Meta Power-Up - Television Tropes & Idioms

Video games have lots of powerups. Some make you stronger. Some make you faster. And some make you get stronger faster.

A meta powerup doesn't add to the combat ability of a character. It does make improvements go farther. Maybe it doubles the Experience Points that you get. Maybe it increases the number of skill or ability points that you get. Maybe it makes short-term powerups last longer, or makes rare powerups drop more often, or lets you steal abilities from defeated foes. Whatever it is, it doesn't power you up, it powers up whatever powers you up.

Examples

Super Mario RPG had an accessory that doubled all experience gained by the character wearing it.
Paper Mario has Double Dip and Triple Dip, which, like the Glutton Ring, allow Mario to use multiple items at once. Double Dip returned in The Thousand Year Door; wearing two of it had the same effect as wearing Triple Dip.
In Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story, there are a lot of examples, such as EXP-boosting socks and gear to make attacked enemies drop items when hit.
Some of the microtransaction items in Battlefield Heroes increase XP and other earnable points.
Diablo II had some very high level items that increased XP gain, and items ranging from low to high levels that increase gold drops or the chance that randomly dropped items will be magical (and the power of magical items that drop).
- Diablo 3 has similar items at lower level. +1-2 XP per kill, +x% chance of magic drops, more gold.
In Final Fantasy VI, the experience egg doubles gained experience.
Final Fantasy VII has the EXP Plus and Gil Plus materia, as well as equipment that can double or triple AP gain.
Similarly, the Updated Rerelease of Final Fantasy V gave abilities that doubled EXP and AP gain.
- Final Fantasy VIII had GF abilities that affected stat gains. You could theoretically wait to gain levels until you had the maximum level in said abilities, causing your character to grow by leaps and bounds.
- Final Fantasy XII has the Golden Amulet, which doubles License Point gains.
Final Fantasy X has weapon properties that double and triple the AP gain of the wielder and one which converts Overdrive gained into AP*
(which stacks with Double/Triple Overdrive for insane results)
, armor properties which increase gil recieved and item strength.
- The really brain-bending meta items are the Sphere Distillers. Using a Sphere Distiller on an enemy forces that enemy to drop spheres (essentially a currency that allows you to buy stat boosts in the game's complicated level-up boardgame) instead of whatever else it would have dropped. Not only does this make up for some types of spheres absolutely refusing to drop at the right time, abusing Sphere Distillers and farmable Bonus Bosses that drop ludicrous amounts of items is the powergamers' way to raise your Aeons, and can also be necessary when filling in the entire sphere grid.
Chrono Trigger has an accessory that turns experienced gained into money instead (though you probably don't need it by the time you get it).
Samurai Warriors 2 has the Prodigy skill, a Mega Manning type, as well as several skills that increased the benefit of leveling.
Pokémon has the Randomly Drops Lucky Egg, which doubles XP gain, as well as various items which promote EV gain.
- Also the insanely hard to get "Pokerus" that doubles EV gain, infects multiple Pokemon, and goes away at midnight. the chances of getting it from a wild Pokemon are approximately 1 in 24000. Thanks to the Global Trade Station, however, it's much easier to obtain considering that if you have ONE pokemon with the virus, you can infect as many as you want and put them up for trade. Many players consider infecting trade Pokemon a common courtesy due to the virus' usefulness.
Star Ocean First Departure may win a prize for this trope. It has a skill that reduces the EXP cost to level, a specialty that increases skill points per level, a specialty that increases EXP, and even a superspecialty that empowers item creation abilities (to make equipment that powers you up).
Star Ocean: The Last Hope has a variety of ways to increase XP gain, equipment factors that give permanent boosts, food that gives a boost for a set number of fights, and the bonus board. The bonus board also has elements that give the party bonus skill points, used to both power up skills and invent items.
The freeware game Spheres of Chaos has point multiplier and point bonus powerups. While these may not seem spectacular, points earn you lives. It's not like your typical arcade game, though. Enemies are generally worth about 100-300 points each, depending on size and type, most of them are Asteroids Monsters (so there's a ton of them), and extra lives come every 10,000 points at first, only going up by about 5,000 every 300,000-500,000 points or so to accommodate the fact that there are many more enemies. Point-increasing items give 3,000-8,000 points each, and multipliers start at 6x and slowly decrease until returning to 1x.
Heroes of Might and Magic series often have Heroes with the skill called "learning" that would give you a extra % bonus in EXP that you gained.
In The World Ends With You, some of those styling outfits you get increase your experience points received.
In the Tower Defense game Defense Grid: The Awakening, Command Towers don't attack, nor do they boost the attack power of your towers. Instead, they reveal any stealthed units in their radius, and any enemies defeated in their radius will drop more resources.
Sonic Adventure had the Crystal Ring, which decreased the time needed to charge for the Light Speed Dash (granted by an earlier item).
Cave Story has the Arms Barrier, which decreases by half the weapon energy you lose when you get injured.
Many of the Day Job bonuses in City of Heroes work like this, giving the player things like bonus XP or certain guaranteed item drops upon mission completion. A few others give discount tickets for certain vendor services.
Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep has the ability "EXP walker" that gives you experience for every step you take. You learn it by synthesizing it.
There is an item in Tales Of Legendia that reduces cast time. Very good, although it does cause the characters' incantations to be interrupted.
Shirley: "Great will of the ocean, verily if thou deemest me thy proxy, then let all hear thy marv-Tidal Wave!"
Masteries in League of Legends often give small increases to certain stats, but there are others that increase the amount of experience gained, or the duration of buffs received from neutral monsters.
There is a Dragon Ball Z game, set during the Buu saga, which has RPG Elements. There are pieces of equipment (weighted armbands & tunics, if this troper remembers correctly) that, when equipped, increase the Exp. you gain per kill, but decrease your walking speed.
Dissidia: Final Fantasy has most of their accessories in the form of "booster accessories" which increase the power of other accessories (regardless of what those power up, as long as they are in the correct category) under certain conditions.
In Dawn of War: Dark Crusade, you get powerups to your hero to increase his combat potential, while controlling certain regions gets you increased population cap, the ability to start with your base already built, etc.
In Odin Sphere, you can buy a Spirit Gem from the very first merchant you encounter, after the first stage of the game. Equiping this item increases the experience that your Psypher Weapon gains when you absorb phozons. You don't need to have it equipped all of the time, so you can just swap it on whenever you're done killing a wave (or entire level) of enemies. It's also a handy part of the Phozon Farming Abuse trick, which involves using the Phozon Release skill to turn some of your "magic points" into free-floating phozons. Equip the Spirit Gem, release all of the phozons you're carrying, and then reabsorb the phozons. This restores your MP guage (though not to the same level as before), allowing you release and reabsorb all of your phozons again and again. Doing this often will grind up your Psypher Level, especially with the Gem.
FireEmblem: Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn have the skills Paragon and Blossom which double experience gained and raise stat growths at the cost of halving experience gained, respectively.

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