| 1 | ->''*YE REALLY HAST FOUND A USE FOR THIS PETTY ITEM*''\ |
| 2 | ''*YER INGENUITY SHALL BE REWARDED*'' |
| 3 | -->-- ''VideoGame/AncientDomainsOfMystery'' |
| 4 | |
| 5 | A video game offers you a variety of things to use against your enemies, you've been (or needed to be) making use of several and have been making progress just fine. |
| 6 | |
| 7 | Then you meet a [[ThatOneBoss brick wall]]. |
| 8 | |
| 9 | Whatever you use seems to get you slaughtered in the end, and the only viable way you can think of is either a long battle of attrition or a near-impossible precision strike. As a last resort before you throw the controller out the window, you try something (whether it be an item, spell, weapon, move or another thing) that you pretty much forgot about as it seemed [[UselessUsefulSpell utterly useless]]. Then you proceed to blast through the "difficult" moment without breaking a sweat, as this "useless" thing has just the right properties to get you through this situation... Then it remains utterly useless for 99.9% of the rest of the game. |
| 10 | |
| 11 | This isn't [[EleventhHourSuperpower something that you are "supposed", or necessarily need to]] use for that encounter, something TooAwesomeToUse you were saving up, something that is [[OutsideTheBoxTactic genuinely useful in different situations]] or something that [[MagikarpPower becomes awesome when upgraded]]; this is something you dismissed straight away (probably rightfully), whether because it sucked, or because of better alternatives, that just so happens to work perfectly (or, at the least, far better) for this specific situation, perhaps for some odd quality it has (that is sometimes also what makes it useless everywhere else), or some effect it has on an enemy. It almost goes without saying that this is a typical GuideDangIt moment. |
| 12 | |
| 13 | Note that not all examples are as extreme as the one given at the start; this is any time where something is useless for most of a game but has an advantage over your main tools for some section or other, even if it is not a particularly large one. |
| 14 | |
| 15 | Compare ChekhovsGun, ThisLooksLikeAJobForAquaman and CripplingOverspecialisation. This is different from the LethalJokeItem, which is actually useful for a broad range of enemies; it just ''appears'' useless at first, or requires something before becoming useful. Compare HighlySpecificCounterplay for the PlayerVersusPlayer equivalent. |
| 16 | |
| 17 | Expect gameplay spoilers in the examples. |
| 18 | ----- |
| 19 | !!Examples: |
| 20 | |
| 21 | [[foldercontrol]] |
| 22 | |
| 23 | [[folder:''Castlevania'']] |
| 24 | * In ''VideoGame/CastlevaniaIISimonsQuest'', the Golden Dagger (obtained in the fifth mansion, right before the room with Dracula's Ring) is a powerful, straight-line projectile. However, it costs hearts to use, and by the time you get it, you have a ton of faster ways to deal with enemies. However, if you use it on Dracula, he'll be pinned to his starting location in the center of the room as long as you keep throwing them at him, becoming easy pickings (presuming you don't just use [[GameBreaker laurels]] to give yourself invincibility). |
| 25 | * ''VideoGame/CastlevaniaSymphonyOfTheNight'': |
| 26 | ** The Red Rust is the more useless of the first two weapons you pick up, doing pitiful damage despite being picked up ''after'' the more effective Short Sword and occasionally getting stuck it its scabbard, preventing you from attacking with it. However, it can inflict the cursed status on the [[MirrorBoss doppelganger]], rendering it helpless and making for an easy win against a WakeUpCallBoss. It being one of two available weapons at the time also served to teach the player a valuable lesson about the at-the-time new style of Castlevania: equipment has effects and the nominally strongest weapon isn't always the ''best'' weapon for every given situation. |
| 27 | ** The Cat Eye Circlet offers "Big HP restore by cat damage". Only one enemy in the game does "cat damage", and that's Salome, a rather dangerous witch enemy found in parts of the castle that upon being killed turns into a pesky cat that can do additional damage to the player, making her a real pain in the ass. Unless you're wearing the Cat Eye Circlet, in which case you get healed for most or all of your HP by touching the cute kitty. Everywhere else, the item is likely useless compared to other available equipment. |
| 28 | ** Similarly is the Beryl Circlet which grants you absorption of thunder. Very few enemies use thunder, meaning you won't enjoy benefits from it often. However one of the enemies who does use thunder is the {{superboss}} Galamoth, who is rendered an absolute BreatherBoss at best with the thing equipped. [[WordOfGod Iga]] explained this was deliberate as he intended Galamoth to be ''so'' difficult players would search the castle for an easier way of dispatching him rather than just trying to git gud. |
| 29 | ** The Alucar''t'' gear, that serve as cheap knockoffs to the real thing that have piddling attributes and lack any of the special abilities of the actual Alucard gear. However equipping all three at once gives a gigantic +30 boost to luck, making it much easier to get Schmoo to drop that pesky [[GameBreaker Crissaegrim...]] |
| 30 | * ''VideoGame/CastlevaniaPortraitOfRuin'' has Jonathan's Cream Pie subweapon. It's dark element, in a game where you're mostly fighting demons, it does about as much damage as you'd expect a pie to, and it's thrown in an awkward arc that doesn't give it much range. About the only thing it has going for it is the negligible MP cost. And the fact that it makes a bastardly sidequest boss much easier: He's among the few enemies that are actually weak to dark damage, boosting the damage up to passable, and the throwing arc is such that you can reliably hit the boss from a position that doesn't leave you immediately open to counterattacks. |
| 31 | * ''[[VideoGame/CastlevaniaAriaOfSorrow Aria of Sorrow]]'': |
| 32 | ** There is one enemy, the Iron Golem. 9999 life and only takes 1 damage from any attack. It's also the same game that has the Killer Mantle soul that swaps the target's HP and MP values. Take a guess how much mana the Iron Golem has. The Killer Mantle is also equally useful against Red Minotaurs, another DemonicSpider found late in the game. |
| 33 | ** The handgun found in the Underground Reservoir is next to useless. It has poor range despite being a ''gun'', can't pierce enemies, and halves your ATK attribute meaning it does minuscule damage. However it becomes immensely useful against the next to final boss [[spoiler:Julius Belmont]], turning ThatOneBoss into a pathetically easy ([[DamageSpongeBoss if drawn out]]) game of leading him around the arena staying just out of his normal attack range spamming him with bullets. |
| 34 | * ''[[VideoGame/CastlevaniaDawnOfSorrow Dawn of Sorrow]]'': |
| 35 | ** The Imp soul temporarily effectively switches ''all'' enemies' HP and MP. Iron Golem, once again, has more HP than MP. The multi-hit LethalJokeWeapon Terror Bear (which, like its name implies, is a stuffed bear filled with iron sand which Soma swings by holding one of its arms) makes it even easier. |
| 36 | ** The Balore soul allows you to break chunks of ice that may block your path. There are only two rooms with ice that block your path, and both are next to the place where you find the soul. |
| 37 | * Flesh Golem soul in ''Aria'' and Ghoul soul in ''Dawn''. They make thing like Rotten Meat or Spoiled Milk restore HP, rather than damage you. Suddenly Spoiled Milk becomes an alternative to Super Potion (at least in Aria). %%Are these Poison Mushrooms or just plain Vendor Trash? |
| 38 | * The Scutum glyph in ''[[VideoGame/CastlevaniaOrderOfEcclesia Order of Ecclesia]]'' is, for the most part, functionally useless - it's just a shield that appears above your head, and doesn't appear in front of you like it is expected to. Its later forms, Vol Scutum and Melio Scutum, both appear in front of you. However, Scutum earns its respect in four battles: |
| 39 | ** Goliath's punching attack to the ceiling causes rubble to drop. The rubble is easy to avoid on Normal mode, but Hard mode makes the ceiling drop much more debris, so Scutum is much more useful. |
| 40 | ** Barlowe's homing fireball attack. Just stand below him and use it. All the fireballs just hit it and do nothing. Again, on Hard mode, this is almost required as they are nigh impossible to dodge. |
| 41 | ** Eligor's crossbows are located above you for most of the fight, placing them at just the right angle for Scutum to block part of their firing pattern and render them easy to avoid. |
| 42 | ** Finally, the Dracula fight, where it completely negates every shot that rains down during his Destruction Ray attack, which is quite tough to dodge otherwise. In combination with Melio Scutum, it can also effectively block his extremely deadly stream of bats attack. |
| 43 | [[/folder]] |
| 44 | |
| 45 | [[folder:''Final Fantasy'']] |
| 46 | * Across the ''Franchise/FinalFantasy'' series in general: |
| 47 | ** The status buff Reflect can get this treatment. Reflect returns most magic spells back at the caster/caster's party. However, some enemies will cast Reflect on the player's party so that their healing or buffing spells are reflected back at the enemy party. Not only that, but most enemies that use elemental magic absorb what they are casting, thus reflecting magic back at them would just heal them. Finally, most enemy abilities and some late-game spells like Ultima ignore Reflect outright, making it useless for guarding against them. That is the main reason why Reflect is hardly used by the player, but if enemies cast Reflect upon themselves, the player party can cast Reflect on themselves and cast magic on themselves to bounce it back at enemies without a counter reflect (except for ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVII'' where if the party and enemies have reflect, the spells will keep bouncing back and forth until Reflect fades for someone). |
| 48 | *** Asura of ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyIV'' was a Puzzle Boss on these grounds. She had a powerful counterattack, but her only non-counter actions were healing herself, buffing herself and reviving herself. That last one is the clue that you're meant to put a Reflect on her, poke her, wait for her to revive whoever she killed, rinse and repeat. And/or put Reflects on your own team and magic her face off, but at least on the SNES version white magic didn't cause Reflect to wear off, making the [[DeathOfAThousandCuts "touch and wait"]] strategy less risky. |
| 49 | *** Alternately, sometimes you can dispel the enemies' Reflect spells and let them get blasted by their own spells. One particularly funny instance is against the fight against Seymour on Mt. Gagazet in ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyX'', where he tries to bounce a Flare spell off his Reflect barrier to hit you. If you dispel his barrier before he gets the chance, he'll hit himself and then the game will snarkily note that the "Combination Failed". This is easier in FFX than in other games because you always know when a character's next turn is coming up. |
| 50 | *** In both ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVI'' and ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyIX'', you can actually cast ''four'' spells on the enemies for the price of one. If all your characters have reflect status (through Wall Rings, casting Carbuncle, etc.) and you cast something like a Firaga-All or a Cura-All spell on them, every single one of those spells will be bounced back and hit the enemies. If there's only one enemy, he or she will take the full effects of all four spells at once. So much for ThatOneBoss... |
| 51 | *** In the case of FFIX, multi-targeting magic reduces its output by half. Still works out well when used against 3 or more enemies at once, since you're outputting more damage than the single-target version would anyway. Then you combine it with an Ability that Vivi has which seems specifically geared toward abusing this mechanic: "Reflect X2", which doubles the power of spells that are bounced off a Reflect first. Have all four of your characters under Reflect, multi-target them with a reflectable spell (such as Firaga), and you're actually doing four times the standard damage to your enemy in one hit: The X0.5 effect of multi-target gets cancelled by Reflect X2 doubling it back to X1, then each Reflected copy hits for X1 damage per character. IX further encourages this behavior by giving both White Mage characters an ability that allows them to heal through reflect, and all characters are able to learn the Auto-Reflect ability. |
| 52 | *** In ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXII'' you can get an accessory that allows you to ignore Reflect, so you can give it to your dedicated healer while everyone else is under Reflect status, easing up on micromanaging. On the other hand, many enemies and bosses have also a 'Piercing' variant of usual spells (Piercing Firaga etc.) that automatically bypass Reflect status. However, this time the strongest spells, such as Scathe, do ''not'' bypass it by default, allowing you to do insane damage to one enemy if it bounces off of everyone (moreso if you have a guest in the party). This is actually crucial in defeating some bosses, notably Zodiark, as they have a nasty tendency to put up immunity to physical attacks [[TurnsRed once their HP gets low]]. |
| 53 | * ''Videogame/FinalFantasyII'' |
| 54 | ** The Ancient Sword and Blood Sword both have abysmal accuracy, meaning neither will land very many hits even with an experienced user. However, both of them have [[GameBreaker Game-Breaking]] properties against bosses. The Ancient Sword inflicts Curse, severely weakening an enemy's offensive and defensive stats, and the Blood Sword bases its damage off of the target's max HP — it ''will'' kill anything in sixteen hits, even the FinalBoss. |
| 55 | ** The Sap spell is useless for depleting enemies' MP (Sap is fraction-based, meaning it will never leave an enemy at very low MP without exorbitant grinding) and Swap is too unreliable for topping up HP and MP from enemies. Both spells serve excellently for grinding MP early in the game when used on your own party members. |
| 56 | ** The Barrier spell will see little use in the main game, but in Soul of Rebirth, it is invaluable for protecting your party members from status effects. |
| 57 | * ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyV'' has numerous almost-useless classes with useful abilities; mastering those classes will confer those abilities on the Freelancer and Mime classes. For this reason, many players will level-grind with those classes, and then never use them again. |
| 58 | ** Geomancers' "Gaia" skill [[CrutchCharacter is incredibly useful for the first half of the game]], thanks to it giving you a wide variety of potent attacks, all of which require 0 MP. In particular, using it while walking across a swamp has a decent chance of causing a 100% instant death effect on all enemies. Other than that, Geomancers don't have much to offer... except when you face a dungeon with pit traps and damage floors: Geomancers can reveal pit traps upon walking on them (allowing you to go around or ''choose'' to go in) and allieviate damage from these floors. Of course, these are both learnable abilit'''ies''', so a Geomancer is only completely necessary in dungeons with both... and if you don't have anyone who's mastered the class already... |
| 59 | ** Requiem is a song for bards that will do impressive damage to Undead, but nothing else. Initially, it's a case of dealing with Undead easily and nothing more, but in the Second World, shortly after you get access to the song, this skill is crucial in getting Golem, a wildly useful summon. You have to save from two enemies that are...you guessed it...undead, giving you and option that both gives you a way to kill them off easily without endangering Golem, who counts as an "enemy" in that battle. |
| 60 | ** As for weapons, the Excalipoor was designed to be a [[JokeItem useless joke]], having high attack but always hitting for 1 damage. However, thanks to its unique damage mechanics, you can also use it as a replacement for its normal counterpart for Blue Mages. Since the game only looks at the internal damage value for weapons when calculating damage for attacks such as Goblin Punch, it does as much damage as if you were wielding the genuine article. The same applies to the Ninja's Throw command, but once you throw it, you don't get it back. It has one more use, but that's covered under LethalJokeItem. |
| 61 | * ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVI'' |
| 62 | ** The Rasp spell, which [[ManaBurn eliminates enemy magic points]]. Most players overlook it for spells that do hit point damage - killing things the old-fashioned way - or for Osmose, which eliminates as many points as the caster is missing and [[ManaDrain restores them to the caster]], saving on Ethers. However, there are several enemies[[note]]including both iterations of the Atma/Ultima Weapon and literally every enemy in the Fanatics' Tower[[/note]] that die if all their magic is depleted. On top of that, several of these TurnRed, have either {{Desperation|Attack}} or TakingYouWithMe magic attacks; if their magic is drained, they can't do the attack and leave you untouched as they die. |
| 63 | ** Similarly, the Berserk spell doesn't tend to be much help because most enemies that you can't deal with more quickly just by killing them either have ContractualBossImmunity or powerful physical attacks or both. One exception is the [=MagiMaster=] boss at the top of the Fanatics' Tower, who casts powerful spells, can [[BarrierChangeBoss change his elemental weakness]], and casts a powerful Ultima spell as a TakingYouWithMe attack on death... unless he's Berserked, which turns him into a pussycat. |
| 64 | ** Then there's Relm's Sketch command, which most people ignore, given that it's [[GuideDangIt even more unintuitive]] than Gau's rage ''and'' the attack depends on the (''current'') enemy you're targeting, not one from elsewhere you're (supposedly) imitating. (Unless you're trying to [[GoodBadBugs glitch the game]]). However, it's a OneHitKill against a few foes.[[note]]And often, it's not even an attack they themselves use, meaning that TacticalSuicideBoss is not in play.[[/note]] |
| 65 | ** Similarly, you won't use Celes' Runic very often, but there are a few magic-dependent bosses that are significantly incapacitated by it. It counts on Celes outspeeding the enemy, however, ''and'' on you ''not'' using magic, [[AwesomeButImpractical as it absorbs the first spell cast after it's set]] (which is why people don't use it often). |
| 66 | ** Umaro. He's generally not considered very useful because he's TheBerserker and you can never control him. However, that lack of control can actually be [[CursedWithAwesome a blessing in disguise]] in situations where you don't have access to your Command Window; you can't [[InterfaceScrew screw with an interface]] when there's no interface to screw with: |
| 67 | *** In the Colosseum, your characters are subject to a frustrating AIRoulette, but if you send in Umaro, he will never waste his turns with pointless actions and will only ever attack. If you equip him with the right Relics, he'll actually do very well. |
| 68 | *** In the Fanatics' Tower, Umaro can still attack freely when everyone else is limited to Magic and Items. Many people will cast Berserk on the [=MagiMaster=] boss to prevent him from changing his weakness...but it's possible to Berserk him into an element like Earth or Wind that can't be hit with conventional spells. If you don't have non-elemental spells like Flare, and can't drain his MP, the fight becomes {{Unwinnable}}...unless you brought Umaro, who can still destroy the [=MagiMaster=] for you even if he has to do it by himself. [[note]]If you try to use him against Magi Master, you'll '''[[TakingYouWithMe need]]''' someone with [=ReRaise=].[[/note]] |
| 69 | *** He's also useful when using Cyan's [[ChargedAttack Bushido]], since you can't input any commands for your other party members until Cyan is ready. Fortunately, Umaro doesn't need command input and will immediately attack whenever his turn comes up. |
| 70 | * The Squire class from ''Videogame/FinalFantasyTactics'': |
| 71 | ** Tackle, Counter Tackle, and Rock Throw are all usually rather pathetic abilities as far as damage goes. What bumps them into Not Completely Useless territory, however, is their ability to knock the target back a square. This can enable you to open an exit path for that party member, force an attacker to come back rather than performing a hit-and-run, hit an opponent and shove them out of range for their own counter-attack... and send them plummeting off a sheer cliff to the tune of colossal, and likely ''fatal'' fall damage. |
| 72 | ** The Squire's abilities also have an incredible efficacy for LevelGrinding. EXP and JP are earned per action in ''Tactics'', and JP is earned based on the job of the character acting and not which action they are using. These abilities are weak enough that they can be used on your own characters. Form a team of four characters you need to level and a tank, trigger an encounter, eliminate the majority of your opponents, arrange your party in an X with your tank in the middle, and ''[[ViolationOfCommonSense subject your tank to a stoning]]''. Your tank can heal with an inexpensive item/ability, which will ''also'' earn EXP and JP. The end result is that it's actually harder for named characters with unique jobs that replace Squire to achieve GameBreaker setups. |
| 73 | * Dispel tends to be forgotten in the series since the game provides little use for them. Then comes ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVIII'' with bosses like Cerberus and Raijin who use buffs to unleash [[ThatOneAttack killer attacks]] and dispelling them will save you dearly. But at this point, hardly any player even remembers it exists. |
| 74 | * ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyIX'' has Ipsen's Castle, a dungeon where stairs and ceilings swap places, and your current weapons inflict ScratchDamage. Most of the treasures you find here are the lousy starter weapons for your party that they came with. This, along with the general "reversal" theme, is a clue that that's what you should be using, as weapons do ''more'' damage the ''weaker'' they are, making your starter weapons not useless after all. (Magic is unaffected by the reversal rules, sadly.) |
| 75 | * ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyX'' has several instances: |
| 76 | ** Seymour on Mount Gagazet is one of less than a handful of enemies to use the Zombie attack. You can fight this battle the long and hard way with Aeons and Overdrives, or you can just keep a few vials of otherwise useless de-zombify medicine handy. |
| 77 | ** Seymour's third encounter is one of the only bosses that can be poisoned in the entire game. The extra damage can pile up over time if you poison him at the beginning of the battle, and he never cures it on himself. |
| 78 | ** Yuna's Nul-spells, a low-cost spell that hits the entire party and will protect them from one attack that matches the nulled element ([=NulBlaze=] will protect you from fire, [=NulTide=] will protect you from water, et cetera), are considered useless by some players. However, they can be very handy indeed when you know exactly what kind of elements are coming. Flans and Elementals, in particular, will attack with specific elements, and if you cast the appropriate Nul- spell in time you won't be hurt at all. They're also very helpful the first time you fight Seymour, since he repeatedly casts each elemental spell in a specific order. If you know what's coming next (and the Sensor ability will explain the sequence to you), you can make what would be ThatOneBoss much more bearable. |
| 79 | ** Petrifying enemies doesn't usually count for much in many ''Franchise/FinalFantasy'' games, but in ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyX'' it's another matter entirely: |
| 80 | *** Having Rikku use Petrify Grenades on underwater fiends will instantly kill them, as they [[LiterallyShatteredLives sink to the bottom and shatter]]. |
| 81 | *** Petrify on a capture weapon makes capturing monsters very easy, as many of them are vulnerable to petrification. most that aren't are vulnerable to instant death instead. |
| 82 | *** In the desert on the way to the Al Bhed Home, you'll run into these weird plant fiends that will automatically cast Confusion on you every time you hit them...unless you use Kimahri's Stone Breath on them. Who'd have guessed that it would be so hard to confuse someone when you're petrified and about to shatter? |
| 83 | *** You can also use Stone Breath to one-shot Seymour's Guado Guardian escorts, who have this nasty Cover-Protect-Auto Potion loop. [[GuideDangIt You're supposed to steal a high potion from them to disable it,]] but this way is easier. |
| 84 | ** Speaking of Kimahri Ronso, many complain that he is redundant because there's no need for a multitasker in a game where switching inactive characters into the party at any time and vice versa is one of the main gameplay mechanics, but those people forget several things: |
| 85 | *** He can make a useful backup mage or provide additional status effects, which can complement the party member who is supposed to specialize in these things, or even take their place if that party member isn't available; |
| 86 | *** He's the only character besides Auron whose weapons normally have the Piercing trait. This is especially helpful at the start of the game, before Auron actually joins the party. |
| 87 | *** Similarly, Kimahri can be used as a thief as soon as you get your first Level 1 Key Sphere for the Sphere Grid, which is a lot sooner than when Rikku is found. |
| 88 | *** He is also the closest character to the powerful Ultima spell in the sphere grid (which is blocked by several high tier locks). If you delay upgrading him until you gain the spheres needed to unlock it, you can use a teleport sphere to move a more devoted caster to the Ultima spell immediately. |
| 89 | ** Rikku's Bribe attack seems virtually useless, given its obscenely high price against anything significant (25x the enemy's max HP in Gil for a guaranteed success), until you realize that Bribed enemies can give you a truckload of crafting items that're much harder or impossible to get anywhere else in large quantities. Furthermore, since the game keeps track of how much money you've given to the enemy in total, the massive Gil cost can be reduced to something more reasonable by first bribing them with a lower amount and then keep bribing them 1 Gil at a time until you're successful. There's also an ''extremely'' annoying boss midway through the [[BonusDungeon Omega Ruins]] that is, [[ContractualBossImmunity in defiance of expectations]], vulnerable to bribery, handing over ''ninety-nine'' of an incredibly useful item in the process. (It takes a ''million'' Gil, but by that point in the game [[MoneyForNothing you've already bought everything you'd want to buy]].) |
| 90 | ** Tidus's Provoke ability seems pretty useless. Normally you'd want the damage spread around so nobody dies. And if you need to swap him out, it gets cancelled. But it also locks the AI into using a specific attack, which is always the same for any given monster it works on. And it doesn't wear off as long as the character who cast it is out. When that attack is a current hp-half rounded down attack (that does no damage at 1 health), it means you can't lose. Yes, this actually works on one story boss. Certain other otherwise difficult enemies can get locked out of very nasty status inflicting attacks if you Provoke them, making it very useful against them. |
| 91 | * ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXI'' - The two hour ability (a supposedly extremely valuable job specific ability that can only be used every two hours) for Ninjas is Mijin Gakure. This ability kills the Ninja and deals damage based on their current HP. Due to [[HealthDamageAsymmetry the amount of health enemies have]], this ability is basically useless. It does not inflict enough damage to be worth using in any situation where a two hour is justified. There are two uses for it. |
| 92 | ** Avoid the harsh penalty for death, since a secondary effect of Mijin Gakure is to remove all penalties for dying and being raised back to life. |
| 93 | ** A poor man's Warp, since you can return to your home point after you die and again there is no death penalty for doing it this way. This has become less useful due to how easy it is to Warp through higher level spells and items. |
| 94 | * ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyTacticsAdvance'': |
| 95 | ** Undead enemies rise again a few turns after being killed, unless a skill like Burial is used on their remains. Needless to say, those skills are completely useless anywhere else in the game. In the sequel the same goes for the Bard skill Requiem, which damages undead. |
| 96 | ** Oddly enough, the zombie status itself is rather useful - if you get zombified, you will automatically come back to life in several turns, without having to use Raise/Arise or a phoenix down! |
| 97 | ** The Viking class is an awkward combo of stealing skills and spells. The spells are, for the most part, not worth using, with the exception of Tsunami, which can only be used if the caster is standing in water. |
| 98 | ** The Paladin class, generally a MightyGlacier plagued by many a UselessUsefulSpell, such as Parley (which removes enemies from the battlefield at an incredibly low chance), Nurse (a pitiful [[AreaOfEffect AoE]] heal, thanks to the class' low magic) and Drop Weapon (grants the ability to change your weapon for another in your inventory, in a series where there is usually little reason to do so), also has Subdue. Subdue is a skill that makes the Paladin hit with the flat side of their blade, dealing exactly 1 damage. This is incredibly useful for breaking an ally out of Charm or Confusion without having to heal them later, and helps when you need to get a monster to low HP so a Hunter can capture them. |
| 99 | * The Triple Triad card game in ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVIII'' and ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIV'' has many low grade cards that have low numbers with 1 being the worst since it's the lowest number can't overtake anything. However, playing with Reverse rules makes cards with a 1 or low numbers in general become incredibly useful since their values are inverted; a 1 under Reverse is as powerful as a card with an "A" while said "A" is now as weak as a 1. |
| 100 | ** A second rule which is covered under this is "Fallen Ace". It does only one thing: allow an A to be captured by a 1. (Or vice versa, if Reverse is also in play.) Most [=NPCs=] with this rule have a couple of 1s in their deck: those who don't are strong enough that they're effectively the Triple Triad equivalent of a PuzzleBoss. |
| 101 | * ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIV'': |
| 102 | ** The Paladin's Cover skill is rarely used since it only lasts for 10 seconds, requires both the tank and the party member to be no further than 10 yards apart, and it doesn't block party wide damage for the player being protected. In some raids however, Cover can be excellent to use on the main tank so that the Paladin off tank soaks up some damage while the main tank is free to pump out the pain without worrying about dying or stressing the healers. |
| 103 | ** The Deep Dungeons gives some items and spells a lot more use than they do in the main content. Healing potions become useful in a pinch in cases where your party lacks a healer. Phoenix Downs, which only work on people in your party and out of combat, become incredibly useful since you don't have to risk going through monsters trying to find a device that can revive fallen party members. The Sleep / Repose spell, which never gets used since almost everything is immune to it, can work surprisingly well on some enemies in the Deep Dungeon, which makes it a great alternative to interrupting enemy attacks if stunning them doesn't work. |
| 104 | [[/folder]] |
| 105 | |
| 106 | [[folder:Other Video Games]] |
| 107 | %%Please separate by Genre... or at least split off the RPG and MMORPG examples. |
| 108 | * The Undead Slayer in ''VideoGame/AdventureQuestWorlds'' is amazing in Doomwood due to its unique quality of quickly becoming well over 9000 by a Spirit Power system that only works when fighting undead. Its normal power when out of its element is pretty dismal. |
| 109 | * The Viy fight in ''VideoGame/LaMulana''. Going by how the rest of the game is set-up you are led to believe that Spears are your only option for this battle. However, as spears shoot directly downwards you must get right above the boss's eye to damage it, which also happens to be where all its most dangerous attacks come from, making it one of the harder fights in the game. There is another weapon that turns out to be a savior: Throwing Knives seem pretty useless when you get them, so you tend to forget about them, as the shurikens do more damage and are faster horizontally and spears have better vertical damage and speed. However, the Knives' property of "sliding" along the ground until they hit a wall allows you to just stand back (dodging some weak projectiles) and bombard Viy while coming under very minimal danger yourself, instantly turning it into a very easy fight. As a bonus, the Throwing Knives will damage the regenerating tentacles as well, making them much less of a hassle. |
| 110 | ** The Throwing Knives did have one other big use-- Hell Temple. While the area may be filled with false floors, a thrown knife traces the actual path of the floor-- Passing right through the "gaps" to show the real path. |
| 111 | ** Throwing Knives also make a small number of puzzles much easier than they would be with other, more obviously applicable weapons. |
| 112 | ** The throwing knives are actually significantly stronger than shuriken, and can hit sufficiently large enemies twice (they go through most enemies). It's just that shuriken have a (usually) far superior movement pattern. And you can throw more shuriken at once than you can knives. |
| 113 | ** In both the remake and [[VideoGame/LaMulana2 the sequel]], {{Caltrops}} have very little utility, since they get thrown behind you, otherwise need the enemy to be on the floor in order to work, and can damage you if you step on them. However, they are invaluable against certain guardians and room guardians, such as Viy, Svipdagr, and Karkinos, which meet multiple of those criteria. Furthermore, when they damage you, they also trigger MercyInvincibility, allowing you to dodge through certain highly telegraphed but difficult to evade attacks, such as Viy or Tiamat's [[WaveMotionGun giant laser beam]]. |
| 114 | * In ''VideoGame/LuckBeALandlord'', Dud symbols are used to increase the difficulty and are unarguably worse than any other non-empty symbol in the game, but if you have three of them, they'll meet the Green Pepper's requirement of having 3 of the same symbol, and can potentially meet the Purple Pepper's requirement of having 3 of the same symbol adjacent to each other. |
| 115 | * The last boss of ''VideoGame/MysticDefender'' could be trivially defeated by using the weapon that bounces balls off walls and crouching in the lower right hand corner of the screen. The balls would bounce and hit the boss in just the right spot. The weapon was otherwise useless for most of the game. |
| 116 | * In ''VideoGame/WildArms3'', a skill by Luceid called "Dark Luceid" pretty much deals very low damage, even when Luceid is using it against you when you need to obtain him. Afterwards, you can fight an upgraded {{superboss}} called Power Trask (basically, an upgraded "regular" Trask whom you defeated earlier). Now unlike regular Trask which can be defeated easily after knowing a trick, Power Trask suffers none such weakness. It is also highly defensive towards elemental magic (which your party has been relying on for a good chunk of the game). The non-elemental magic available doesn't hit hard enough and Power Trask is, quite simply, a pure StoneWall that laughs at your physical attacks. Cue Dark Luceid saving the day due to its mostly heretofore unknown "deal damage according to how many elemental resistances the target has" property. This same property is what usually makes it deal pitiful damage: not many enemies have full elemental resistance thus making this skill useless for 90% of the game. |
| 117 | * Completing a sidequest involving [[NoSenseOfDirection directing an easily-lost scholar home]] in ''VideoGame/StarOceanTheSecondStory'' earns you a stick called the Funny Slayer that [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin instantly slays any enemies with "Funny" in their name when you hit them.]] Of course, the only enemies that fit that description (Funny Thieves) are TheGoomba and pretty much go down in one hit even if you were Level 1 and unarmed. That is, until you hit the middle floors of the [[BonusDungeon Cave Of Trials]], which contain Metal Funnys and Funny Thief lvl99s (one of which is a floor boss.) |
| 118 | * ''VideoGame/MetalGear'': |
| 119 | ** ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolid'': |
| 120 | *** It is implied you must use your missile weapons for the battle against Vulcan Raven, which he can easily shoot down if you don't use them carefully. But, you can lay claymore mines around the arena and wait for him to step on them; this is one of the only good uses of claymore mines in the game. |
| 121 | *** Remote-controlled Nikita rockets are slightly different: they are used for solving a puzzle near the beginning of the game, but after that see little use (as they aren't exactly especially stealthy). However, they are ''incredibly'' useful during the second Sniper Wolf boss fight (much easier than using a sniper rifle). |
| 122 | *** Snake's cigarettes at first appear to serve no purpose other than to slowly drain his health ([[SmokingIsCool while making him look cool]]). However, the smoke allows you to detect laser security sensors, although not as well as with infrared goggles. They also calm Snake's nerves and make his sniping aim more steady, although not as effectively as Diazepam. Their real benefit comes from if you missed the Thermal Goggles (you get one chance to get them and if you do you can't get them until much later), or run out of Diazepam, as Snake starts with the cigarettes and they never run out. |
| 123 | ** ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolid2SonsOfLiberty'': |
| 124 | *** Repeats the cigarettes gimmick from the previous game exactly. |
| 125 | *** After Ocelot takes your mask, the Gurlukovich Soldier uniform seems pointless - guards immediately recognise you, and it has no effect on your stats. However, if you put it on before walking in an area where you leave footprints, the guards will recognise the bootprint as one of theirs and ignore it. |
| 126 | *** Pentazemin (a drug which improves sniper rifle accuracy) can be found on the Tanker, a stage in which there is no weapons beside the USP and the M9. It appears to serve no function, but taking it causes the disorientating up-down motion of the camera (stronger in higher difficulty levels) to stop for a while, explained as it helping with seasickness (via the PlaceboEffect). |
| 127 | *** The RGB-6 is a grenade launcher in a game where grenades are ''already'' fairly useless. Enemies are very difficult to hit with it, the explosion alerts guards, and there is ''always'' a better way to take down your foes than this thing... until you face Vamp. When he dives into the water you can drop a few RGB-6 rounds in the water which will most likely hit him (and do decent damage), but even when they don't the blast depletes his OxygenMeter and forces him to surface, leaving him wide-open for another attack. |
| 128 | * ''VideoGame/DeadRising2'' has the toy spitball gun which unless crafted into a more powerful item does absolutely no damage to any enemies under normal circumstances. There is however one exception. Partway through the game Chuck has to fight a helicopter armed with a mounted turret. The helicopter has incredibly high damage resistance to most forms of attack except for thrown weapons which deal a decent and fixed amount of damage to it per hit regardless of what the damage output would otherwise be. The toy spitball guns projectiles are unique in that they count as thrown projectiles despite being fired from a gun meaning that despite their usual damage value of zero the tiny plastic balls can hilariously be used to rip apart the helicopter in mere seconds. |
| 129 | * ''VideoGame/SpaceMegaforce'' has a few times that weapons that seem to be outclassed become life savers. In level eight, if you shoot the walls, pieces break off that can kill you. Most weapons, when upgraded, have bullet patterns that will hit the walls constantly. Your saving grace is the Sprite weapon, which is usually outclassed by the others. Also, when playing on Normal, Tricky, and Wild difficulties, weapons that don't do much damage per hit but can fill much of the screen with bullets tend to be good choices, but when you play on Hard or Hyper, the enemies become able to take much more damage before dying, which forces you to fight with weapons that do more damage to individual targets. Oddly enough, the weapon named "Multi-Direction Shot" turns out to be the best at this, making it excellent on Hard and Hyper but a poor choice for the other difficulty settings. (The game's difficulties, in order from easiest to hardest, are Normal, Hard, Hyper, Tricky, and Wild.) |
| 130 | * In ''VideoGame/MaximoGhostsToGlory'', Captain Cadaver is immune to all your attacks except for swinging your sword while crouching so you can hit his peg leg. This is one of the four times where crouching is useful. The other times occurs against bomb-throwing skeletons (attacking them normally causes their backpack of bombs to explode, whereas crouching and slashing at their legs causes them to collapse in a heap with a bomb still in hand and ticking), Hammer Devils (can be killed faster since their hammer is not getting in the way) and the crawling zombie torsos. |
| 131 | * In the ''VideoGame/MegaManClassic'' series, the weakness of the ({{True|FinalBoss}}) FinalBoss corresponds either to the most useless weapon or to the weapon which is a pain to hit with. |
| 132 | ** The trend started with Bubble Lead in ''VideoGame/MegaMan2''; it ran along the ground, so it doesn't do well against most enemies. But it's the only weapon that works against the FinalBoss. It also earns its pay earlier in the Fortress with the disguised holes in the floor. |
| 133 | ** Top Spin from ''VideoGame/MegaMan3'' is considered one of the most useless weapons in the series. However, any enemy that is weak against it has no invincibility frames against it. This includes Wily's final form. So, while it doesn't [[OneHitKO one-shot]] any of these enemies, it can be made to look like it does. |
| 134 | ** In ''VideoGame/MegaMan7'', you remember those Wild Coils? You will when you fight Wily! |
| 135 | ** In ''VideoGame/MegaMan8'', you can only use three weapons against... the ''first'' Fortress boss: [[AlwaysAccurateAttack Astro Crush]] and Ice Wave when he's by the wall, and the oft neglected Mega Ball [[ItMayHelpYouOnYourQuest that you got at the start of the game]]. It also replaces the Rush Coil and also permits you to perform [[DoubleJump multiple midair jumps]] if your timing is good. |
| 136 | ** Actually averted more often than not with Sigma in the ''VideoGame/MegaManX'' series. In X1, he was weak to Rolling Shield, but the charged version actually shielded you, disqualifying it once you go either of the attack upgrades. In X2, he was weak to the Strike Chain, which had limited weapon use but [[UtilityWeapon was a good tool in several situations]]. In X3, he was weak to the X-Buster only. |
| 137 | ** ''VideoGame/MegaManBattleNetwork'' brings a really odd one to the table. The Minibomb chip in the standard series games is useless - you can't hit with it worth a damn against most things and it barely does more damage than any of the many chips you do have that are way more accurate. For the series' platformer GaidenGame, however, it became a GameBreaker that went largely unnoticed because of its terrible history in the other games. For this one game, it was extremely easy and efficient to use, cheap to maximize your stock of, available right from the moment you hit [[DiscOneNuke New Game]], and because the explosion damaged enemies multiple times, was capable of one-shotting half the enemies in the game; and everything else could be taken down with a second one if it wasn't a boss or had an aura (as enemies in two endgame stages did). |
| 138 | ** The Mega Man 3 (DOS) game's final boss had weaknesses at various stages to the Shark Boomerang or the Water Shooter, both very short-range weapons. |
| 139 | * ''VideoGame/MetalSlug'' has the Drop Shot, a gun that shoots exploding bouncy balls that jumps around in an unpredictable pattern, does medium-to-low damage on vehicles, and useless in ''every'' single boss fight... until in the seventh game of the series, when it's available as a pickup against the Fall Mecha, a giant robot that the player spend the entire fight standing on it. For this battle, using the Drop Shot allows projectiles to instantly hit the Mecha without the need to aim downwards, making it considerably more useful than machine-guns or rocket launchers. |
| 140 | * ''VideoGame/{{Mother}}'': |
| 141 | ** Mondo Mole is one of the few bosses that is susceptible to [[PsychicPowers PSI]] [[StatusEffects Paralysis Alpha]]. |
| 142 | ** Shroooom! can be a rather tough boss...unless you use the otherwise nigh-useless PSI Flash Beta against him, which will either paralyze or kill him in one shot. |
| 143 | ** Poo's Mirror ability allows him to transform into any normal enemy in the game and act out their AIRoulette. But since Poo on his own is generally stronger than any regular enemy, and you can't control what he does, it's usually useless. Except when you're fighting [[ShootTheMedicFirst Atomic Power/Nuclear Reactor Robots]], which will cause Poo to use what is effectively the full heal Lifeup Gamma for free 75% of the time. |
| 144 | ** The New Year's Eve Bomb in ''VideoGame/Mother3'' inflicts HPTo1, but it fails against most things... unless they're the King Statue, which has 99 million hit points. It's more or less a PuzzleBoss; there's even a guy selling the item in the same area. |
| 145 | * ''VideoGame/WorldOfWarcraft'': |
| 146 | ** In the early days of raiding, Hunters received a new ability, Tranquilizing Shot. Its only use was to remove frenzy effects found on some of the bosses (which would make them much stronger). Due to issues Hunters had, this one trick made Hunters much more likely to even get into raids. The second expansion finally gives it a broader range of uses, even against other players. A similar case was the Mage spell Detect Magic (shows active buffs on the target) which was very helpful on some bosses that required the raid to dispel certain effects otherwise hard to see, but in this case, the spell was eventually removed (and buffs made always visible). |
| 147 | ** Another classic case of this is the Warlock spell Detect Invisibility. Until Mages got a corresponding skill this was completely useless (Rogues use ''Stealth'', which is a different mechanic) with a few select locations that have invisible enemies. Even there it's not necessary to use the spell, but it avoids nasty surprises (especially in Naxxramas where the first player the monster spots usually gets killed in one hit. |
| 148 | ** Yet another rarely used skill is "Mind Soothe/Soothe Beast". What does it do? It reduces the radius of the target in which it attacks players. If the spell fails, it attacks the target. Nowadays almost forgotten, there were a few places where players could avoid some fights with it, and in a specific case it's often used as a means to let the Priest get close enough to the target safely to Mind Control it. Speaking of which... |
| 149 | ** Mind Control, while perfectly viable in [=PvP=], used to have the fatal drawback of making the target ''very'' pissed at the caster (a [[SquishyWizard squishy Priest]]) when it breaks off. This was later changed along with the possibility to use the spell to force some enemies to cast very useful buffs on the Priest's party. |
| 150 | *** In classic, Mind Control was an effective strategy, and fun change of pace for healers, to use in phase 1 of Razorgore, the first boss of Blackwing Layer. The caster orcs (which when using a kite strategy were the only targets the raid killed) could be Mind Controlled and were effective tools to be used against the other casters, who would gladly target the powerful controlled mage. Thus helping greatly in lowering the HP of 2 targets at once. |
| 151 | ** Yet another overlooked spell is "Dampen/Amplify Magic", a buff that either decreases or increases magic effects (both damaging and healing). Since healing is almost always required and magic damage all too common, it's pretty much restricted to a choice few bosses that predominantly hurt with physical damage as a means to make healing a bit easier. The dampening variant is reasonably useful for Mages playing on their own though, since they have no healing spells. |
| 152 | * ''Franchise/{{Metroid}}'' |
| 153 | ** In ''VideoGame/MetroidPrime'', all of the charge combos (besides the [[BoringButPractical generally-useful]] Super Missile) work like this: |
| 154 | *** The Ice Spreader fires far too slowly to be of any use against normal enemies and most bosses. However, it also can freeze the first form of the final boss with one shot, causing massive amounts of damage in the process. |
| 155 | *** The Wavebuster uses far too much ammo to make it worth using... until you reach the end of your first visit to the Phazon Mines, where you fight an invisible enemy that you can't lock on to and is very quick. Suddenly, the ability to auto-target ''anything'' becomes very useful. And this enemy is even weak to the Wave Beam, mitigating the ammo requirement. |
| 156 | *** The Flamethrower does fast continuous damage, but it has a limited range and anything that isn't immune to the Plasma beam can be taken down in a few shots making it a huge waste of ammo. However, it is one of the few weapons that can penetrate the Omega Pirate's shield. |
| 157 | ** Also in the ''VideoGame/MetroidPrimeTrilogy'', the hazard proximity bar in the HUD is generally considered a pointless aesthetic touch. But during certain boss fights like the Omega Pirate in the first game and Dark Samus 1 and Emperor Ing in ''VideoGame/MetroidPrime2Echoes'', it becomes incredibly useful for letting you know when you're dangerously close to a pool of Phazon, for example, since you can't see where you're strafing or backing away while locked on to the boss. |
| 158 | ** Seeker Missiles are generally ignored aside from opening certain doors. However they turn out to be exceedingly useful for taking out the tentacles of Emperor Ing's first form. And in ''VideoGame/MetroidPrime3Corruption'' their ability to lock 5 missiles onto a single enemy provide a semi-decent replacement for the absent Super Missiles or beam combos, and at least don't cost health unlike Hyper Missiles. |
| 159 | * One of the first weapons you get in ''Metal Mutant'' is some kind of lightning attack. It looks cool and is pretty strong in raw power, but it [[AwesomeButImpractical has an overly long charge time, its range is limited, and ]]''[[AwesomeButImpractical any ]]''[[AwesomeButImpractical hit will take you out of it]]. However, there is one certain enemy near endgame that is [[NighInvulnerable totally impervious to everything you have]] ''except'' for this weapon. |
| 160 | * Most ''VideoGame/{{Einhander}}'' strategy guides recommend the Endymion Mk. II and dismissed the GunsAkimbo Astraea fighter as AwesomeButImpractical. But, equipped with the right pair of gunpods (that seem fairly useless on the Endymion) the Astraea chews through mooks and bosses alike with ease. |
| 161 | * ''[[VideoGame/{{Diablo}} Diablo II]]'' features a Paladin ability called "Holy Bolt". Virtually useless unless you're focusing on healing teammates or damaging Undead. Of course, only a 1/4 of all the monsters in the game are Undead so you're helpless against everything else, but Holy Bolt does smash the daylights out of Undead. |
| 162 | ** If you spec out a Paladin to maximize Holy Bolt's healing properties, you won't be able to hit any monsters past Act 3 Normal. On the other hand, with the right gear (Faster Cast Rate rings for the win) you can heal 500+ HP a second. Not bad for a game that allegedly doesn't have a healing class. |
| 163 | ** Though the Sorceress's Blaze (which makes fire appear where you walk) is mostly useless, it makes an effective [[HitAndRunTactics kiting tactic]] against [[ThatOneBoss Duriel]]. More than most classes, the Sorceress desperately needs to stay out of his InstantDeathRadius; with Blaze, you can get him to [[ArtificialStupidity chase you around in a circle in your trail of fire]] until he eventually dies. |
| 164 | * Charred Newts in ''VideoGame/LufiaCurseOfTheSinistrals''. They fully restore IP, but IP regenerates naturally anyway and you can just use standard attacks against enemies or switch out to a different character with a full IP meter. The final boss fight against Daos gives Maxim the ability to freeze time with the Dual Blade, which lasts until his IP runs out. Popping a Charred Newt once Time Stop runs out lets you repeatedly freeze time and wail on Daos, letting you kill him ridiculously easily. |
| 165 | * ''VideoGame/DigitalDevilSaga'': |
| 166 | ** Null Sleep/Avoid Sleeper (avoid any attack so long as you're affected with Sleep status) is completely useless against nearly every boss in the game. Except one, where it is, in point of fact, absolutely ''required'' to succeed. Oh, and that one specific fight? That would be [[spoiler: Demi-Fiend]], most definitively on the short-list for hardest boss ever in the history of gaming. |
| 167 | ** Cielo has mediocre stats and a weakness to any skill that inflicts status ailments. Virtually every enemy has an attack that inflicts status ailments, so Cielo is often times a bad choice, even against electric enemies who he is supposed to be most useful against. The one time he is legitimately useful is in the same fight where the aforementioned Null Sleep is required. The reason is because his weakness to status ailments means he is almost guaranteed to be hit with the sleep status ailment.\ |
| 168 | He's also surprisingly useful for [[spoiler:the second phase of the Ravana fight. Ravana likes to cast a spell that inflicts your entire party with the control-removing Hunger status and follow it up with an all-target Wind spell... which can be reflected back at him for huge damage. He also likes to cast the Hunger effect on his second action, letting him follow up with the Wind spell on the next turn with your reflect caster Hungry and unable to put the reflecting effect up. If you have Cielo on the field, though, Ravana will gain a press turn from Cielo's ailment weakness and cast that big spell immediately, before your reflect can wear off.]] |
| 169 | * In ''Videogame/{{Persona 4}}'' there are items that deal a fixed amount of damage, low even for the early parts of the first dungeon (and you don't find them till you get near the end of said dungeon!) make short work of {{Metal Slime}}s. Also good for exploiting elemental weaknesses without burning SP. Later on, however, you get the Magatama items, which deal 150 damage to all enemies; you'll likely find them useful on the bosses for the striptease and [[{{Retraux}} Void Quest]] dungeons. |
| 170 | * In ''VideoGame/ShinMegamiTenseiIV'', Silent Prayer resets all stat changes to both sides of the battle. This isn't that useful for the most part, since by the time it's available, odds are you are making extensive use of {{Status Buff}}s for your allies, and you don't want that to reset. Merkabah, on the other hand, ''loves'' to increase his own stats while lowering yours, and the battle can go uphill for you in a hurry without Silent Prayer. |
| 171 | * ''VideoGame/AncientDomainsOfMystery'' hangs a lampshade on this with the "potion of uselessness." When drunk, it's... useless. When you throw it at a monster, it's... useless. If you dip an item in it... nothing happens. It's never an alchemical ingredient. And many, if not most, potions are useful for more than one of those reasons. But if thrown in the SlippySlideyIceWorld, it propels you along like any other thrown object...[[spoiler: and your god is impressed enough to give you an artifact for finding a use for it.]] |
| 172 | ** Another example is using items as so-called rift fodder. The Rift, a location leading to a certain library, requires very high Climbing skill, as well as luck, to get down safely. Failing a luck check (and in past builds it was bugged to almost always fail) will result in, among other things, the destruction of up to hundreds of items in your inventory. The usual way of dealing with this consists of filling your inventory with cheap, light, useless items-- arrows for non-archers, identified scrolls and potions with negative properties, etc. Considering the relative rarity and potential ''usefulness'' of the potion of uselessness, it is actually often excluded from rift fodder. |
| 173 | * In ''VideoGame/{{Iji}}'', the Resonance Reflector is normally too slow to recharge to be much use for you; you'd be better off [[WhyDontYaJustShootHim blasting the enemies with a]] BFG instead of trying to reflect their own projectiles back at them. You'd think it would be good for a PacifistRun (They're killing themselves, right?), only for [[FriendlyFireproof gameplay reasons]] the reflected projectiles count as yours, so no it isn't. Then comes the final boss, who has immensely strong armor... [[PlayingTennisWithTheBoss and a weapon that does far more damage than anything you've got, and that can be reflected.]] |
| 174 | ** Version 1.6 changed the reflection mechanic so that deflecting an enemy projectile no longer counts as your kill. Unless of course, it's a projectile they reflected back at you, but with the reflector's load time, you probably won't be able to reflect it again anyway. |
| 175 | ** The Resonance Reflector is an upgraded version of the Resonance Detonator, which is even more useless since it shares the Reflector's absurdly long reload time but its effect is identical to your kick attack (which is always a keypress away and doesn't require you to switch weapons). Kicking also takes a lot less time than charging the Detonator does. The only advantage provided by the Detonator is that it fires instantly when you press the button, while the kick only deals damage about half a second into the attack animation. Enter Tasen Shredders, vehicles that both Iji and the Tasen can use. Most of them spawn with a Tasen rider, but you can kick them off without destroying the Shredder - if you manage to hit a fast-moving vehicle with your foot in the split second before it knocks you down. Resonance Detonators make this feasible. |
| 176 | *** The Resonance Detonator has another use. It fires in a small circle away from you, hitting opponents who are not close enough to kick. Usually this doesn't mean much, as the ability is still too weak to justify having as your only weapon. However, there will be numerous occasions where Iji is standing on a platform right above an opponent who can't hit her since he is unable to jump. The detonator can be safely loaded and allowed to charge without risk of harm, and if fired when the opponent is right along the ledge the Detonator will hit him despite iji being above him and unable to kick. This can be a bit tedious to do, but it does give a free kill without wasting ammo or risking enemy fire. |
| 177 | *** And one more use: the Resonance Detonator is the easiest and cheapest way to destroy Skysmashers. Too bad these only show up in the final sector. |
| 178 | * The Tractor Beam spell in ''VideoGame/TalesOfPhantasia'' is largely useless. In practice, it's supposed to be a useful spell (being the only non-elemental spell Arche can learn for a good long time), but it only works on enemies on the ground. The problem is that many of ''[=ToP=]'''s enemies (roughly about 1/3) are flying enemies that are NEVER on the ground, while most of the rest are fond of jumping around like rabid monkeys. The result is [[UselessUsefulSpell a spell that so rarely deals damage (that has no other effect)]] that most players will turn it off so the computer-controlled Arche doesn't end up wasting half her turns. There's only ONE case where the spell is useful, being in Gnome's Dungeon against the Clay Idol monsters, land-based creatures that take damage from only one attack in the game. Care to guess which one? |
| 179 | * In ''VideoGame/TalesOfVesperia'', Estelle can potentially give you an item called the "Mother's Memento." It theoretically grants you unlimited healing, as it is never consumed when used, except that the healing it grants per use is incredibly small, and given that any item use in the game comes with a cooldown, there are far more efficient ways to heal. Eventually, you have to fight [[spoiler:a brainwashed Estelle as]] a boss. Using the Mother's Memento during the battle grants [[spoiler:her a brief moment of self-awareness, lowering her defenses and earning]] you the Secret Mission for it, which you can't get in any other way. |
| 180 | * In ''VideoGame/DinkSmallwood: Mystery Island'', you learn a spell called Duck Magic through a subplot involving a human-to-duck transforming magic fountain. This spell does nothing at all except summon ducks. [[spoiler:The final boss is the only thing they work on, because it "forgot to put on feet armor".]] |
| 181 | * ''VideoGame/FullThrottle'': Ben can optionally pick up a handful of fertilizer powder from a crashed truck and use it in fights on the Old Mine Road (throwing it in his opponent's face). However, it's weak, and has a fairly slow attack animation, so you may as well just punch them instead. [[spoiler:''Except'' for the chainsaw wielder, for whom the fertilizer is a OneHitKill. You don't absolutely have to beat her, but getting the chainsaw is the easiest path to getting the weapons you do need.]] |
| 182 | * In ''VideoGame/MediEvil'', one of the earlier weapons you get is a wooden Club, which breaks boulders. The Club is unfortunately also the game's only [[BreakableWeapons breakable melee weapon]], is almost as weak as the Short Sword you start with, and the Warhammer can also break boulders while being stronger, with a longer range and an awesome GroundPound attack. However, the Club can also be used as a torch, and the GangplankGalleon level at the end of the game has cannons with fuses... |
| 183 | * The emerald swords of ''VideoGame/LandsOfLore'' cause little to zero damage to all enemies, can't be sold (shopkeepers will refuse to buy them) and seem to be of no use until you enter the White Tower, as they're pretty effective against ghosts, who are impervious to normal weapons. They're also very useful in one floor of [[TheVeryDefinitelyFinalDungeon Castle Cimmeria]], which is teeming with ghost Cabal warriors. |
| 184 | * In ''[[WesternAnimation/CasperTheFriendlyGhost Casper]]: A Haunting 3D Challenge'' you collect fool's gold coins throughout the game. Through most of the game they appear useless, until the final boss fight where you have to drop them around to distract Carrigan. |
| 185 | * ''VideoGame/KingdomOfLoathing'' |
| 186 | ** Using the Antique Hand Mirror normally just breaks it and gives you [[BadLuckCharm 7 turns of "bad luck"]] (which [[SubvertedTrope does nothing]]), but using it while fighting the absurdly powerful [[spoiler:[[TheWormThatWalks Guy Made Of Bees]]]] will kill him instantly. |
| 187 | ** The Chaos Butterfly normally has minor, random effects, or gives a seemingly meaningless message. However, if you use it while clearing dooks for the [=McMillicancuddy=] sidequest, you can complete it in half the usual amount of time, if you choose exactly the right multiple-choice options. This is also quite a serious case of GuideDangIt, because not only is this a completely unrelated questline (chaos butterflies drop from Possibility Giants, which you can encounter during the Level 10 quest, and [=McMillicancuddy's Farm=] opens up during the Level 12 quest), but you also have to choose a specific set of options during non-combat encounter, with no indication of which ones to pick. |
| 188 | ** There's also the [[TalkLikeAPirate Safarrri Hat]], which grants "+15 damage against Lions" to parody the WeaponOfXSlaying trope. There's only one lion-type enemy in the entire game, and it's not a particularly difficult encounter. It's not completely useless, but it's close. |
| 189 | * In ''VideoGame/{{Wizardry}} IV'', the most useless summoned monster in the game is also the only thing that can kill the final boss. |
| 190 | * ''VideoGame/ChampionsOfNorrath'' and its sequel have several spells that either only work on undead, or are much more effective on undead. For example, the dark elf shadowknight's Convert Undead is absolutely useless ''unless'' you're fighting a horde of undead. The high elf cleric has several HolyHandGrenade spells that are only useful against undead. |
| 191 | * There's a Disney game for the Sega Genesis called ''[[VideoGame/DisneysMagicalQuest The Great Circus Mystery]].'' In it you get several suits that allow Mickey and/or Minnie to solve puzzles, get items and open pathways. You know how you tend to forget about the first one or two weapons you get as the game progresses? Well, nothing will take down Level 5's boss except for the vacuum cleaner-suit from WAY back. |
| 192 | * ''Franchise/StarWars: VideoGame/KnightsOfTheOldRepublic'' series: |
| 193 | ** For Light Side players, the Drain Health Force Power is near useless for the brunt of the first game, [[KarmaMeter handicapped as it is]], while the [[ThrowingYourSwordAlwaysWorks Throw Lightsaber]] power is just plain weak and leaves the user vulnerable briefly. [[spoiler:In the final boss fight against Darth Malak, however, they are the only way to make use of the comatose Jedis he has strewn around the room. While using these powers on one of them does kill them, Drain Health also completely replenishes the player's health, and both powers keep Malak from using them.]] |
| 194 | ** [[VideoGame/KnightsOfTheOldRepublicIITheSithLords The sequel]] had Mira's unique power: while she was your active character, your party wouldn't trigger mines. Normally mines in the ''[=KotOR=]'' series are widely-spread and easy enough to simply walk around (or ''through'' -- they don't do very much damage). However, precisely one area in the game, not long after you recruit Mira in the first place, has ''dozens'' of mines in thick clusters, entirely unlike the usual arrangement. Later on, [[spoiler: on the way to Freedon Nadd's tomb]], there's another chokepoint with dozens of mines strewn through it, and setting any of them off will trigger the alarm system, making it harder to progress. Once again, Mira's unique skill lets you waltz right over the mines and disarm the security system while in stealth mode with ease. |
| 195 | ** The game also emphasized this with skills through the crafting mechanic. Usually you could rely on your party's skills, rather than your own -- and a few, like Awareness and Stealth, were not very useful to begin with. However, they were the basis of the crafting system, and most of the time you were forced to use your own skills when determining what upgrades you could make. |
| 196 | * Fina in ''VideoGame/SkiesOfArcadia'' has a special move called Lunar Glyph that does a little damage and has a chance of petrifying the enemy. As you'd expect, all the enemies worth petrifying are immune to it...except for ''one boss'' that it's almost 100% effective against. |
| 197 | * In theory, ArrowsOnFire are an advanced attack in ''VideoGame/{{Trine}}'', doing more damage in return for a bit of magical energy. In practice, normal arrows make up for quality with quantity. However, max-level fire arrows explode to damage nearby targets, allowing you to quickly take out the [[GoddamnBats bat swarms]] that are hard to hit with most other attacks. |
| 198 | * ''VideoGame/StarcraftII'''s campaign features one new unit in most missions, and typically the mission revolves around that new unit to a greater or lesser extent. This can make a number of these units Not Completely Useless, though which ones will depend on a given player's style. Battlecruisers, for instance, are generally held to be AwesomeButImpractical in terms of resources, but are essential to "Maw of the Void", the mission which unlocks them, since their health lets them weather the environmental effects better than other, more efficient units. |
| 199 | * The 'mutate' perk in the ''VideoGame/{{Fallout}}'' universe. You can re-pick your traits, how grand. Too bad you pick your traits yourself in the beginning of the game and there are few, if any, traits that it would be worth a perk switching to mid-game. Meanwhile, in ''VideoGame/{{Fallout Tactics|BrotherhoodOfSteel}}'', your team-mates have pre-picked traits, and getting [[GameBreaker Gifted]] ''is'' worth the perk slot. |
| 200 | ** The 'Mental Block' perk is completely useless [[spoiler:up until the battle with the main villain of the game, when the perk grants the player complete immunity against the villain's psychic attacks.]] |
| 201 | ** The "Bloody Mess" perk in ''VideoGame/FalloutNewVegas'' gives you a rather negligible 5% boost to all damage while also greatly increasing the probability of causing dismemberment. In the base game, the latter effect is almost completely visual aside of the Three-Card Bounty -quest where it's actually detrimental since you must avoid damaging the Fiend leaders' heads too much when killing them to get the best reward. However, the perk is quite useful against the Ghost People in the Dead Money DLC as dismembering them is the only way to kill them for good. |
| 202 | * In ''VideoGame/GoldenSun'', StatusEffects are generally useless, as it is more efficient to simply beat your foes' brains in. However, the {{superboss}} Deadbeard is absolutely crippled by the Psynergy Seal status effect since his entire offensive lineup consists of Psynergy and his basic attack. Since the Djinn Luff can inflict Psynergy Seal with 100% accuracy, and can be spammed by your most agile party members at no cost, this becomes the best way to tear him apart. In its sequel ''Golden Sun: The Lost Age'', Luff and its equivalent Rime also do very well against the {{superboss}} Sentinel, although he holds onto a solid elemental physical attack in addition to his basic attack. |
| 203 | * In ''VideoGame/GoldenSunDarkDawn'': |
| 204 | ** StatusEffects are quite handy against the {{superboss}} Ancient Devil. Not directly, since like most bosses it's immune, but its [[ThatOneAttack major ability, Demon Sign]], lets it turn one of your allies against you at any given time, and ''they'' can be crippled with status effects, keeping them out of your way without KO-ing them and letting the Devil use Demon Sign on someone else. |
| 205 | ** [[AnnoyingVideoGameHelper Insight Psynergy]] has a different effect if used on [[ThatOnePuzzle the infamous Capricorn puzzle]]. Instead of the usual useless "[[CaptainObvious this object can be affected with Move]]", it highlights a path for each statue that will solve the puzzle, which is pretty handy if a little FridgeLogic-inducing. |
| 206 | * ''Franchise/KingdomHearts'': |
| 207 | ** The Collision Magnet command in ''VideoGame/KingdomHearts3DDreamDropDistance''. It's extremely slow, does mediocre damage, and can be easily interrupted if there's more then one enemy around, unlike most commands with a long start-up. However, in an aversion of ContractualBossImmunity, the [[GetBackHereBoss Spellican]] is susceptible to it and it knocks it down, giving you plenty of free time to beat on it before it runs away. You can also hit it with the move again before it gets up to keep it on the ground and even grab it out of its otherwise unstoppable teleport. This is especially useful in the rematch, where it loses its vulnerability to Zero Gravity. |
| 208 | ** In ''VideoGame/KingdomHeartsCoded'', High Ethers are normally a waste of limited space, because all they do is increase your clock gauge by two units. However, when going for the Fatal Flawless trophy, you have to make yourself into a OneHitPointWonder, and while the enemy mooks also have their HP set to 1, bosses still have their full HP. This is where the High Ethers come in: using one while you wield the Oathkeeper keyblade with activate Auto-Life, letting you survive one hit, and you can recast it as long as you have High Ethers. |
| 209 | * ''Franchise/TheElderScrolls'': |
| 210 | ** ''VideoGame/TheElderScrollsIIIMorrowind'' has the Scrolls of [[IcarusAllusion Icarian Flight]] (which allow the player to [[InASingleBound jump incredible distances]], [[GravityIsAHarshMistress then splat against the ground]]) have a number of users in certain tricky situations (to say nothing of [[{{Speedrun}} Speedruns]]). To note: |
| 211 | *** In one particularly tall Daedric ruin, using one can allow the player to leap all the way up to the highest level in a single bound to acquire some valuable loot, skipping over all of the enemies in the ruin. |
| 212 | *** Whenever fast travel is unavailable for whatever reason, such as the Tribunal Temple quest where the player is forced to take a vow of silence before traveling to the complete opposite side of the island. (A trip of several in-game days on foot.) Instead of that hassle, the player can simply use one of the scrolls to leap across the island, [[SoftWater crash down in the ocean]] beyond the shrine (or cast levitate when just above it,) and complete the quest in a fraction of the time. |
| 213 | *** Another use is for getting out of a death trap in [[spoiler: Sotha Sil's Clockwork City]] in ''Tribunal''. The player has to climb up a spiral staircase in a room while outrunning a spinning blade that moves faster than the player. The usual high-level character approach to this puzzle would be to levitate to the exit; but levitation magic cannot be used there, and no practical jump spell that the player would have is capable of getting them all the way to the door. However, a Scroll of Icarian Flight will allow you to leap all the way to the top of the chamber, "crash" (harmlessly) into the ceiling, and land on the platform right in front of the exit. |
| 214 | *** Solstheim in ''Bloodmoon'' has very limited fast travel options, so the scrolls allow the player to more quickly traverse the island. In particular, they can help with one East Empire Company quest that has a [[TimedMission strict time limit]]. The person you need to find will be in one of three random places, so placing a Mark spell ahead of time may not work. Using the scrolls to jump there can get you there much faster than running, and will allows you to pass over any enemies along the way who would otherwise slow you down. |
| 215 | ** ''VideoGame/TheElderScrollsIVOblivion'': The second-last Mages Guild {{Sidequest}} involves creating a ProtectiveCharm to NoSell the villain's [[BeginWithAFinisher opening attack]], which would otherwise [[ReforgedIntoAMinion transform the player character into a Worm Thrall]]. The attack is never used again and the item has no other use. |
| 216 | ** ''VideoGame/TheElderScrollsVSkyrim'': Aside from a few times you have to use it to advance the main story, the Clear Skies shout is mostly just languishing in your shouts menu without any reason to select it unless you want to take some pretty screenshots of the sky. What the game doesn't tell you (since it instead tells you to use Dragonrend when this would be useful) is that Clear Skies gets rid of Alduin's meteor storm attack, which eliminates the possibility of a flaming rock beaning you on the head while you're trying to fight the bastard. What's more, for anyone playing on Survival mode, Clear Skies can be used to get rid of a bad snowstorm in a pinch, reducing the risk of freezing to death. |
| 217 | * ''Franchise/ResidentEvil'': |
| 218 | ** The knife in ''VideoGame/ResidentEvil'' is a very weak weapon. While it is possible to use it on a downed zombie to do some damage as they get up, having to switch to the knife and then back to a gun can kill the pacing of the game if there's multiple zombies, so most players don't bother. The Nintendo DS version still keeps the knife weak, but it's given its own dedicated button and doesn't take up inventory space, making it feasible to stab a fallen zombie multiple times and then finish it off in a few bullets. |
| 219 | ** In ''VideoGame/ResidentEvil2'' and its [[VideoGame/ResidentEvil2Remake remake]], many of the weapons that suck for killing zombies are extremely effective against other specific creatures instead. Leon's flamethrower and Claire's flame rounds are excellent against the Plant 43 and Ivy monsters, the [=MAC 11=] is great for taking out Lickers and keeping them from counterattacking, and Claire's Spark Shot does nearly as much damage to the boss enemies as Leon's Upgraded Magnum. The Bow Gun is also effective at hitting Lickers without alerting them to your presence, allowing you to deal with them while saving bullets and grenade rounds for other enemies and bosses. |
| 220 | ** The knife in ''VideoGame/ResidentEvil2Remake'' is designed to be used as an EmergencyWeapon where you can use it if out of ammo or use it if a zombie grabs you. Unlike how the knife was portrayed in previous games, the knife in the remake can hit enemies multiple times in one swipe, which makes knife only runs much more lucrative. |
| 221 | ** The handgun in ''VideoGame/ResidentEvil3Remake'' is handy in the beginning, but most players quickly toss it in the item box once they start stockpiling ammo for their stronger guns like the shotgun and grenade launcher. The final fight against the Nemesis requires you to shoot at his weak points in order to stun him and there are a few problems that come with the fight; using the shotgun means being up close and having a higher chance of being hit by the Nemesis's attacks. The grenade launcher has its shots arc and is slow to fire. The magnum also fires too slowly to be effective. The pistol can easily destroy the weak points in a few bullets and is very quick to fire and reload. The arena also has plenty of handgun ammo as well. |
| 222 | ** In ''VideoGame/ResidentEvil4'', the knife is generally not used in boss fights due to its low damage. Cut to the fight against Krauser where the knife gets a massive damage boost and just a few slashes can end the fight in seconds. |
| 223 | * In the ''Franchise/FireEmblem'' series: |
| 224 | ** The final chapter in ''VideoGame/FireEmblemMysteryOfTheEmblem'' gives you a whopping ''four'' [[DamselInDistress damsels in distress]] to save: [[spoiler:Maria, Elice, Lena, and Nyna]]. They become playable if rescued, but otherwise cannot fight the ''many'' enemies of the chapter due to the major differences in stats. However, they have C-ranks in Staffs, so they can use Physic (distant healing) and Again staffs (grants their target an extra turn). The latter is all but necessary as only Marth can deal significant damage to the Final Boss. In fact, a very handy thing they can do in the remake if you have enough Rescue staff uses is pull in the person needed to recruit the next maiden, who can then take the staff and trade it to the maiden, who then uses their turn to pull in the next person--properly done, this allows you to save all four maidens in a single turn, and considering how difficult the final chapter can get if you take your time on it, this is a very useful thing to do. |
| 225 | ** In ''VideoGame/FireEmblemTheBindingBlade'', Merlinus is normally quite useless: he can access the convoy of supplies in the middle of battle, but he's incapable of combat, he takes up a deployment slot that could be spent on someone actually capable of fighting, his stats are nonexistent, and his mobility is poor, meaning using him to trade items around is still suboptimal. You don't even ''need'' to deploy him to send items to the convoy, since items go there automatically. For most of the game, his only apparent utility is using him to bait out enemies (since he's immune to {{Permadeath}} and a very juicy target for them)... until Chapter 21, when the game introduces the main Secret Shop, which allows the player to buy very expensive and beneficial items. What's more, in the game's Hard Mode, the player can't buy and sell items between chapters. This means that it's very common for hardcore players to deploy Merlinus just for that chapter, since he allows them to access all their owned items and sell them off ''en masse'', enabling them to spend as much money as possible at the Secret Shop. Particularly good management of him can lead to the player being able to buy dozens of pairs of movement-increasing Boots, which bust the map design of the final chapters wide open. |
| 226 | ** The Devil Axe in ''VideoGame/FireEmblemTheBlazingBlade'' and ''VideoGame/FireEmblemTheSacredStones'' is very powerful, but has a high chance of [[CriticalFailure backfiring and damaging its user instead]]. In a game with {{permadeath}}, this makes it very impractical as an actual weapon. (Especially since the more damage you're dealing with it, the more dangerous a potential backfire is, ESPECIALLY if you critical) However, it does give a very high amount of Weapon Exp compared to other axes, so it can be useful to raise a character's Axe rank quickly. |
| 227 | ** ''[[VideoGame/FireEmblemRadiantDawn Radiant Dawn]]'': |
| 228 | *** The game makes a big deal about Micaiah's Sacrifice ability, which allows her to heal others without a staff, but in battle the ability is mostly worthless since it [[CastFromHitPoints drains Micaiah's own HP when she uses it]], and Micaiah is a SquishyWizard whose death results in a [[WeCannotGoOnWithoutYou game over]]. Since traditional healing items and staves are not hard to come by, you're usually better off using them. However the ability does have some niche use on a few select maps, since it removes all status ailments on the affected target, basically making it a free Restore staff. You can also use it to get Micaiah a small amount of experience by healing ScratchDamage on turns she doesn't have anything better to be doing. |
| 229 | *** Gareth. As a combat unit, he's nearly worthless: sure he has some of the highest Strength and physical Defence in the game... but at the point he joins (with only 2 chapters left in the game) ''all enemies use magic'' so his immense physical tanking ability is completely useless. What makes him fall under this trope though is a skill he comes with, Blood Tide. This increases the Strength and Skill of all adjacent allies by 5, a pretty significant amount, and it stacks with the one other Blood Tide user in the game (who's also somewhat useless in combat, though less so than Gareth). This ability greatly helps in taking down the penultimate boss and especially the FinalBoss, making him worth deploying for the skill alone. |
| 230 | *** The Nihil skill is also an example of this, one that the player had better realise before ''Radiant Dawn'''s Endgame. It's a Skill that causes the user to ignore the effects of their enemy's Skills in combat. The problem is it takes up a disproportionately huge amount of skill capacity, meaning the user won't be able to make much use of skills themself, and in ''Path of Radiance'' there simply aren't enough enemies with skills to make it worth its cost. The same is true for most of ''Radiant Dawn''... until the late-game chapters, where 90% of bosses have skills that [[ThereIsNoKillLikeOverkill essentially spell instant death if they trigger.]] Suddenly immunity to skills becomes something ''definitely'' worth the capacity cost, making your few Nihil scrolls extremely valuable. Also, the FinalBoss has barriers that reflect all damage they take directly onto the attacker, making the fight extremely annoying without Nihil nullifying this skill. There's a reason Ike automatically learns Nihil on promoting to his ultimate class. |
| 231 | ** The various [[JokeItem Joke Weapons]] in ''VideoGame/FireEmblemAwakening'' can be used where [[GoneHorriblyRight killing enemies too quickly can be hazardous]]. For example, if one of your units is hiding behind a bottleneck, enemies will usually body-block each other while trying to attack the unit, allowing you to pick them off one by one and heal the unit after each round. This doesn't work if your unit is strong enough to kill each enemy in one round, and will probably get them killed by ZergRush. Give them a crappy weapon, however, and the bottleneck strategy works again. The joke healing staff (the Kneader) also is handy for certain builds that rely on being at low-but-not-minimum HP (e.g. those using Vantage, Vengeance, and/or Miracle). |
| 232 | ** Similarly, Bronze Weapons in ''Radiant Dawn'' and ''[[VideoGame/FireEmblemFates Fates]]'' are unable to {{critical|Hit}}. This is supposed to be a handicap, but there are times where you ''really'' don't want to crit (like if you're trying to feed a kill to a weaker unit). |
| 233 | * ''Franchise/TheLegendOfZelda'': |
| 234 | ** In ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaOcarinaOfTime'': |
| 235 | *** The Ice Arrows are surprisingly useful against Bongo Bongo. Their freezing effect can be used to distract the hands, letting you get a shot at the eye. They are also useful in a particular room in the Spirit Temple, where the player has to trick an Armos Knight into landing on a switch at the end of its rampage. An Ice Arrow can force it to stop on that switch at any time during its attack period. Lastly, there is a programming quirk where any enemy that can be frozen is damaged twice when shot with an Ice Arrow, which makes them a OneHitKill on the infamous Like-Likes. |
| 236 | *** Additionally, Ice Arrows can also be used to freeze certain environmental hazards like Blade Traps. Although you would need to do a fair bit of [[SequenceBreaking sequence breaking]] to even have them at this point in the game, this came make certain rooms that would normally be extremely annoying, such as the room right before the boss battle in the Water Temple, much less annoying to deal with. |
| 237 | *** The Deku Nuts as well: They're probably forgotten about by the time you beat the Deku Tree, but they make Jabu Jabu's belly a cakewalk. They'll instantly kill ''every bubble enemy in the room'', stun those annoying jellyfish (which you can't otherwise harm until you find the boomerang), and will force the jet-ray creatures out of the ground so you can get the drop on them. They're also handy as an adult when fighting Bubbles (the flaming skulls) and in the timed battle against the two Stalfos in the Forest Temple. |
| 238 | *** The broken Giant's Knife is ''intentionally'' meant to be useless, but it tears [[ThatOneBoss Dark Link]] to shreds since he is programmed to block against it as if it were still the full blade. |
| 239 | *** Farore's Wind can be useful in cases where you need to get to a specific room quickly (like the room with the switch controlling the twisted corridor in the Forest Temple), or where you're prone to falling long distances or getting caught by a Wallmaster. It can also be useful by casting it before attempting tricky platforming segments where falling drops you into a lower room that you'd then normally have to spend several minutes backtracking from. |
| 240 | *** A couple of the masks also have hidden properties to them. The Bunny Hood preventing Stalchildren from appearing is convenient, and the Skull Mask is very useful in Dodongo's Cavern as it prevents Keese from attacking and can easily be obtained before challenging the dungeon. |
| 241 | ** In ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaMajorasMask'', the Deku Nuts are also largely worthless, but make fighting Wart ''very'' fast as the flash dislodges tons of his protective eyeballs which can easily be taken out all at once with a quick spin. |
| 242 | ** In ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaTwilightPrincess'', the final boss can be distracted by the Fishing Rod, leaving him vulnerable to attacks. Of course, the Fishing Rod is only needed for two small plot hurdles, so many players would have likely forgotten about it by the time they reached the final boss, and since it has no offensive capabilities whatsoever, the few who did remember wouldn't normally think to equip it for the fight. |
| 243 | ** Similarly, ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaSkywardSword'' lets you distract the boss with the bug net. It is otherwise used only for catching bugs and fairies. |
| 244 | * In ''VideoGame/PaperMarioTheThousandYearDoor'', the fifth boss, Cortez, summons a ''gigantic'' horde of flying swords to attack the player when he's in his third form. The swords do massive damage each turn, and are considered both aerial enemies and spiked enemies--meaning that only very certain special moves hold any chance of damaging them and thus removing them from the fight. ...Unless, of course, you use Flurrie's Gale Force move, which instantly blows any aerial enemies away from the battle. |
| 245 | ** In the [[VideoGame/PaperMario original game]], the second Star Spirit you rescue, Mamar, offers the power of Lullaby, which inflicts the [[StatusEffects status effect]] of [[ForcedSleep sleep]]. While it has its uses early in the game, it's quickly outclassed by things like Skolar's [[DeathFromAbove Star Storm]], which attacks all enemies for fixed damage, and Muskular's Chill Out, which lowers the attack power of every foe. But late in the game, you come across OptionalBoss Kent C. Koopa, who is a ''tank'' and does massive damage. His one weakness? He's exceptionally vulnerable to...''falling asleep.'' Suddenly Mamar is going to be much more helpful... |
| 246 | * In ''VideoGame/BaldursGateII: Throne of Bhaal'', magic golems are immune to any enchanted weapon, but vulnerable to non-enchanted weapons, which you probably ditched after the first dungeon of ''Shadows of Amn'' (since the game throws vast quantities of magical items at you). Luckily, the areas where you face those golems also have some crates containing non-enchanted weapons. |
| 247 | * ''VideoGame/BaldursGateIII'': With the exception of the jackpot, the items awarded from Akabi the Circus Genie's rigged Wheel of Wonders are intentionally meant to be useless, having drawbacks that either outright negate their benefit or make them too much of a hassle to be worth using. However, a few of them manage to have some niche use nonetheless: |
| 248 | ** The Unlucky Thief's Gloves increase your Sleight of Hand skill by 2, at the cost of adding a piece of charcoal to your inventory every time you steal something and causing you to occasionally catch fire. The former drawback is completely harmless, and the latter can be negated by... |
| 249 | ** The Reverse Rain Cloak, which gives you a permanent Wet condition for as long as you wear it. While wet, the character is immune to burning and takes reduced fire damage, at the cost of vulnerability to cold and lightning damage. Aside from making the Unlucky Thief's Gloves completely safe to use, this is also helpful against enemies who primarily use fire-based attacks. |
| 250 | ** The Eternal Carafe of Wine (Or Sometimes Acid) can be used to reduce your HP and has no cost, meaning it can be spammed in combat if the player desires. This can be handy for specific builds that require being [[CriticalStatusBuff under set HP thresholds]]. |
| 251 | * ''VideoGame/DragonQuestIX'': |
| 252 | ** The Have A Ball and Thunder Thrust skills allow you to fire eight weak attacks at random / have a 50/50 chance of scoring a critical or missing outright. Neither are exactly reliable in regular battles against more than one enemy, until you realize it can do 1-8 damage to a MetalSlime (Metal Slash, the move that is designed to reliably do damage to metal monsters, does 1-2 per turn) or kill one outright (''if'' it hits). |
| 253 | ** When you first get them, the various Fource moves don't really help much, as there is precious little information on who's weak to what short of GuideDangIt (unless you let AI characters learn them, since they 'know' what to use). However, since it increases damage proportionally, you can find yourself dealing bonus damage in the hundreds to grotto bosses (especially once you have the item that lets you apply the buff to all characters in a single turn). |
| 254 | ** The Treasure Eye Land skill causes all red chests and stairs to show up on the minimap. Sounds useful, but it only detects red (non-respawning chests), making it completely useless in grottoes, which is where most endgame action happens. The only saving grace is showing where the stairs to the next floor is (and even then, often it's still not in the same map sector as you are). |
| 255 | * In ''VideoGame/CityOfHeroes'' the first power in most Blaster secondaries was a single target ranged immobilize/attack power. Devices was unusual in that Web Grenade didn't deal any damage which was generally viewed as a weakness of the set since it meant that Devices Blasters had lower damage early game. However unlike most blaster immobilizes Web Grenade also had strong debuffs to jump and fly which meant that at end game it could be used to pin most archvillans to the ground while the players hovered above them safe from melee attack. |
| 256 | * The ''Franchise/YuGiOh'' card [[http://yugioh.wikia.com/wiki/Heavy_Slump Heavy Slump]] seems completely useless, since its effect requires your opponent to have 8 cards in their hand, which is extraordinarily rare -- in fact, one of the basic rules of the game is that players cannot have more than 6 cards in their hand when they end their turn, and it's quite rare for this rule to come into play in the first place. Then you play the video game ''Over the Nexus'', and ThatOneBoss decides to be a [[TheComputerIsACheatingBastard cheating bastard]] and start the duel with 10 cards. Opening with this card turns a nightmare into a cakewalk. |
| 257 | * The Eden colony from ''VideoGame/{{Outpost 2}}'' can develop a system for shooting down incoming meteors using high energy particle beams combined with an observatory, which is pretty cool, except [[CoolButInefficient the energy and staff requirements to maintain it are surprisingly high]]. Meteors don't do much damage to begin with, so it's easier and cheaper to simply repair any buildings that happen to be hit. This changes in the final mission of Eden's campaign, where Plymouth improvises a devastating EMP missile using their space launchers, and Eden's meteor defense system can be similarly repurposed to destroy them. |
| 258 | * ''VideoGame/ZombiesAteMyNeighbors'' is ''built'' around this trope. You are given tons of seemingly worthless weapons alongside the few intuitively useful ones, but as it turns out, every single weapon in the game will [[OneHitKill one-shot]] (or at least be extremely powerful) against at least one kind of enemy. Some are obvious, like using silverware against werewolves or the freezing fire-extinguisher on the blobs, while things like using tomatoes against martians or the martian bubble gun against the ants [[GuideDangIt aren't so clear]]. |
| 259 | * The Monography Gun from ''VideoGame/RogueGalaxy''. What does it do? It creates platforms to stand on. When do you use it? The WakeUpCallBoss, [[spoiler:after freezing the waterfall on Juraika and the first stage of the final boss]]. You don't need to use it again after that and all it does is take up inventory space. Oh, and if you jump on a platform [[GoombaStomp floating over an enemy]] it deals a PercentDamageAttack which makes it useful when fighting Mimics. |
| 260 | * ''VideoGame/PathOfExile'' has three unique jewels (Fragility, Pacifism, and Powerlessness) that have no effect other than reducing your maximum number of charges (for Endurance, Frenzy, and Power charges respectively). This would normally be worse than useless, but certain skills and unique items grant bonuses when at the maximum number of charges (e.g. Snakebite causes attacks to inflict poison at maximum Frenzy charges). Reducing the maximum to zero means the bonus is constantly active. The Ahn's unique items were made for this in mind, which give effects for when you have no charges and maximum charges. The addition of minimum charges made them more obsolete, but they're at least more accessible. |
| 261 | * ''VideoGame/BravelySecond'' lets you buy the Spirit Magic scroll "Spirit" in Florem, allowing you to inflict non-elemental damage with your magic attacks, but at a low power level compared to the likes of [[DeathFromAbove Comet and Meteor]]. Considering how just about everything you encounter is either a humanoid or is weak to some element, this sounds pretty pathetic. ... And then you run into Vucub Caquix, who has the ability to [[ElementalAbsorption absorb]] ''every element'' in the game. Guess what your Spellcrafters are going to be using? [[note]]Also, at least on the first playthrough, you can't encounter Khamer, and thus get the Time Mage job which offers Comet and Meteor, until after Vucub Caquix is destroyed.[[/note]] |
| 262 | * ''VideoGame/ChronoTrigger'' has items that induce the Berserk status on the [=PCs=], meaning they automatically attack and don't take orders. [[AttackAttackAttack While this sounds like a very bad idea in theory]], it's a godsend for NewGamePlus runs: since your [=PCs=] will be at endgame levels and making every attack a OneHitKill, random battles will go by much faster without the need to give individual orders. |
| 263 | ** Even in a regular playthrough, such items can be quite useful when used on [[LightningBruiser Ayla]], especially early in the game when she doesn't have any really useful Techs. |
| 264 | ** Lucca's Hypnowave tends to be a UselessUsefulSpell at best, as while it boasts the ability to put all enemies to sleep most enemies are immune and the ones that aren't tend to go down in one or two attacks anyways. Then you face Mother Brain ([[Franchise/{{Metroid}} No, not that one]]) who is protected by three Displays that continuously heal her, but destroying them will provoke her to unleash savage magic-type attacks. They're ''very'' vulnerable to Hypnowave, allowing you to trounce Mother Brain with minimal effort. |
| 265 | ** Magus's Black Hole is supposed to OneHitKill your enemies. In reality, it doesn't work on bosses and ''sometimes'' works on plain mooks. There's no real reason for you to ever rely on this tech, except for exactly two occasions in the game, both of which are not even obligatory. The first one is Lucca's sidequest where you fight Son of Sun, who is surrounded by a bunch of flames and only gets hurt if you hit the correct one. Naturally, Black Hole will help you get rid of a couple of those. The second one is... yet another Lucca's sidequest, this time from the DS remake, where Black Hole is pretty much the only way to quickly take the insufferable [[BossInMooksClothing Iron Maidens]] down. |
| 266 | * ''VideoGame/{{Palworld}}'' allows you to capture humans in Pal Spheres. This is something that's mostly something done for laughs given their ''awful'' stats; lack of Pal abilities; poor working abilities; and useless, nonreplacable attack. However, capturing merchants and black marketeers grants you access to an instant shop at your bases or even while you're roaming the overworld. In addition, while Syndicate Elites still have only the punch attack, a quirk in how the game calculates damage means that their punch ''deals as much damage as a rocket launcher'', giving you a very powerful "Pal". |
| 267 | * ''Franchise/{{Pokemon}}'': |
| 268 | ** The move Splash is completely useless; all it does is make the user flop around helplessly. However, as of ''VideoGame/PokemonSunAndMoon'', the Normalium Z item can be used once per battle to upgrade it to Z-Splash, which raises the user's physical attack by ''three stages'' in one turn (to put that in context, in one turn you multiplied your Attack by a ''2.5x'' modifier). Few other moves can raise a stat that much, and none of them are as widely available as Splash is. This once-useless attack is now a viable choice in TournamentPlay. |
| 269 | ** Genesect's [[SecretArt Techno Blast]], even after its power was increased in Gen VI, isn't that great owing to its reliance on a hold item to change its type (and unlike Arceus's Plates or Silvally's Memories, changing Techno Blast's type is the ''only'' thing the Drives do, with no other benefits like STAB included). However, the Douse Drive is arguably the best Drive to use, since it's Genesect's only learnable Water-type move outside of Hidden Power, and since it also can't learn Rock- or Ground-type moves, it's the ''only'' counter it has for Fire-types (to which [[WeakToFire it has a double weakness]]). |
| 270 | ** The Rhyhorn line has Rock Head for an Ability, which prevents recoil damage. This would be useful... if they knew any moves that did recoil damage beyond Take Down. However, in ''[=FireRed/LeafGreen=]'' they can learn the more powerful Double-Edge via Move Tutors, and when evolving into Rhyperior, Rock Head becomes Solid Rock, which reduces the damage done by its ([[KryptoniteIsEverywhere many]]) weaknesses by a quarter. |
| 271 | ** The Starmie line has Analytic for its Hidden Ability, which increases their Special Attack if they move last. Being {{Fragile Speedster}}s, this isn't too useful... though the opponent switching makes Starmie move last, and since humans are more likely to switch than the AI, Starmie can be pretty dangerous with it in [=PvP=] matches. |
| 272 | ** Hyper Beam [[AwesomeButImpractical is a very powerful move, but it forces the user to recharge the next turn]], so it isn't used by a lot of players. On top of that, since it's been a Normal-type Special move since Generation IV, there's relatively few potential users that can use it effectively and still get a Same-Type Attack Bonus (most fully-evolved Normal-types have a physical Attack bias, so they'll turn to the physical-based Giga Impact). There are a few Pokémon that can use it effectively, though. Porygon-Z has an incredibly high Special Attack stat, gets additional damage from it due to STAB, can have Adaptability to boost said STAB bonus from x1.5 to x2, and on top of that, it can learn Nasty Plot to sharply boost its Special Attack. A Hyper Beam from a Porygon-Z '''hurts.''' Mega Pidgeot can also do a hefty amount of damage with it thanks to its high Special Attack, STAB, and No Guard [[AlwaysAccurateAttack to ensure Hyper Beam never misses]]. |
| 273 | ** One of Delcatty's Abilities is Normalize, which turns all of its moves into Normal-type ones. It's bad enough that Delcatty [[MasterOfNone doesn't really excel in anything]], but Normal-type moves aren't strong against anything, are resisted by two types, and Ghosts are completely immune to them. However, Delcatty also learns Skill Swap, which lets it swap its hindering Ability with an opponent, burdening them with it instead. Furthermore, Gen VII gave affected moves a power boost as well. |
| 274 | ** On a similar note, Durant's Hidden Ability is Truant, which stops it from attacking every other turn. (For context, the other two Pokémon with Truant are Slaking, who has [[MightyGlacier absolutely monstrous stats]] in return, and Slakoth, its first prevolution.) Durant also learns Entrainment, which turns the opponent's Ability into whatever the user's is. Suddenly, the enemy is giving you free turns to wear them down. This also turns [[BrutalBonusLevel the Battle facilities]] into a near-joke. |
| 275 | ** The move Hidden Power is a move that, depending on the Pokémon, can be any type and (prior to Gen VI) any level of power from 30 to 70. The exact specifics are [[GuideDangIt a tricky thing to understand]] and the move itself isn't especially useful, but for many Pokémon, Hidden Power is their best/only counter to certain threats (Grass types, for instance, love using a Fire-type Hidden Power to counter Steel-types that resist all their attacks). |
| 276 | *** The move's base power being set to 60 down from potentially 70 makes it a little more reliable to get a Pokémon with a type-covering offensive option, but does lower its maximum potential... except in the case of Roserade, who can have Technician (an Ability that boosts the power of moves with a power of 60 or less). Suddenly, it has a consistent 90 power move of nearly any type, and it's also a special move on a Pokémon with high Special Attack. |
| 277 | ** Any Doubles-focused move, such as Wide Guard, Ally Switch, Helping Hand and the like tend to be this in a standard ''Pokémon'' playthrough. In most games, Single battles are the default battle type while Double battles only occur in uncommon scripted events or against certain trainers. Most of these moves do nothing in Single battles, so they will be wasted moveslots except in these specific battles. |
| 278 | *** Plusle and Minun were designed around the Double battles introduced in the same Generation, so the Pokémon themselves are this. In Double battles they can be decent supporters with debuffs and moves like Helping Hand, but in standard battles they are inferior to almost all other Electric types, with subpar stats and Abilities that do nothing outside of Double battles. |
| 279 | ** Imprison is normally incredibly situational - the sheer number of moves the games have make it unlikely the move will even affect the opponent you want it to. However, Mew and Smeargle can learn both it and Transform, the latter of which allows you to copy a foe's entire moveset at once. Combine the two moves and you've suddenly made an opposing Pokémon unable to do anything but Struggle to their own doom in the span of two turns. It also works wonders if you already know the opponent has a specific move or two you'd like to shut down...such as [[ComplacentGamingSyndrome Protect or Fake Out in Doubles matches.]] A particularly notorious case of this was Musharna, which was the sole Pokémon in Generation VI capable of learning Baton Pass and Imprison, giving it the ability to completely shut down Baton Pass teams... at the price of running a Pokemon that was otherwise very, very bad. |
| 280 | * The Grail Sphere [[LimitBreak S-Craft]] from ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfHeroesTrailsInTheSky''. It protects anyone within range from any one attack, Art, or Craft (two at 200 CP). While this sounds useful on paper, Kevin has several good healing and support Crafts that'll keep your party going, and his Orbment setup by default in ''SC'' is built for distance healing anyway. Plus, the Earth Guard/Wall Arts can do the exact same thing for 70 EP which is pretty cheap after the first third of the game. There is however, one scenario where this could very well save you from a TotalPartyKill. When you fight [[spoiler:Renne]], she'll immediately start the battle with her S-Break, which has a 50% chance of inflicting [[OneHitKO Deathblow]], on top of hitting all of the party and doing heavy damage in its own right (even with anti-Deathblow accessories). But if you mash Kevin's S-Craft half a second before she does, he'll NoSell it. The same applies in [[spoiler:her rematch, and the showdown with Loewe.]] |
| 281 | * ''VideoGame/BreathOfFireIII'' had the Backhand skill you could learn from one of the earliest Masters. It will inflict non-lethal damage, thus making it pointless in most fights. However, you have to know the move to unlock another Master, who has the spell for one-hit-killing undead enemies which is very useful in several late game battles and makes the first post-timeskip boss a joke. It is also highly useful in the "Train Beyd" minigame as he gains defense per blocked hit and will always block at low HP, so you can just Backhand him to untouchable defense in about 3 nights. |
| 282 | * In ''VideoGame/TheHitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxy1984'', one of the items in your inventory is "The Thing Your Aunt Gave You But You Don't Know What It Is". If you drop it, it'll [[ClingyMacGuffin show up again]] a few turns later. It appears to be useless, but you can make one of the puzzles in the game easier to solve by putting things into it and dropping it, thus getting around the limit on the [[InventoryManagementPuzzle number of items you can carry.]] |
| 283 | * In ''VideoGame/{{Warframe}}'', Volt's passive ability builds up extra damage for the next attack upon walking or running. In normal gameplay, this ability is almost completely useless. However, it's incredibly useful in the fishing minigame introduced in the ''Plains of Eidolon'' -update, since the bonus damage works with fishing spears. Just a couple of steps before a throw gives enough damage to one-hit even the toughest of fishes with ''the most basic fishing spear'', making the upgraded spears specialized for different types of fishes completely redundant. |
| 284 | * In ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfDragoon'' there's an item called Sachet which deals a pathetic 10 damage. It's intended use is to put a specific boss to sleep for a few turns, but there's three guaranteed Sachets in the game (plus a rare drop) and two you only get after beating the boss. The best use for it is to kill rare monsters which give large amounts of gold, experience, or a rare item but are near impossible to kill before they flee. There's also a boss near the end of Disc 3 who exposes its heart to a single attack whenever it traps and releases a party member. Its heart only has three hit points but takes one point of damage from any attack. Using a Sachet kills it instantly. |
| 285 | * ''Franchise/BlazBlue'''s Astral Finishes are {{Death Or Glory Attack}}s that automatically end the match if you land them on an opponent that's below a certain health threshold. However, they cost the same as just doing two super moves, they leave you vulnerable briefly if missed (when the match is definitionally in its closing stages), initiating one removes your super bar so you can't do super attacks again if you miss, and the ease with which you can combo into them varies heavily with each character. While flashy and satisfying, it would be perfectly understandable to have never used them. However, they are very useful against the [[SNKBoss Unlimited/Grim versions of the Abyss bosses]], who all have jacked-up stats compared to their normal counterparts. It doesn't matter how high their defense is if you can terminate the match automatically, and it stops heal-comebacks (Unlimited Celica's specialty). It also becomes available below a ''percentage'' health threshold rather than a flat one, which is helpful against opponents like [[MightyGlacier the Iron Tager]]. |
| 286 | * Roll is generally seen as the absolute bottom of ''VideoGame/MarvelVsCapcomClashOfSuperHeroes'''s tier lists, an obvious JokeCharacter who serves as little more than a crappy version of [[VideoGame/MegaManClassic Mega Man]]. However, her one strong point is that she's very short. When going against most of the cast, it doesn't come close to resolving her problems, but when playing against local SNKBoss Onslaught, she's so short that most of the attacks in his pattern just fly right over her head, allowing her to take him down with comparative ease. |
| 287 | * ''VideoGame/AgeOfEmpiresII'': The Hun's unique technology Atheism makes Wonder and relic victories take longer (i.e. you have to defend them for longer once you have them before the InstantWinCondition), including your own. 95% of games will end by military victory instead, making this meaningless. In the rare situations where this is relevant, though, it makes it a lot harder for your opponent to get a free win. ''The Conquerors'' expansion at least gives it the extra ability to halve the cost of Spies/Treason, which Spies allows the player to see where exactly every unit and structure the enemy has with a hefty cost and Treason allows the player to temporarily see where every enemy King is in Regicide, but an update in ''Lords of the West'' removes that in favor of halving gold gained from relics for the enemy, which, while situational and dependent if the enemy has relics, made it much more useful than its initial version. |
| 288 | * ''VideoGame/{{Heretic}}'': |
| 289 | ** The firemace. It's normally like a weaker version of the hellstaff (as it has a much shorter range, doesn't work on ghost creatures, and sinks if the floor of area has a water texture. If you use a [[QuadDamage Tome Of Power]], the metal orbs it shoots become ''much'' more effective, being a OneHitKO for mooks and other players. Even against bosses it does a respectable amount of damage (about the same as the phoenix rod). |
| 290 | ** The shadowsphere makes enemies shoot erratically, which is usually a bad thing, as you depend on knowing where they're going to shoot to dodge. It provides a few interesting advantages, though. Undead warrior's axe projectiles will go through you harmlessly, making large groups of them easy to deal with. The iron lich's frost ball will also pass through you. (Though not the shards that explode afterwards.) Most importantly, though, the tornado attack will no longer track you, making one of the most frustrating attacks very easy to deal with. |
| 291 | * The Gaboie item in ''{{VideoGame/Illbleed}}'' completely restores your health bar, but it also massively increases your heart rate - which is a bad thing, considering that you die instantly if your heart rate rises above 255, and that it's very easy to increase it (traps, enemy encounters, dodging and running all increase it). However, bleeding too much can make your heart rate ''drop'' at an alarming speed; and a heart rate of 0 instantly kills you. At that point, the Gaboie's drawback becomes a life-saving feature. |
| 292 | * Any poisoning weapon in ''VideoGame/BloodstainedRitualOfTheNight'', particularly the stingers you'll pick up by the dozen farming Sidhes for healing shards and fairy wings, tends to be useless since enemies tend to die faster without them and bosses tend to be immune. That is until you face [[spoiler:Alfred]] who [[GetBackHereBoss runs away like an asshole]] and [[GoddamnedBoss inflicts status ailments by throwing potions]], the Doppleganger who's [[ThatOneBoss basically you on mega-steroids from hell]], and [[spoiler:the second Zangetsu]] battle since he clearly wasn't hard enough the first time. All of these enemies are highly vulnerable to poison, so you can keep them inflicted with it with the occasional HitAndRunTactics and [[BreatherBoss simply dodge until they die in about three minutes]]. |
| 293 | * The Le Carde Sword in ''VideoGame/CastlevaniaTheLecardeChronicles 2'' initially appears to be a JokeItem, what with its pitiful damage output. Then you come across a MirrorBoss that is invincible to everything except [[AchillesHeel one weapon]]. Take a wild guess which weapon it is. |
| 294 | * The homing missile launcher in ''VideoGame/BulletGirlsPhantasia'' is inferior in every way to the bazooka and regular missile launcher when it comes to most enemies. It only has one shot, cannot be hip-fired, has a long delay before firing as it's locking on, and takes very long to reload. Against attack helicopters, dragons in flight, and the fast-moving crawlers, however, it's ''devastating.'' |
| 295 | * ''VideoGame/YokusIslandExpress'': While there are quite a few items and abilities scattered throughout the game, only a small handful are really necessary to progress or obtain the regular ending. The "best" items and upgrades may make the game a tad easier in specific situations, but depending on your playthrough, you may come across them too late for them to really make a difference. |
| 296 | * ''VideoGame/LunarTheSilverStar'' has Dragon Grief, the last of the dragon spells that Alex learns on his path to becoming the Dragonmaster. It instantly kills all non-boss enemies, but deprives you of experience and pretty much accomplishes what escaping would have done at a fairly sizable MP cost in a game where MagicIsRareHealthIsCheap is in full effect. It's never worth using. The one exception is the Forbidden Forest, which is a BonusDungeon populated by high-level enemies that will crush your entire team in the blink of an eye and give garbage amounts of experience and money. Just clearing out the enemies with Dragon Grief will allow you to get through the Forbidden Forest with ease, and your reward will be [[{{Fanservice}} access to the women's hotspring]]. |
| 297 | * ''VideoGame/BloonsTowerDefense 6'' has Lead to Gold. It's a tier 3 upgrade for the Alchemist that lets it instantly pop lead bloons and turn them into $50 each. While it's a relatively cheap upgrade, lead bloons aren't very common, and there are much more useful ways of popping them. Lead to Gold also works on [=DDTs=], but it only grants a +9 damage bonus instead of instakilling them, and they move incredibly fast and have camo (which the Alchemist can't detect), so it's not a particularly effective attack against them. |
| 298 | * ''VideoGame/LegendOfGrimrock 2'' has "Dispel", which is a low-damage spell with an awkward casting sequence (the only spell in the game that requires all nine runes). The only time you will ever use it is against Air Elementals — because it's the only spell that can damage them. |
| 299 | * DownplayedTrope in ''VideoGame/SuperPaperMario'': Piccolo the Pixl is a case of Not Purely Cosmetic. The visible effect of having Piccolo with you is that while she's out, the music and sound effects for your character change to 8-bit style sounds like the original Mario games. She also plays a music tune over your character if you press the 1 button. There are three, very specific instances where Piccolo does something practical: Firstly, there are a small number of blocks with her symbol on that are removed by her music, revealing special Catch Cards. Secondly, her music removes status effects of the various Cursya enemies. Third and most importantly, using Piccolo in [[UnexpectedGameplayChange the Underchomp battle]] causes all three of the boss's heads to fall asleep, allowing you to wail on them freely. |
| 300 | * ''VideoGame/{{Undertale}}'' has the Instant Noodles, a joke healing item that makes you [[OverlyLongGag painstakingly go through all the steps for making the noodles]] prior to healing a tiny 4 hp. But if you use it during Serious Mode (a few boss fights where the item jokes aren't present), you will eat it immediately with just a comment that "they're better dry", and it will heal 90 hp. |
| 301 | * In ''VideoGame/DarkestDungeon'', the Sculptor's Tool is an overly specific WeaponOfXSlaying that grants a huge +40% damage to Stonework enemies, which there are only '''two''' of in the entire game. One of them are Gargoyles, which are not specific to any location and are easy to kill anyway. The only other Stonework enemy is the Garden Guardian, a repeatable boss fight in the Courtyard that drops powerful Crimson Court trinkets. If you're farming the Garden Guardian, the Sculptor's Tools here speeds things up. |
| 302 | * ''VideoGame/HollowKnight'': |
| 303 | ** The Hiveblood charm allows you to slowly regenerate health without focusing [=SOUL=]. Not very useful normally because you can gain soul just by hitting enemies, and normal healing is both faster and doesn't use up charm notches. But there is one area in the game where it comes into its own: the White Palace, a PlatformHell level with a dearth of enemies to hit for [=SOUL=], and where you will most probably be taking a lot of damage. |
| 304 | ** Joni's Blessing (converts all your health to Lifeblood, giving you extra HP but removing your ability to heal) is generally disregarded, as there are better health buff charms that don't stop you from healing. It ''does'', however, have one legitimate use: opening the Lifeblood Door in the Abyss, which usually requires a staggering 15 lifeblood masks. Using Joni's Blessing can give you up to 14 Lifeblood Masks, and you can pretty easily make up the difference with Lifeblood Heart, removing the need to go running all over the map collecting Lifeblood and desperately trying not to lose it before you reach the Abyss. |
| 305 | * ''VideoGame/TheGrinch2000'': The binoculars are the most superfluous gadget in the game (ironic since they were the one the Grinch had decided to build first before all his blueprints got blown away), as they mostly only serve to improve your aim with the Rotten Egg Launcher and Slime Shooter weapons and are not necessary for most of the game. However, at one specific point, you get a puzzle that requires you to move chess pieces to match up with patterns on a panel inside a window. The window is too high up for you to clearly see the pattern normally, but the binoculars will give you the zoom in needed. The game actually gives you a message telling you to use the binoculars when you approach the window, acknowledging the fact that this specific instance has the binoculars themselves serving as more than just a way to make the most of your weapons. |
| 306 | * The manual for ''VideoGame/ABoyAndHisBlob'' establishes that the Blob hates ketchup-flavored jellybeans, and feeding them to him does nothing but make him sad. So why are you carrying eight of them at the start? Because if the Blob is out of range, throwing one causes him to teleport to where it lands. [[GuideDangIt This is not listed anywhere in the game]], but it makes for a quick way to bring him to you in situations such as when you use the trampoline and end up a dozen screens above the Blob. The game expects you to pick up on the "ketchup = catch up" {{pun}}, which in fairness is a pretty slow pitch compared to some of the other bean-based wordplay in the game, but it's also the only jellybean flavor you ''aren't'' supposed to feed to the Blob for it to have an effect. |
| 307 | * ''VideoGame/TheMilestoneTree'': Transcend Upgrade 64 divides hyper boost costs by 1e300,000 and 71 does the same by 1e30,000. While that's a pittance as by the time you can afford it they'll cost more than e200,000,000, it can be hard to get enough hyper prestige points to buy even a single boost in a Transcend Challenge when it costs 1e413,950 without it and you can only get somewhere around the 1e150,000 mark. |
| 308 | * In ''VideoGame/RuneFactory4,'' weapons "upgraded" with Scrap Metal+ only do one point of damage per hit, every time. Normally, this makes them {{Joke Weapon}}s. However, the game's MetalSlime, the Mineral Squeek, drops very useful items every single time it gets hit, but only has 4 HP. These weakened weapons are extremely useful against this one specific enemy, as they let you get the maximum number of items from it without defeating it. |
| 309 | * The M-16 in ''VideoGame/TombRaiderII'' is freakishly powerful, but it's incredibly unwieldy to use. Whenever you have Lara move or jump, she has to readjust her aim before she can start firing and her enemies will likely close the gap on her before she can start shooting. On the other hand, the M-16 absoultely shines with long range combat since it can hit enemies from a much further distance than the other guns, making it useful as a pesudo sniper rifle. The M-16 is also a godsend in the Floating Islands level where the jade warriors that come to life in the distance will very slowly fly to Lara's position, giving you plenty of time to whip out the rifle and blast them to bits before they can even reach you. |
| 310 | * In ''VideoGame/DragonBallZBudokaiTenkaichi 3'', one of the game's many borderline-{{Joke Character}}s is Spike the Devil Man. He's mediocre-to-bad overall (sluggish, weak, frail), but has one standout move, the Devilmite Beam. Said move deals damage that varies depending on the character: according to the series, [[MoralityGuidedAttack it "amplifies the darkness in a person's heart until it explodes"]]. Against some characters, like variants of Goku, it does no damage or barely scratches them, other characters lose the health you'd expect for an Ultimate Blast, major villain characters like Frieza will usually lose multiple health bars to it, and MadeOfEvil characters like Janemba, Kid Buu, or King Piccolo will actually face a OneHitKill if it connects. Consequently, he becomes far stronger against that small subset of character--which is showcased in a what-if storyline in the game, where he fights Frieza and his father during their attempted invasion of Earth and actually manages to defeat them despite the vast difference in power. |
| 311 | * Like in the main series, bug Pokemon in ''VideoGame/PokemonGO'' are pretty weak and generally aren't useful beyond the Great League (barring some exceptions). However, bug types are cheap to evolve since they require less candy compared to other Pokemon. Since you get a good chunk of EXP from evolving Pokemon and bug types are extremely common to find, they can serve as a good way to farm EXP via evolving. |
| 312 | * The Safe Mapping Mastery in ''VideoGame/{{Trimps}}'' is worthless at first, since it grants bonus health, but only in maps, where enemies can't pierce your block, and by the time you get Masteries, you block is [[NoSell several orders of magnitude higher than the enemies' attack power]]. It gains some use once you reach Universe 2, where blocking doesn't exist, so dying in maps becomes a possibility once again. |
| 313 | * The Taunter in ''VideoGame/RatchetAndClank2002''. Despite it being sold as weapon, it has zero offensive capabilities on its own. It can destroy boxes with its sound waves and increases range of mines from Mine Glove, but there are more mundane approaches for both box destruction and combat which are faster, less impractical and more fun. However, this thing also allows to lure enemies to specific places such as weighted switches, which comes handy for some Gold Bolt puzzles and Skill Points. |
| 314 | * The defend command in ''VideoGame/SuperMarioRPG'' will have a character spend their turn defending to reduce damage taken (it won't work on magical attacks). Because you can use a well timed button press to reduce or even outright block physical damage, you can effectively render the defend command pointless after enough practice. However, the fight against Birdo makes the defend command a lot more useful; characters in defending mode can make Birdo's singular egg attacks bounce off the party member and land by her. Attacking the eggs afterwards makes them explode and deal massive damage to Birdo. You won't know about the trick unless you talk to a certain NPC who gives the hint. |
| 315 | * Florentine's staff in ''VideoGame/RealmsOfTheHaunting'' does comparable damage to the game's other magic weapons, but it has a very limited number of charges and once you use them up they cannot be refilled by any means, ever, while all other magic weapons have infinite ammo on a short cooldown. As a weapon it seems utterly pointless, but if you save it throughout the game at the very end you'll find it kills the otherwise quite tough FinalBoss in just a couple of shots. |
| 316 | [[/folder]] |
| 317 | |
| 318 | [[folder:Non-Video Games]] |
| 319 | * "Magic Bullet" cards are fairly common in {{Collectible Card Game}}s. In response to cards and game mechanics that could potentially unbalance the game, designers often include cards [[ObviousRulePatch specifically to counter these effects]]. If done poorly, such cards are useless ''except'' if your opponent employs the tactic it's meant to counter; in this case it rarely works, because it generally just isn't worth putting a card in your deck that is only useful in one specific circumstance. |
| 320 | ** The card game ''Doomtown'' was especially bad at this. In one of the later expansions, the cards in question really ''were'' Magic Bullets--"Bullet" type cards were designed to insta-kill various character types. |
| 321 | ** The [[TabletopGame/{{Pokemon}} Pokémon Trading Card Game]] uses "Magic Bullet" cards in place of banning. One example is [[http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Machamp_(Stormfront_20) Machamp]], who could [[OneHitKill instantly KO]] any non-evolved Pokémon at a time when non-evolved Pokémon was the norm in tournament play. Most cases are subtler than this, however. |
| 322 | ** ''TabletopGame/MagicTheGathering'' integrates these into competitive play via the use of sideboards. A sideboard is up to 15 cards that can be traded one-for-one with cards in a player's main deck for game 2 (and 3, if there is one) of a competitive best-of-three match. This is explicitly designed to give Silver Bullet cards an application and also to reduce the impact of decks that invert this trope via unusual construction (a classic example is creature removal being powerful against most decks but useless against pure combo and control decks that often run zero creatures). |
| 323 | * ''TabletopGame/MagicTheGathering'' |
| 324 | ** The card One With Nothing, whose entire effect was "discard your hand." It was completely useless until a competitive deck came out that relied on giving the opponent a stream of cards and using spells that dealt damage based on the number of cards in an opponent's hand compared to yours. |
| 325 | ** Lifegain cards started out almost completely useless, unless you had a card like [[GameBreaker Yawgmoth's Bargain]], which lets you turn life into cards (though [[DealWithTheDevil you can't draw cards the normal once-per-turn way]]). Later in the game's history, lifegain became a centerpiece of many White and Black strategies: due to lifegain's perceived weakness, you can gain ''tons'' of it for very cheap with a number of Black, Green, or especially White cards. White exploits this by adding cards that grow in power every time you gain life or cards like [[http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=185743 Felidar Sovereign]] that add alternate win conditions for having a sufficiently high life total, while Black features cards that harm your opponent each time you gain life, allowing them to inflict DeathOfAThousandCuts. |
| 326 | ** Pick any card that's the centerpiece of a combo deck. Chances are the card is broken in half in the context of that deck, but completely useless anywhere else. Some of the best combo decks take two otherwise useless cards (say, Donate and Illusions of Grandeur) and turn them into a solid win condition. |
| 327 | ** [[http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Dralnu,%20Lich%20Lord Dralnu, Lich Lord]] is a classic example. It was largely dismissed as junk when Time Spiral was released and WOTC even featured it as part of a "reject rare" creative deckbuilding article where they essentially gave WordOfGod that Dralnu was [[AwesomeButImpractical mechanically interesting, but nowhere near competitive]]. Then the French pro Guillaume Wafo-Tapa used Dralnu in a highly successful blue/black control deck dubbed "Dralnu Du Louvre" that became a fixture of Time Spiral-era Standard. Later versions of DDL actually ended up cutting the deck's namesake card due to its riskiness, but Dralnu still picked up some serious respect for briefly seeing top-level play. |
| 328 | * ''TabletopGame/YuGiOh'': |
| 329 | ** The card game was very fond of magic bullets in its early days, such as Gryphon Wing, White Hole, and Anti-Raigeki, whose ''only uses'' were to negate specific overpowered cards. Then they discovered banning, and these counter cards quickly became dead weight. |
| 330 | ** Return Zombie is generally regarded as one of the game's worst monsters, as its effect is that it can add itself back to the hand during the Standby Phase if you have no cards in your hand. As the Standby Phase happens right after the Draw Phase, this effect almost never triggers because its timeframe is right after you just drew a card. However, at the time it was released in the OCG, it was seemingly one of the only ways to stop a Yata-Garasu lock (a monster that prevents you from drawing if it attacks and does damage), because it could add itself back after Yata had attacked and then be summoned to block its attack and let you hopefully draw again next turn. Needless to say, though, it didn't do much of anything to hinder Yata's dominance before Yata was banned. |
| 331 | *** Underlining Return Zombie's true purpose, it was released in the same set in the OCG as Gemini Imps (blocks an effect that would force you to discard and lets you draw), and Legacy of Yata-Garasu (a Trap that let you draw additional cards if your opponent controlled a Spirit Monster, which Yata is). Pretty much the entire pack was designed with the intent of countering the Hand Control Yata-Lock running rampant at the time. It failed to do so. |
| 332 | ** The line of Effigy cards was CutShort by Wind Effigy, a monster who seemingly revealed the problems with the concept. They were a series of monsters that could count themselves as double if they were used for the Tribute Summon of a Normal Monster of a specific attribute. The effect was already kind of bad, but at the time Wind Effigy was released, there literally did not exist any Normal Wind monsters that required two Tributes, meaning its effect did absolutely nothing. Later on, though, the card Simorgh Bird of Ancestry was released, which not only has an effect that activates when it's Tribute Summoned, but also can count itself as a Normal Monster while in the hand, the only monster in the game that can do this. This means Wind Effigy can indeed be used... for the summon of exactly one monster in the whole game. It's widely theorized that Simorgh exists just so Wind Effigy could qualify for this trope. |
| 333 | ** A lot of very old Fusion Monsters were generally considered AwesomeButImpractical at the time, due to the resources they ate up and lackluster stats. Monsters like Fusionist and Flame Ghost, however, were considered absolute trash by pretty much everyone, as a monster with only 900 or 1000 ATK that needed Polymerization and two other specific monsters just wasn't worth the effort even by the earliest stages of the game. When Xyz Monsters were introduced, however, players on a budget discovered that they could use Instant Fusion to quickly Special Summon these weak Fusion Monsters without the tight requirements and use them for Xyz Summons. Fusionist even saw a lot of use in tournament decks because it was an easy level 3. |
| 334 | * One of the iconic abilities of Clerics in ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons'' is TurnUndead. The ability fell into this camp in 3.5 Edition. The actual resolution of a Turning attempt was unnecessarily complex (involving a "Turning Damage" table ...that doesn't actually deal damage) and required a hefty investment of the otherwise irrelevant Charisma stat. Most undead that were an actual threat had Turn Resistance, and actually succeeding made undead run away, which was rarely useful. In acknowledgement of this, starting with ''Complete Divine,'' supplements started adding the Divine Feat class, all of which gave Clerics (and Paladins) alternative uses for Turn attempts. Divine Metamagic in particular allowed a Cleric to spend Turn attempts to power up their spells via other Feats and is regarded as one of the most powerful Feats in the game, passing through this trope and into MagikarpPower. |
| 335 | * At one point in the D&D fanfic ''Fanfic/VowOfNudity'', the protagonist bails a knight out of prison and they escape into the inhospitable tundra. The knight complains that of all his gear she could have picked from to bring him (which included his armor, spellcasting shield, and a grappling hook) she brought his battleaxe, which is relatively useless in an extreme-cold survival sitiation. But later, when he's on death's door from exposure, she uses an empty potion injector in the battleaxe's handle to give him an emergency blood transfusion that saves his life. |
| 336 | * In the web novel ''Ark'' the main character learns Survival Cooking, a skill which lets him produce food items from foraged material. Most of the "food" produced in this manner has detrimental effects, such as inflicting paralysis, releasing a literally sickening odor, or making you ''hungrier''. However he soon realizes this can be weaponized, feeding paralysis food to powerful enemies, rendering enemies too ill to fight with smell, and getting additional food buffs by making himself hungrier. |
| 337 | * In ''WebAnimation/LevelUP'''s "Mario's Pokemon Moves Calamity," the near-useless Splash move is ultimately what gets him safely across a lava pit. |
| 338 | * ''Fanfic/WithThisRing'': An orange power ring can make [[ImaginationBasedSuperpower any construct you can imagine]] if you want it badly enough, and Paul keeps an assortment of other equipment in [[HyperspaceArsenal subspace]]. He has also been working to train his junior Lanterns to use ranged attacks, rather than instinctively creating swords or gauntlets. Nonetheless, when they encounter soldiers using exotic shielding that seems to resist almost everything he can do, he has to resort to pulling out a cutlass. |
| 339 | --> I mean, yes, crumbler rounds can theoretically be stopped by sufficiently lucky point defences as they need to strike a solid surface in order to trigger. No point defences are visible, so..? Active plasma shield? No, those are clearly visible and horribly inefficient outside of a vacuum, Okay, Psions, maybe they've created something with a similar performance profile but without the disadvantages… Wouldn't explain the effect on constructs, but if I assume that's what's happening how do I get through it? A singularity projector might well work, but I need this station more or less intact in order to destroy the fleet outside. And I don't want to risk breaking space-time.\ |
| 340 | Oh, flipping heck. All that time I spent trying to get the princesses '''not''' to use melee weapons…\ |
| 341 | I take an Nth metal cutlass off my equipment harness and ''charge''. |
| 342 | [[/folder]] |
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