Infinity Plus One Sword - Television Tropes & Idioms

"One wonders what Freud might say."

Final Fantasy games give you a choice: you can either spend forty hours playing underwater foosball or watching chocobos screw or whatnot, which eventually gives you your ultimate weapon so that you can defeat the final boss pretty handily. Or, you can spend those forty hours actually fighting the final boss. It's up to you. You want a quick game, go play pinball.
— Lore Sjöberg, The Book of Ratings

It's the very best weapon in the entire game — even better than the Sword Of Plot Advancement and the Infinity Minus One Sword. But, in order to get it, you've got to put the plot on hold and embark on a five-hour sidequest! That, or go around killing enemies until one of them Randomly Drops it.

One would think in the time needed to finish the subquest could be better spent on leveling, so the Infinity Plus One Sword is often more useful because it has other associated stat bonuses, unique to the character, rather than simply being stronger than other weapons. Also, it's unlikely the dungeon the sword is in will be uninhabited, in fact the monsters there tend to be very XP-rich anyway.

Sometimes the sword has not been forged yet. Then it is time to call the Ultimate Blacksmith.

As noted, this doesn't actually have to be a sword.

Of course a Rules Lawyer will always be able to use their intimate knowledge of set theory to speculate on the cardinality

of the Infinity.

Compare Penultimate Weapon, Infinity Minus One Sword.

Examples

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Anime and Manga

In the Doma arc of Yu-Gi-Oh!, the Big Bad Dartz uses Divine Serpent, a monster card with an attack and defense power of infinity, during the final battle. Yugi responds by pulling a wildly improbable combo out of his ass to give his own monsters an attack power of Infinity Plus One.
- If you're feeling really geeky, technically, he boosts the power of the attack to aleph-one. Which would technically make this actually mathematically plausible: aleph-zero is the size of the set that has all the non-negative integers (which is different from infinity in that it's a well-defined infinity), aleph-one is the amount of sets that can be made from all non-negative integers and it's a "larger infinity", and thus it is mathematically possible to elevate a number to the aleph-one power. Which would in turn result in an attack of strength somewhere around beth-2 (2^aleph-1 = beth-2). Still, to quote Bakura in The Abridged Series: "This game is a load of bollocks!"
  - The card says "∞", which, mathematically, is totally meaningless by itself. It's generally used in shorthand in limits, which, strictly speaking, involve ludicrously gigantic numbers but not actual infinity.
  - Not at all, 'as x approaches/goes to' infinity is just a misnomer for 'as x get unboundedly greater', the thing about infinity limits in analysis is that it's a special case of the notion of the limit in that it's not a distance between two points getting arbitrarily close, but arbitrarily far from each other. Seeing that Yugis attack has 'power', hereby assumed to be meant the amount of energy per time. And clearly knowing that we have encountered a situation of bollocks would we have to divide infinity by some thing. Clearly we would concur with Bakura.
- Guys, both monsters had infinite attack points, so when they clashed both were destroyed. Since the survival of Dartz's opponent was needed for him to remain in the game, so his monster dying meant bye bye.
  - Yugi's just using a time-honoured strategy! And he didn't spend a dime!
In Tenchi Muyo, Tenchi's Light Hawk Wing Sword is literally more powerful than the gods.
Excalibur in Soul Eater, which would be nifty if anyone could stand his company. He's The Scrappy in-universe, though, so those phenomenal cosmic powers aren't getting used any time soon.
Not an anime, but a fanvideo of UFO gives us tatara's beam sword attack starting at 3:43. I'd say cutting a planet in half qualifies.

Literature

Tabletop Games

Comic Books

Gamebooks

Video Games

In the original Breath Of Fire, the game info touted the Dragon Sword as your Infinity+1. It's not: It's the Tri-rang (Not only is it stronger, but weighs less AND hits everyone on the screen). Once you have access to Adult Nina (and her Great Bird form), it's hidden behind a tower at the top of the world map. No level grinding, no epic sidequests, just find the tower, press B, pick up Uber-weapon. Of course, if you didn't read the FAQ, you won't know it's there.
- Oh, it gets even better than that. You can get the Emperor's Sword by checking behind the throne after you defeat Jade. While it doesn't give you the area effect that the Tri-Rang does, it does more damage overall, making it useful for boss fights. As usual, just stand there, press B, pick up Uber-weapon.
  - In fact, the Dragon Sword isn't even very good, as its worse than a variety of weapons the main can use come end of the game, INCLUDING the strongest storebought weapon available to him.
  - Not that there are exactly a lot of boss battles left at that point in the game. And it's not like you really want the hero fighting in human form against the Final Boss.
- In Breath Of Fire 3, it's not so easy: The Goo King Sword can only be obtained from the (You guessed it) Goo King. First of all these enemies don't show up often. Then, unless you're faster than lightning and manage to steal its beloved Green apple, it'll flee. If you succeed, you must fight it, and it is the hardest normal monster in the game. Also, you get the weapon by chance. Yes. You have to beat it and HOPE you'll get it as a reward. The best way to ensure a better chance..is to fight TWO of them...and even then, you'd be better off just moving on a little while ahead and fighting the Big Bad.
  - The semi-ultimate weapon, the Royal Sword, is much easier to get though. You can either find it as a reward of a small Side Quest in the Desert of Death or buy it from Manillo if you have caught certain rare types of fish in the fishing game.
- This gets worse in Breath Of Fire 4, where the ultimate weapon for Scias, the Render, can only be acquired after repetitive fishing for tens of hours, and when acquired isn't actually that great, since its power depends on how many enemies you've fought. Then there's the Slayer, which can only be bought after the game is over from a cameo character from the third game, and starts out as a "Rusted Sword". This sword has an abominably low attack power, and you need to kill no less than 1000 enemies with it before it turns into the Slayer!
Chrono Trigger's Frog has as his central life's goal the acquisition of an "ultimate" sword called Masamune. Of course, since it is obtained as part of the plot relatively early on, it is supplanted by vastly superior weapons as the game goes forward. One of the endgame quests that can be undertaken before the battle with Lavos is a quest to refine the Masamune into an even more ultimate sword, which is truly Frog's best weapon.
- Also in Chrono Trigger, giving a certain stone to Melchior late in the game will allow him to create the Rainbow Sword for Crono, arguably the most powerful weapon in the game, with a ridiculously high critical hit ratio (70%!!).
  - The DS Remake rewards you for defeating the new Bonus Boss with an even more ultimate weapon for Crono with an even more ridiculously high critical hit ratio (90%!!!).
- About half the characters in Chrono Trigger get these. Before you can get the Rainbow Sword, for example, Lucca uses that same stone to create the Wonder Shot, a gun with randomized damage output which is, on average, the strongest weapon in her arsenal, by far.
- At the end of his personal end-game sidequest, Robo picks up two weapons: the Terre Arm and the Crisis Arm. The Terre Arm is his best weapon by stats alone. The Crisis Arm has the potential to be even stronger then that. Its damage algorithm is decided by the last digit in his current HP count. If that number is 0, it does nothing. If that number is 9...
- Ayla, who fights with her bare hands, starts out with her weapon classified as "Fists". Level Grind her enough and that will change to "Iron Fists" which confuse enemies on a hit. Level grind her even more, and these turn into "Bronze Fists" which will score 9999 damage on a critical hit. Every. Single. Time.
  - And in the DS remake, you can earn an accessory from the first Bonus Dungeon that can only be equipped to Ayla. The Valor Crest not only gives her a 50% counterattack rate when hit, but it boosts her critical hit rate. Now, imagine the possibilities of combining that with the Bronze Fists.
- In Chrono Cross, the spirits that inhabit the Masamune (plus their older sister) transmigrate into that game's main character's weapon, becoming a weapon even more ultimater than the one Frog got. AKA the Mastermune.
- Also in Chrono Cross, Glenn (who happens to be named after Frog's human form) can acquire the legendary holy sword, Einlanzer. This seems to be his Infinity Plus One Sword, until you go to a parallel reality and get that world's version of Einlanzer - after which Glenn will use both at once.
In the Disgaea series nearly any weapon in the game can become extremely powerful by fighting in its Item World. However, the true Infinity Plus One Sword of the games can only be found within the deepest levels of the best items.
- Disgaea also has the Hyperdrive, which allows any character that equips it to teleport anywhere on the battlefield save for the Dimensional Gate in Item World maps. In the original, it was awarded for going through all 100 levels of an ultimate item and defeating the Item God 2 (which is level 6,933) on the 100th floor, while in the PSP and DS remakes, it is only awarded if all 100 levels are done in a row without exiting out in between. Note that the only way to revive a fallen party member is to exit out.
  - The raw time involved in this is mind-blowing, let alone the effort to get your characters at a high enough level. Oh, right, and make sure to clear out your inventory before you go, as you'll accrue a lot of useless crap over the course of 100 levels.
The various Ultima (or Celestial) Weapons in the Final Fantasy games. Sometimes requires the completion of a really long side quest, or clearing the Bonus Dungeon.
- The final dungeon (which takes place on the moon) in Final Fantasy IV has an optional sidequest, where you must get a Pink Tail from a Pink Puff to acquire Adamant Armor, the best armor in the game, bar none. It's helped by the fact that everyone can equip it. The only problem is that the tail is so rare, you will spend hours aimlessly walking around their very small spawn area because the combined encounter and drop rate is around 1 in 4096.
- If you're playing one of the "Hardtype" versions (anything except II US or IV JP easytype), then you can use the Siren item to guarantee an encounter with the Flan Princess. Too bad the drop rate is still ridiculously low, though.
- And they expanded this subquest in the DS remake: now there are several critters that drop tails at ridiculously low rates. Even the Treasure Hunter augment doesn't really help much (as all it does is double the drop rate). That said, there is a bonus to doing the expanded quest: the gear you get from it is the only gear that you can take with you in a New Game Plus.
- Even though some of the Twelve Legendary Weapons from Final Fantasy V are the best of their type, some, like the Excalibur, are outclassed by weapons like the Ragnarok. Then there's the Brave Blade and the Chicken Knife, whose power falls and rises respectively depending on how many times you fled battles. The Chicken Knife is the more popular option, though.
  - Final Fantasy V also had the Excalipur/Excalipoor, a sword used by an anticlimactic boss near the end; while its attack stat was incredibly high, it would usually do a ridiculously low amount of damage. That is, unless you threw it or used it with Goblin Punch, either of which ignored its special effects...
- While technically not a sword, the Cursed Shield in Final Fantasy VI had to be worn (giving the wearer every negative status effect in existence if not counteracted by other rare item) in 255 battles to be turned into the Paladin Shield which is one of two Items that can teach you the Ultima spell. And since the other being the Ragnarok magicite which you can turn into an Infinity Plus One Sword instead...
  - Except the Ragnarok summon can turn monsters into rare items. The best thing to do, at least if playing the GBA version, is to steal a Ragnarok from the final boss, than bet it at the arena for an even ultimate sword, the Illumina/Lightbringer.
  - What is actually named Ultima Weapon in Final Fantasy VI is indeed your Infinity+1, but only if you Level Grind enough — its power depends on the wielder's level, making it scale up with you, unlike every other weapon. It's in a perfectly ordinary chest in a perfectly ordinary cave ( the one that leads to the Esper world) that you have to explore to advance the plot, so most players will have no trouble finding it. Final Fantasy VII expands on this mechanic (see below).
- Ultimate weapons in Final Fantasy VII are remarkably easy to come by. In the most extreme case, you have to kill an optional boss. Some of them have bits of Guide Dang It, but there literally isn't a single one that doesn't have the requisite hints in the game itself. Level 4 Limit Breaks, on the other hand, are either stupidly simple to get, or require acts too bizarre as to make you wonder what the hell the developers were smoking. The worst is Tifa's Final Heaven, which requires you to play a piano in a flashback, choosing a particular option, then a minimum of twenty hours later, go back to that same piano and play the same tune from memory. And if you don't have Tifa in your party it doesn't work. Whoops.
  - Uniquely, all the Infinity Plus One Sword weapons are made more powerful if you know what they're linked to. The Ultima Weapon, for example, is more powerful based on Cloud's current HP. The Missing Score, Barret's ultimate weapon, does more damage if it's equipped with more powerful materia. The HP Shout, Venus Gospel and Limited Moon (for Cait Sith, Cid and Red XIII respectively) do damage based on current MP. The Conformer for Yuffie does more damage if the enemy attacked is higher level than Yuffie. The Death Penalty for Vincent increases in powerful the more enemies are killed over the course of the game. And the Premium Heart for Tifa increases in power for every *MISS* Tifa gets on her limit break roulette.
- The weapons themselves don't become ultra-powered in Final Fantasy VIII, but Squall's final weapon gives him his final Limit Break: 17 consecutive hits that almost always do 9999 damage each. If he gets an 8-hit wind-up, that's 250,000 damage — more HP than the final boss has...
  - And Squall will always get the full range of hits on Ultimecia, because he gets a special Renzokuken attack sequence for the final boss.
- A variation exists in Final Fantasy IX, whereby in order to obtain Steiner's Infinity Plus One Sword, the Excalibur II, the player has to go from the start of the game to a point roughly halfway through the final dungeon and search in a specific area, in less than 12 hours. In a game that spans ''four discs'
- The ultimate weapons in Final Fantasy X come in three parts each, some of which are fairly simple to uncover (you'll stumble on Auron's almost by accident) and some of which are legendary in their frustration value. What do you MEAN, I have to finish a chocobo race in under zero seconds?!
- Final Fantasy XI has Relic weapons that literally take years to get, and that's if you have a crapton of money. The upgrade process is so convoluted that the developers have actually stated that only the most insane players can get them. This game takes this trope, shoots it, buries it, digs it back up to slice its nuts off and shove them down its throat, brings it back to life and has it watch its daughter get raped and shot in the head, then it gets pissed on, covered in gasoline, lit on fire, then thrown into a black hole where the resident Cosmic Horror awaits to torture it until the end of eternity.
  - Mythic weapons are worse. To start, it requires climbing a Bonus Dungeon to get a weak version of the weapon, killing a bunch of Bonus Bosses, some of which appear at the end of another Bonus Dungeon, followed by collecting things that require completing the same content over and over (with one item in particular that has the drop rate of a Pink Tail, yet THIRTY THOUSAND is needed), and this is followed by a series of Fetch Quests and Bonus Boss battles all leading to get three items that also have a Pink Tail drop rate. And if these items don't drop, the whole series of Fetch Quests needs to be restarted. This is capped by a final Bonus Boss where if failed, will require another set of the three items mentioned earlier. The kicker is that the Mythic weapons are seen as less useful and less powerful than the comparably easier to get Dynamis relics. We're still trying to find out what the developers are smoking, because there are time-sinks, and then there are Bottomless Pits.
- Final Fantasy XII features several weapons that are only made available through completing difficult subquests, most of them involving gathering rare items that only drop from certain monsters once in a blue moon. These weapons include the Ultima Weapon (of course), the Danjuro, the Whale Whisker, the Tournesol, and the Zodiac Spear. Ironically, the Zodiac Spear, most powerful of them all, is actually the easiest of the game's uber-weapons to get... provided one has a strategy guide so one knows which chests not to open in the early part of the game.
Vaan's Anastasia sword in Final Fantasy XII Revenant Wings starts out as a fairly average weapon (he'll probably have better ones especially if you've been crafting, and you should). After going through an incredibly grueling Bonus Dungeon with freaking Yiazmat as the Bonus Boss ten times the Anastasia becomes the most powerful weapon available to Vaan. How powerful? He'll be able to take down the aforementioned Bonus Boss by himself.
The four mystic weapons are one of the many optional collections available in Final Fantasy Legend III. They seem to have a unique element associated with them that bosses (and Dwelgs, for some reason) are weak against. There's even one boss that can only be killed with the mystic weapons.
Final Fantasy Tactics Advance has a set of infinity plus one equipment: The Sequence Sword, the Peytral armour, the Sapere Aude Rod and the Acacia Hat. Each of them were capable of growing by one point in their main stat every time a certain repeatable quest is completed. These quests didn't occur very often, however it was also possible to do two-player co-operative missions that also awarded both players (or just one in the case of hunting missions) with equipment growth.
- Only the Sequencer and Peytral return with the same mechanics in the sequel, Final Fantasy Tactics A2: Grimoire of the Rift, but now only require their wielder to activate an opportunity command in order to power them up. Something much easier to accomplish than just doing a quest/sequence of quest. This also allows the player to get a two-for-one bonus if the unit is equipped with both at the time.
  - In addition, the Sequencer/Peytral boost is retroactive, meaning if you were abusing Opportunity commands the whole game, by the time you received the weapons, they'd have been powered up nicely already.
- There are also a few "ultimate" abilities in Final Fantasy Tactics Advance that can be obtained from rare weapons, and all of them require 999 AP. These include all the Ultima abilities, Doublecast (the Red Mage's trademark gamebreaking ability), and Double Sword (the Ninja's trademark gamebreaking ability). The last is notable for giving your humans the capability to hold two Infinity Plus One Swords at once (i.e. Excalibur2 + Nagnarok, Tulwar + Manganese, 2x Masamune 100 if you used a trading exploit).
- Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles had a set of Infinity Plus One equipment for each of the four races. The problem? To get items created, you have to get an item's crafting scroll, and the right materials, and then take to a blacksmith and have it made. All of the ultimate weapons require a rare drop, sometimes multiples, from the boss of a particular dungeon, and virtually require you to own a Game Boy Advance to know how to get enough points to have a chance of that drop set appearing. This is mitigated by the consolation prize: Even if the item you want doesn't appear, there's still some good loot to be had.
In Dissidia Final Fantasy, each character has exclusive weapons, equippable only at Level 100, that are tailor-made to imrpove their unique aspects, and are usually the best weapons those characters can use (though there are some non-exclusive Level 100 weapons that are more useful). However, none can compare to Exdeath's ultimate weapon: Enuo's Scourge. Aside from its stats (which are good, but just as good as the other ultimate weapons), it has, like the other Exclusives, added effects based around the character. For Enuo's Scourge, those bonuses are Brave Point boost on block, and an effect called Riposte, which makes every attack a critical hit if done to a staggering character. Exdeath's abilities are based around blocks and counterattacks, meaning virtually EVERY hit he does will be done to a staggering opponent, reeling from their attacks being blocked. Boosting his Attack rating will make his critical hits do absurd damage, ensuring you'll be doing several thousand points of damage with each of his counters. And this is with a character designed to counter everything.
While the final weapons for the main Lords in each Fire Emblem game don't really match this trope exactly (well, it is technically possible to 'miss' some of the Lord weapons like Falchion in certain games...), each game generally comes with a half dozen to a dozen S ranked weapons you can get (but don't need... unless this is Fire Emblem 6). To kick this up a notch, Fire Emblem 10 had 13 SS Ranked weapons that you could hand out to your party. Granted, Fire Emblem games are often Nintendo Hard and while you don't NEED them in a technical manner, you do need them in an "Oh God, oh God, we're all going to die!" manner.
Save the King, Save the Queen, and Ultima Weapon in Kingdom Hearts. In the second game, you can create each of these (using a somewhat more streamlined system) and acquire the Fenrir Keyblade, which is slightly stronger than Ultima Weapon though the latter has useful magic bonuses. And just to go over-the-top, once you've made these things you can make them again, this time adding a "synthesis enhancement" ingredient, to make the Infinity Plus Two versions. (Not so much for Ultima Weapon, as there only exist enough Orichalcum+ in the game to make it once.)
- Fenrir is simpler to get than Ultima. You just have to beat a Bonus Boss, rather than collect a bunch of items. But easier? That depends of if Sephiroth is That One Boss for you.
The Biggoron Sword in The Legend Of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. The sidequest required to get it had several Guide Dang It events in it, particularly giving the saw to the carpenter's boss, where it is only vaguely hinted that the gray-skinned man possessing the saw was his son, and to boot, he's in a location (Gerudo Valley) that is unlikely you would visit at the time you start the quest, so by the time you would finally get it, you would have missed out on using it in more than half the dungeons.
- Majora's Mask has not one, not two, but three Infinity Plus One Swords. The first is a "normal" sword, the Gilded Sword — while not too difficult to obtain, it requires a lot of money and good timing to get to. The second, the Great Fairy's Sword, actually counts as a C Button item instead of your usual sword—it requires hunting down fifteen Stray Fairies in the fourth temple, which you have to get all in one day cycle, and returning them to their fountain. The last Infinity Plus One Sword, the Helix Blade, comes free with the Fierce Deity's Mask—but in order to get that mask, you have to get every other mask in the game. And even then, you can only use it in boss encounters.
  - The Magic Armor in Twilight Princess, which can be a major Game Breaker during boss fights. It lasts as long as you have rupees, because when you run out it becomes an Artifact Of Doom, slowing Link down.
  - Link's Awakening has the boomerang as the Infinity Plus One weapon - it can kill almost anything, including the final boss, in one hit, although the Magic Rod, a mandatory weapon, is pretty much as good, if not better against certain enemies. There's also the Level 2 Sword, which you get by hunting around for 20 Secret Seashells all over Koholint and then turning them in at the Seashell Palace. Not only does the Level 2 Sword deal twice as much damage as the regular sword, but if your health is full, the famous sword blast from the original game makes its return.
Okami features the String of Beads, which basically turns Amaterasu into even more of a god than she already is. It gives you infinite health and ink (the game's equivalent of magic power) and ten times attack power. To get it you must collect all 100 stray beads, which entails completing pretty much every sidequest in the game, among other things. Naturally this a huge Game Breaker, but since the final bead is received upon beating the game, it is a New Game Plus-only item. Incidentally, this is also an instance of One Hundred And Eight, since the beads are the "stray" small beads from the rosary of the mythical Princess Fuse, which broke when she committed suicide (though she's alive and well in the game world). The eight big beads are the power orbs held by her canine warriors.
The Devil's Arms from Tales Of Symphonia had variable attack power based on how many enemies you had killed throughout the course of the game, and even then their true power was only available after beating the game's toughest boss.
- Tales Of The Abyss had the Catalyst Weapons, which worked roughly the same way: weak as hell when first acquired, attack-power-based-on-kills after beating the most powerful boss in the game. Additionally, said boss also holds the best Capacity Core in the game; you can only acquired this by stealing it from her, and you can only steal from her when she's staggered, which, as you might guess, does not happen often.
- The Fell Arms in Tales Of Vesperia work the same way. After you defeat Duke's true final form, the Fell Arms' strength increases by the number of kills that you have acquired. The catch is that it's only for when a human was playing for a given character. Combine this with the cape you receive from defeating Dhaos in the 200 man melee that transforms Destruction Field into a massive attack known as Dhaos Blast and Yuri becomes an absolute monster in battle.
In Tactics Ogre and Knight of Lodis, this is the Snapdragon. It literally turns a party member into a sword that is based off their own stats. When first acquired in Knight of Lodis, it'll pretty much hit for 100+ damage (When enemies may have 150 health - that's a definite ouch!). But in Tactics Ogre, it has to be randomly obtained... in Knight of Lodis, it's actually found in a story mode battle on the map around the middle of the game. Despite that it's not really something you'd know, the Dowsing Rod can point you in the right direction, or you could have a guide, and unlike most secrets like these, you might actually find it by accident in the battle or in training mode.
- Not to mention you can get multiple ones.
The Spur in Cave Story (Not so much the Sword part as the Infinity Plus One part; it's the most powerful weapon in the game). Actually, it's an upgrade to the starting weapon: the Polar Star.
In Romancing Sa Ga, there is a Special quest reserved for the Ineffectual Loner (He is the only one who can hear the spirit of the sword) that involves you actually forging the Infinity Plus One Sword known as the Demonbrand. Also it starts off as a rusty katana perhaps better suited to cutting food. Video.
- But to be fair almost all tempered weapons in that game can become the Infinity Plus One Sword through tempering.
- In Romancing Sa Ga 3, there are a few Infinity Plus One weapons for each weapon class. The best one is probably the Dragon Spear, which has awesome damage and an exclusive waza that also deals a lot of damage. It's also the hardest one to get, as it Randomly Drops from Dragon Rulers.
  - You can get a two for one deal if you are playing as Harid and going for his strongest weapon; the boss guarding the Infinity Plus One Sword is a Dragon Ruler! You can net both Sword and Spear in one go.
  - This can also be true in the Ice Galaxy since the guardian of the Ice Sword (Best 2 handed sword which also damages the enemy that attacks the wielder) is a Dragon Ruler also.
In Star Ocean: The Second Story, the final weapon of the main hero is the "Eternal Sphere", which can only be made through a certain path of upgrades from a unique sword gained from the Inevitable Tournament. If you sell off that sword after acquiring a better one, unaware of the inherent and entirely unmentioned potential, you can say bye-bye to the Infinity Plus One Sword.
- The upside? With a bit of luck and a little more Save Scumming, you can aquire the Infinity Plus One Sword as soon as you can leave town.
The best weapons for each of the heroes in Earthbound can be earned by defeating a certain type of enemy (different for each). It's a grind, however: The weapon only has a 1 in 128 chance of dropping.
Each Shadow Hearts game has sidequests for each character to obtain their best weapons and most powerful skills. These often require actions being taken throughout the entire game, in addition to the main storyline.
In Phantom Brave, clever use of random dungeons, bottles (an enemy monster type that makes it easier to acquire items you summon your phantoms into), titles, and a number of otherwise "useless" job classes means that you can do this with any weapon you hold, and you can deck your entire party out with their own Disc One Nuke if you so choose. And since Phantom Brave has a Weapons Kitchen Sink, this means that you can make yourself an Infinity Plus One Sword...or Book...or Loaf...or even Fish.
- If, however, you want the item described as the Ultimate Sword; the Divine Blade Yoshitsuna; you have to go through 99 stages of a high level Dungeon without restoring the game; and then there is an 5-15% chance that the Dungeon Boss will have it; which you then have to steal.
Persona 3 has the Monad Block, a Bonus Dungeon only accessible the first time in January. The best weapons of each type are found in rare (yellow) chests on specific floors. They usually have 400 attack power and 99% accuracy, as well as an additional effect. Persona 3: FES, however, has even better weapons, which are created via the game's new Item Crafting feature.
Castlevania: Symphony of the Night contains a well hidden sword called the Crissaegrim that attacks with five near-simultaneous blows at once, can strike as fast as the button is pressed, and deals significant damage with each individual hit. However, it is found on only one very weak enemy in one location that has a 1-in-1000 chance of dropping the sword. Needless to say, the player has only a snowball's chance in Hell of ever accidentally finding it.
- Symphony of the Night also has the Ring of Varda, the "Golden ring to rule over all!". Yes, that is the item's description in-game, and appropriately so. The ring gives you ridiculous stat bonuses which absolutely unbalance the game. And if one isn't enough, you can equip two of these things! It's so awesome that the game only allows you to collect it if you started a new game after you've beaten it at least once. Otherwise, the monster that drops this item will drop the similar-looking Turquoises in place of a Ring of Varda, which can be sold to the librarian, but is mostly useless.
  - And to a lesser extent, the Runesword, which flies out in front of the player and has a ridiculous range.
- Though this is more like a "Infinity Plus One Shield," the Alucard Shield, when used with the Shield Rod, becomes the strongest weapon in the game. Yes, even more broken than the easily game breaking Crissaegrim. As a bonus, it is also far easier to obtain.
  - To clarify, you put the Alucard Shield and the Shield Rod in each hand, press both buttons at the same time, and you can actually drain enemies' life away just by touching them with the shield.
- And let's not forget the Duplicator, which can be bought from the librarian for 500,000 gp, and is also only available after beating the game at least once. While equipped, it allows unlimited use of all items that would otherwise be consumed when used. (Although it does reduce your stats, but that can be fixed by the Ring of Varda)
  - Need convincing? Obtain the Power of Sire, which deals heavy damage to all enemies on screen multiple times and does not drop from any enemy (meaning if you use it, its gone forever).
- Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow offers up a Crissaegrim-like weapon with slightly shorter range called the Valmanway. Unlike SotN, where the Crissaegrim can be picked up halfway through the game if you've got the bravery and the time to waste, the Valmanway can only be picked up as a reward in Boss Rush Mode, which isn't unlocked until you beat the game at least once.
  - However, the Claimh Solais can be casually picked up in a secret area. Also, the Hard-mode-only Silver Gun. And the Chaos Ring, after obtaining all souls.
  - Speaking of the Claimh Solais... Word of warning, even though it's an awesome weapon, make sure you have a backup weapon when fighting Julius Belmont. He's the hardest boss in the game AND he's got holy resistance. If you at least don't have a decent mundane or dark sword for a backup, prepare for a world of hurt. He's so badass, even game breakers fail to work against him (or at least not work as well).
  - The Valmanway is still the ultimate (crown) sword weapon in Dawn of Sorrow, but now it's only available through item crafting. The downside? It requires two boss souls, which you can only get one of per playthrough. So if you make the Valmanway, you have to give up two useful and relatively unique souls. It's incredibly worth it, though, as the Valmanway, despite limited range, absolutely destroys every early boss and most end bosses.
  - You have an alternative though: Death's Scythe. It is Exactly What It Says On The Tin and requires you to get the Golden Axe first, a very powerful overhead weapon that can only be crafted with a very rarely-dropped soul. Once you have it though, and once you have Death's soul, you can fuse the two together and get this weapon.
- Portrait of Ruin hands you a ridiculously powerful sword, the Royal Sword, for a fairly simple quest early on (A-Rank Hunter). It's one of the strongest weapons in the game, boosts several stats, and has only one disadvantage - a slow swing speed. Its only competition is... the Vampire Killer, which starts out ponderously weak but can be boosted with the defeat of a relatively simple Bonus Boss. The Vampire Killer is weaker than the Royal Sword, but it's a lot faster and has the quite-useful Holy elemental affinity.
  - If you have a wireless connection, you can use the Nintendo WFC shop to buy a Rose Stem Whip for the low, low price of 4,800 gold, long before you would find it otherwise. It's the strongest non-elemental whip in the game.
  - Portrait of Ruin also had a pair of weapons actually more powerful than those: Alucard's Spear and the Final Sword. Alucard's Spear is given to you by Wind, the guy who gives out sidequests, if you managed to master the Javelin subweapon (basically killing nearly a thousand enemies with it); the Final Sword is a rare drop from a giant armored warrior that, while having only 50 hit points, is resistant to everything.
- Ecclesia, in keeping with the Nintendo Hard nature of the game, doesn't really have anything especially gamebreaking. The equipment gathered from the bonus dungeons, while useful, isn't powerful enough to fall under this trope either. The closest thing to an Infinity Plus One Sword Shanoa has is the Nitesco Glyph + Sword Glyph combo; a laser BFS that is the most powerful attack in the game. in addition, there is an extremely costly room clearing "final attack" where the background goes super nova when fusion is done on a light and dark magic, which clears the entire room of any non-boss monster, and deals at least triple digit damage, but it costs 50 hearts.
In Ratchet And Clank, one could simply purchase the R.Y.N.O., the most powerful gun in the game... for a whopping 150,000 bolts. The price for the different versions of R.Y.N.O increases with each game.
- In Tools of Destruction, one cannot even buy the R.Y.N.O. IV and must run around looking for pieces of the blueprint. The reason for this is because Gadgetron deemed the weapon too dangerous and discontinued it (the guy who gives you the thing in exchange for the complete blueprint even casually mentions it's "banned in three galaxies"). Seeing as how this same company had no problems with making and selling a portable black hole launcher (point away from face), it should come as no surprise the new Rip Ya a New One is a major Game Breaker.
  - Many of the pieces are just hidden in plain sight, but a few are real Guide Dang Its if you're on your first playthrough and/or don't use your map much. The Stratus City, Rykan V, and Kreeli Comet pieces spring to mind.
  - Also, the Game Breaker status is somewhat mitigated by the fact that you can only get the last piece literally moments before you face the final boss. Who has enough health to take every single shot of a fully loaded R.Y.N.O. IV and still not die (though it does take more than half of his health).
  - And that is why the developers were kind enough to give us New Game Plus. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you, the Omega RYNO 4-Ever. Upgradeable for increased damage, of course.
  - In a similar vein, Ratchet: Deadlocked gives us the Harbinger/Supernova, created by Dreadzone after one of its top gladiators stated that the R.Y.N.O. was a "Weak sissy from the sissiest place in Sissyland." To top it, not only is the Harbinger/Supernova absurdly powerful, it has a special Omega version that can be upgraded a grand total of 99 times, and have a damage rating of OVER ~~9000~~10,000. The thing is (possibly because it's a major Game Breaker), you can't pick up any ammo from ammo crates; you have to buy it at the vendors.
Technically not a weapon, but still increases your characters' powers to ridiculous levels, the Sheriff Star is an accessory in most Wild ARMs games that you obtain after fighting Ragu O Ragula, the most difficult Bonus Boss in the largest Bonus Dungeon in the games.
- In Wild ARMs Four, Five, and XF you could make your own Sheriff Star. It was usually very pricy and often required use of the Black Market, which you shopped with character levels instead of money. This graph shows how hard it was to make a Sheriff Star in the fourth game from scratch, without relying on stealing or random drops. Yes, you read that right, 8080 levels and near 1.5 million gella.
Tales Of Phantasia has "Excalibur", a sword markably better than the game's purported Infinity Plus One Sword, the Eternal Sword. To get it, you need to visit the secret dungeon below the Morlia Mineshaft (which has the most powerful enemies in the game, The Very Definitely Final Dungeon notwithstanding). Conveniently, you also get the spear version of this, a weapon you've had once before but had it confiscated, and the most powerful summon in the game — three Infinity Plus One Swords for the price of one dungeon.
- In later Tales games (except for Tales Of Symphonia, the prequel of Phantasia), the Eternal Sword itself was the Infinity Plus One Sword, generally won by defeating Cless, the protagonist of Phantasia, in some kind of arena. He's generally a lot stronger and faster than he was back then. For extra fun, turning the difficulty up adds in either Phantasia's Staff Chick or witch. (Keep in mind, the Staff Chick can stop time.)
  - It should be noted that in Tales Of Eternia, the Eternal Sword was only the ultimate weapon in terms of sheer power, sacrificing other stats for it. Not to mention its Time element weakens it against certain enemies. The game had a few other weapons like it too. The true Infinity Plus One Sword was the Last Fencer. While not as strong in terms of sheer strength, it had no element, and the advantage of raising all stats at once. It also may or may not be named after one of titles Cless gets in Tales Of Phantasia.
The sword Kingsblood in Drakengard. Looking at it, you'd think it was a dagger. Turns out it has about the same range as the BFS and does nearly as much damage, with the added bonus that it swings a heckuva lot faster.
In Xenosaga Episode 1, the AG-05, the final and most powerful A.G.W.S. available for purchase, sells for 300,000 G, a truly ridiculous sum in that game. It is certainly possible to buy it, but by time you've killed enough enemies to have that kind of money, your characters are invariably so high level that they're more powerful on foot than in the A.G.W.S. anyway!
The Frying Pan weapon in Fable can either be this or a Joke Weapon, depending on whether or not you acquired all the clues needed to find it; if you do, you'll get a massively-powerful weapon with four augmentation slots, but if you don't, you'll get a weapon with no slots which does 0 damage.
- There's also Skorm's Bow, the best longbow in the game, which you can only acquire by sacrificing someone at Skorm's temple at the right moment in the night. Although you can do this at the very beginning of the game, before getting even a single experience point, so it's really more of a Game Breaker.
- The Sword of Aeons in Fable if you're evil, or Avo's Tear if you're good, although Avo's Tear only appears in the expanded re-release of Fable.
- Fable 2 suprisingly doesn't have Infinity Plus One Sword weapons. The best weapons for damage are Masterwork weapons (and the Masterwork Flintlock pistol is one of the most powerful weapons by virtue of being very, very fast and most damaging per shot than an equivalent turret and clockwork pistols. The rare weapons are rare because of their enhancements, but aren't better than Steel weapons in terms of damage. Some are only equivalent to Iron weapons. However, level 5 magic spells can quickly become overpowered if you specialize in Will, making them to the true Infinity weapons.
Valkyrie Profile 2 has an Infinity Plus One Sword that epitomizes the "so hard to get that it becomes useless" issue. Getting the "Angel Slayer" requires completing the bonus dungeon ten times, each time being harder then the last. The only challenge higher than a tenth playthrough of the bonus dungeon is to start a new game on a higher difficulty — and you lose the sword when you do that.
- It does possibly help you fight the Hamsters.
Sonic The Hedgehog 2 first gave players access to Super Sonic after gathering all seven Chaos Emeralds in the bonus stages. Completely invincible, superfast, and with ludicrous jumping ability. Hell, even touching him makes quick work of bosses. The Sonic Adventure games made him into an Eleventh Hour Superpower, due to him being too broken to use during regular gameplay.
- Sonic 3 & Knuckles gave Tails and Knuckles a Super form as well, neither of which have been seen in-game since...
  - ...Until Sonic Heroes, where their Super Forms looked slightly different.
- Combining Sonic 3 And Knuckles could get you Hyper Sonic (assuming you got both Chaos and Super Emeralds), which is Super Sonic with a dash ability that could clear all enemies from the screen. If Super Sonic broke the game, this shattered it into microscopic pieces.
Mega Man ZX had the Omega biometal, which you could only acquire by either beating the Bonus Bosses (accessed by plugging in two Mega Man Zero games) or Omega himself and then beating the game.
- OX isn't actually the best thing to get the dolls; remember, getting the necessary Rank 4 involves not hitting the boss's weak point, and OX is basically a slower ZX with extra bells and whistles. The real reason to get Model OX is to have fun with the full-charge down-buster Beam Spam.
- Also, in Mega Man Battle Network 5: Double Team for Nintendo DS, to unlock super powerful Bass Cross Mega Man, you first have to complete the completely same game on GBA so that you could complete it on Nintendo DS with couple of bonuses.
  - Some of the Giga Chips are possible Infinity Plus Ones. Many of the FortePlus/BassPlus/BassAnly chips deal far too many hits not to be used with Attack+10's, and you get them from the inevitable fight with him at the end of the Bonus Dungeon. From EXE3, FolderReturn cost a fortune in Bug Fragments and broke the game into little tiny pieces. In Star Force, drawing one of the AM-seijin Giga Cards is a fantastic "kill all enemies" button.
  - FolderReturn in EXE3 wasn't the Game Breaker, NaviRecycle was. The general consensus at the time was that, if you needed to use your folder more than once to win, there was something wrong with your folder. NaviRecycle, on the other hand, was essentially a replay button for the last Navi chip (essentially summons, and powered up to match), including any bonuses attatched to it. With the right 5 chip combo and a bit of luck and timing, any enemy in the game could fall to it, and that's assuming it survived the first shot...
  - FolderReturn, however, additionally acted as FullCustom. Theoretically, a user could continuously end the round immediately through the aforementioned chips, until the opponent no longer had chips available. The user, on the other hand, would still have their entire folder to work with. Combined with a certain glitch, as well as legitimate customization in the game itself, the chance of this happening isn't as small as one would think.
- Oh dear god Hub.BAT. Battle Network 3's is such a perfect example it hurts. It requires getting to Secret Area 3 (which in itself requires half the Standard library and at least one Giga chip), fighting your way through a long, twisty path full of horrid Random Encounters (with a nerfed character - thanks, Press Program!), and finally fighting a twenty round chain battle with some of the most annoying monsters the game had to offer. And once you had the thing, you had to know the style-specific enabler code. And to make it worthwhile, you also had to know the compression command. However, just tossing it onto Mega Man made you ridiculously powerful, to the point that practically every metagame Mega Man was wearing it, halved HP or no.
  - Its predecessor, HubStyle/SaitoStyle in Battle Network 2, is also a prime example. It had most benefits of Hub.BAT / Saito Batch, plus no elemental weakness. However, to get it, you had to S-rank every V3 Navi in the game, which in turn required completing the WWW Area first, which itself had several requirements.
- Ahem. Hadouken, Shoryuken, and the Ultimate Armor, X gets a lot of these things. And Maverick Hunter X made the Hadouken usable on the final boss...
Resident Evil 4 has not one, not two, but THREE of these. The Infinite Rocket Launcher and Chicago Typewriter are available for a million PTAs at any merchant after completing the main game once, and getting a five star rating on every level in Mercenaries earns the Handcannon, which can be upgraded to do the most damage of any weapon in the game and have infinite ammo.
- Technically, every weapon can become one of these when fully upgraded. When all upgrades are bought, a ridiculously expensive one becomes available. For instance, the Striker gains an ammo capacity that takes roughly an hour to empty, the SMG gains damage equal to several pistol clips per bullet, and the Broken Butterfly magnum gains damage rivaled only by the Rocket Launcher and the Handcannon. Restarting the game with a New Game Plus using these weapons is terribly fun. Oh, and bear in mind the Handcannon is terrible without all its upgrades. Without them it uses an ammo that is very hard to find, selling the ammo to make money for the upgrades is a simpler option.
- In Resident Evil Darkside Chronicles, the Linear Launcher fulfills this trope in terms of power, but is much easier to get then the average Infinity Plus One Sword. All you need to do is beat every level on Hard difficulty (admittedly, the Operation: Javier 4/6, which are full of tough enemies, including a number of Demonic Spiders, and end with That One Boss, with you taking roughly 1.5 damage in 4 and double damage in 6, aren't exactly cakewalks), and your reward is a weapon with S rank Attack and Stopping Power (both of which can be raised to S+, the best rank in the game, for 22000 gold each), a massive splash radius, and infinite ammo. It does need to charge between each shot, but once you've upgraded that to its maximum, it's roughly 2 seconds between shots that can wipe out any non-boss enemy on the screen.
The Lazy Shell equipment in Super Mario RPG.
- The Frying Pan, although not as good as the Lazy Shell, is still a very powerful weapon, enough to allow Peach to do damage on par with Bowser. It can be bought, if you know where to look.
The Dragon Bracelet in Blue Dragon; to get it, you have to find, kill, and collect a fang from each of five dragons, four of which don't even appear until you've talked to Elder Bauhm, whose village can only be reached by the Mechat.
Most of the Reapers' gear in The World Ends With You, which you can get after beating the main game; as well as the samurai gear, and some of the weird ones you get filing out the secret reports.
- And the Black Planet pin set (also known as the Darklit planets). The Black Planet pins are pretty good by themselves, but put all six of them in one deck and you've got what is possibly the most destructive pin set in the game, because all of them deal substantially more damage if all six are in the deck together. The catch? You only get one of the pins from Hanekoma, though if you try putting the cartridge into different DS's you might find another one to buy there, and you have to hunt down the rest by getting Noise to drop them. Incredibly powerful Noise, who can only drop them on the highest difficulty level, and you have a snowball's chance in hell of them dropping it without setting your HP incredibly low or chaining battles together. Alternatively, mingle with someone who has the whole set and buy it off of them.
- Nobody mentioned Joshua's Angel Feather or Neku's My Phones. My Phones are worth two pieces of Samurai gear, math-wise.
R-Type Final features several extremely powerful ships which require two hours of game-time with the previous ship in the series, meaning by the time you get them you're probably good enough that they're entirely useless.
Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne: Not a weapon, but a thing called a Magatama which is ingested by the main character to make him immune to EVERYTHING except Almighty attacks and gives him +10 in all stats. First, you need to get a broken sword then go to the Cathedral of Shadows, then proceed to a weird temple that appears out of the ground and fight 4 guardians and many monsters of varying difficulty from bloody hard to mega hard. Worth it though.
- Nocturne has one other possible contender for this title: Completing the Burial Chamber special battles in the required number of press turns awards you with perhaps one of the games greatest prizes on the second run-through: the Demi-Fiend's second Press Turn. Makes Hard Mode significantly easier after Matador.
In Ultima VII: The Black Gate, the game didn't even come with the Infinity Plus One Sword, the Blackrock Sword — it was added to the game through an expansion pack, the Forge of Virtue. As Infinity Plus One Swords go, it ranked right up there, making the rest of the game ridiculously easy — including such things as Instant Magic Recharge, one-shot kills on ANY creature, etc. It had to be created in the expansion pack, and was useless without the demon who was trapped in the hilt. In the game's sequel, Ultima VII part 2: Serpent Isle, you wind up having it teleported away from you, and when you find it again, you must release the demon inside in order to escape the dungeon you have been imprisoned in.
The Mace in La Mulana. To get it, you must solve a puzzle involving weights and balancing a scale out; on top of that, if you mess up the puzzle, congratulations, it's gone for good. Should you manage to get it, you can make it even more powerful by equipping the Castlevania and Mahjong Wizard ROMs.
In The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion, it is possible for players to create their very own Infinity Plus One Sword by doing a custom enchantment on a regular weapon. This involves finding the biggest possible type of soul gem and filling it, which practically qualifies as a sidequest in itself and is something only very high-level players, or players who are "clued in" by various quests can accomplish. Then, the player has to either complete a long string of side quests or pay real money for the official "Wizard's Tower" mod, and game money for the appropriate equipment. With all that done, he can finally put a custom enchantment on his weapon. A common choice is both weakness to magic and magical damage enchantments, which is a Game Breaker.
- In regards to custom-enchanted weapons, the most absolutely game-breaking enchantment yet discovered is also one of the cheapest and easiest to create. By enchanting any weapon to cast the Chameleon spell at 100% for 2-3 seconds on strike, not only do you have a window of relative safety to prepare your next strike, but if you go to sneak mode while doing the next blow is a guaranteed critical. Using this technique with a powerful but slow weapon like an Axe or Warhammer will make even the cheapest weapons almost insurmountable. Of course, if your enemy has magic resistance...
  - Alternatively, you can make the Infinity Plus One Sword with more standard enchantments and enchant enough pieces of armor with constant Chameleon enchantments to have a constant 100% Chameleon. Nothing could stop you.
- Additionally, one of the game's official downloadable content mods adds Mehrunes Razor, a dagger with, among other things, a chance to instantly kill anything it hits. The dagger is found at the bottom of a nine level dungeon.
- The Elder Scrolls: Morrowind gives us Goldbrand, one of the best swords in the game. To acquire it, one must swim down to an unmarked and destroyed offshore statue and talk to it's head. The head will tell you to that it wants to be rebuilt, but only by this one crazy orc. Once you find the orc, he tells you that he needs a book that is only available from one bookseller. Once you recover the book and bring it to the orc, you still have to wait two in game weeks before the statue is finished and you get the sword.
  - On the plus side, if one knows all the steps Goldbrand can be acquired by a rather low level player
  - Furthermore, Goldbrand can be upgraded to Eltonbrand - en even more awesome sword, but only if you're a vampire and (at some point) if you have a certain exact amount of gold in your inventory.
- The first expansion to Morrowind, Tribunal, gives you TWO of the strongest swords in the game at the end of the main quest. You have to beat a living god to get them, though.
The Spirit Sword in Grandia Xtreme. To obtain this weapon, the player must beat the game, travel to some of the bottom floors of a 100-levels randomly-generated dungeon in which the player can only leave every five floors, and can only return if such an "exit" was made into an entrance, at which point the exit cannot be used and the player must advance five more levels down just to make an exit. Making matters worse is that the sword is the rare drop of a fairly difficult enemy which is (thankfully) not rare on these floors. The only "easy" method of ensuring the player gets it is to equip one of the more useless characters with a ridiculous rabbit-themed set of armors and skills which are likewise rare drops of equally ridiculous, and nearly impossible to kill, cute rabbit-like enemies. Even then, you will be seeing an awful lot of the common drops. This is not the only time the game does this to the player.
- In Grandia III, the Spirit Sword makes a return as the Infinity+1 weapon, and has an extremely similar method of acquisition, with the exception that the player must defeat the enemy, and cannot resort to stealing, running away, reentering battle, stealing, etc (as can be done in Xtreme). Luckily, this enemy is right next to a save/recovery point. Unluckily, this enemy is extremely difficult for no apparent reason.
- Neither of the first two Grandia games have secret weapons that could be considered Infinity+1 Swords. However, if one hacks items in the first game, an item called the 100 Sword will appear. It would be an Infinity+1 Sword had it been included in the game proper as the final weapon (the Spirit Sword) has only 70 +STR while the aptly-named 100 Sword has +100 STR. There is also a 100 Fire Mace in the game files for no reason in particular.
The driving forces behind the events of the Soul Series of fighting games are the twin swords Soul Calibur and Soul Edge. The Soul Edge was a legendary sword sought after by countless warriors. Unfortunately, said sword is actually an Artifact Of Doom, whose hobbies include devouring souls, slaughtering innocents, and becoming it's wielder's Superpowered Evil Side. The Soul Calibur was a sword created to destroy Soul Edge. The swords are often the ultimate weapons of the characters. Ironically, the motives of many characters revolve around destroying one or both of the swords, rather than claiming them as their own.
In Lufia 2: Rise of the Sinistrals, protagonist Maxim spends roughly half the game in search of Dual Blade, a weapon which will magnify his energy enough to challenge the titular villains. Yet the Dragon Blade, a prize offered at the Forfeit casino, offers much better stats (though at the cost of a weaker IP ability).
Even Pokemon has some items like this for certain Pokemon. Pikachu has the Light Ball, which turns it into a Glass Cannon. Cubone and Marowak have the Thick Club, and Farfetch'd has the Stick. The former two only have a 5% drop rate, but they both Double the attacking power of their respective Pokémon, which in Marowak's case, puts its attack into a three way tie for 3rd strongest attack of all Pokémon.
- In addition to items, legendary Pokémon are basically the Infinity Plus One Sword combined with Bonus Boss or That One Boss. Especially event Pokémon like Mew, which is capable of learn any move in the game.
- The move Return can function as a mix of this, Disc One Nuke and Magikarp Power due to how it works. Power Of Love indeed.
In the online RPG Murkon's Refuge, there are two Items of Specialness for each character class. You most likely won't find them until you reach the deepest dungeon levels, and even then you have to dive into pools and hope that you're lucky enough to get one. Even rarer than the Items of Specialness is the Rod of Catastrophe, an item that casts one of the highest Sorcerer spells in combat with no loss of Mana points and can be used multiple times in combat.
- There's also a literal sword, far rarer than the rod, but not as handy as a bottomless supply of free CHAOS spells.
The Trident of the Red Rooster, from Ancient Domains of Mystery (aka ADOM), is unquestionably the best weapon in the game; it grants immunity to every element as well as see-invisible and a massive mana boost, has especially awesome damage and accuracy with useful slaying properties, and also automatically returns when thrown. It is also necessary for the best endings. Unfortunately, it is gained after finishing a series of Guide Dang It sidequests, many of which are also pretty Luck Based. It's kind of amazing anybody's ever collected it at all.
In some games, particularly Book I of Ys Book I and II, and Ys IV: Mask Of The Sun, the Infinity Plus One equipment doesn't work against the Final Boss, so you have to switch to a certain lower level set of equipment.
The Sol Blade in Golden Sun: The Lost Age is one interesting example, as it lies in an easy-to-find treasure. Yet, all other weapons pale in comparison to the sheer damage-output of this weapon. The only two swords that come close are Excalibur and the Tisiphone Edge. (The former needs an Ultimate Blacksmith, the latter is a rare drop)
- This is Golden Sun. There are no "rare" drops, only drops that are harder to engineer than other drops.
- Although Excalibur has a 5% forge rate and the material used to make is found in chests and dropped by Sky Dragons in the Bonus Dungeon
In Fallout 3, there is the Experimental MIRV, cannon that launches eight miniature nukes at once and kills anything it hits in one shot. As well as the huge cost of a single shot making it Awesome But Impractical, getting it requires finding the place it is hidden in and finding the five password tapes for it scattered around the wasteland.
- The Mysterious Stranger's .44 Magnum would also fall into this category, as it causes roughly the same amount of damage as the MIRV in one shot. The disadvantage is that it's only available through hacking or sheer dumb luck.
- A more practical Ultimate Weapon would be Lincoln's Repeater. It's the only .44 Magnum rifle in the game, it can be repaired with ordinary hunting rifles, it does a lot of damage and sneak attacks can one-shot-kill most enemies. About its only drawback is that ammunition for it is relatively scarce, but it doesn't need very much anyway.
  - Sadly, Lincoln's Repeater becomes a lot worse in the new DLC Broken Steel. Granted, you'll still be an unstoppable force of mass destruction until about Level 18, but it's main appeal has always been either sniping or use in V.A.T.S. in combination with the perk Grim Reaper's Sprint, which makes you pretty much invincible as long as you can kill your enemies in one V.A.T.S. sequence. However, when regular enemies start having 1.5 times as much health as Deathclaws - who are still quite lethal - and survive your assaults quite easily, you'll be pretty much a sitting duck for the Feral Ghoul Reavers and Albino Radscorpions with the powerful, accurate but horrendously slow Repeater and those Big Guns and Combat Shotguns suddenly become a lot more appealing! The dart gun is still quite broken though...
Mass Effect actually makes it quite easy to acquire the Infinity Plus One Sword; all you need to unlock the Spectre-grade weapons is to acquire more than one million credits.
- Unless you are playing on the Insanity or Hardcore difficulties in which those guns will be needed to not make playing a flurry of perfect decisions or Trial And Error Gameplay. Needless to say, starting a new character on those difficulties will be quite rough.
- Though there are actually Infinity Plus Two weapons as well which don't appear until your character nears level 50, as there are two tiers of Spectre weapons, and then the Infinity Plus One Bullets and weapon mods...
Enchanted Arms has the Omega Golem, with the ability to reduce ANY and all enemy's HP to exactly 1, regardless of defensive Enchants. This is offset by the fact that you have to do 4 sidequests before you can do the actual quest to go through 50 (or was it 40?) floors of doom, all guarded by the toughest monsters in the game as Random Encounters, which will sap the ever so vital Vitality Points from your characters. The boss himself is tougher than any other boss, boasting no elemental weakness, 99,999 HP, 9,999 EP, said Game Breaker, and the standard attack deals OVER 1700 HP worth of damage, AND can nail you to the floor. Even IF you beat him, the core for said Golem requires 275 of EVERY kind of gem, he comes up at level 1 only 15 or so VP, and he takes up a good amount of the field. Suffice to say, if you are willing to get and train said Golem, ALL boss fights will be a breeze.
Neverwinter Nights 2 - Taken to ridiculous extreme with a Enchanted Papyrus Blade (paper sword?)[1]that actually makes you good at using that kind of sword. True, its appears to be a hidden bonus but the main point of the game is also to put a ridiculous powerful sword back together, the Sword of Gith, used to save the world.
The later Syphon Filter games has a funny example in the E.P.D.D, which is a long-range, sure kill, stealth weapon with infinite ammo that you can only unlock by getting the best rating in certain tasks, such as performing non-lethal KOs or stealth kills. Why is it funny? Because in the first Syphon Filter game, it was called the Air Taser and served as your default Emergency Weapon. Unsurprisingly, less broken weaponry like combat knives and short-ranged tasers were used in its stead in later games, but they still kept it as a hidden weapon, making this one of the rare instances that an item found itself on both sides of the power spectrum.
Metal Gear Solid 3's Patriot is simple — just clear the game. Metal Gear Solid 4's on the other hand requires a no Alert, no Continues, No Kills (of humans; tranquilizing an enemy who falls to his or her death counts, but GEKKOs and Scarabs don't), no recovery item (normal and iPod-assisted natural regeneration is fine), no special item (Stealth Camo or Bandanna), Speedrun on The Boss Extreme... where everything that's not a "Now Loading" screen (but the "Press Start" prompt does count!), between-Acts install time (including the "Press Start" prompt), and a post-Act results screen counts towards the 5 hour time limit. Yes, even the Start menu and the PS 3 home screen.
In the Roguelike Shiren The Wanderer, the most powerful sword in the game cannot be found in dungeons or on monsters; it has to be created by finding the most powerful sword you can find in dungeons or on monsters, upgrading it to the maximum level, and then have a blacksmith upgrade it again to turn it into said sword. That's still not the best weapon in the game though. The REAL Infinity Plus One Sword is the result of many dungeon runs and a painstaking amount of Item Crafting. After getting the sword, you need to acquire every weapon in the game that has a special property and fuse it to the sword with Fusion Pots in order to get what you want. And you really need to tell the difference between a normal pickaxe and an indestructible pickaxe. Since the entire process probably requires you to complete everything in the game, and the use of warehouses means that this can only be used in the main dungeon that you will have already completed, this is also an example of Bragging Rights Reward. (And possibly Too Awesome To Use, unless you're playing the SNES version and have a Dividing pot and two Withdraw scrolls.) But hey, at least you got yourself a sword that has a swastika on its hilt and a blade that looks like an impossible energy burst, right?
- Mah boi, this sword is what all true Wanderers strive for.◊
- And it goes quite nicely with a Rasen-Fuma shield that halves explosion and fire damage, prevents theft of your items, cannot rust, slows hunger, increases your chance to dodge normal attacks, reflects magic, and returns half of any normal damage done to you.
Riviera: The Promised Land has the Fanelia, one-shot weapon that deals 999*8 damage, which is far more than any other weapon in the game. It's actually not that hard to gain, but requires some unconventional thinking as it was hidden in the ground in Undine Springs after you complete mission 5 or 6. You need to dig it 5 times, while 4 times before you will be prompted that there's nothing there.
The Witcher has a legendary ARMOR with all the trappings of an infinity plus one sword, such as a famous wielder/wearer, it must be reassembled from various fragments, an explict quest is required to gain it and it was crafted by Gnomes.
- It's possible to get two Infinity Plus One steel swords, which are still practical because oils with different effects can be applied to each and the player can switch between them. It's also possible to get Infinity Plus One silver swords, but only one can be kept and there's only one optimal oil for silver anyway.
- Unlike most Infinity Plus equipment, the armor and swords don't come on the verge of the final fight, but the player is given a goodly chunk of story and action to make the most of them.
Shin Megami Tensei 1 has sword fusion, which allows you to fuse certain swords with demons. There were a few nice ones, including one that required you to fuse three elementals to the blade in succession, and one that required a component you could only obtain just before fighting maou Asura - i.e. at the very end of the game. The sequel took this even further - you now had even more combinations and possible swords. At the very end of the tree, you had the sword Hinakogusuchi, which scored three hits, had amazing accuracy and damage, and turned its targets to stone. To get it, all you had to do was follow a convoluted expert-level fusion process that consumed seven original swords and sixty-seven demons. For even more fun, the sword could be further fusioned to create the Brahmastra, the best gun in the game, or the four pieces of your female companion's ultimate armor. (Which, bad graphics aside, looks downright stripperiffic.) To sum things up, in order to get the best equipment ever, you need EIGHT infinity plus one swords, so you have to bind five hundred and thirty-six demons, and obtain fifty-six baseline fusionable swords. Oh, and did I mention those swords are random drops? Have fun!
The Granstream Saga has the Onimaru, which is twice as strong as the 'best' sword you would get normally. Surprisingly, you find it very early in the game, if you use the Cat's Eye somewhere in the west wall of the church basement in Arona. It sometimes causes instant death to enemies if it hits them while they're performing long attacks. The icing on the cake? The instant death thing even works on bosses.
Mario And Luigi Partners in Time has an Infinity Plus One Sword in the Ulti Free Badge. What exactly does this equippable item do you may ask? Gives you an INFINITE supply of attack items, which, considering the massive power of them (up to 999 damage for many, and infinite for others), allows the user to literally flatten the opponent under a barrage of hugely damaging special attacks if they have even just one of the item they want to use. It can also, thanks to this pretty much kill the final boss in about ten minutes.
- Multiple exist as some useful special moves in Mario And Luigi Bowsers Inside Story. You've got the Magic Window and Mighty Meteor attacks for the bros (the former is easy infinite hit, latter gives free ultra powerful items are every use, and is good in the Gauntlet) and Magikoopa Mob/Brogger Bonker for Bowser, which are extremely powerful but also extremely easy to use to well.
In Paper Mario, the quite useful Lucky Day badge can only be obtained after delivering a chain of 14 letters, requiring at least thirty minutes outside of the main plot.
- Not to mention how long it takes to get all of Chuck Quizmo's 64 Star Pieces for all badges and 100% completion!
Parasite Eve 2 has two of them. The first is the Gunblade, which with the right ammunition, will deal damage in the thousands. The other is the Hypervelocity railgun. While it does have a 10 second charge up time, it also deals damage in the thousands. Both are rewards for getting the best rank in the game (which you can only do in the New Game Plus)
Kirby & the Amazing Mirror has two Copy Abilities, arguably the two best ones in the game by a mile. They are also the only two abilities in the game that can perform all three ability-specific actions: cut strings, break gray blocks, and pound pegs.
- Smash gives Kirby "familiar fighting moves", specifically his moveset from his appearances in the Super Smash Bros. series, which includes attacks from several other abilities. For most of the game, it's only available by beating a Master Hand or Crazy Hand miniboss, until you hit every big switch in the game to unlock the copy ability room.
- Master, an upgraded Sword ability, is given to you for the final boss battle, and after clearing the game it becomes freely available in The Hub. It can take down nearly any regular enemy in one hit, as well as taking out minibosses in a matter of seconds. More importantly, it can break blocks, pound posts, cut ropes, light fuses, and anything else you'd need to solve any puzzle in the game, encouraging you to hunt down any treasures you missed.
There's a whole bunch in Dark Cloud. You get the best of them by beating the game and then completing an extra 100 floor dungeon. For extra points, you can then level up said weapon, granting it the suffix '+1'.
- Worth mentioning is that due to the weapon upgrade system of Dark Cloud and its sequel, it's entirely possible to upgrade any weapon to Infinity Plus One status, except for the starting weapons in the first game.
World Of Warcraft has a set of weapons that are extremely difficult to acquire. So much so that they have their own rarity category, Legendary. Some of these items drop from certain bosses at ludicrously low rates (Illidan's Twin Glaives of Azzinoth, Thori'dal,) others require a number of pieces of the item that drop from bosses at a high rate which combine to form a broken version of the item that has to be repaired through some sort of quest (Atiesh, Val'anyr,) others combine the best of both worlds and require multiple items with ludicrously low drop rates that the player must use as part of a quest to form them (Thunderfury, Sulfuras.) Additionally, the Kael'thas fight in Tempest Keep temporarily grants the entire 25-player raid fighting him a number of these items (which fade in 15 minutes or when you leave the area) as a sort of Eleventh Hour Superpower.
- Some of them have been removed from the game however. Ateish, the only legendary item for non-healing casters (Locks, Mages and Boomkins) was removed when Wrath of the Lich King lanched.
Dragon Quest has Erdrick's Sword, which, while not required to beat the Final Boss (except in the first game, where no other weapon will hurt the boss), certainly makes it considerably faster/easier. And of course, there's Erdrick's Infinity Plus One Armor, which not only protects the hero from poison swamps and barriers, but restores his HP with every step. From DQ 2 onward, the true Infinity Sword is always capable of extreme damage, but always cursed in some way.
The Flamethrower from the SNES version of Zombies Ate My Neighbors (Sorry, Genesis players!). There's only one of them in the entire game (400 shots), so once you run out of ammo, that's that. And it's pure Guide Dang It to find. But it does fry up Giant Spider Bosses quite nicely!
Almost all of the Ace Combat superfighters have hard-to-achieve requirements, usually including New Game Plus, but they are Game Breaking enough that the demands are almost justifiable.
- The Falken in AC 5 only required the player to destroy several hangars located in out of the way locations in missions to obtain. However, it comes at such a hefty price this editor has only been able to obtain one in a New Game Plus while selling all his accumulated aircraft.
- The X-02 Wyvern can be unlocked in Ace Combat Zero simply by having an Ace Combat 04 save on the same memory card. The price is prohibitive for a first playthrough, however.
- If you have the (real) cash, you can get the Prototype (fixes the stability problems of the stock) or Razgriz (hardens the armor, fixes stability, looks cool in black) CFA-44 Nosferatu as DLC in Ace Combat 6. Normally, you would have had to slog through the campaign on Hard mode, but you can get it at the beginning of the game (complete with ADMMs and railguns). Oh, and while you have to buy the stock planes with your in-game cash, any DLC planes you purchased are free.
The Mineral Town and DS flavors of the Harvest Moon series gives you Infinity Plus One Tools in the form of the Mythic tools. It takes effort to get all six: you have to level up your regular tools to full, then find the cursed tools via mining, then lift the curse on each one, turning them into Blessed Tools, AND THEN you have to pair them with Mythic Stones and a boatload of gold to the local blacksmith (Saibara or Gray, depending on the game) to gain the Mythic Hammer/Axe/Watering Can/Sickle/Hoe/Fishing Pole. Made harder in DS by the fact that you can't save scum the mines until you have six Mythic Stones - you can only posess one of them at a time. Although a few are more powerful than they're worth: A fully charged Hammer will destroy every poundable object on screen... including your fencing. Ditto the Axe (in DS) and your fruit trees.
In F-Zero Maximum Velocity, there is an Infinity Plus One car that also functioned as an Infinity Minus One as well. To get it, you had to A: beat every league(4) on Master difficulty. With the first 9 cars you unlock. You could also do B: race on the Championship Circuit 255 times. That is, all 5 laps, 255 times. You could also take a 3rd option: cheat. Either gameshark it or use the ingame password system. What makes this an infinity +-1 object is that the car itsself is horrible on paper but awesome in practice. Case in point: it's the car that holds the world records on every course but one, due to it's inability to make one jump for a shortcut.
The game Ragnarok Online has the godlike equipments. Each is made by a quest that takes certain almost unattainable items dropped from the castles, so only the leader of a guild can get them. AND, if that wasn't enough, the quests themselves are unlocked by having yet another uncanny quest completed by 50 diferent players. And the items ARE worth it, even.
The eponymous Heavy Barrel. One always felt compelled to collect the pieces to get it - though playing without it was more fun than playing with it.
Wario Land 4 has the Black Dog/Big Lips/Big Fist/Black Dragon items, which can be bought for about 20 mini game coins before any boss battle. However, this isn't merely an equippable weapon that's powerful, nope, you just enter the boss battle, and get to watch the item being used to send the boss to literally two health points from death before the battle even begins.
Iji's Null Driver.
- Practically, the Massacre, as the Null Driver is a LITERAL Game Breaker.
The Terminator Armour suits in Dawn Of War 2. There are 3. One you get in a main quest mission. The other 2 you can get in 2 side quest missions, that are the most difficult missions in the entire game (the last mission is a walk in the park after this). One involves killing an insanely powerful Warboos after going through waves and waves of looted tanks and nobs. This is the easy one. The hard one involves killing an Eldar Avatar of Khaine that is invulnerable to all melee weapons and some ranged ones, after going through scores off Fire Prism tanks to get to him. And both of them have at least 100 times more hit points then all your units combined. And they heal.
An unusual non-weapon example, the "Fist of God" punch in God Hand. Not only does it do 100 damage, it can be charged to do four times as much and this without releasing the godhand which adds another multiplier to the damage. A single hit from a fully utilised Fist of God can kill bosses in one or two hits! Appropriately, the move is only available through New Game Plus and costs 600 000 gold which is about as much as an average playthrough of the game will net the player making obtaining it a matter of either ignoring all the powerups to save money or spending a rather long time in the casino.
Nethergate has Infinity Plus One spells. The Nether Circle spells can only be found in certain dungeons, and to cast them you must be able to cast the highest-ranked spell of their associated spell circle.
Bliss Stage First And Final Act, based as it is on the Tabletop Game, requires you to complete the Romantic Sidequests to get these... wink wink, nudge nudge, say no more guv'na!