History DiscOneNuke / RoleplayingGames

*** While not as busted as it was in some earlier ''Dragon Quest'' games, the Puerto Valor casino still has some twinky possibilities. Farming enough tokens via the Slime Slots can get you two Lightning Lances for Jade and Serena, Spangled Dresses for all the ladies as well as a Platinum Power Sword for the hero, which are the best pieces of gear you can get until well into Act 2.

*** As soon as you arrive on the second continent the alchemy system becomes available, which offers some fun possibilities. Combining two Farmer's Scythes will make an Iron Axe for Yangus, which is the best weapon he'll get for quite a while. You can also make and sell 49 Strong Medicines and Special Medicines and 10 Lesser Panaceas, Rose-Roots, Strong Antidotes and Special Antidotes for a bit over 6,000 gold in profits for future ventures (like the aforementioned casino). Going down a ramp behind the small house across the bridge near Riverside Chapel also puts you on a beach with frequent Metal Slime encounters, which are relatively easy to kill with Eight's Thunder/Lightning Thrust and Yangus's Hatchet Man/Axecutioner; though you may want to wait until after you get Angelo for that so he can share the experience (and help out with Metal Slash).

* In ''VideoGame/DarkCloud2'', there's the famous Name Ticket Glitch, where renaming any crap low-level weapon to the EXACT name of a endgame weapon will give you said endgame weapon, letting you skip a lot of stat grinding (though you will still have to farm a pretty hefty number of dungeon medals for that). A less exploitative example is Jurak's Gun - once you've made some progress in Sindain, check a guide for the hidden requirements to get the Georama there to 100%; these are normally not revealed to you until several chapters later, but there's no safeguards in place to prevent you from unlocking them early. Your reward is Jurak's Gun, which packs quite a punch when you get it (it's a chunk of wood that fires lasers, somehow) and offers a direct upgrade path to the strongest gun in the game, the Supernova.

* In ''VideoGame/PlanescapeTorment,'' for Fighters proficient in [[DropTheHammer hammers]], it is fairly easy to get Mazed quite early in the game and find a Brimstone Hammer, which will last you until mid-game or later.

* In ''VideoGame/TaskMaker'' for the UsefulNotes/{{Mac}}, you're given an Ethereal Potion in the (optional) Tutorial level. It can either be sold for a high price to a shop, or used to phase through a wall and access a passageway with ''three'' of the most powerful weapons in the game -- and while one of the three is in the same chamber as some highly powerful monsters, they will spawn far enough away for you to grab it without being hit.

** The tavern keeper Fadia of Redstone Keep is a MsFanservice who shows up often during the loading screen, but being shown prominently also lampshades how useful she is. If you win her favor through gift-giving and buying everyone a round of drinks, she will eventually give you an artifact. It's an indestructible Book of Phoenix Summoning, which conjures up a powerful Phoenix into combat for 25 seconds before waiting a short cooldown. Other tavern keepers also have gifts but none of these come close in power.

** ''VideoGame/MegaManBattleNetwork3'' introduces the Number Trader, which allows you to input an eight-digit code to receive various items. While the codes are meant to be found throughout the game from [=NPCs=] or in various external media, they're readily available online and can be used at any time. In many of the games, the Number Trader rewards will snap the early difficulty of the game in half with chips and parts meant to be acquired much later.
** The Nintendo DS remake of ''VideoGame/MegaManBattleNetwork5'' has the most extreme example in the series: it lets you import your folder from the GBA version to the DS version using the dual-slot feature, enabling access to an endgame folder from the very start of the game, ''and'' it gives you access to a SuperMode with a plethora of unique abilities. Inserting any of the ''Boktai'' games instead won't let you carry over the folder, but results in an even ''more'' broken SuperMode.

* In ''VideoGame/ChronoCross'', the Profiteer's Purse, obtained by checking behind the stairs in Gogh's mansion in Another Termina, is this in two ways. You can either disassemble it to its base components for three pieces of Iron (letting you forge better equipment than would otherwise be possible that early in the game) or give it to Serge for a 1-15% bonus to all money gained from battles (which adds up very quickly). Either way, though, it's well worth making the small detour for it.

* ''VideoGame/MassEffect1'':
** On Eden Prime, a crate near where you encounter Ashley is guaranteed to have the Scorpion Light Armor. While Scorpion armor can be bought at any time from the Normandy requisition officer, you will not have the thousands of credits to buy it until a few missions after leaving the Citadel. Over here, you get one for free, and it is easily the best early game armor, outclassing even some heavy armors you might get as random drops.
** As soon as you get Tali, max out her 'Quarian Machinist' skill and give her a shield boosting armor mod. Doing so will give her enough shielding to turn her into a shotgun-wielding StoneWall for the next few hours.
** The Level VII "Spectre - Master Gear" Weapons, which are unlocked after the player hits one million credits and are second only to the Level X Spectre Weapons. Considering the game loves to throw the player tons of loot, they have lots of things to sell and not much incentive to spend money buying weapons from stores because they probably picked it up half an hour ago. If they explore UNC worlds before doing any story Missions, they'll be able to afford a full set of these weapons and make every future encounter in the game a damn-near cakewalk with no cooldown concerns for all but the sniper rifle. The only reason why the Level X Master Gear aren't listed here is because you additionally need to hit Level 50 to get them.
** You can actually get the Master Gear weapons on your first visit to the Citadel. After you save Dr. Michel and complete her questline, she will buy items for more than other nearby merchants sell them. So it's a matter of about half an hour devoted to running back and forth to amass that first million credits.
** Completing the Pinnacle Station [=DLC=]'s quest line unlocks an apartment on Intai'sei where you can spend credits to salvage convoys over and over, one of which allows players to get most of the best equipment in the game at the maximum level for less money than it legitimately costs to buy them (and it's absolutely vulnerable to SaveScumming) This allows a low level player to get equipment that isn't possible to get under normal circumstances without beating the game once to change the level cap from 50 to 60 (such as the coveted Colossus Armor or the aforementioned Level X Spectre - Master Gear).
* ''VideoGame/MassEffect2'':
** The Locust SMG, obtained during [[DownloadableContent Kasumi's loyalty mission]], which is a fast-firing weapon that is accurate enough to be used at long range, and is great for stripping shields or barriers. It can also be obtained just before [[ThatOneLevel Horizon]], where (on [[HarderThanHard Insanity]], at least) every single enemy you fight has barriers. Oh, and Squad Mates have perfect aim and recoil when using it.
** DownloadableContent brought us the M-96 Mattock, an Assault Rifle that fires ''sniper-rifle ammunition''. If you start the game as a Soldier, you have access to Assault Rifles immediately and can use this gun to mow down just about every enemy in seconds.
* The [=DLC=] also gives us the Geth Plasma Shotgun, which is both incredibly powerful and has no real spread, unlike all the other shotguns. It's incredibly useful in the hands of the player, but since the AI Squad Mates have perfect aim and no ammo concerns, they can absolutely *melt* through most enemies with the thing.
* ''VideoGame/MassEffect3'':
** The Cerberus Ajax Armor (and, to a certain extent, the N7 Defender Armor) straddles the line between this and BribingYourWayToVictory. The former is a piece of DownloadableContent, the latter a PreOrderBonus -- and both of them have more cumulative benefits than any other suit in the basegame, cost nothing in-game, can be acquired as soon as the player steps foot on the ''Normandy'' and makes Shepard an absolute tank that's far sturdier and resistant to damage than they're expected to be at the beginning of the game. For reference, the only other suit that offers the same level of cumulative benefit (the Cerberus Nightmare, Shade or Spirit Armor) is a BraggingRightsReward offered during the ''Citadel'' DLC, which can't even be accessed until (at the earliest) after the Cerberus Coup.
** Despite attempts by the developers to marginalize their impact, nearly all of the DownloadableContent weapon packs are broken in one fashion or another, having far more damage output than Shepard is expected to have at the beginning of the game (with some comparable to NewGamePlus weapon levels, ''without even beating a single mission''). These include the fully automatic Piranha shotgun, which shreds even the toughest enemies in close quarters; the Cerberus Harrier assault rifle, which has a combination of high damage, rate of fire, accuracy, and low recoil that make it extremely effective in just about any situation; and perhaps most of all, the Typhoon machine gun. The Typhoon has an extremely high sustained damage potential, only mitigated by extreme recoil and ammo consumption. Your squadmates, however, do not have to worry about either of those problems, and equipping both squadmates with Typhoons and appropriate ammo powers can change the toughest fights on the highest difficulty from a brutal slog to a cakewalk.

** In the middle of the first disk, after obtaining the second best alchemist in the game, you can obtain some {{Orichalcum}}. It looks useless, until you forge it into a weapon. It adds 500+ attack and gives you a 50% chance of surviving a fatal blow if you have Fury. They're also not that expensive to make (10,000 Fol)... Well you can probably afford four-five at most, but still, 2000+ attack to go around in that point is pretty darn impressive. They were likely put in for the sake of playing on Universe and 4D difficulty, where things like abusing selling the model bunnies and Orichalcum become rather necessary. Though one has to wonder if that is the case, why didn't they just lock them out in Galaxy mode...?

* ''VideoGame/{{Starfield}}:'' The UC Vanguard quest line is available early in the game, and soon leads to a boss battle at the New Atlantis starport. Two security guards will offer to help you. If you accept their help they will probably die, but one of them will drop a minigun worth about 80,000 credits. Give the gun and at least one round of the appropriate ammo to your companion, and don't forget to equip it on them. Congratulations! Your companion now has a minigun that will never run out of ammunition.