History Main / CommonPlaceRare

See also UnusableEnemyEquipment. Contrast JunkRare and OddlyCommonRarity. Sometimes overlaps with MundaneLuxury.

** Feebas when it was introduced in the Hoenn games. It is an ugly fish with stats and movepool that puts it firmly on par with ''[[JokeCharacter Magikarp]]'' ([[MagikarpPower with a very powerful evolution to match]] but still, very underwhelming on its own). ''Unlike'' Magikarp, which can be found pretty much [[ComMons everywhere where there's fresh water]], Feebas is [[GuideDangIt ludicrously hard to find]]. Only one trainer (who's off the main road) has one in the whole games, so it's likely you'll play through the whole main storyline without even knowing it exists. And the way to get it is not only convoluted and never even hinted at in-game, but unique to the series (it cannot be found by [[RandomEncounters wandering around]] like most other Pokemon, you ''have'' to find a handful of specific floor tiles where it shows up). And the worst part? If you actually manage to catch one, its Pokedex flavor text specifically mentions that it is ''[[GameplayAndStorySegregation common and frequently ignored by trainers]]'', both invoking this trope and inadvertently mocking the person that just spent hours trying to catch it. Eventually, this was fixed in later generations, with Feebas just being somewhat uncommon.

* ''VideoGame/MyTimeAtPortia'' has Valves, strangely enough. They're a required element of certain important storyline commissions in the mid-game but can only be found in the ruins rather then crafted. Which comes across as strange when you can craft pulleys, working electrical lights and various power tools, but a simple valve is somehow too difficult to make.
* ''VideoGame/DwarfFortress'': Black dye for cloth. The process for weaving and dyeing fabric is a fairly complex one that takes a fair bit of setting up ([[RefiningResources one plant has to be grown and woven into cloth and another has to be ground up to make dye]], and the latter process requires building a mill which has its own production chain), and black dye has the added complication that the plant it's made from only grows natively in biomes with unusually hostile wildlife and the only race that has domesticated and cultivated it are [[AlwaysChaoticEvil the goblins.]] Blue dye might be this from the perspective of the human or elven merchants the player trades with, as it's made from a plant that only grows underground.

* Due to the nature of SolveTheSoupCans nature of some FetchQuest based puzzles in ''Franchise/ResidentEvil'', this is often the case when what would normally be a commonplace item is needed to solve a puzzle:
** ''VideoGame/ResidentEvil'' has the mansion keys. Realistically every employee should have had a full set of these since even going to the ''bathroom'' requires at least the Sword and Armor key, thus raiding the first zombie encountered should have opened up the entire mansion. However, because that doesn't make for good gameplay and because Umbrella are clearly batshit insane, there's only one of each in existence and you need to solve a ton of puzzles and fight a giant plant to find them all.

* The rarest items initially were... food. The only place food was generated was at the food stores every five minutes. Unfortunately, they ran out in 15 seconds or so. You could feed your pets at the soup kitchen if you were poor enough, which led to lots of people in PerpetualPoverty just so they wouldn't have to spend all their money on an apple. Luckily, you could still get free food every day from the Giant Omelette and the Giant Jelly, and once a month from a [[http://www.neopets.com/freebies hidden link]]. The problem has since been negated by the addition of more places and ways to obtain food, including the General Store, which unlike every other shop ''never'' runs out of stock.

* In the online virtual pet game ''{{Website/Neopets}}'', the rarest items initially were... food. The only place food was generated was at the food stores every five minutes. Unfortunately, they ran out in 15 seconds or so. You could feed your pets at the soup kitchen if you were poor enough, which led to lots of people in PerpetualPoverty just so they wouldn't have to spend all their money on an apple. Luckily, you could still get free food every day from the Giant Omelette and the Giant Jelly, and once a month from a [[http://www.neopets.com/freebies hidden link]]. The problem has since been negated by the addition of more places and ways to obtain food, including the General Store, which unlike every other shop ''never'' runs out of stock.
** Played with in the case of paintbrushes - some of the most rare and sought-after items on the site are paintbrushes, but the rare ones are explicitly magical in nature, and have the power to permanently change your pet's appearance. Non-magical paintbrushes exist and are more common... but there are nowhere near as many varieties of normal ones as there are magic ones, simply because they [[ShopFodder don't serve much of an actual purpose]], and there is therefore no need to have over 100 types of boring normal paintbrushes.

!!Fan-Works

!!Film

!!Literature

!!Live-Action TV

!!Tabletop Games

!!Western Animation

!!Real Life

* The recipe to create a turbo-charged flying machine requires ingredients from mining and engineering... except for one: a hulla dancing doll. This is only sold by one merchant in Shatrah city and nowhere else. It is also the most expensive item in his otherwise useless merchandise.

** The Pokemon Audino in the fifth generation -- it can be tough to find if you don't know to look for any shaking grass (where it has the highest percentage of showing up).

** Non-event grub all comes in "common", "rare", and "very rare" varieties, which are [[PowerEqualsRarity appropriately powerful]]. ''Most'' of them are also appropriately easy to acquire, with the notable exception of the Ultimate Delicacy -- the rare and very rare varieties can easily be farmed from the FinalBoss and {{Bonus Boss}}es, while the common variety can only be acquired from the rare [[DegradedBoss Replica Dark Lord]] enemy.

* In ''Literature/TheGirlFromTheMiraclesDistrict'', oranges are extremely rare and valuable in the Miracles District, as they can only be obtained in the human world, and the people of the district are physically unable to get there. At one point, Nikita manages to buy extremely sensitive information with nothing but a small crate of them.[[note]]This has [[AluminumChristmasTrees some basis in reality]]; in Poland (where the "human world" in question is set) in the height of Communist era, oranges could only be found in shops during the Christmas period.[[/note]]

* ''VideoGame/PhantomDoctrine:'' The US M-16 rifle is a common gun in real life, but is very rare in game, and people have reported finishing the game without finding one in loot. If you buy one on the black market, it is a mid-tier rifle at a mid-tier price. Meanwhile, RareGuns are ten a penny.

* In ''VideoGame/FarCry2'', one mission requires you to go to a diamond mine to steal some dynamite, which you're told you'll need to destroy a water pump. The only practical way of getting the dynamite is killing all of the mercenaries guarding the mine, and there are at least a ''dozen'' of them, meaning that this little fetch task inevitably turns into a full blown firefight. This all seems very pointless, since you have [=RPGs=], hand grenades, improvised explosive devices and M79 grenade launchers available at this point, and any one of those should have had no trouble with the fragile-looking pump. It's even worse when it comes to ammo upgrades. When you can only carry 90 total assault rifle bullets, a 67% increase to 150 sounds pretty good. In real life, you could achieve this exact thing with a double-mag pouch, which you can find at a tactical store or online for about $15. In game, you must pay 15 golf ball-sized DIAMONDS. Damn, how much for just a fanny pack?
* ''VideoGame/TeamFortress2'': The (in)famous hats, which are the most demanded and valuable items in the whole game despite not having practical use besides looking cool. How rare are they? With the current item-drop system, there's a minuscule chance (1 in 128, possibly even lower) that you might get one after 15 mins. to 2 hrs of play, but most of time you'll get a random weapon. '''However''', there's a weekly cap for dropped items, (roughly 7 - 12 per week) after which you'll not get new items until next week. You can also use the crafting system in order to get one, but it takes from 54 (to craft a random one) to 75 weapons (to get a class-specific one) in order to do so, which translates into several months worth of game-play.

* In one of the vending machines in ''VideoGame/{{BioShock|1}}'', a cream-filled cake is around $90 despite it being found on the floor anywhere. This was done to show how without any capital control the companies could charge whatever price they want. Said machine is in a ''theater'' hallway, doubling it as a TakeThat against [[{{Snacksploitation}} real life concession stands' exorbitant markups]].
* In ''VideoGame/BioShockInfinite'', most of the vigors seem to be mass-produced as alternate power sources or have other industrial applications, so they shouldn't exactly be rare. However, a whole long level is dedicated to retrieving a single bottle of the Shock Jockey vigor to fix one of the game's Main/BrokenBridge. Made even more egregious by seeing an overturned cargo container full of said vigor bottles in the next level.

* ''VideoGame/TeamFortress2'': The (in)famous hats, which are the most demanded and valuable items in the whole game despite not having practical use besides [[NiceHat looking cool]]. How rare are they? With the current item-drop system, there's a minuscule chance (1 in 128, possibly even lower) that you might get one after 15 mins. to 2 hrs of play, but most of time you'll get a random weapon. '''However''', there's a weekly cap for dropped items, (roughly 7 - 12 per week) after which you'll not get new items until next week. You can also use the crafting system in order to get one, but it takes from 54 (to craft a random one) to 75 weapons (to get a class-specific one) in order to do so, which translates into several months worth of game-play.

* The same 'dye is inordinately expensive' paradigm holds true in ''VideoGame/RagnarokOnline'', where the only way to obtain it is to get a MadScientist to create the base materials, then colour them with patently absurd numbers of herbs. Players, naturally, go through the whole rigmarole in order to obtain {{Nice Hat}}s.

** In ''VideoGame/TheElderScrollsVSkyrim,'' there are many rare alchemy ingredients that logically ought to be relatively common. For example, you'd think you could get human flesh and human hearts from every enemy you kill, but they're some of the rarest ingredients in the game, and are never looted from human enemies.

* In ''VideoGame/{{Elvira}} II: Jaws of Cerberus''. Some of the spells have very broadly defined ingredients--"combustible substances", "metal items", "anything edible"--and finding these is as easy as you'd expect in the real world (in both the studio and the "haunted house" set, most of rooms allow you to pick up tons of items; e.g. the kitchen allows you to ransack the cupboards and drawers and put every single tiny can, pot and piece of cutlery into your inventory).

** Clay was also rather rare in the earlier days of the game, only available on coastal areas. Make a boat and get to searchin'. One version had a bug that brought it UpToEleven, by only allowing clay to spawn at coordinates where x=z (effectively a single diagonal line through the world).

* Tactical shooter ''7.62mm High Calibre'', there are several guns that are extremely hard to find, and several guns that are extremely easy to find, based on both how far you are in the game's plot, and who you're buying from. On the other hand, ''ammunition'' can be absolutely impossible to find. At the beginning of the game, 9x19mm Parabellum bullets, one of the most universal rounds used today, cannot be found ''anywhere'', while 7.62x25mm Tokarev rounds, which are designed for weapons that are barely even produced (the TT-33 Tokarev and the Skorpion submachine gun being the most common weapons to use the round), can be purchased in bulk. Later in the game, you might be struggling to find enough ammo for your common 5.56mm assault rifles, while tripping over Gyrojet rounds and 5.7mm pistol clips. To give an idea of how ridiculous this is: the 5.7x28mm round is used by ''only two weapons in the entire world'' (the Five-seveN pistol and the P90 PDW, three if you count an AR-15 conversion kit that isn't in the game) and aside from all models of the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyrojet Gyrojet]] being rare collector's items, ''so is the ammunition'' (selling for over $100 a round). The 5.56mm, on the other hand, is the standard rifle round used by NATO. 7.62x25mm Tokarev rounds genuinely are common, though, given ridiculously vast stocks of Soviet and Eastern Bloc surplus ammo that was exported to America after the fall of Communism.

* ''VideoGame/{{Earthbound}}'', since it takes place in an UrbanFantasy instead of medieval times, is full of them. Made more obvious by the fact that prices are based on their value in yen, yet in-game currency is dollars, leading to a $3480 frying pan and a $98 cup of noodles.

* The world of [[VideoGame/TalesOfMajEyal Maj'Eyal]] is apparently chock-full of artificers, master craftsmen, etc, seeing as mundane items are quite a bit rarer than items with special powers. Normally, you wouldn't ''want'' a plain item anyway, as the "egoed" items are strictly better, except that [[VendorTrash gems]] can be taken to master jewelers to imbue mundane rings with special powers (one artifact, the Lifebinding Emerald, is totally useless without a voratun ring to set it in, unless you're playing one of the two classes in the game that can use it directly), and a pair of artifacts can transform plain weapons and armor into powerful "crystalline" versions of themselves. Especially painful for dagger users: The Crystalline Voratun Dagger is one of only three top-tier artifact daggers in the game, but the "regular" voratun dagger you need to make it is harder to find than most artifacts.

** In ''VideoGame/DivinityOriginalSinII'', there's tons of [[VendorTrash useless everyday items whose sole purpose is too be sold for dough]]. And yet, there's only ONE teapot in the entire game that you find in the very last chapter. You can't even take it or steal it, you have to return to its location every time you need to make some tea.

** Played with in the case of paintbrushes - some of the most rare and sought-after items on the site are paintbrushes, but the rare ones are explicitly magical in nature, and have the power to permanently change your pet's appearance. Non-magical paintbrushes exist and are more common... but there are nowhere near as many varieties of normal ones as there are magic ones, simply because they [[VendorTrash don't serve much of an actual purpose]], and there is therefore no need to have over 100 types of boring normal paintbrushes.