Too Awesome to Use: Difference between revisions

 

{{examples}}

* Magic Potions in ''[[The Legend of Zelda]]'' series. Usually, there is a super-rare and super-powerful type of potion that you can place in one of your bottles. However, some of them are refillable, free of charge.

** For example, Grandma's Soup in ''[[The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker|The Wind Waker]]'' refills all your magic and life AND doubles your attack power until you take damage (the only item in the game to do so), and you can do this twice with one bottle since she gives you two servings. Since getting a refill requires going all the way back to your house, an unpleasant task if you're in the middle of a dungeon, and since the game is relatively easy in the first place, you might opt to search for hearts and potions in grass and pots rather than using it, and you might beat the whole game without using it. (But you'll keep one with you anyway, since they're the best thing to have in your bottle.)

* ''[[Spiral Knights]]'' has the Mist Tank, which you only get once after passing the tutorial and refills your Mist Energy once, i.e. the "currency" you need to enter levels and craft equipment.

 

* ''[[Zombies Ate My Neighbors]]'' has a flamethrower located in a hidden alcove. Despite being the strongest weapon in the game, the flamethrower is unique, only has 400 ammo and is best saved for the final boss. Other rare items, like Red Potions and Pandora's Boxes, may also qualify.

 

* The horror-based adventure game/first-person shooter/interactive movie ''[[Realms Of The Haunting]]'' had a magic staff which had a very limited number of charges (something like 12 shots or so) and couldn't be recharged. It wasn't noticeable more powerful than the game's other magic weapons, though, so you either never used it anyway, or used all 12 shots then forgot about it. Sucks to be you if you did use it up killing common enemies, because it turns out this particular weapon pretty much [[Revive Kills Zombie|insta-kills the otherwise very tough and annoying final boss.]]

 

* The Free Checks in ''[[Kirby]] Air Ride'', much like the example from [[Super Smash Bros.]] Brawl below.

 

* ''[[Super Smash Bros.]] Brawl'' has Golden Hammers that can automatically unlock a secret without having to do the challenge. You never use them.

** Made ''even worse'' because, for the few challenges that really are exceptionally difficult (beating Boss Battles on [[Harder Than Hard|Insane]], for example), you can't actually use the damn hammers in the first place. Which makes them completely useless unless you're too lazy to complete the challenge yourself. Well, except in the [[Regional Bonus|PAL versions]].

* ''[[Gundam vs. Series|Gundam: Federation vs. Zeon]]'' has a form of this in its Campaign mode. Basically, even if a mobile suit you take out for a mission is entirely undamaged during the course of it, once you get back to the map screen it'll still have an arbitrary number of HP depleted, as a deterrent to just taking the same suit out over and over again ([[Reality Ensues|much like real-world armored vehicles and jets can't go on more than one mission in a row without maintenance]]). As such, the titular Gundam will almost never be used - taking it out on a mission, even avoiding all damage, automatically drops it down to ''25% health'' once it's over, which will not be fully repaired until after you complete multiple missions.

 

* ''[[Doom]]'':

** The trademark Heart Artifact from ''[[Doom]] 3: Resurrection of Evil'' could stop time, turn the player invincible, and boost the damage of their weapon all at once. It was such a cool effect that the player is commonly tempted to conserve the artifact's energy and rarely use it, even though it could be recharged just about everywhere.

** HE ammo for the Assault rifle later on in the game is partially susceptible to this, as while it offers Heavy Weapon power for a Rifle specialist, ammunition is fairly rare.

** The PS20 is a one-shot holdout plasma blaster that has perfect accuracy even if you don't have any points in the relevant skill. It will kill just about any human enemy that you shoot in the head with it, and each one only takes up a single spot in your inventory space, but you don't find many of them, and it's hard to decide which of the many nameless mooks you battle to use it on. The Light Anti-tank Weapon is a one-shot rocket launcher that is guaranteed to destroy ''anything'' it hits directly, and also probably anything standing nearby. However, because it's only a one-shot gun and takes up four inventory spaces, it's impractical to carry around if you have other rifles or heavy weapons with you. Cue desperate thinking about how best to dispose of it along with some Inventory Tetris. On the bright saide, the LAW was almost always found near giant military robots.

** The laser rifle can shoot through walls though, so if you can see through them, it's great for catching enemies unawares.

** Those who pre-ordered or bought the applicable DLC pack will experience this through the grenade launcher; it can only be acquired about 2/3 into the plot and eats through boss health, but all ammo for it (save for the six grenades it comes loaded with) must be found, which means most players get little use out of it.

* ''[[Painkiller]] Resurrection'' has an [[Obvious Beta|odd case of this]] in multiplayer: attempting to fire the electrodriver weapon [[Game Breaking Bug|crashes the game immediately.]]

 

* In ''[[Galactic Civilizations]] 2'', it is possible to 'get lucky' and find a rare Precursor battleship early on which is generally much stronger than anything currently out there. However, between fleet limits (a player at that point can generally only afford to field -only- that ship in a given battle) and a rather adaptive AI, those ships may be held in reserve until they get surpassed by normal researched ships. Ironically though with the proper civilization traits, one can end up finding quite the number of such ships very early on.

* In 4X game ''[[Space Empires]] V'' there is a special Ancient Ruins tech you may find if you colonise a planet, called Shield Imploder. It will bring down the enemy shields and cause damage to the enemy ship (Best description is the Breen weapon in ''[[Deep Space Nine]]''), however it is rather weak at first, but eventually it will destroy with one shot ships relying on shields. So you end up keeping it secret so as not to let other players know you have it. A game can actually end before you get to the stage where it is a one shot kill weapon. Meanwhile it would have been quite good as it is to instantly remove enemy shields if you hadn't wanted to keep it a secret for later.

* The console-only (later ported to iOS) game ''[[Civilization Revolution]]'' gives you an [[Nuke'Em|ICMB]] once you build the Manhattan Project wonder. Unlike a typical ''Civilization'' nuke, this one can reach any city and wipe it off the face of the map without leaving any fallout. However, it's a unique unit that you only get ''once'' per game. You probably will end up not using it until the game ends.

 

* A minor example in ''[[Diablo]] II'' are the jewels and runes, items that can be put into special "socketed" items for stat bonuses, but can only be used once. They are just rare enough, and special items with stat bonuses drop regularly enough, that it makes one hesitant to use them instead of just waiting for another special item to drop.

** In Ladder tournament play the object is to get the highest level runes, which ever remain Too Awesome to Use. The player often faces the dilemma of whether to create a powerful runeword for survival now or hoard the runes to transmute to higher runes later. Then there's the question of finding the correct ''base'' item for it. Of course, this is what happens when there are literally dozens of items which are each so rare that many-year players frequently never find any of them in the first place, many of which have to be ''combined'' to yield results...

* Unlike its spiritual predecessor above, ''[[Dante's Inferno (video game)|Dantes Inferno]]'' is incredibly stingy when it comes to using your [[Berserk Mode|Redemption]] due to the [[Scrappy Mechanic|rate of Redemption regeneration being directly correlated to your combo lengths]]. Moreover, you can't turn it off once you turn it on (a lesson God Of War learned ''years'' ago), and you can only use it once you completely fill at least one tier on the potentially three-tier meter. If playing on [[Harder Than Hard|Infernal difficulty]], you will use your Redemption ''twice'' over the course of the game, and both times are against [[That One Boss|incredibly cheap bosses]]. For all practical purposes, your ''real'' berserk meter might as well be your <s>mana</s> [[Game Breaker|Divine Armor]] meter.

 

* ''[[World of Warcraft]]'' has a lot of items like this, though Blizzard eventually changed them to be unreliable or useless against enemies over a certain level. Fortunately, many of them can still be sold to players that have less doubts about using them in a tight situation.

** The Holy Mightstone, an artifact that a level 50 paladin receives at the completion of a lengthy quest chain. It provides a 10-minute buff to damage vs. undead when used, but it can only be used once and can ''never'' be replaced since it's a quest item, so the end result is that most paladins end up never using it. Sadly it's fallen victim to power growth in expansions. At level 60 it would turn you into an death-machine by practically '''doubling''' your offensive stats. At level 80 - not so much. It gives the same boost, but by now it's a 5-10% power-up at most.

** Flasks used to be like this in the original game. While they provided outlandish buffs (such as increasing player health by 1200, which for most classes meant a 30% increase in hp - an incredible amount, particularly for boss fights), they were also notoriously difficult to craft. Obviously, you needed to be a high-level alchemist (which in itself wasn't that big of a deal—many players would grind alchemy as it provided access to expendable mana and health potions). However, crafting flasks also required Black Lotus, a ''ludicrously'' rare herb (initially at any time there were a maximum of ''four'' in the entire game, up to one in each of the zones they could spawn) that ''wasn't tradeable'': you had to find it ''yourself'' (good luck!) and in order to be able to gather it, you had to be a maxed-out herbalist. Since herbalism was considered a primary profession (of which you could only have two), if you chose any combination of professions other than "herba-alchy", you could not make flasks, period. To top off the ignominy, flasks could only be made in ''one place in the entire world'' (later two), which was smack at the end of a high-level dungeon. When C'Thun was first killed, most of the player community had problems wrapping their minds around the fact that the victorious guild expended '''forty''' flasks on this single boss fight.

* ''[[City of Heroes]]'':

** The Wedding Band hero-side springs first to mind. It granted a hefty resistance buff to all damage that lasted for two total hours of on-time (and maybe required an hour to get). Since it was only available to heroes, it quickly became the major target of villains and a fair issue of player-versus-player balance. The "Echo" version of the power now gives the same level of protection, but only lasts five minutes of on time, but can be stacked with the original version.

** Similarly there's the Inspirations you build up as you play, basically the equivalent of potions in other MMORPGs that can be used at any time to heal health, restore endurance, or give a number of beneficial buffs. The thing is, you rarely need to use them to win most fights so the tray quickly fills up with Inspirations you hang on to for tougher fights and emergencies that never come.

* ''[[RuneScape]]'' has the Tiger Shark, one of the most powerful pieces of food in the game. It heals more [[Life Points]] than any other fish,<ref>Except the Baron Shark (also very rare), which heals slightly more, but with a delay</ref> and it can even boost your life above its normal maximum. Of course, it can only be obtained with a near-maxed fishing level, requires a near-maxed cooking level to be edible, can't be traded with other players, and it's very rare, obtainable only through the Fishing Trawler minigame at an average catch rate of roughly one tiger shark for every ''hour'' of trawling.

 

* P-wings in ''[[Super Mario Bros 3]]'' gives you infinite raccoon flight. This game also had some other items that fell prey to this effect, like the Hammer Bros. Suits and the Tanuki suits. They were just too cool and rare to use anywhere. They're more usable in the ''All-Stars'' remake, where you can save items and regain items earned from beating worlds, meaning you can easily farm P-Wings by repeatedly beating World 1. The same goes with Lakitu's Cloud, which allows you to automatically skip a single stage.

* ''[[Mega Man (video game)|Mega Man]] 9'' gives us a few of these, with shop items that are expensive, or of which you can only have one at a time. Eddie Call can give you items, including 1-ups. The M-Tank acts like the Megalixers described above; it refills your [[Hit Points]] and all your [[Mana|Weapon energy]]. But the biggest user of this trope ''has'' to be the Guard Power. It grants double armor for 1 level, but though you'd be tempted to use it against the [[Cluster F-Bomb|!* %@?&%]] Bio-Devil twins, you'd be ''far'' better off using it against the final level's [[Boss Rush]] and Wily's [[One-Winged Angel|3-stage battle]].

* In ''[[The Lost Vikings]]'' and its sequel you can find an item that kills every enemy on the screen. However, this item rarely comes into play as you can usually take out your enemies easily enough with your normal attacks.

 

* ''[[L.A. Noire]]'' has Intuition Points that allow you to find all clues and ease questioning, you also only get a limited amount of them and can only have 5 at once.

 

* The question skips in ''[[The Impossible Quiz]]''. {{spoiler|You do actually need to stockpile every last one to get past the last question. Muhahahaha.}}

** In ''The Impossible Quiz 2'', your final grade (should you beat the game) is dependent not only on your number of lives remaining, but also how many Skips and Fusestoppers you've stored up.

 

* The heroes in ''[[Warcraft]] II'' are almost always Too Awesome to Use, as in most missions [[Hero Must Survive|if they die you lose the mission]]. Only the human side has healers, auto-healing doesn't exist, and you don't always have healers in every mission, so most of the time you keep your hero locked up tight in your base where no one can hurt it, so that you don't accidentally lose the mission by getting them killed. The expansion ''Beyond the Dark Portal'' made the heroes into souped-up versions of the regular units, so you might be tempted to use them; in vanilla ''Warcraft II'', they're ''weaker'' than regular units and far too easily killed to ever be risked in battle. Except when you really need that spell only the hero can cast.

* Heroes were a big problem in most early RTS games, including ''[[StarCraft]]'' and ''[[Age of Empires]]''. Generally the heroes only found use if they were either expendable or in a no-production mission. Newer games, especially ''Warcraft 3'', combat this by making [[Hero Unit]]s respawnable and able to be customised and levelled up.

* Some ultimates in ''[[League of Legends]]'' have this issue. Galio's ultimate, with a huge cooldown of over 2 minutes, is a channeled vortex that taunts enemies towards you, then explodes for massive damage. Locking down the entire enemy team and drawing them together can turn the tide of a fight and possibly the game, so you may end up never using it because the ''perfect opportunity'' may arise just 30 seconds later...

 

* When playing as Vegas or Pointman in ''[[Audiosurf]]'', players may hold on to a paint or sort powerup until they get a large combo or the end of the song so they can get clean finish. Overfills that could have been avoided by using one of these powerups will ruin their plans, however, due to losing all power ups you were carrying when you overfill.

 

* Falling into this hoarding mentality is especially deadly in ''[[Nethack]]'', doubly-especially on the first few levels. Until you've built up a small cushion of hit points, ''use'' that wand of lightning!

** In the late game, certain expendable items ''do'' become almost useless - namely scrolls and potions. (No need to hurl potions of paralysis at a monster when you can smite it with Excalibur, after all.) Almost, because you can dip potions and scrolls in water to blank them out - and with the proper tools, bottled water and blank paper can be some of the most useful tools in the game.

** One playing the ''[[Nethack]]'' variant ''Slash'EM'' may come across the Houchou, an artifact-level spoon. Throwing this spoon at a monster results in an instant kill, after which the artifact is destroyed. ''Slash'EM'' mostly averts this trope, though, because just about every player has their own idea of which single creature in the game deserves skipping.

** This is especially true in ''Linley's Dungeon Crawl'', as beneficial potions and scrolls are relatively common and safe to identify by trial-and-error (and it is easy to end up facing half a dozen rampaging orcs with three hit points left).

* Summon feathers in ''[[Chocobo's Dungeon]]'' allowed you to replace your partner with far more powerful summon creatures. This meant calling to your aid allies that could take down the game's bonus boss singlehandedly while taking only pitiful damage in return. The downside is that, should they actually die, you lose the feather you likely spent hours trying to get your hands on. A random summon feather takes away that risk but doesn't give you the option of selection.

* In ''[[Castle of the Winds]]'', you randomly find magic wands that can cast all kinds of spells, even the room-clearing Ball spells, with as much as a dozen charges. Even if you do put one in your belt, you'll probably forget you have it.

 

* There are a multitude of items like this in ''[[Pokémon]]''; the Master Ball is probably the most famous example, since it can catch any Pokémon regardless of how strong it is. However, you usually only get one during a playthrough, though it's possible to get more of them via the lottery, trading, or exploiting cheats. Other examples may include certain TMs, evolutionary items, battle items and even certain healing items, such as Max Revives and the Sacred Ash, which can heal every Pokémon in your party to full health but can only be found once or twice in the game. Another bizarre example would be the Old Gateau, which is a one-off item that otherwise functions like a Full Heal, so you end up keeping it just because it looks cool.

** Although, considering that in the first generation, [[Good Bad Bugs|there was an easy way to duplicate items]] like the Master Ball many times over, while in the later generations duplicating is a slow and involved process if you want many of the same item.

** ''[[Final Fantasy XIII]]'' has only four elixirs in the game. If you do dare to use them and do so intelligently though, [[Game Breaker|one is usually enough]] to ''drop'' the scales in your favor.

*** Shrouds (field items that pre-buff your characters with every conceivable positive status or let you dodge enemies entirely) cannot be bought in shops. They also never drop from enemies. How to get them? Intentionally spend excessive amounts of time in battles so that you get One-Star rankings in them, and after about a few dozen instances of this, a flag triggers that allows shrouds to become rare drops. Needless to say, you'll want to save the 20 or so you get through the course of normal play for the endgame [[Bonus Boss]]es.

** ''[[Final Fantasy VIII]]'' has the Hero and Holy War items, which make respectively a single character or the whole party completely invincible for a short period of time. They have to be mugged off of certain bosses and are thus very limited in quantity... unless you go to the trouble of playing the [[Game Breaker|card game]]. Winning the Laguna and Gilgamesh cards - a difficult task but not [[Nintendo Hard]] - and refining them with the Card Mod ability gets you 100 Heroes and 10 Holy Wars, more than enough to get you through all of the game's toughest boss fights. In addition, Bahamut (another rare card) could be refined into 100 Megalixirs.

** ''[[Final Fantasy VIII]]'''s junction system essentially discouraged the player from using magic, since you'd either be saving up your best spells to junction with a specific stat or you'd have them junctioned already, meaning you were left with the lesser spells that weren't worth using on account of the stat boosts from the junctioned spells.

** And in ''Valkyrie Profile: Covenant of the Plume'', a man in the prologue said something along the lines: "Medicine never did a dead man no good."

* The ''[[Neverwinter Nights]]'' franchise has this. This is mostly the case with powerful or even ordinary potions and scrolls, especially if your character is not a magic build. A lot of mundane but tough fights could have been made easier if you'd just used that barkskin potion or whatnot, but you keep saving it for the boss fights.

** Of course, considering you can make them yourself via Alchemy, that every potion you make raises your Alchemy skill and that by the time you're a Master of Alchemy it's probably the quickest and easiest way to make money (go raid a few farms and presto, 200 potions of restore fatigue to sell), this doesn't really apply if you're playing a character that uses alchemy.

** The Daedric Lava Whiskey from the Wizard's Tower expansion: Only one bottle in the game, does a slight amount of damage and paralyzes you in exchange for then healing a massive amount of health and summoning a Dremora Lord, which is one of the most powerful summonable creatures in the game

** This can also happen with some of the more powerful scrolls, one-use items that allow you to cast powerful spells at no cost.

* Using items mid-battle in ''[[Eternal Sonata]]'' is clunky and generally unnecessary for victory, so many very useful ones remain unused throughout - even in the final battles of the game, when it only really becomes necessary to use HP restoring items.

* ''[[The Bard's Tale]]'' has Adder Stones, which allow you to heal instantly, restrain enemies, become immortal for a brief period of time, and do several other cool things. [[Your Mileage May Vary|Depending on how conservative the player is]], this can result in completely unnecessary hoarding in case they need to become immortal later—people have died sitting on a decent collection of adder stones and entered the final boss fight with 102 stones (one is needed to heal, and 3 for immortality).

** Of course, if you're the type that doesn't care about cheating, there's a cheat code that gives you a insane amounts of adder stones(as well as gold) and can be used repeatedly. This can be used in combination with codes that make you invincible, allowing the adder stones to be used for their more offensive spells as opposed to just their healing and defensive ability.

** Same goes for most scrolls and potions in ''BG2'': by the time you'd figure you need them, you can beat pretty much anyone to bloody pulp ''without'' magical buffs, let alone potions. This also applies to artifact weapons lying around, ''especially'' after you find that Bag of Holding.

* ''[[Ultima]]'' frequently features the Glass Sword, which is very much one of these, killing any enemy instantly but breaking after use.

* The game ''[[Full Metal Alchemist And The Broken Angel]]'' had a system where you could turn things into weapons using alchemy; you could make the basic weapon and a more advanced one, and could add on elemental bonuses to them. You could, for example, create a broadsword and attach fire to that, which was pretty powerful, or you could make the more advanced weapon, a katana, but it came at a cost; you couldn't attach an element to it, and, while it was powerful enough to take out an enemy in a single hit, it was used up after about six hits, leaving you running around wildly looking something else you could turn into a weapon.

 

* The Grenades in ''[[Metal Slug]]'' are rather powerful. You'll want to keep them the first time you play the game, thinking you're going to find a good use for all that power... The game soon obliges, and you'll usually end up wasting those grenades [[Nintendo Hard|when you get killed]]. Of course, you get a fresh set on your next life, and hopefully a little extra insight on [[Averted Trope|how things work in the game]].

* Bombs are very useful in ''[[Star Fox (series)|Star FOX]]'', and are instrumental in a few boss fights. You don't find yourself using them too often, though, do you?

** Doubly so because killing multiple enemies with a single Bomb does not offer the same cluster-kill bonus that doing the same with a charge shot does. It mostly comes down to a matter of only using it on enemies that you KNOW you can't clear out anyway, and memorizing the points where more bombs appear so you can be sure a replacement is right around the corner.

** See also, Gigawing, as bombs add a ridiculous amount of points to your already ludicrous trillion-digit score. The temptation to beat your old score by holding onto just ONE more bomb this time is quite deadly.

* The Climax Mode [[Limit Break]] in ''[[After Burner Climax]]'', which gives you [[Bullet Time]] and a [[Macross Missile Massacre]], does not come that rarely, but it's still possible to fall into this mentality as there's a chance you burn it on one enemy wave only for an even larger wave of enemy planes to show up.

* In ''[[Thunder Force]] III'' onwards, dying takes away your current weapon unless it's Twin Shot or Back Shot, your initial weapons. Less experienced players who are aware of this penalty may find themselves refusing to use the better weapons, out of fear of losing them.

 

* ''[[Splinter Cell]]'': If you didn't realize you could use the Sticky-Cam to knock out people, you'd end up hoarding Sticky-Shockers and Airfoils right past the point where they'd be useful. (And the games would often have Sam [[Fake Difficulty|inexplicably]] dump several of his items during loading screens, rendering all your hoarding moot.) ''Conviction'' rectifies this by giving players "Weapon Stashes" that top off ''all'' the player's ammo whenever they're used.

 

* Nearly all entries in the ''[[Resident Evil]]'' series barring Code Veronica (where there simply isn't enough ammunition) and 4 (where it's just ''so damned fun'' to [[There Is No Kill Like Overkill|shoot regular enemies with larger weapons than is necessary]], and the game will give you more of the larger ammo if you're short on it anyway) have players finding themselves with dozens of magazines worth of ammunition for their weapons, and their larger guns all but unused by the time they meet the final enemy, which most likely cannot be hurt by any of those weapons, even the big-ticket firearms.

** Ink Ribbons. 'Nuff said. While most typewriters have at least one and possibly as many as three ribbons nearby, the prospect of running out and ''being unable to save'' is quite scary for many players.

** ''[[Silent Hill Origins]]'' has one of the largest weapons' count in the series (including six kinds of firearms). Most of them, however, are commonplace depot appliances. The more powerful ones break after a single use, so players want to save them for boss fights and the like. But there's ''so many'' of them that Travis usually ends the game with [[Bag of Holding|dozens of TV sets, toasters, blenders and hammers in his pockets]].

 

* The Smart Bomb in ''[[Alien Swarm]]''. When you unlock it, you can carry only one. It's pretty much the same as the Hornet Barrage, but 5 of them. It fires so many damn rockets that a huge swarm can easily be dispatched with the item. However, since you can only hold 1, you'll have a tough time figuring out when is the best time to use it.

* Heavy weapons in ''[[Mass Effect 2]]''. You can only replenish their ammo at a handful of fixed points in the game, and you get money for all the heavy weapons ammo you pick up that would put you over your maximum ammo capacity. Most people only ever use their heavy weapons in the tutorial because of the monetary reward. Medi-gel had a similar role. This has resulted in heavy weapons being scrapped, and medigel was given a more vital role in ''[[Mass Effect 3]]'', being the only way you can regain health as opposed to the [[Regenerating Health]] of ''[[Mass Effect 2]]''.

 

* Most emergency plants in ''[[Plants vs. Zombies]]'', i.e. Cherry Bomb, Jalapeno, Doom Shroom, etc. Most of them get pretty expensive at 100 sun upward for an explosion, when you could be spending your sun on permanent attacking plants. They also take forever to recharge, so you can't use one back-to-back for multiple emergencies.

** Most of the plant upgrades qualify in anything that isn't [[Endless Game|Survival Mode]]. By the time you have enough sun to turn all your Sunflowers into Twins or your Repeaters into Gatling Peas, the round is most likely over already. In the case of the former, as well, it costs so much sun to upgrade to Twins that the Sunflower has to pelt out sun 6 times before you start making profit off of it.

 

* ''[[Fire Emblem]]'':

** The unique S-rank staves in various ''[[Fire Emblem]]'' games (e.g. the Ashera Staff in ''Path of Radiance''). They heal all your allies on the battlefield as well as removing all status ailments ''and'' give enough experience to the caster for a level up. But they only have three uses, and in order to use them at all you need an S-rank in staves (which has no other purpose and, in some games, stops you from S-ranking any other weapon type). This at least is not so much a problem in ''Radiant Dawn'', because you only get the Ashera Staff from a character (whose method of recruitment approaches a [[Guide Dang It]]) that joins in the last chapter, and it can be freely used in the fight with the [[Big Bad]].

** ''Blazing Sword'' [[Lampshade Hanging|references this]] when a character warns not to put too much thought into who gets an item; 'holding onto a useful item does no one any good'. However, said NPC appears in Lyn's mode, and saving the item will help up your funds ranking. A higher funds ranking means Lyn has a [[Vendor Trash|better gem]] in her inventory in Eliwood/Hector mode, so ironically, this is the one time not using an item IS helpful (though it's debatable whether the better funds ranking and the extra gold later on outweigh the stat bonus from using the item right away).

** Frankly, a lot of the items in the game, up to and including Vulneraries, which are the only way to heal without standing on fortresses or using healers.

** ''Sword of Seals'' actually '''forces''' this behavior. You have access to the game's ultimate weapons very early, but they have few uses, and in order to get the [[Golden Ending|best ending]] they all need to be intact by the time you beat the [[Big Bad]]. Even though you technically CAN use them 1/3 of the way through the game, not players won't until the very end.

* ''[[Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri]]'''s expansion pack introduced Battle Ogres. These are alien war machines left on Planet that really kick ass, especially the Mark 3. Problem? They are rare, and damage to them can never be repaired. So despite having very good weapons for when you pick them up, they tend to sit around as garrison units, because they have an ability that makes them better police. They're also good stopgaps in the case of mindworm swarms, as they have not only good defense but (in the mark 1 and 2 versions) additional defenses against psi attacks. Just be sure to never let them get into ''real'' combat.

* Completely averted in the ''[[Baten Kaitos]]'' games; thanks to the card-based battle system, you could use your most powerful Magnus on weak enemies, and they'd still be in your inventory.

* In most normal gameplay, you won't need to use the Jonathan Ingram card in ''[[Metal Gear Acid]]'', despite it being one of the most powerful ones in the game. Ingram removes twenty COST from your character, far beyond the twelve COST removed by the most powerful conventional COST reduction card - but, because Jonathan Ingram is so powerful, it tends not to get used.

 

* The three one-shot ultra-weapons in ''Gorky 17'' (known as ''[[Odium]]'' to Americans), (a missile, a lightning and an energy beam). They cause colossal damage in a huge radius.

** A very frustrating occurrence might be using one of those on a boss... only to discover he was immune to this type of attack.

* See that beautiful Allmighty Antilaw in ''[[Final Fantasy Tactics Advance]]''? It allows you to completely nullify all laws in the battle. Which means that they are the ultimate anti-judge weapon. But then it should be noted that it is limited to very certain plot points of the game. This extends to a lesser extent to the R level law cards which are still rare, but they can keep returning to the card shop. But good luck on getting yourself to use them too because often times you will just stomach the laws to begin with.

 

* In ''[[Grand Theft Auto]]'' games, getting a vehicle you want to keep generally means it will stay in the garage forever, since if you take it to do a mission, you will likely have to get out of it and risk it disappearing, and [[Every Car Is a Pinto|they are ridiculously easy to destroy]].

** This is taken to insane lengths in ''[[Grand Theft Auto III]]''. Certain plot-involved cars are immune to certain things, such as bullets, fire, explosions, and wrecks. Most of these cars could only be obtained ONCE per game and often required hours of trial and error to get. Many players spent many hours collecting them, just to have them waste away in a garage, even though some missions almost require one to complete.

** Changed as of version 1.1. Apples now have a 0.5% chance of dropping from certain trees. They also only need eight gold nuggets, which can be made from one gold bar, not the previous 72 bars required. Still not very easy to get as you need to dig quite deep for gold, or kill several Zombie Pigmen. They're also not as effective in terms of healing, though they still offer the much sought after health regeneration for thirty seconds.

** Some consider diamond equipment to be this. A pick-axe made of diamond mines faster and lasts a lot longer than one made of iron or stone... but it still breaks eventually, and if you're killed by underground monsters or a lava flow, you risk losing it forever. Similarly, diamond armor offers a great deal of protection, and diamond swords deal 25% more damage than iron swords, but since they're only useful in combat, there's a serious risk of losing them long before their unparalleled durability runs out, especially when diamond armor provides not much more protection than iron, which is plentiful. Diamond is found deep within the earth, usually near lava, and is even rarer than gold. It can still be worth using with proper branch mining techniques, but it is time-consuming to hunt for.

** Enchanted tools and armor. You can get some nifty effects for your items, such as setting mobs on fire or increasing the diamond drop rate. However, the enchantments you receive are pretty unpredictable, and the experience cost increases exponentially with the enchantment level. You'd have to kill 77 hostile mobs for level 10, 651 hostile mobs for level 30, or 1785 hostile mobs for the maximum, level 50. Furthermore, enchanted items can't be repaired without stripping the enchantment. They basically have all the drawbacks of diamond equipment taken [[Up to Eleven]].

** Also, holy water and dynamite are extremely rare, especially since you can't buy anything.

 

 

* Some cards in ''[[Magic: The Gathering]]'' are specifically designed to invoke this trope, by giving you a small cheap effect and/or a large expensive effect. Good players will know when getting it out now is more important then making it more powerful; bad players will not.

** One such example is [http://www.wizards.com/magic/autocard.asp?name=Kavu%5BTitan Kavu Titan]; when they were playtesting Invasion and someone lent now-head Designer Mark Rosewater a deck to use without mentioning that the Grizzly Bears (a basic 2-mana card with two power/toughness, similar to Kavu Titan without its kicker) were supposed to be proxies for Kavu Titans. Mark went 4-0 the first week, and then upon being told that they were actually Titans, he went 2-2 the next week, wanting to hold back to use the Titan's improved version rather than just pouring on the aggression.

** There are also the Planeswalkers, which have two small abilities and one "ultimate" ability, but which they can use only once per turn. Garruk Wildspeaker, in particular, gets this treatment: "Do I untap two lands or Overrun?" is a legitimate question.

* ''[[Dungeons & Dragons]]''

** A charged magic item (particularly a staff, which can hold spells of any level) can cost a fortune to buy new or craft from scratch. You can loot them off enemies or find them in treasures like any other item, but in this case they are unlikely to have a full compliment of charges (50) when found. If you find one with particularly mighty spells, it will often have only a few uses left, and good luck deciding when to expend them.

** The double move: With a little judicious spending, it's possible to move twice in a row, which can be a huge advantage. The only problem? It tends to set up the other side to do the same exact thing, so most players will never use it unless they can be pretty certain of knocking a major enemy country out of the war.

** American units: These are the best Allied units in the game, but they have a drawback. American units that get eliminated have to be rebuilt in the United States and then initially deployed to Britain (or France, in the unlikely event that France is still standing), but the United States can only initially deploy six units per turn, and those units cannot be strategically redeployed to any place outside of Britain until the next turn. So there's a temptation for the Allies to let the British carry the brunt of the fighting, since any British casualties can return to the front a turn earlier than any American casualties.

** French and British units in the Mediterranean theater: This is the same principle as the previous point. British units are generally stronger than French units, but British units require two nine-factor fleets to be transported to the Mediterranean front, whereas French units require only one (assuming the French navy has been based in Marseille). So if the war in North Africa heats up while France is still standing (granted, it usually doesn't), there is a temptation for the Allies to let the French to bear the brunt of the fighting there.

** All that being said, however, these are just temptations or tendencies. It's a rare game indeed where there isn't at least one double-move (and if the Allies ''don't'' pull a double-move in 1942, when the United States enters the war, it is because the Axis has all but won). Likewise, barring very unusual circumstances, American units will see plenty of action, and the British will do plenty of fighting in North Africa.

 

* MS Paint Adventure's ''[[Problem Sleuth]]'' [http://www.mspaintadventures.com/?s=4&p=000876 plays] [http://www.mspaintadventures.com/?s=4&p=000930 this] [http://www.mspaintadventures.com/?s=4&p=001106 repeatedly], with the same skill. When it is finally used, though, {{spoiler|1=the move triggers an [http://www.mspaintadventures.com/?s=4&p=001708 ending sequence] that easily takes up the next 50 pages, if not more.}}

 

* Rare coins and dollar bills:

** The 2-dollar bill. Some people give them as gifts, knowing that the recipient will keep it for this reason. Ironically they aren't rare at all. The U.S. Treasury has been sitting on shrink-wrapped piles of them for years, but banks rarely ask for them.