History Main / RandomDrops

->"''How fortuitous! Evil doom-chicken #3 (second from the left, but otherwise indistinguishable from doom-chickens #1, 2, and 4) had a Great Big Nasty Sword of Serious Hurtfulness + 5. Funny, I didn't notice that sword anywhere on its feathery person while it was still alive. If it was so heavily armed, why didn't it use it in the fight?''"
-->-- '''Ernest Adams''', [[http://www.designersnotebook.com/Columns/044_Bad_Game_Designer_3/swords044_bad_game_designer_3.htm Gamasutra.com]]

A gameplay mechanic that increases replayability by assigning enemies a list of items you might gain if you defeat them. These items are called "drops" because the foe drops them when they die, and there's a probability table assigned to each item the enemy can drop--"Okay, 30% of the time you get a Potion, 5% you get a Red Shield, and 3% you get Cod Liver Oil"--which is where the "randomly" comes in.

Every gamer dreads these words, and they indicate you'll be spending the next hour or five fighting RandomEncounters over and over hoping to grab the super-duper item or weapon that the enemy has a 1-to-127 chance of dropping. It's even worse when it occurs with [[BossBattle bosses]] and you have to endure the same fifteen minute battle (and accompanying {{cutscene}}s) over and over again. If you're lucky, there'll be an item somewhere that increases your chances of getting these drops, but a 1-to-63 chance is still annoying.

What's odd is that enemies will often randomly drop things that [[NoOntologicalInertia ought not be random at all]] -- such as [[TwentyBearAsses their organs.]] Every boar should drop a liver, as a boar cannot survive without one. But often, organs will only be randomly dropped. This at least can be {{Handwave}}d by the idea that it's difficult to get an ''intact'' liver, but the question of why the boar was carrying a ''gun'' might be less easy to explain.

Even less explainable is when a different item set can be [[VideogameStealing randomly stolen]] only while the enemies are still alive. And in some games, you can [[OrganDrops steal their organs, too]].

Relative of the LuckBasedMission. See also MoneySpider and ExclusiveEnemyEquipment. In {{MMORPG}}s, when said item is rare to the point of causing fighting amongst the players, it is LootDrama. If you need lots of dedicated item-hunting to get anything remotely fun, see EarnYourFun. See also OrganDrops, FakeLongevity.
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!!Examples:

[[foldercontrol]]

[[folder: Action Adventure ]]

* The ''{{Castlevania}}'' series has a lot of examples:
** ''{{Castlevania}}: Curse of Darkness'' has any number of items that only very rarely drop from enemies. This is the ''only'' way to acquire many of the materials needed to make weapons and armor. However, most of the materials can be stolen from ''other'' enemies, so it's not quite so bad. That being said, since stealing in this game works by locking onto an enemy and then pressing a button when they do a specific action that leaves them open for stealing, some of the items can be even more of a pain in the ass if you can only steal their item with a ridiculously good timing, using obscure gimmicks or avoiding a hard-to-dodge attack with perfect timing and be positioned correctly right afterwards.
** ''Castlevania: CircleOfTheMoon'' was particularly egregious in two respects. There is an item that increases the rate of random drops, but this item was also a random drop. There's also a spell that boosts your luck (and thus increasing your odds of getting a random drop), but to get the materials for the spell you needed '''two''' random drops (although the odds of getting those drops was much more realistic--no worse than a 10% chance). Remember too, in this game there is no other way to get ''any'' items other than through random drops. Even the most basic Potion is a rare drop from just a handful of enemies. The people who made this game hate you and your family.
*** Although you can use [[GoodBadBugs a certain bug]] that lets you activate any card combination as long as you have at least one of both types of card, but that means you'd need to know which cards you need to use to activate the Luck effect before getting them.
*** Even worse is the skeleton athlete. It drops the rare bear ring, but in order to get it, you have to kill it before it commits suicide and there is no feasible way to kill it other than to use the Speed boost skill. Did I mention that you have to STOP to whip? Unless you can kill it with a knife or get lucky enough to actually hit it, you might kill it. But there is no guarantee the item will drop at all.
** ''Castlevania: DawnOfSorrow'' 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).
*** One of the most aggravating souls to get is that of Peeping Eye, whose equippable soul lets you see breakable walls. Even though it wasn't that rare in ''Aria'', in ''Dawn'' its base chance of coughing up its soul is 1%. Even if you wait until you can pay Hammer the $300,000 for the Soul Eater Ring (by which point you may have already found most of the breakable walls), it can take '''hours''' to get Peeping Eye's soul. This trait even persisted in ''Portrait of Ruin'', where Peeping Eye drops a piece of headgear which reveals breakable walls, but according to one FAQ the base drop rate is an even worse 0.69%! Don't say I didn't warn you.
** Similarly, in ''OrderOfEcclesia'', 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.
*** Most of these aren't too bad, as enemies that drop glyphs have the courtesy of leaving behind a glyph shadow for a moment when you kill them even on an unsuccessful drop (as in, they can drop both their item and the glyph at the same time, and if they leave a brief shadow of the glyph behind, it means they can drop the said glyph upon kill: this generally only applies to weapon glyphs though). By far the worst, however, is Merman Meat. This is needed for a sidequest to unlock better healing items at the shop (which you ''[[NintendoHard will]]'' need), but is a nightmare to get. First you need to intuit which enemy actually drops it ([[spoiler: No, neither of the two 'merman' species. The enemy Lorelie, which appears in about 3 rooms in the game]]), and even then, it's a six-star drop without copious luck boosting.
** ''Castlevania: SymphonyOfTheNight'' has a bunch of really cool (But sometimes impratical) weapons that randomly drop from enemies. Most infamous would be the [[InfinityPlusOneSword Crissaegrim]] that drops at an insanly low rate from one of the game's resident GoddamnBats. (Though unlike every other goddamned bat these don't spawn nearly as often.) Some locations do allow you to kill enemies with rare drops in rapid succession by switching rooms back and forth quickly if they don't drop the item you want, but that also tends to devolve into a reaction test of actually being able to see the item drop and stop yourself from instinctively changing the room again before picking the said item up, which of course makes it disappear. Not to mention Heaven Knights, which fly around, are unhindered by walls and appear in an area where they can easily drop their rare item in a location where it's impossible to get even if it didn't disappear in 10 seconds or so.
*** Not to mention the real GoddamnBats of that area knocking you offscreen even if you have perfect reactions to whether or not it drops.
** ''Aria of Sorrow.'' Souls. Incredibly common from some enemies (you'll have ten copies of the Bat soul by the time you hit your second boss), incredibly rare from others. The worst? "Tsuchinoko," which spawns in the far corner of one room maybe half the time, and immediately tries to burrow out of sight, and drops his soul maybe one time in fifty kills. There are other bad ones, but he's the worst. Many players have killed it once out of curiosity after killing the boss before its room, gotten the soul, and wondered if that was actually the boss-fight reward.
** Every relic except two in ''Lament of Innocence'' are found throughout all the levels, like good hidden items should be. With the exception of two. These two are the rare drops for somewhat difficult to kill monsters and it's rather frustrating to try to obtain them...
** This goes back all the way to the original ''Castlevania'' and most of the non-{{MetroidVania}}s in the series that followed. Enemies would randomly drop hearts, money, or even subweapons, if the game was feeling generous. [[NintendoHard 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''.
* ''{{Castlevania}}: HarmonyOfDespair'' 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 [[TimedMission thirty minutes]]. And then she has to absorb the same spell to get stronger.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Fighting Game ]]

* In ''SuperSmashBros. Melee'', there is a 1 in 151 chance of getting Mew from a Poké Ball, and a 1 in 251 chance of getting Celebi. Disappointingly, they only appear and fly away, but reward you with a lot of points, and an alert after the match is done telling that you met them for the first time.
** This also happens in ''SuperSmashBros. Brawl'', but with severely decreased chances of getting any legendary Pokémon at all. This being the case, however, most legendary Pokémon are much more lethal; Mew drops [=CDs=], Celebi drops trophies, and Jirachi (who wasn't in ''Melee'') drops a ton of stickers.
** For all those die-hard completionists, Brawl's Subspace Emissary will be HELL. To get [[OneHundredPercentCOmpletion all the trophies in Brawl]], you have to play Subspace Emissary, and have a trophy stand randomly drop during all the [[BossBattle Boss Battles]]. When it comes to Meta-Ridley, it's incredibly frustrating - not only is there a ''time limit'' on the battle, but unless you have ABSOLUTELY PERFECT timing, the trophy will most likely drop into a bottomless pit if you're not fast enough. Luckily, trophy stands appear much faster in this battle.
* The ''{{Tekken}} 6'' Scenarion Campaign has this with clothing items. While you'd pretty much always get at least one item per stage, the effects they give off and how powerful those effects are is also random, so getting something useful was even less likely to happen than in most games with RandomlyDrops.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Driving Game]]
* A rare racing game case, the third GranTurismo game has a prize system in which, starting with the late game beginner races, there are four cars that you can win. Too bad you can only win one of them--very frustrating since the endurance races are long as hell, you can't save in the middle of them, and there's a good chance that you'll get stuck with a crappy Renault instead of that GameBreaker F686/M.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: First Person Shooter ]]

* ''{{Borderlands}}'' is the {{FPS}} equivalent of this (its initial pitch: "[[XMeetsY Halo meets Diablo]]"). It, too, has a list of super-rare ({{DLC}}-exclusive) weapons known as "Pearlescents". These [[InfinityPlusOneSword super-strong]] firearms drop at a rate of 1 for every 60 orange (the previous highest-level category) items. Of course, they're a ''little'' more prevalent than you might think, thanks to a [[GoodBadBug multiplayer glitch]] that allows for easy item duplication.
* ''[[{{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?
* The folks at Valve have decided to throw the unlockable weapons of ''TeamFortress2'' into this category with rates based on time played, and made the achievements "useless." The first day had absolutely horrendous drop rates, and most of the time it was weapons you already had, so [[SarcasmMode you can imagine how fun that was]].
** Also realize that 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. Currently both the broken drop rate and achievement systems are active. Currently, the drop rate is about one an hour, so not so bad.
** 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.
*** The players back lashed by using Steamstats to "simulate idling without actually having the game running." Valve turned around and took away the ill-gotten hats, gave the non-cheaters halos, and then increased the drop rate. You can read all about it here[[http://www.journalfen.net/community/fandom_wank/1220007.html]]
** And now with the Engineer Update, Valve has decided to gift 100 Golden Wrenches to the community, which you can find by chance for every time you use the crafting system. Given that well over 20,000 people are playing TF 2 at any given time, and the fact that you need items to craft in order to craft, the chances of finding one of these Wrenches is exceptionally low. This hasn't stopped the community from complaining about it, of course.
* ''Left4Dead2'' has random drops for Hazmat and Riot zombies. The Hazmat infected will drop Boomer Bile and the Riot infected will drop Tonfas. The odds of them carrying the said items are low but since they always respawn down the road, you are bound to score the items at least once per map.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Hack And Slash ]]

* The ''{{Diablo}}'' games feature items that aren't just randomly dropped, but ''randomly generated'' from thousands of potential combinations of attributes, special abilities and base weapon types. Runes (items you can place into other items to make them better) are particularly glaring, with some high-level runes having such tiny chances to drop (1 in millions, and even that requires finding enemies even capable of dropping the runes in the first place) that most hard-core players have never seen a legitimate one (ones created by hacks, of course, are another matter entirely). In fact, one person apparently estimated that one has a better chance of getting hit by a falling plane that was struck by lightning than one does of finding the rarest rune. Nobody knows if that estimation is true, but you get the idea.
** The rune example is fairly straightforward, but it can get much more complex: A base sword, for example, might have an inherent range of say 5 +/- damage and 10 +/- quality. So, just getting a "max" sword would take at least 15 rolls of that sword, of which, the top swords are also rare. Then, the top prefix is "Cruel," which varies between 200-300% added damage. The top suffix is "of Eviscration" which also varies by 20 points. It is estimated that maybe 1 sword has ever existed that was truly "perfect." You would need 10's of thousands of rolls to get a perfect roll, but you would probably need somewhere around 100 million of that sword to get 10k with that roll to even have a chance at the perfect stats. And then, there's the "Etheral" version, which is 1/3 as common as the regular version. Only 1 300% Cruel, Etheral, Elite class, 2 Socket sword has ever been found.
* ''Diablo II'' includes many items that, when equipped, increase the odds of an item drop, notably socketing an item with perfect topaz gems. Some players traded for as much of this equipment as they could cram onto themselves, and went hunting; the Barbarian had an edge over any other character in this respect, because the optimum item-finding equipment package requires dual-wielding a pair of enchanted broadswords, which only the barbarian can do, and the barbarian had a skill that basically amounted to "trigger the random drop again".
* ''{{Ninety-Nine Nights}}'' is a terrible offender in this category, with the final boss being almost unbeatable without an item which randomly drops (Or more likely does not drop) from one of the finite number of enemies within the last level, often forcing you to restart the mission hundreds of times over before it finally drops.



[[/folder]]

[[folder: MMORP Gs ]]

* ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXI'' has a couple items that are stupidly rare. Not only is there The Ridill (average drop rate: about one every 20 kills of Fafnir at best), but it also has Defending Ring (about one every six months) and Hauteclaire (about one every three months). Dynamis often falls victim to this due to the fact that every monster in a Dynamis zone has an extremely low chance of dropping one of many different armor pieces (which is made up by the fact that these zones contain hundreds of monsters). Many linkshells end up with a particular set of pieces that are rare, while three jobs (usually Beastmaster, Dragoon, and one job that is actually desired at first) tend to drop at a fast rate. And this is just endgame. Listing all the things that eat a ton of time due to ridiculously low drop rates would take up too much space.
** 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.
** Rarely do drop rates in ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXI'' drop below 7%... except in Salvage. The premise of Salvage is that collecting 3 like pieces of equipment (3 mage gloves, 3 warrior boots, etc) from the ancient ruins of the Alzadaal civilization could allow a player to restore a piece of Salvage equipment, which constituted (until fairly recently and with few exceptions) [[InfinityPlusOneSword quite a bit of the game's Infinity Plus One gear]]. The first two pieces are generally easy enough to obtain, with the first piece (level15) being 100% and the second piece (level25) usually being around 25%. Then you have the third piece (level35)... If it happened to drop in the Silver Sea Remnants section of Alzadaal, chances are you're ''still'' looking for it. Or not, because they've almost all since been replaced with better and more immediately satisfying equipment.
* Played seriously straight in {{MMORPG}} ''MapleStory''. 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''.
** This aspect is where some quests become truly, stupidly hard. For instance, there's one quest where you have to find a little fairy's lost glass slipper. The slipper was stolen by the fire boar enemies in the mountains around Perion. No one is quite sure of the drop rate, but you can stand there and kill - quite literally - ''thousands upon thousands of fire boars'' and never see the item.
** It doesn't help that they randomize the drop rate at least once a week so you can't even figure out what the drop rates are.
* Several dungeons in ''WorldOfWarcraft'' include rare magic items with drop rates of under 0.01%. One instance, Shadowfang Keep, includes a set of items that possess a drop rate of roughly 1-in-''7000''. Previously Baron Riverdare's Deathcharger, an epic mount, was an example, but the drop rate for it was raised to 1% in the 3.0.2 update, also considering you can easily solo the Stratholme instance with a level 80 or even 70 character. Still, quite some work for some BraggingRightsReward--and Blizzard loves doing that, especially for mounts. Sabertooth mount anyone?
** Of course, there are also the "world drops"--rare items which have a very small chance of dropping from ANY monster of the given level range. Acquiring them comes down to pure luck. Or having a ton of money to spend on the AH.
** In Wrath of the Lich King, high level leatherworkers need Arctic Fur in quantity both for buying and for making high-end patterns. Arctic Fur is randomly skinnable from any skinnable Northrend mob, with a drop rate more normally associated with the above-mentioned "world drops." Many patterns require more than two.
** There are also some items that are easy to get but useless unless you get the correct version. What is essentially one item can have about 12 different sets of stats.
** Additionally, a huge number of quests require randomly dropping items that cannot be traded, and only drop if you have the quest. Oh god... How long does it take to find four hooves from a four hoofed animal? It's longer than you think.
** There is a quest where the player must collect 12 raptor heads. If you think this involves killing anywhere near as few as 12 raptors, you've clearly never played ''WorldOfWarcraft''.
*** [[http://www.wowhead.com/?item=3692 Hillsbrad Human Skulls]]. The listed droprate is a little off (Since they only drop if you have a quest to collect them) but the exact population of Hillsbrad that actually have skulls was about 35-40%. And you need to collect 30. Ouch. Fortunately, Blizzard finally cottoned onto this and ''recently'' made them a 100% drop. But still no fix for the headless raptors...
*** http://darklegacycomics.com/107.html
*** Prior to the Cataclysm expansion, a southshore alliance quest had a man request that you bring him 10 murloc heads. You rarely completed this objective with anything less than 25 murloc kills, ''at least.''
** The game eventually LampShaded this with one of many items that drop irregularly from a specific group of mobs. "Surely enough, not every one of them is wearing one. Cowards!"
** Another special case are drops from bosses that can only be encountered during an ingame holiday with a low drop rate. Not as bad as the above examples but the limit on the boss itself cranks it up considerably.
*** Two particularly aggravating examples are the Hallowed Helm hat and Sinister Squashling pet, two rare drops from the Hallow's End event. The items have three sources: the event's Headless Horseman boss with a 7% chance each, from a daily quest during the event with a 1.7% chance, and from an hourly repeatable interaction with any innkeeper for a 1.3% chance. Why is this example particularly bad? Because acquiring ''both'' items is requisite for the achievement "Sinister Calling," which is in turn requisite for the holiday's meta-achievement, which is in turn requisite for the meta-achievement "What a Long, Strange Trip It's Been" which requires a year, minimum, to complete anyway, turning an already arduous task into a LuckBasedMission.
*** Worse still were the cheap paper masks for the achievement of collecting the 20 separate racial masks (male and female of every playable race prior to the addition of goblins and worgen). The drop rate was so ''awful'' that this specific achievement was ''removed'' from the meta-achievement requirements. This troper only got ''two masks in three years of trying.''
** Blizzard likes RandomlyDrops so much that they were included in the TradingCardGame. The so called loot cards have codes that can be used ingame to acquire one of several special items, although most of them are pure flavor.
** Farming for dragon whelps. At a 0.1% drop rate off only certain monsters (some of which share spawn points with monsters that don't drop the whelps), it can be painfully boring.
*** On that note, the blue parrot dropped by certain pirates in Stranglethorn has the lowest drop rate of any non-combat pet.
* ''PhantasyStarOnline'''s most powerful weapons often have drop rates ranging from 1-in-72 to 1-in-''22000''. Add that to the fact that the 1-in-22000 monsters usually only show up singly, and only in certain map variations...
** And only for certain characters, as a character gets 1 of 12 possible dropcharts permanently assigned to it upon creation based on the character's names, class, and even gender, with some items having a 1 in 299594 chance from only 1 chart, from 1 monster, that can only be found in 1 area, with the monster being the rare form of an already rare monster.
* Beaten to death in ''AnarchyOnline'', an {{MMORPG}} where you will find that some of the most powerful and sought after items in the whole game (and since this game deals also in quality levels per any given item, in that as well) are so rare, they could be the poster child for this trope. The number of times that one specific item, the Sparkling Scimitar of Spetses (a stupidly rare item dropping from a semi-boss from the 2nd hardest area in the known game) is so ridiculously rare that it is counted among the forums. The numbers are kept as to which dimension (of the 3 this game has) has dropped how many... at last count, it was STILL IN THE SINGLE DIGITS for dropping after at least 3-4 (maybe longer) years of play in the game that allowed the zone. Though if you want similar horror stories, ask hardened, end-game players about the Spirit Shroud, anything regarding Alien boss drops, or really anything valuable in the game in question. As a result of this, of course, AdamSmithHatesYourGuts.
* ''KingdomOfLoathing'' uses this extensively. Also, certain quests require you to get items from standard enemies, which will never drop those items until you get the quest. The dread of this class of random drop is mitigated by the ability to buy some of them. But by no means all. This has been justified by the creator as "you did not know it was important so you didn't pick it up" which, considering the item is a [[spoiler:twig]] is believable.
** And let's not forget the game's "ultra-rares"--the player base STILL isn't sure how it works. The game's fansite says your best bet for getting, say, a 17-ball (erases your ElementalRockPaperScissors worries) is to save your money.
** Then again, the game also lets you play with the drop percentages. It's not much, but the game's guides do show how to maximise item drops.
** Most of the very-rare drops in ''Kingdom of Loathing'' are just icing on the cake for most players, which is helpful; most of the best equipment in the game is acquirable by playing through a "hardcore" ascension. A few rare random drops usually become the purview of SpeedRun players who use them to shave a few more turns off of their ''next'' game.
** Apparently, it is possible on a Bad Moon ascension to get a rare item to drop, only to have a nearby kitten bat it into a nearby sewer grate, meaning that you don't get it.
*** To be fair, you have to [[SelfImposedChallenge take the kitten adventuring with you]] for that to happen.
**** Which is part of a quest to allow yourself permanent access to Bad Moon (normally only accessible on an ascension immediately following a Hardcore run with no usage of 10-leaf clovers, itself a ridiculous challenge as it makes two important sidequests impossible and turns an easily winnable trial in the final dungeon into a very painful LuckBasedMission).
* ''{{Everquest}}'' had some mean ones. One otherwise uninteresting newbie zone had a high-level halfling that spawned every few days in a random location, disappeared after two minutes whether anyone killed her or not, and had a one in eight chance of dropping a very expensive item.
* In ''Everquest 2'', in most zones, monsters will drop an "exquisite chest" (a chest containing the best kind of treasure, Fabled) 0.0126% of the time. Of course, which Fabled treasure drops depends on random chance and which monster dropped the chest...
* A staple of ''RagnarokOnline''. Each enemy has a 1/10,000 chance of dropping a "card" (with rare exceptions like porings at 1/1000) which can be permanently placed into a "slotted" weapon or armor, which also have an extremely rare chance of dropping. The cards give bonuses to you when you wear armors with a card equipped. They range from completely useless in the case of most ordinary monster cards, to boss cards which have downright [[GameBreaker Game Breaking]] stats such as ''immunity to spells and abilities''. The catch is, since bosses only respawn once per hour in one location, if you were to kill a boss every hour on the hour for a ''year'' you would only have a 58% chance to get their card...
** Due to the way the RNG works in this game, it's actually 1 in 5000. (The RNG can actually hit 0, giving stuff a .01% higher chance to drop.) There's cash shop items to increase this further.
* In ''Warhammer: Age of Reckoning'', although there are still random drops, when you get a quest to get, let's say, 10 wolf eyes, at least the game have the decency to give two eyes to most wolves, and no quest has a <1 drop ratio. You also get fairly good items from influence and even better ones for cheap if you have renown, so the rare-drop ones aren't all that needed.
** Also, many items will drop as broken versions that can be repaired into an item your class can use.
*** Unfortunately this is not true of some of the higher-level set items.
* ''[[GaiaOnline zOMG!]]'' loves random drops. Your basic things like gold, loot, Power Ups, and the occasional [[ItemCrafting recipe]] drop. However, there are several more unorthodox examples. Charge Orbs (the games version of experience points) are a random drop as well (though quests always drop them). Rings (which represent skills) are also random drops. Thus, your progress through the game is ''reliant'' on random drops. You can, in theory, buy high leveled rings from the marketplace to max your charge level. However your drop rate is affected by your charge level. The higher your charge level in relation to the monster your fighting (represented by a color system), the lower your drop rate.
** This is complicated by the fact that certain quests (most notably the Totem Collection quest at the Otami Ruins) ask you for specific loot items, which you ''have'' to get through a random drop. Buying and trading them doesn't work. Complicating things further, drops are automatically rewarded to players to prevent fighting. Thus, drops cannot be delegated based on who needs them for quests, making this pretty much a LuckBasedMission. (Luckily, [[LuckStat luck is a stat, albeit an invisible one]]).
*** And finally, by crewing with someone radically more powerful you actually hurt your drop rate by a significant amount. Trust me, [[SurpriseDifficulty this game is harder than it looks.]]
** On the main site itself, there's Chance Items that, when opened, can net the user anywhere from cheap commons to rare, exclusive items that usually go for millions on the market. The rarest of these items is almost always a cute animal companion for your avatar.
* ''CityOfHeroes'' cheerfully chucks all this out the window--pretty much any enemy that gives you experience points also has a chance of dropping pretty much any loot (within certain confines--mostly level ranges and loot types, neither of which prevents them dropping the 'good stuff'), although more difficult enemies have a slightly higher chance of dropping higher-quality whatevers.
** Still counts though, as it has Purple Recipes. These only drop from enemies around 50 (the cap), getting one your character has any use for is another thing entirely, and getting the one you actually want quite the exercise in patience. Thankfully with so many players and a Market, the one you want is usually for sale, and although it'll likely be pretty expensive, the Purple that was trash to you might be a treasure to another.
*** Calling a Purple recipe a treasure would be an insult. The least popular Purples sell on the auction house for well over a hundred million influence (the game's currency), which is more than most players would EVER earn if they weren't auctioning things off.
* ''AceOnline'' goes almost [[BeyondTheImpossible into orbit]] with this trope: In addition to a normal Item drop table, rarely-spawning gold-named mobs have a supplementary Gold Mob Drops table, and Boss Mobs have ''their own'' Boss Drops table. The latter two are '''not''' affected by the regular item drop bonus given by regular Happy Hours (but are affected by Nation's Growth and Mothership Victory happy hours).
** In addition, [[HolidayMode Event Mobs]] and the aforementioned Gold Mobs have a (slim) chance to spawn whenever you kill a normal monster. Happy hunting.
** It even ups the ante with itself with the much vaunted Boss Armors. Each Gear has special armors from a specific boss. Now let us list the prerequisites on how to obtain it:
*** 1. Defeat the boss and get the drop. Problem: Bosses rarely spawn more than three times per 24 hour period, and the drop rate of said armor is 0.002%. Not to mention it's hard... since it's a boss. Did I mention that this drop is an ''unfinished version''? Oh, and by the way, most of the bosses spawn in areas where the two opposing nations can access, which is why some Boss Hunts end up as PVP Camping Contests...
*** 2. Find a ''corresponding'' item to combine with the unfinished version. Problem: said drop, although more available than the bosses ''also'' has a low rate: 0.008% rate.
*** 3. Combine the two items, ''which has a 50% chance of failing''. If you fail, both items are, yep, LostForever.
*** 0. The zeroth prerequisite to these is that you must be above a certain level to equip this in the first place.
** The Episode 3 Part 1 however, makes it somewhat easier; there're three bosses in Pandea Maps that can drop any one of the unfinished boss armor. The corresponding item has the same quirk. There's only one slight problem; the entire Pandea maps are {{Scrappy Level}}s made of [[EverythingTryingToKillYou aggro, aggro]], and... [[BeyondTheImpossible more aggro]]. [[DepartmentOfRedundancyDepartment And more aggro]].
* Even kid-friendly MMORPGS like ''Toontown Online'' have this. Many "Toontasks" (quests) have you go fight certain kinds or levels of Cogs (the main antagonists) to get certain items. Even worse is if the type of Cog that drops it is found exclusively in one of the * shudder* Cog Headquarters. Here, it's downright evil because you only get items and experience points that you earned at the ''end'' of a boss fight. Including defeating the BigBad after destroying all his {{Mecha-Mooks}} (Technically, they're ''all'' Mecha Mooks.) If your connection drops out, or you lose all your Laff Points (hit points), you don't get '''''anything'''''. And if you failed by droping to 0 LP, you lost all your gags (weapons) as well. Horrifying if you had just earned a Level 7 Gag (which you can't buy; after you max a type of gag, you get one every 500 EXP). Some tasks are more benevolent versions of this trope, only making you go fishing (yes, fishing) at a pond in a certain area to get X number of whatever item was requested. (The game gets really mean by coupling this with other sub-tasks, mostly involving the meaner example of this trope. No more Cashbot Mint fights, please...)
* ''{{RuneScape}}'' has too much of this to count; the Draconic Visage from almost all dragons, the godswords from the God Wars Dungeon, various high level armor from boss monsters, the sigils... At least It's one of the best moneymakers in the game. It can get frustrating in that many of the bosses are hard to kill solo and you need a team to effectively farm them. This by itself isn't so bad, but you have 3 options for dividing the loot: Player who deals most damage gets drop, (not very fair) all players get the value in coins divided amongst the group, (Witch can lead to some small payouts) and 1 player gets the drop, while the other players get an increased chance of getting a drop. (This does not always go as planned.)
* In "Dynasty Warriors: online", random drops are interesting. How it works is 3 LAYERS of random drops, but done fairly so you can actively seek out such drops without going "please, lord let this be it or kill me. but not both." The actual fighting aspect is done via arena setup. So you start a room, up to eight people (4 vs. 4) live players can join, but you can just go with a Dumb computer in it's place, and there can be as many as 7 comps in a game. In the field, there are named officers that appear to be mooks but have a slightly more unique look and are stronger than mooks. They will drop one of three things. Random layer one is what officer has one of the 2 items on that side, there are four total but unless you can kill friendly players then you can only get two. Layer 2, for each of those drops there is a random chance that you will get either an armor/clothing piece, or a weapon that you can pick up during the battle. Layer 3, after the battle, and if on a choice above newbie level pairings then losing means you also lose all found items, but the enemy doesn't gain them, then there is a random chance what the weapon/wearable will be, and of what quality.
** Depending on how many weapon updates there are, the chance that you get a certain weapon lowers but there are no "rare" weapons, all weapons have a chance to show up. Armor is slightly different in that you must fight a certain faction to have a, or possibly a greater, chance of getting certain armor.
** Items, actual items that get used up after the battle, do have a more % chance of finding then weapons. However, even the most rare can be found in game via simple habit of getting on every day, or via buying.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Real Time Strategy ]]

* Played absurdly straight in ''DawnOfWar 2''. Space orks, space elves and space bugs all have similair chances of dropping ancient SpaceMarine equipment neither of them should have needs for or (in case of Tyranids) means to carry.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Roguelike ]]

* In ''{{Nethack}}'', enemies will randomly drop their own body. Bodies are food. If you're [[WizardNeedsFoodBadly hungry]] and the wild boar you just clubbed does not drop a dead wild boar, you may starve. Only large monsters like rothes and [[DemonicSpiders Leocrotta]] are guaranteed to leave a corpse.
** For items, this trope is mostly averted. Monsters always drop their entire inventory on death, so when you kill a spear-wielding elf you can count on looting an elven spear. The "mostly" qualifier is because there's a very small chance of a monster dropping a item that wasn't there before on its death, so a centipede just might drop a broadsword.
* ''AncientDomainsOfMystery''. Nearly ''everything'' can be randomly dropped or pickpocketed, even artifacts. Unfortunately, many items that are important for various quests (notably the amulet of life saving) are also random drop items. Where the Creator really extracts the urine is when you are required to find a boar skull as part of the Ultra ending quest. Said boar is [[RandomEncounters only encountered infrequently]], is in the highly-dangerous overworld and even ''then'' rarely leaves a skull. Low-to-mid-level players frequently starve to death or spend 60-''320'' game days trying. Higher-level players resort to dooming themselves to increase the encounter rate, or hunting for an item that grants one wish (also only available by random drop, and extremely rare).

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Role Playing Game ]]

* ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyIV''. Two words: Pink Tails. They are held by one enemy, found in one room, with approximately a 1-in-64 chance of encountering it ''and'' a 1-in-64 chance of dropping the proper loot once defeated -- and that's the only way to get the best armor in the game. For those of you who didn't study math, that's a whopping 1-in-4096 chance per encounter. This is ameliorated somewhat if you've accumulated a stockpile of Alarm items, which trigger encounters; in the room in question, they trigger an encounter with these particular monsters. This is made worse in the DS remake since the newly added optional bosses are impossible/near impossible without said armor... on all party members. Also in the DS version are Rainbow Puddings. Some people have attempted three days with none of it dropping... and some people get tons of pudding without even trying.
** 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 treck 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.
* ''FFIV'''s sequel, ''The After Years'', seemed to be guilty of the above as well, but then it was discovered that thanks to its cellphone roots, its RNG is comparable in ''GoldenSun'' in its simplicity and people have already found methods to get pretty much any and all 1/256 items every time. There's also items that increase the droprate normally, and change that drop to the next item on the rarity list. Due to the way this works, you'll be seeing a lot of supposedly rare items and zero common ones just by playing the game normally with the best items of each category equipped.
** 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 [[BonusDungeon 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 ArmorOfInvincibility at the end of the game.
* ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyV'', like the other Final Fantasy games, has several rare drops. The Tinklebell is the most annoying, and belongs to [[ThatOneBoss Twintania]]. It's technically a 1/16 drop ratio, but Twintania's drops change based on whether it's in Normal form, or if it's in its Gigaflare form. The Normal form is the harder to kill of the two, and is the form that drops the Tinklebell.
* AlterAILA Genesis: In the core of the [[BonusDungeon Orbital Prison]], there is a chance that you will fight watermelon enemies that use a countdown. They drop Enhancer ABC's (Improves all stats except speed) and they will ALWAYS drop them. The problem is the encounter rate.
* ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVIII'' is an unpleasant offender, too. Several of the items required to get Quistis's best Blue Magics (Shockwave Pulsar, for example, though Ray-Bomb is a worse offender) require either hours and hours of card-playing, at least a couple hours of stealing from enemies, ''or'' (in the hideously egregious case of Ray-Bomb), attempting to steal a 12-in-256 drop from an uncommon monster.
* ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXII'' took things to somewhat ridiculous length: not only does every monster have common, uncommon, rare and ultra-rare random drops (and a fifth class of drop that requires you to purchase a 'monograph' describing that class of monster), but also (different!) lists of random [[VideoGameStealing steals]] and 'poaches'. Crafting Tournesol, the game's InfinityPlusOneSword, requires multiples of the rarest loots from the rarest monsters.
** 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 BonusDungeon. 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.
* ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIII'' adds the notoriously uncommon Trapezohedron to this growing list of epic loot. The Traps are extremely rare items that only drop once in a blue moon from an Adamantoise, which is basically a BonusBoss for all intents and purposes - and one that requires extensive planning, preparation, and LevelGrinding to defeat. (Or Death spamming, if you're willing to put up with the antics of the RandomNumberGod.) Many players have killed several dozen of these absurdly tough enemies without getting a single Trap, which is needed to upgrade your InfinityMinusOneSword to an InfinityPlusOneSword.
* ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVI'' subverted this trope in a clever way. Every monster in the game had common and rare drop items. The rare drop has a certain (small) percentage of dropping. Otherwise, you get the common drop guaranteed. Most monsters did not have common drops, but some monsters (especially bosses) were guaranteed to drop certain items because they had the same item as both common and rare drops. (Barring a certain glitch that makes the second Behemoth Suit you're supposed to get unattainable.)
* In the ''RuneFactory'' game series ItemCrafting 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 RandomlyDrops components you need.
* ''Final Fantasy IX'' has a variation on one of these: Eiko's Fairy Flute can stolen from Hilgigars on disk 2, a full disk before it becomes available in a Mogshop. Not hard - equip Bandit and spend a few turns trying to steal it, right? Wrong. It is quite the hardest item to steal in the entire game, and Hilgigars isn't an easy boss, either. Most walkthroughs advise just giving up on the Fairy Flute and buying it later. Not necessarily a random drop, but the difficulty and time required in getting the item definitely qualifies.
* ''{{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.
** ''[[UpdatedRerelease FES]]'' corrected this: if you kill at least one monster of the required type in a battle, you'll always get at least one item of the required type, guaranteed, though at the expense of other possible drops.
* ''{{EarthBound}}''. Its 1-in-128 items have become the focal point of several [[SelfImposedChallenge 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, [[LostForever the enemy carrying it never appears again.]] [[InfinityPlusOneSword 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 [[ActionBomb 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 [[GameBreaker Rock Candy]], you don't ''need'' no stinking RandomlyDrops weapons. [[DidYouJustPunchOutCthulhu You could beat Giygas to death with your bare hands]].
** ''{{Mother 3}}'' is a bit nicer, with a 3% to 5% chance of getting good weapons from certain enemies.
* The ''BreathOfFire'' 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.
* ''{{Pokemon}}'' 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.
** This is compounded in the case of the aptly-named Chansey. They're one of the most common features of the meta-game and tournaments due to their evolution's usefulness in battle. The teeth-grinding part is that they're notoriously hard to find in the wild. They're found in two areas in the most recent games, at a rate of five percent. This wouldn't be so mentionable (many of the {{mons}} have this annoying characteristic) if it weren't for the fact that one of the most useful items in the game, Lucky Egg, is ONLY found on wild Chansey, at a one-in-twenty rate. Crunching the numbers, that's a 1 in 400 chance of getting a Chansey with a Lucky Egg. You want that item, you're gonna be spending a whole lot of time working for it. Ironic, considering Lucky Egg multiplies experience gains by 1.5 on a single Pokémon, meaning the only reason to go after it is if you want to ''save time''. Luckily, recent games have a variety of ways to make specific-drop hunting easier; if you're dedicated, a few minutes on Bulbapedia will tell you more than you ever wanted to know about it.
** Another Pokémon that deserves a mention is Feebas. This fish isn't so incredible at first and you need to evolve it in order for it to be useful (this is a [[GuideDangIt tedious task in itself]]) but finding that Feebas in the first place is going to eat up a lot of time. It can only be found by fishing, but get this, it can only be fished up on '''certain tiles'''. Between 4 to 6 tiles out of hundreds, depending on the game. Did I mention that these tiles are randomly generated and are prone to change? Once you've found your Feebas tile, try to catch a [[GenderEqualsBreed female one]], or a Ditto if you're not playing Ruby and Sapphire, so you won't have to find one again.
** Arguably worse is Munchlax. Originally the only way to obtain it (without trading a Snorlax from another game and breeding it) was through Honey Trees. There are 21 trees that you can spread honey on. Of these 21 trees, only 4 of them have even a chance of having a Munchlax. These are assigned randomly at the beginning of the game and you have no way of telling which ones are Munchlax trees until you actually catch one. Each tree also has 2 of 3 different possible drop charts that vary from tree to tree. The third set can only be used by Munchlax Trees and has a 93% chance of generating a Munchlax. Bad news? There's only a 1% chance of a Munchlax Tree using the Munchlax chart. Also it takes 6 hours after slathering honey for a Pokémon to appear, and messing with the DS clock doesn't work. And the Pokémon you find is set once you slather honey, so saving right before you check the tree and restarting won't change anything.
** Oh, but that's not all. This isn't technically a drop, but if you want a rare, ''Shiny'' version of a Pokémon, with a sparkling intro and an alternate color, you have a one in '''8192''' chance. By the way, Legendary Pokémon and starters can be Shiny as well, so start breaking in (or outright breaking) your soft reset fingers! Luckily, like the item example above, Generation IV introduced ways to boost this probability.
** Don't forget the Pokérus! It behaves like a virus (once your leading Pokémon has it, it can easily infest everyone else in your party, etc.) but its effects are very beneficial. Without getting into stupidly hardcore hidden values in the game's deep arcane math algorithms, suffice it to say that you want the Pokérus. Too bad that any random encounter you finish has a '''1 in 21,845''' chance of giving it to you (in Gold and Silver). Luckily you don't have to ''catch'' it for it to spread, just battle. More luckily, now that you can trade online, it's very easy to achieve as you only need one and you're set for life.
** The enigmatic Mirage Island of Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald! Every day a number between 0 and 65535 is generated. In order to access the island, you have to have a Pokémon in your party with a personality value that matches the number of the day. Did we mention that the Personality Value of a Pokémon can be anywhere from 0 to 4,294,967,295? The only thing worthwhile about Mirage Island is a particularly rare berry tree.
** 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 DiscOneNuke if you got one of the more rare items early (like a Nugget or a RareCandy). Later games balanced it to make the list level-dependent, removing the DiscOneNuke status but adding a reason to [[LevelGrinding level grind]] fairly weak 'mons. The potential rewards? Greater chances at getting a RareCandy, some otherwise-rare evolution items, and the rare chance at acquiring items otherwise TooAwesomeToUse. 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.
* In ''{{Wizardry}} 8'' enemy drops and chest contents are determined when loading an area. So after a 15-minute fight, if the monster doesn't drop [[InfinityPlusOneSword Excalibur]], you can't just reload and fight again. You have to reload from before you entered the area, then make it all the way back to the monster, ''then'' fight it again.
* Both ''GoldenSun'' games have rare weapons and armor that drops from certain monsters across the world, and since store-bought equipment is horribly mundane in these games, acquiring this equipment could certainly be handy. The problem is that each item only has a ''0.4%'' chance of dropping, upped to 1.6% if you kill it with a djinni attack of the correct element. However, given the rather simplistic nature of the random number generator in both games, it's possible to fix encounters to up the drop rate to 100%. Guess which method most sensible people pick?
** 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 [[BonusDungeon 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.
* Averted in ''ShadowHearts'', where enemies simply don't have rare or valuable items to drop. This has the interesting side effect of averting MoneyForNothing - since you aren't going to get much out of the enemies ''but'' money, shops and the items within become more important.
* ''TheWorldEndsWithYou'' seems to be initially guilty of this, and the game blatantly taunts you with drop rates that ultimately go as low as 1/30th of a percent. However, this doesn't matter much as you can initially increase the drop rate by as many times as your current level in exchange for a lowered maximum HP (i.e. your current level is currently 30, you can drop it to 1 to multiply all drop rates by 30), then further increase it by chaining together battles and multiply it with the number of battles you chain in exchange for increasing enemy stats for each successive battle. As if that wasn't enough, there's also [[RareCandy expensive and relatively hard to get food items you can consume to permanently increase your base drop rate by 1 or 3]]. Thus, in the end it's not as much of a question of lucking out with ridiculously small odds as it is a question of being able to win a battle with odds heavily stacked against you, which is far more acceptable.
** 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.
** If you're planning on time-attacking, raising your base drop rate is [[BlessedWithSuck a very bad idea]]; instead of finishing the battle once you deplete the enemy's HP, you have to wait for your dropped items to spiral around your characters and get collected.
* While not technically drops, ''YumeNikki'' has random events throughout the game with varying percentages of encountering. In the case of the [[HighOctaneNightmareFuel infamous]] Uboa event, the randomness of it actually heightens the suspense and makes it more terrifying when it appears.
* In ''MegaManBattleNetwork'', many of the games require you to have used each [[WaveMotionGun Program Advance]] at least once for HundredPercentCompletion. The problem? Doing so requires you to have exactly the right chips to form it in the exactly right code, which can usually only be obtained from random encounters, or if you're ''really'' a masochist, spending a couple hours at the chip traders. Even if you have the right chip and have [[GuideDangIt figured out the Advance]], the odds are pretty good that the chip you have is the wrong code, and many of the codes you need for them are the ones that are only dropped at a particular busting level by a particular enemy in a particular location, who generally appears together with other enemies that drop things you don't want.
** 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.
** And in ''[[MegaManStarForce Mega Man Star Force 3]]'', there's "Illegal Data Aquisition". Overkilling random enemies or attacking bosses with a specific subset of cards (Non-elemental, non-time-freezing) and then not shifting into your super form will allow you to receive a random drop after battle. And it really is random. You could get almost any standard card in the game, or a bug frag for trading; but most importantly you can get Illegal Cards that are unobtainable every other way in the game. And there's more illegal cards than there are normal battle cards! The ''smallest'' pool of random drops for any enemy in the game, however, goes to the already stupidly rare and powerful v5 [[BonusBoss Bonus Bosses]], and that's roughly 30 possible drops; most enemies in the game can drop upwards of 80 different battle cards via IDA, so getting what you want can be ''extremely'' frustrating, nevermind that most of the ones you do want, you'll want ''5'' of!
* 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, ''ValkyrieProfileSilmeria'' 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.
* ''Dragon Warrior 7'' for the Playstation uses this one frequently. If you want a certain type of monster heart, you must play Memory at the casino or keep fighting monsters until one of them drops a heart. Otherwise, you can never transform into certain monsters.
* ''VideoGame/MonsterHunter'': this is one of the main extra difficulties in the game, for alomst ALL kind of loot and carves. For those not in the know, let me explain: let's take, for example, a well known offender, the Lao-Shan Ruby item. This item is necessary to craft some ''very'' good armors and weapons, and is only given by a monster named the Lao-Shan Lung. Unlike many others in this page, the odds are more decent - only slightly below 1%. Not so bad, right? Yes, except the Lao Shan Lung is a ''huge boss that always takes about twenty minutes to kill'', each time (since it's scripted that he can't die until he reaches a certain point, his health will stop going down no matter how much you attack it). Twenty minutes per attempt, with a 1 in 100 chance... sound nice? Well, then we'll get into Rathalos Plates and Rubies, and Heavenly Scales (which, by the way, you need ''several'' of to make anything from them)... and it's easy to see why one of the chief concerns of the Monster Hunter fanbase is finding the best ways to kill the enemies as quickly as humanly possible.
** 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 [[MarathonBoss 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]]
** Tri Portable [[BeyondTheImpossible takes this trope to an extreme]] with the introduction of Guardian Stones, which has different skills and point allocations each time you mine a raw stone for examination. Granted, you may have limited control over those skills you may get (see various analyzation sites), but ''not'' their values. For example, a popular (and rare) stone with Sharpness 4 and ESP 10 will only appear as the highest rank stone... With a minumum of 0.019% chance, at best 0.944%. It becomes worse when you can't control which type of raw stone you may get from mining (most times it's not even a raw stone to start). Good luck mining.
** Carried over for the CrossOver in ''MetalGearSolid: 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.
* ''KingdomHearts'' 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)
** In ''KingdomHeartsCoded'', you can unlock a special cheat that allows you to multiply the drop rate of the various command chips dropped by enemies in exchange for lowering your maximum HP, up to 16 times its normal rate. The difficulty level of the game also affects enemy drops. A few of the game's strongest enemies will drop stat-boosting chips on Critical mode, the highest difficulty.
* ''TheElderScrolls'' 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.
* ''LostOdyssey'' has [[ItemCrafting Ring Assembly]] components randomly drop, but thankfully nothing important. Then the ''Seeker of the Deep'' ExpansionPack had to go ruin that by including some ridiculously good, ridiculously hard to get randomly dropped accessories.
* ''SummonNight Swordcraft Story 2'' is notorious for random drops, especially after you finish the main game. You missed a rare item in the story? No worries, you can get it again from random monsters in certain areas! ...maybe! And since the monsters that drop the valuable materials you need are so rare already, it makes completing your Weapon List take forever to complete!
* This happens in ''LiveALive'', with the [[GameBreaker Cola Bottle]], a powerful accessory and attack item. It is a rare drop from a GuideDangIt BonusBoss, which means that it is quite possible for the player to not realize that the aforementioned boss can even DROP a different item to its normal drop.
** Also of note is Feminophobia/[[TranslationCorrection Gynophobia]], who has an attack that causes [[StandardStatusEffects Drunk]], whoch makes it ThatOneBoss... Unless you get a certain drop ([[GuideDangIt with zero hints]]) that protects from the Drunk status. THEN it's much easier.
* ''RaidouKuzunohaVsKingAbaddon'' features Ukemochi liver, a useless item that's necessary for exactly one sidequest, which in turn is necessary for OneHundredPercentCompletion. The only way you can get it is by donating money to a shrine, at 300 yen a pop, for a roughly 1/256 chance of getting it. Cue an hour and a half of standing there throwing money at the shrine hoping to get it.
* ''{{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 FinalBoss, God save the poor bastard who wants to outfit his ''entire army''. Thirdly, those of the [[RareCandy 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, [[MightyGlacier 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.
* Monsters in ''ShiningInTheDarkness'', although using the confusion spell "Muddle" can also make them give you their items.
* In the ''VideoGame/EtrianOdyssey'' series, monsters [[MoneySpider don't drop money]] -- you get raw materials from their corpses, which you can then sell back to the local shops both for cash and to help create even better weapons, armor and other supplies. This is your primary source of income. However, monsters don't always leave things behind, and many monsters also have Conditional Drops, which require you to [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin meet certain conditions to trigger]], like defeating it in a single turn or finishing it off with a certain element/status effect. Even if you meet the conditions, they ''still'' don't always drop, unless it's a boss... and many times, getting a boss to drop their special item also blocks the ''regular'' drop.
** The third game, ''The Drowned City'', has an {{NPC}} who frequents the local bar called Scavenger Toma. His whole purpose is to [[GuideDangIt 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.
* ''[[PaperMario Paper Mario: TTYD]]'' has this in spades with its random badge drops. Most HP-related badges, as well as attack and defense-boosting ones, can be eventually found on an enemy, then stolen off of them, but if you want any FP-related or special-attack badges, you'll likely have to kill several hundred of a specific enemy to get them.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Simulation Game ]]

* In ''AnimalCrossing'', virtually all shop items change from day to day based on luck. Fossil identifications and offers of foreign fruit in both versions are also based on luck.
* Although not an RPG, ''[[SimCity Sim City 4]]'' has this as "randomly develops" and "randomly awards" with city development.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Turn Based Strategy ]]

* ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyTacticsA2'' '''breathes''' this trope. What you can buy is determined by what pieces of loot you bring to the Bazaar, which is determined solely by how much of a lucky bastard you are. This means that it's almost impossible to tune your team to your liking until much, much further into the game, since most classes require that you have enough abilities in others to unlock them... and abilities are granted by these same items you depend on luck for finding. So you end up having to get by with whatever you have available.
** Or by looking at the ''guaranteed'' loot given for completing a mission.
* ''EternalEyes'' 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'!

!!Non-video game examples:

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Web Comics ]]

* Parodied in ''SluggyFreelance'' when Torg plays an {{MMORPG}} and is beyond frustrated with his first quest.
-->'''Torg:''' "I've been putzing around for ''hours'' beating little salamanders to death with a stick in the hopes of getting a tongue out of them. And it's annoying because apparently not too many of them actually ''have'' tongues."
* In ''{{Cheer}}'', Alex and Lita get trapped in an MMORPG world (thinking that they're dreaming) and are asked to get a Rat Tail that is "dropped" from rats. Lita, who has played the game on her computer, [[http://www.cheercomic.com/?date=2009-02-27 tries to get the item drop through the normal methods]]. Alex, who has not, gets tired of waiting for the "drop" and [[CuttingTheKnot just uses her newfound magic powers to remove the tail from a dead rat]].

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Web Original ]]

* ''{{Neopets}}'':
** Random Drops can occur whenever you load a page. However, there exists a wide variety of these Random Events, which have many more effects than just giving you a rare item.
** There are certain avatars that can only have a chance of being given when you preform a certain event. Some of these events can only happen once every 24 real-time hours. Coupled that these avatars are infrequent in distribution, it makes avatar-getters frustrated in collecting them all.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Real Life ]]

* Sweepstakes where prizes are won by collecting a specific set of game pieces--for example, [=McDonald=]'s Monopoly or Subway's Scrabble games. One of the pieces in each set is rare: the amount of those pieces are equal to the amount of prizes available for that set. The other pieces are common, so you are enticed to keep playing the game to find the rare piece. The rules usually list the odds of winning the prize, which is also the odds of a given game piece being the rare piece for that set.
** It's easy figuring out which letter is the rare to win which prize - just look for a letter that occurs ONCE in a given prize's name and doesn't occur in any other prize names. If you live in french Canada where the contests runs in english AND french, then the SAME rare letter much fulfill both conditions in TWO languages. Fun time being the guy who has to figure how to prevent the game from being UnwinnableByMistake while simultaneously avoiding to give out half a million cars.

[[/folder]]
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