awesome]]''', ''[[
[[Twenty Bear Asses]] is a sub-category of [[Fetch Quest]] that involves going around killing enemies and collecting a certain amount of a specific item that these enemies [[Random Drop|randomly drops]]. They are most common in [[MMORPG|MMORPGs]]. The common hypothetical example involves a woodsman NPC asking the [[Player Character]] to deliver [[MacGuffin|20 sections of bear]] to him.
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== Action Adventure ==
* ''[[Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia]]'' took the NPC sidequest ingredient from its predecessor, ''Portrait of Ruin''. Unfortunately it turned simple fetch quests into a bundle of Twenty Bear Asses.
** To illustrate, one villager sends you on quests to kill a certain number of creatures, culminating in her sending you to kill an optional boss in a [[Guide Dang It|location you might never reach]]. Then there's the blacksmith, who just needs a certain number of random drop metals.
* ''[[The Legend of Zelda:
** In ''[[Majoras Mask]],'' there's a place where there's a maze ''full'' of Gibdos, each protecting a door, an each asking for a given number of a certain item. If you don't [[Guide Dang It|read the walkthrough]] and stock up, you'll likely find yourself spending hours and hours going back and forth finding out what you need and getting each Gibdo's price for opening the door.
* Optional in ''[[The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword
== [[
* In ''[[X (
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* Many of the sidequests in ''[[STALKER]]'' are of this type and rarely worth the reward. The body parts ones are really annoying as you have a knife yet somehow only managed to cut the foot/eye/tail off one out of ten times?
** Not to mention that every sidequest has a [[Timed Mission|time limit]]. Combine this with certain bear asses not being available until the player is in an area far away and there being no means of travel between areas except on foot... Definitely not worth the reward. Which was never disclosed until you received it.
* ''[[
** Worse still, any items you pick up ''before'' you activate the quest aren't counted towards the total needed. If you don't know exactly where the quest is located, you could pick up hundreds of items for absolutely nothing.
** Even worse, many of the achievements in the fourth DLC can only be gotten this way. What would robots be doing with pink panties and stale pizzas?
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** The "Thelsamar Blood Sausages" quest actually ''does'' send you out to collect Bear Rumps. You need eight of them, though, not twenty, and needing them for a recipe makes some sort of sense even if the recipe doesn't. This may or may not be an [[Ascended Meme]].
** Special attention needs to be brought to the item crafting portion of the game, which frequently requires this sort of action ''en masse''. The Heavy Clefthoof armor set, for instance, required leatherworkers to skin 94 Thick Clefthoof Leather hides... which had a drop rate between 8%-30%. This means you had to kill a minimum of 310 Clefthoofs. Considering there were rarely more than 50 or so in the game at any given time, this is tantamount to extinction-level genocide. The kicker: the set was aimed at ''druids'', which are supposed to be in harmony with nature.
* ''[[
** This gets especially bad as some quests, like those from Dage the Evil, can require you to gather up to 50 of a given item, and you usually have to get 2 or 3 different items per quest. It get's even worse when you realise that logging off forces you to start all over again.
* ''[[
** Quests in ''FFXI'' do not give experience points, and thus are typically have a purpose outside of "do this to progress your character."
** A truly soul-killing quest requires giving an NPC 10,000 of a particular kind of fish... and it is only possible to catch 200 fish per Earth day. Your reward? The second best fishing rod in the game - and a [http://wiki.ffxiclopedia.org/wiki/Testimonial certificate telling you to go do something more useful with your time]. (It's not all bad; selling this one kind of fish is a staple source of income for many newbies, which spreads the pain around... a little.)
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*** There are plenty of items that don't drop ''at all'' unless you have the appropriate quest.
** [[Maple Story]] has responded to the incredible complaints with the Big Bang patch, lowering the amount of these vastly, and the ones that remain are at a fraction of the amounts they used to be.
* ''[[Mabinogi (
* The "Understanding M.Kill" quest, one of your very first quests in ''[[Rohan Online]]'' has you collecting pairs of front paws off the Vargs and Greymane Vargs around the bindstone. And that's just the start -- you'll be asked to collect fangs off Fanged Hellhounds, Animal Hides off Slavering Vargs, branches off Drys Ancients, Tough Black Hides off Lycans, and various others, in addition to your standard "Kill X (monster)s then return to me" quests.
* Apart from the usual bounties, ''[[Ace Online]]'' has lots of missions that require you to get bits and pieces of the various wildlife, from eggs and pollen to "chill" organs from Sediums (''presumably where the Sedium's supercooling fluids are produced'') and even DNA samples. The Arlington and Bygeniou governments also like to get you to gather parts from mechanical enemies, like the Control Units, CPUs, and Black Boxes of various Scouts and Shrine/Phillon enemy craft.
** Somewhat logically, most of these mobs drop them almost on a one-kill, one-drop probability, since it is part of their own body. The one mission where the probability is low actually makes sense, as the item is a foreign object eaten by any one of the mobs currently in the area, and hence must be searched through trial and error.
*** The completed mission log that serves as the pilot's diary actually even lampshades the fact on why he/she is forced to hunt down wildlife and take their bounty back like a common hunter.
* The Bounty Hunter Hunter in ''[[
** But significantly less tolerable is the fact that, if you want everything from the Bounty Hunter Hunter, you need 345 Lucre. And you can only get one Lucre a day. That means if you want everything from him, you need to grind every day for a year.
** There's a couple other quests/sub-quests that follow this template: Doc Galaktik's Quest for Herbs, in which you have to defeat three particular types of enemy and get them to drop a herb (which can get rather frustrating because, depending on when you do the quest, the chance of that enemy appearing can be quite low and they don't always drop their herb in the first place) and the goat-hunting part of the 1337 Trapz0r's quest, in which you have to bring back six hunks of goat cheese so he can make the two of you some goat cheese pizzas.
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* ''[[Ragnarok Online]]''. Look forward to spending almost a month searching for the single Bear Ass needed to upgrade the class of your character.
* ''[[Tabula Rasa]]'' had plenty of these, often upwards of several hundred zombie asses, but thankfully every one of those zombies had an ass. However, you still couldn't collect them until you got the appropriate mission.
* ''[[
* Also done in ''[[Fly FF]]''. You have to collect certain amounts of quest items from mobs for quests. Fortunately, you can collect these before getting the quest, and common practice is to do just that, then turn them in when you get the quest for free Exp. They don't drop all the time, however, and the number of them you're told to collect increases at higher levels.
** The problem is as you go further into the game, the number of these items required, as well as their drop rate, becomes so ridiculous, that by the time you hit the level 50ish range, farming for these quest items 3 levels below when you actually get the quest still will not get you the number you need. It may not seem bad at first, until you realize by level 50 you're getting fractions of experience points. From ''multiple'' monsters. Seriously, this game wants you to have nightmares about these sorts of quests by level 30.
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== Real Time Strategy ==
* Though a [[Strategy Game]], and therefore usually not prone to giving fetch quests, ''[[
** Also frickin' annoying, since your enemy tribe, the Kara-Khitai will shoot the sheep if they get in range, and you have to be really careful to keep the sheep close to your troops, or you'll lose them to whatever tribe your mini-horde passes by, and then have to come back for them. Also, the sheep were often in really ''annoying'' places.
* Ever since outfit addons have been introduced, ''[[Tibia]]'' has been like this. Apparently, very few wolves have paws, as they are exceedingly rare. The wolves that DO carry paws carry no more than one at a time.
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== Role Playing Game ==
* ''[[
* ''[[
** And, as per the description, not all snow bears have <s> asses</s> pelts.
* ''[[
** A farmer asks you to kill the bears that have been eating his sheep, and please bring him back the teeth as proof. The drop rate is 100%, but the challenge is finding the things in all the wide-open forest. Who ever heard of keeping sheep in the forest, anyway? And if you do the quest when you have a low [[Character Level]], you'll be going after bear ''cubs'', which are so small ''they are hidden by tall grass.''
*** The Detect Life spell makes this quest MUCH easier.
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** The master speech trainer quest requires speaking to every single beggar in the country. Fortunately, speech is such a useless skill no one seems to bother with this one.
** There's also the "seeking your roots" quest, and no, its not about discovering any sort of background information on your character. It involves finding 100 nirnroot plants spread through the whole game, for a fairly mediocre reward (a series of potions whose effects a mid level spell caster can replicate in his sleep, and an Nth playthrough player produce as constant effects as early as level 1). Unless the player is shooting for a very long and thorough play through, or is specifically scouring the coastline for them, chances are you won't stumble across anywhere near as many roots as you need for the quest.
* By ''[[
** Just for good measure, Skyrim also contains an instance of the archetypal "bring back 10 bear pelts" fetch quest as well. And given the fact that you probably won't be strong enough not to get clobbered by bears when you get the quest, you'll be mostly relying on random vendor inventories to get them, and the things are most likely going to clog up your inventory space for a while.
** If that wasn't tedious enough, another character demands nirnroot, nightshade, and deathbells, 10 apiece. Another wants a few ice wraith teeth, another wants 10 fire salts (one of the few items in the shop that costs over 100 gold). The game engine literally generates these on the fly, with in-game programming that goes something like "require _PLAYER_ to get [item] from [dungeon]"
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** If you're looking for Falmer Ears, you can sometimes loot as many as two of them from Falmer corpses! Similarly, you can always liberate a single Giant's Toe, but never more.
* ''[[The Witcher]]'' has "witcher work", a signboard with these kind of quests. There is no real reason to do them, but they supply you with an extra bit of cash. It's made more tolerable by the high drop rate, and the fact that it is ostensibly the main character's job to hunt monsters. The fact that you have to read about the monster before you can "harvest" from them however, does not help matters. Special hunts to target specific mini-boss monsters also exists, but get better rewards.
* ''[[
* ''[[
* In Interplay's ''[[Lord of the Rings]]'', you have to collect nine cloaks from the Ringwraiths who were washed away in the deluge. This involves a loooooooooong trek up and down the river, and pushing the button everywhere until you can find them all. Finding a couple of them involves fights with Wargs. What's worse, if you go to Rivendell with fewer than the total amount, after Gandalf throws the cloaks into the fire (why the hell did I have to collect them if you're just going to burn them?), the plot will no longer progress and the characters will just sit there forever.
* One of the sidequests in ''[[Sonic Chronicles]]'' is to obtain multiple samples of Nocturnus technology from enemies and give them to Rouge to deliver to her superiors. After receiving about four or five, she grows bored of it and agrees to give Sonic the reward if he promises to stop giving them to her.
** Most of Team Chaotix's missions in ''[[
* The bulk of Elizabeth's Requests in ''[[Persona 3]]'' involve hunting down certain types of Shadow in each section of [[Evil Tower of Ominousness|Tartarus]] and harvesting a representative item, body part, or accessory carried by said Shadow. Sometimes, even fighting a group of five of the required kind would yield only one item; in the original version of the game (prior to the FES rerelease) they could drop nothing at all. These also tended to be of the "only after asked to get" variety. This proved troublesome when Elizabeth required five items to reward you.
** Lampshaded as she say at one point that she'll leave it to our imagination why she needed such items. As you complete her requests, {{spoiler|you realize she is testing your potential.}}
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** And most are ''required story quests''. Although if you're finding one particularly annoying, you can always just [[Reality Warper|whine it to completion]].
* ''[[Progress Quest]]''.
* ''[[Kingdom Hearts: 358 Days Over 2
* ''[[Star Ocean the Last Hope]]'' features items created solely for these sort of missions (Wolf Oil, Peryton Droppings, Giant Bird Feather). Some of them are usable in low-level recipes at the very least.
* In ''[[Pokémon]] FireRed'' and ''LeafGreen'', you must find 2 TinyMushrooms or 1 Big Mushroom from catching (or using Thief/Trick/Covet) Paras(ect) to use the forgotten move tutor. However, this isn't necessary to complete the game.
* Infamous in ''[[
* ''[[Xenoblade Chronicles]]'' follows this fine tradition, adding it with quests where you have to pick up a certain number of shiny collectables from levels that are determined randomly when you walk over them. At least hunting for twenty bear asses means you can selectively kill bears, while the pick-ups all look like shiny orbs.
* There are several quests along these lines in ''[[Summoner]]'', such as the gargoyles' blood.
* ''[[
** Elder Dragons provide one of the best examples in the game, since one of the rarer drops is elder dragon ''blood''! Which becomes even more annoying when that blood sprays all over the place when you hit it!
* ''[[Fallout 3]]'' justifies it quite well. Part of one sidequest has you testing Mole Rat repellent, applied via hitting them with a stick. To make it a proper scientific experiment, you need to test it several times.
** The repellent works very well, by the way. {{spoiler|[[Your Head Asplode|A little ''too'' well]]}}.
* And ''[[Fallout: New Vegas]]'' has quests whereby you can trade in the dogtags of fallen NCR soldiers, OR the ears of Legion soldiers for bonus fame with a given faction and some bottle caps. The quest-giver for the "Legion Ears" even lampshades why he wants that specific body part, explaining that it's basically [[Just for Pun]].
* ''[[Nie R]]'' was panned by critics for its excessive use of Bear Asses in its sidequests and weapon upgrade system. Another example of a short (12 hour) game padded out (to 60+ hours) by this kind of thing.
* The Rages skills of Gau from ''[[
* iPhone RPG ''[[Zenonia]]'' couples this with [[Randomly Drops]] in all of the side quests and nearly all of the main quests. The sequel ups the ante by making the ingame Weapon creation system completely depended on it.
* The DS RPG ''7thDragon'' plays this straight with a lot of quests. There's a quest where you have to collect no less than one hundred bird feathers (which, assuming you have anything else in your inventory, you can't even carry at once so you have to hand it in in parts). You'd think most birds would have at least one of those. You'd think wrong.
* One optional quest in ''[[Betrayal
* ''[[
** The game also inverts the "not every enemy has an ass" issue with a mechanic that increases the drop rate and drop quantity if you run up a string of consecutive kills on a particular type of enemy. Kill enough consecutive bears, and not only will you guarantee a bear ass with every kill, you'll start discovering bears with multiple harvestable asses amongst the ones you kill. While some of the drops make sense (like fangs from some opponents), others... don't.
* ''[[Infinite Undiscovery]]'' has a sidequest where you have to collect 10 Harpy Livers, which are dropped by only one type of Harpy and only drop while this sidequest is active. At least they have a 100% drop rate.
* During the shipwreck sequence in ''[[
* In ''[[
== Stealth Based Game ==
* The "Shop Quests" in ''[[Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood
== Third Person Shooter ==
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* ''[[College Saga]]'' subverts this: when an NPC pops up and demands such a fetch quest, the characters [[Just Shoot Him|Just Blast Him With Magic]] and continue on their way.
* ''[[
== Literature ==
* ''[[
** This sidequest, however, was intentionally bad. This is a good place to point out that Saul was trying to get David killed. Again. Just think of it. "Sure, David. Just bring me evidence that you've mutilated the penises of a hundred Philistines." Left unsaid: "Yes, mutilated. The boy ain't a mohel,<ref>Jewish doctor with the ritual role of conducting circumcisions</ref> I'm sure his 'circumcisions' won't be exactly neat. As soon as the Philistines figure out what he's up to, they'll start fighting not only for their lives but for their junks against this mad genital-chopping serial killer I've just unleashed. Have fun, boy!"
** In ''God Knows,'' Joseph Heller's novelization - or, rather, quite deep yet humorous deconstruction in Heller's trademark style - David spends a while figuring out how many men he would need to hold down and circumcize a hundred Philistines. King Saul eventually has to explain to him that he is allowed to kill the Philistines first.
* There's an old legend involving the small group of slaves who would eventually be the ancestors of the Aztec race earning their freedom by going to war against their masters' great enemy and bringing back sacks and sacks of the enemy soldiers' ears. Slightly less disturbing than foreskins, but ...
* In Sienkiewicz' ''[[
== Web Animation ==
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== Web Comics ==
* The webcomic ''[[
* Also parodied [http://www.1up.com/do/feature?pager.offset=1&cId=3172592 here]. To quote:
{{quote| "Video Game Resolution #3: '''Collecting Stuff.''' ''At least, stuff that doesn't do anything. It won't make me happy if I'm forced into it, either. If I need to pick up the 15 sacred wingwongs to open the door to the lava level, they'd better have some other function than sitting in my item screen and glowing"''}}
* Parodied by ''[[The Noob]]'' [http://www.thenoobcomic.com/index.php?pos=163 here].
* One arc of ''[[
* Eddie in ''[[Yet Another Fantasy Gamer Comic]]'' illustrates [http://yafgc.net/?id=248 how] overdoing "[[Eye of Newt]]" part leads to this.
* [[Looking for Group|Cale]] goes on [http://lfgcomic.com/page/535 a quest] to gather ten giant rats. Uh, Hats. Ten giant ''hats''.
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== Web Original ==
* Lampshaded in [[Yogscast]]'s ''[[
== Troper Works ==
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