Clean up or redefine: Metal Slime

Metal Slime probably fails the Guess The Trope test, considering it is mostly unrelated to metal and to slimes. I would like to hear suggestions for a redirect or two.

Rhetorical, eh? ... Eight!

I think we had this TRS recently.

Fight smart, not fair.

I am not sure if these names are that great, but perhaps Running Rare Mook, Elusive Extraordinary Enemy, or the like would work.

edited 14th Jul '11 3:56:51 PM by LouieW

"irhgT nm0w tehre might b ea lotof th1nmgs i dont udarstannd, ubt oim ujst goinjg to keepfollowing this pazth i belieove iN !!!!!1 d

Redirects, redirects, hmm, let me think. Tough Elusive Valuable Enemy hits some good keywords.

Rhymes with "Protracted."

Could have sworn we got some redirects from the extensive recent discussion on this! Only redirects will work by the way, the trope itself defeated a rename pretty decisively IIRC.

My name is Addy. Please call me that instead of my username.

Yeah, nobody's looking to rename this time, so no worries.

Rhymes with "Protracted."

Can I have a link to the previous discussion please? I can't find it with Google.

Rhetorical, eh? ... Eight!

This trope is subject to some misuse, however. Trope definition says that it examples must fill all four criteria (elusive, flees battle, difficult to kill, high rewards), however there are related pages describing enemies that are simply elusive + high rewards, minus the "flees combat" part.

An Ear Worm is like a Rickroll: It is never going to give you up.

Yes, part of the problem was that the trope used to have a horrible description (over half a dozen criteria of which a given example technically had to meet only, uhh, zero), which led it to pick up all sorts of technically correct bad wicks. I gave up on the rename attempt*

, but did try to enlist people to clean up the description, the examples, and wicks. We succeeded only on the first count: despite all of the effort that was put into keeping the name, very little was put into cleaning up the misuse even on-page. Ironically enough, anyone who didn't know the trope's history in the TRS would probably favor a rename just from a wick check.

In any case, yes, redirects would be very helpful, but a wick and example cleanup is probably more important right now.

I'm bad, and that's good. I will never be good, and that's not bad. There's no one I'd rather be than me.

Hmm, I should probably lend a hand there.

For what it's worth, I recall the key problem being that there isn't a succinct way of covering all four key criteria in one simple name. Anything that covers them all is massively wordy, and anything that's succinct only covers some of it or is just as obscure as the current name.

My name is Addy. Please call me that instead of my username.

Yeah the running part is iffy IMO some of the more famous examples of this don't always run, IE Cactuars in Final Fantasy don't always run depending on the game. Rare, rewarding, speedy / elusive, (require luck or trick to defeat.) and a complete pain in the ass though are a must.

Ha I didnt get the Metal and Gold Zaku's in MS Saga were a Shout-Out to this till just now reading the page. (they are so in this trope.)

edited 15th Jul '11 12:57:54 PM by Raso

Sparkling and glittering! Jan-Ken-Pon!

We did take that into consideration when we came up with the new description. The actual criterion simply requires a way to end the battle without you dying or getting the loot, including but not limited to running away, self-destructing, and getting prematurely offed by another feature of the encounter.

If you are unlikely to get the loot because the monster has a serious chance of killing you, it's disqualified for being a miniboss (or boss).

edited 15th Jul '11 2:59:17 PM by Ironeye

I'm bad, and that's good. I will never be good, and that's not bad. There's no one I'd rather be than me.

Bump. We have a weird name, misuse (according to Strata, above) and a convoluted set of criteria for what should be a simple trope. This probably needs some more discussion.

Rhetorical, eh? ... Eight!

I think we can combine bullet points 3 and 4 in the description. There are basically only three things required for this trope: 1) the enemy is rare (but not unique, like a Boss Battle), 2) defeating the enemy results in significant rewards, and 3) defeating the enemy is difficult.

The rarity can be a result of a low encounter rate, being found only in one specific location, or both. The rewards may be money, XP, valuable items, or all of the above (but defeating it will always give you the rewards — enemies with a chance to drop said rewards do not count). The difficulty may be because the enemy runs away, has extremely high defense, has extremely powerful attacks, because it must be defeated in a certain way to give the reward, or any combination thereof. An enemy that is simply very powerful (like a Boss in Mook's Clothing or enemies at a Peninsula of Power Leveling) with an appropriate reward, however, does not count.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

Reading through the examples makes me think there are several tropes at work here, not just one.

(1) an enemy that is hard to defeat because it can escape from, avoid, or otherwise end combat. (2) an enemy, usually unique, that has a very low chance to actually appear (and usually in only one place), making them hard to find. (3) an uncommon enemy with very high defenses and/or high hit points.

Generally, but with a few exceptions, all of them will either drop (or have a chance to drop) a rare or unique item, or are required for 100% Completion.

So I think that a trope split is better than trying to figure out what criteria, exactly, should be listed here.

is a decent list of criteria, but they don't fit the examples. Several listed enemies are unique (e.g. the Tsuchinoko, the Golden Zelda creatures, Filk, and Smeagol). Some of them are reasonably common (e.g. ADOM's boars and the Poke Mon Abra). Several listed examples don't actually drop anything, either.

Rhetorical, eh? ... Eight!

Yeah maybe an Easy Runner or something should be split off into another trope while this one stay for the rare type that one of their possible ways is said easy runner. others being insane D, agility, dodge, gimmick damage etc

Like the Golden Hands from Persona 3

• They are absurdly rare spawn (unless you get lucky with a floor with all Gold hands but those floors attract Optional That One Boss Death.)
• They see you they disappear so you have to sneak up on them,
• if you actually get into battle its always a back attack giving them a first turn and they have maxed speed so they get to go first the next turn...
• 50% chance of running each said turn
• like 6 different varieties of them
  • Each one having their own trick like ,weak to a random physical element, have to get lucky and crit, have to use a random Elemental element, use a Useless Useful Spell, have an insane amount of HP etc.
• Drop coins that sell for lots of cash for their respective level, (and there are actually quests to kill one and get a coin.)

All of this makes a Metal Slime type mob.

edited 24th Oct '11 9:18:36 AM by Raso

Sparkling and glittering! Jan-Ken-Pon!

The trope is pretty clear, though. It's about things like Final Fantasy's cactaur or Dragon Quest's metal slimes, which are rare and difficult to defeat but have good rewards if you manage to beat them. If people are using it to mean something else, then that's misuse, not a poorly defined trope.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

If a trope attracts broader examples than its description warrants, that may also be a sign that its description is too narrow, or that the "trope" is actually the cross-section of two tropes.

For example, if "enemy that runs away" is a trope, and "hard-to-find enemy required for 100% completion" is a trope, then it does not follow that we need a separate page for the (relatively uncommon) examples that combine both of these.

Rhetorical, eh? ... Eight!

I will remind you that there was no cleanup done after the description got changed—many of the bad examples are back from when the only requirement was...being an enemy in a video game.

And, yes, this trope does suffer from being a subtrope without supertropes—part of the issue in the original rename discussion was that original description implied three or so distinct tropes, none of which were ever launched. Nonetheless, it was decided that the intersection of all of these was itself tropeable.

@Jovian: Having powerful attacks was one of the original criteria (all of which were technically optional). It was the first criteria to go in the rewrite because the defining feature of Metal Slime was that it had a way to stop you from getting its loot without wiping the party—anything that had a significantly better than normal chance of causing a wipe fell into an entirely different category.

I'm bad, and that's good. I will never be good, and that's not bad. There's no one I'd rather be than me.

I'd say that "difficult to get the reward" is sufficient, whether it's them running away, them being really tough, or them having an absurdly powerful attack. I'm thinking of stuff like cactaur's "10,000 Needles", which does exactly 10,000 damage (in games where 9,999 is the max HP) and ignores defense. That certainly seems to abide by the spirit of the trope — I see no reason to discount it.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

Ironeye has a point — enemies who are difficult to collect the bounties on because they (ahem) kick ass and take names are not the same as enemies who are difficult to collect on because they keep running away from battle.

We wouldn't exactly call WarMECH a Metal Slime, would we? Let's see: It's (1) a rare enemy in precisely one area of the entire game, (2) rewards you with more Exp. and Gold yield than all four Fiends combined, and (3) is incredibly difficult to collect said rewards from. These are three of the characteristics associated with a Metal Slime, but the fourth one is the dealbreaker: WarMech doesn't flee or end battle by any unusual means.

edited 24th Oct '11 5:17:51 PM by Stratadrake

An Ear Worm is like a Rickroll: It is never going to give you up.

That's true, but I still think there's a distinction between something like Warmech that's simply a very powerful enemy, and something like cactaur that has a single powerful gimmick, but isn't otherwise overpowered.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

Then it would seem that we agree that this page has numerous examples that should be moved to a new page (which is essentially what "splitting" means).

Rhetorical, eh? ... Eight!

Just how much are we going to put stock into rarity? I always think the low rarity of many examples is actually a case of trope exaggeration - while the original Metal Slime was confined to one particular area of the game, it wasn't that rare. I think it had an encounter rate of 5-10%. Which was rare for its day, but nowadays, that's practically commonplace by today's encounter rate standards. But each successive game wanted to carry it out further and further, until we get to games where you have a 0.1% chance of running into one, and a 50% chance they run away immediately if you do find them.

Truth be told, I'm inclined to actually have only three parts to the trope - a great reward (at least compared to when you find it - said reward could effectively be a Disc-One Nuke), the enemy can find a way to easily deny you that reward (either running away or self-destructing in a game where you get no XP from such enemies) without facing a total party wipe, and the enemy will frequently attempt to use said ability to deny you the reward.

Reminder: Offscreen Villainy does not count towards Complete Monster.

I think I agree on those three requirements but rarity is also a big thing.

Sparkling and glittering! Jan-Ken-Pon!