Random Drop: Difference between revisions

 

* The ''[[Castlevania]]'' series has a lot of examples:

** ''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.

** 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?

** Right before the system was implemented, 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, then later revamped the drop rate entirely. Currently, the drop rate is one item every 25 minutes minimum, 75 minutes maximum, which is much more reasonable.

** 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.

== [[MMORP Gs]] ==

 

** 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''.

== Role Playing Game ==

 

** 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.

** Played straight in the PSP collection, where the random drops are actually random again, but averted slightly in that it's more likely you get rare item from the [[Bonus Dungeon|Challenge Dungeon]] boss chests that're randomized and the worst item you can get is an X-Potion: however, you can't get any extra copies of any of the items, including Adamantines that're used to trade them for parts of [[Armor of Invincibility]] at the end of the game.

** 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.

* ''[[Earthbound]]''. Its 1-in-128 items have become the focal point of several [[Self-Imposed Challenge|fan quests]], as numerous gamers try to get them all. In fact, one character's ''only weapon that doesn't lower his offense,'' the Sword of Kings, is a 1-in-128 chance item. and when you defeat the boss of the dungeon it's in, [[Lost Forever|the enemy carrying it never appears again.]] [[Infinity+1 Sword|The Gutsy Bat]] is found in the area right before the final boss, so it'll only be used against Giygas. The broken antenna/Gaia Beam is dropped by an enemy that [[Action Bomb|explodes upon defeat]]. The Magic Fry Pan is the ''simplest'' to get; killing a dinosaur. At least after hunting Starman Super for the Sword of Kings, Poo can make use of it for a long time.

** If you try for the Sword of Kings (or any 1/128 item), your levels will likely be pumped up to some ridiculous number. But if you abuse the [[Game Breaker|Rock Candy]], you don't ''need'' no stinking [[Randomly Drops]] weapons. [[Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?|You could beat Giygas to death with your bare hands]].

* 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.

* ''[[Pokémon]]'' has the unique problem in that the frustration-causing random drop is more often than not the Pokémon themselves. Some appear very rarely in the wild, with 1-in-20 odds or worse. The frustration is compounded by the fact that you have to weaken these monsters without defeating them, as well as hoping they've got the right gender, nature, etc.

** 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.

** 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!

** There are also the slot games that, while not necessarily "random", are a total pain to predict and give you some of the best stat-boosting items in the game.

* The quality of items found in chests in the [[Bonus Dungeon|Ancient Cave]] in ''[[Lufia]] II'' has no relation to the dungeon level. Not so in ''Ruins of Lore'', though.

** The first ''Lufia'' has the Might Sword and the Might Armor, both pieces of ultimate equipment and both rare drops.

** Not ''that'' heavily stacked, though -- 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.

* While not technically drops, ''[[Yume Nikki]]'' has random events throughout the game with varying percentages of encountering. In the case of the [[Nightmare Fuel|infamous]] Uboa event, the randomness of it actually heightens the suspense and makes it more terrifying when it appears.

** This is especially annoying in ''Battle Network 4'', where you're forced to bump up the difficulty level which in turn levels up the enemies. Good luck getting the Level 2 Chips once you hit difficulty level 3, they're reduced to rare encounters and only in one or two locations.

** And then there's the Battle Mystery Data, items that appear on one panel and have 1 HP, and it must survive to get the item. Most of the time, these are placed in such a way that you must risk either the data or damage to make sure it survives. Then there's ShadeMan Omega's EvilChip, which can get randomly destroyed if the bat he turns into after any 10 HP or higher attack goes in that row - or you destroy it with a missed shot. At least LaserMan Omega keeps his attacks toward you.

* Refreshingly averted in ''[[Gothic]]''. If the player kills a wolf, and he has the 'skin wolf' skill, ''he will skin that wolf''. Of course, this doesn't stop people wondering exactly how much skill it would take to pull the wings off a giant mosquito, or why wolves only seem to have four claws, total.

* In addition to randomly dropped items, ''[[Valkyrie Profile Silmeria]]'' has randomly dropped party members; when you recruit an einherjar, unless it is plot-critical, the game will pick one at random from a list, usually 2-3 possible characters to a recruiting item. Highly annoying if you want to get specific spells.

** Then there are the Big Elder Dragon Jewels in Unite, which can be the hardest items to get in the game. They are dropped by G-Rank Elder Dragons with a 1% chance (or in Chameleos case, 2%). What makes these more frustrating than other extra-rare items, such as Heavenlies and Rubies, is that you must kill the dragon in case to even dream of obtaining it, and [[Marathon Boss|every Elder Dragon takes 3 or 4 quests to be slain]]. And some of them, like Teostra, are not exactly easy.

** {{spoiler|There is also the Ceadeus and it's oh so difficult to get Deep Dragongem, the same could be said of Alatreon and it's Azure Dragongem. Do not even get me started on Uragaan Rubies}}

** 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.

* ''[[Kingdom Hearts]]'' has randomly dropped synthesis items, each one normally dropped by 2 different monsters. These items were needed to make the ''Infinity Plus One Sword'', but it is almost completely averted due to the amount that you can increase the drop rate of these items. (Even the rarest synthesis item could usually be found with a 1:5 ratio, aside from those that only came from chests)

* ''[[The Elder Scrolls]]'' almost entirely averts this trope. Every item needed for a main line quest is always fixed, and even in ''Arena'' and ''Daggerfall'' where sidequests are randomly generated the item will be placed the minute the quest is accepted and won't move until you get it. In ''Morrowind'' and ''Oblivion'', which have no random quests, ALL quest items and artifacts (and even non-artifact unique magic items) have fixed locations. Then ''Shivering Isles'' came and introduced a quest that required you to collect half a dozen random drops. Needless to say this is the quest that usually stays uncompleted.

* ''[[Lost Odyssey]]'' has [[Item Crafting|Ring Assembly]] components randomly drop, but thankfully nothing important. Then the ''Seeker of the Deep'' [[Expansion Pack]] had to go ruin that by including some ridiculously good, ridiculously hard to get randomly dropped accessories.

* ''[[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.

** Triple-whammy of random drops in its predecessor, though--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--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--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--runes, equipment, rune pieces--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.

** The third game, ''The Drowned City'', has an [[NPC]] who frequents the local bar called Scavenger Toma. His whole purpose is to [[Guide Dang It|tell players how to meet most of these conditions]], all for the low-low price of a drink or two.

* ''[[Opoona]]'' has many monsters with rare drops attached to them. Some of these are equipment, which is expected. A few drop stat-boosting items. However, some of them drop items necessary for sidequests, and the ''only'' way to get said items is by beating up monsters until you get lucky. Having the sidequest does not, sadly, make said drops more common.

== Turn Based Strategy ==

 

** 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'!