Twenty Bear Asses: Difference between revisions
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|'''[[This Loser Is You|Johnny Awesome]]''', ''[[World of Warcraft]]''}}
[[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 [[Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game|MMORPG]]s. The common hypothetical example involves a woodsman NPC asking the [[Player Character]] to deliver [[MacGuffin|20 sections of bear]] to him.
This sort of quest can draw attention to the inherent [[Fridge Logic]] of Random Drops, such as when the drop in question is a vital body part that all monster corpses should have, like a liver, feet, or a ''head''. A flimsy justification is that the body part may have been compromised during the fight. Turns out only ''pristine'' bear asses will do, even when the woodsman just wants twenty bears dead and doesn't actually want to make anything out of the bear asses. That is one picky woodsman.
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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.
** The game also has an interesting side-quest that defies the trope, possibly put for players who are getting a little too comfortable with such quests. In the ''Battle for Azeroth expansion'', a quartermaster tells player to slay 8 Thieving Snappers, which are small raptor dinosaurs - seems simple enough. After doing so however, it goes completely off-script, and the player is caught by [[Physical God|Jani]], a powerful loa who [[Mama Bear|happens to be their mother]]. [[Oh Crap]]. Jani decides to teach the player a lesson, [[Baleful Polymorph|turning them into a Snapper]] and [[Cool and Unusual Punishment|telling them to steal the quartermaster's hat]] if they want her to change them back. You will be able to do a quest chain for Jani later, hopefully not as overconfident as before.
* ''[[Adventure Quest Worlds]]'' has a trillion of these. On a quest? Good for you. Want to progress to the next screen to continue the story? Not until you give me 15 sabre-tooth tiger fangs. Oh, and did I mention that some sabre-toothed tigers don't have fangs?
** 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.
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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.
** There are still events in the game where you have to kill literally thousands of mobs for special prizes, but usually they can be any mob close to your level and you have the whole event duration (usually a month) to complete it. Also, in order to register a map on the [[Portal Network]], you have to kill a number of mobs that appear on that map, anywhere from 100 to 400.
* ''[[Mabinogi (video game)|Mabinogi]]'' has a large number of these, with the requisite random drop rate. The vast majority are optional; and are typically used as a way to gain a bit of extra money/experience/useful items that aren't available any other way. The few that are mandatory are mostly "gathering" quests with 100% drop rates; and are part of the [[Forced Tutorial|newbie quest chain]].
* 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.
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* ''[[Dragon Quest IV]]'' requires the player to collect 6 Broad Swords and 6 suits of Half Plate Armor in the third chapter. At least the random drop rate is a bit higher than usual. It's actually possible to buy the items in stores (from a different town) instead, but this takes at least as long.
* ''[[Dragon Quest IX]]'' uses this trope for most quests. You either (a) have to find an item held as a random drop by a specific kind of monster, (b) explicitly have to kill X of a certain monster, or (c) have to use a specific skill (often in [[Self-Imposed Challenge|an arbitrarily hard way]]) X times against a certain kind of monster.
* In Interplay's ''[[The 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 ''[[Sonic Heroes]]'' are this. Hundreds of rings? Chao? Hermit crabs??
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** 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]].
* ''[[
* The Rages skills of Gau from ''[[Final Fantasy VI]]''. As each skill involves encountering its corresponding enemy, trying to collect them all [[Guide Dang It|requires the player to know which enemies show up where during which points of the story, some of which are obscure and easy to miss]]. Worse still, some of the enemy lineup changes past a certain story point, so if the player misses the chances to meet some monsters until that point [[Lost Forever|it might be too late]].
* 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.
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