History Main / ItemFarming

* In ''VideoGame/{{Borderlands 2}}'' players can farm for very powerful or useful 'Legendary' weapons and equipment from enemies that usually have ludicrously low drop rates for those items.

* Half of ''{{Recettear}}'' (the other half being selling what you've farmed).

* The skill system in ''RogueGalaxy'' requires you to find certain items and use them to learn/power up your skills. Most can be found in chests or bought in shops, the rest require you to rely on monster drops. Probably the most egregious example are the Lucky Clover; every character requires several of them (some characters up to a half dozen) and you only find about half of the amount you need during the course of the game. To find the rest you need to kill a specific somewhat rare monster that has a drop rate of less than 5%.

* Happens all the time in ''RatchetAndClank'', especially if you want all the weapons, upgrades, items, and equipment, you need to grind through side games and levels to afford the bolts for everything, lest you want to keep going through NewGamePlus over and over. This however is not necessary for completion (though the game will be a lot harder if you've not saved up for the stronger weapons). On the other hand, in several games, you can collect VendorTrash for money. ''RatchetAndClankGoingCommando'' had two areas where you were required to gather a number of crystals to proceed (ten in the first area then twenty-five out of a hundred in the second area) in order to give these crystals to get required gadgets and level progression. The spare crystals you've not gathered can then be later gathered for money, an amount that's increased tenfold in the NewGamePlus.

* ''MightAndMagic'' games saw a fair bit of this - some items and all spells could be bought, but most of the cool stuff could only be collected from dead high-level monsters. A twist: monster drops were determined randomly when you looted the corpse, so by saving just before looting, you could reload and try again if you were dissatisfied with the take. If you were determined enough, you could use the fact that some creatures occasionally dropped more than one item (the corpse didn't vanish after the first drop) to outfit your whole party with super items from ''one'' dead dragon... if you had the patience.

** Berries come in handy, too, particularly since a Pokémon can use it, rather than forcing you to spend a turn using a Full Heal or other status-healing item. The Lum Berry in particular is useful since it can cure any status problem. Unfortunately, this berry takes several days to grow.

* ''FinalFantasy'' has numerous examples of this over its long history.

** In ''Videogame/TheatrhythmFinalFantasy'', a RhythmGame spin-off, playable characters are unlocked by collecting specifically coloured Crystal Shards, which are randomly dropped by bosses in randomly-generated Dark Notes. So if you want, say, [[VideoGame/FinalFantasyIV Kain]] on your team, you'll have to be doubly or triply lucky. This is thankfully made easier in the sequel, where the shards are easier to get, you only need half as many to unlock a character in general and you can get several at the same time, and when you collect enough shards to unlock a character, you generally can choose one out of several characters that're unlocked with shards of that color, although in exchange, all the characters outside of the 4 you choose initially need to be unlocked seperately, as opposed to the representative characters of each game being available at the start.

* This is how train upgrades are obtained in ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaSpiritTracks''. By collecting VendorTrash.
** Oh, and ''PhantomHourglass'' as well, to a lesser extent.
** Link's equipment in ''SkywardSword'' can be upgraded in the same way with materials. You need some bugs (and a Net to catch them with) for upgrading your potions.

* Happens a lot in things like ''{{Farmville}}'' and ''MafiaWars'', you need to repeatedly do jobs to get the loot items needed to do the new jobs. Gets ridiculous towards later goals.

** In ''Videogame/TheatrhythmFinalFantasy'', a RhythmGame spin-off, playable characters are unlocked by collecting specifically coloured Crystal Shards, which are randomly dropped by bosses in randomly-generated Dark Notes. So if you want, say, [[VideoGame/FinalFantasyIV Kain]] on your team, you'll have to be doubly or triply lucky. This is thankfully made easier in the sequel, where the shards are easier to get, you only need half as many to unlock a character and you can get several at the same time, and when you collect enough shards to unlock a character, you generally can choose one out of several characters that're unlocked with shards of that color, although in exchange, all the characters outside of the 4 you choose initially need to be unlocked seperately, as opposed to the representative characters of each game being available at the start.

** In ''Videogame/TheatrhythmFinalFantasy'', a RhythmGame spin-off, playable characters are unlocked by collecting specifically coloured Crystal Shards, which are randomly dropped by bosses in randomly-generated Dark Notes. So if you want, say, [[VideoGame/FinalFantasyIV Kain]] on your team, you'll have to be doubly or triply lucky. This is thankfully made easier in the sequel, where the shards are easier to get and you can get several at the same time, and when you collect enough shards to unlock a character, you generally can choose one out of several characters that're unlocked with shards of that color.

** In ''Videogame/TheatrhythmFinalFantasy'', a RhythmGame spin-off, playable characters are unlocked by collecting specifically coloured Crystal Shards, which are randomly dropped by bosses in randomly-generated Dark Notes. So if you want, say, [[VideoGame/FinalFantasyIV Kain]] on your team, you'll have to be doubly or triply lucky.

* Happens all the time in ''RatchetAndClank'', especially if you want all the weapons, upgrades, items, and equipment, you need to grind through side games and levels to afford the bolts for everything, lest you want to keep going through NewGamePlus over and over.

* ''DragonQuestIX'' has a LOT of this, particularly if you want to get (closer) to OneHundredPercentCompletion. There are locations on the map where items can be collected, reappearing after a while, RandomDrops from enemies (including very difficult bonus bosses), items found in blue chests (some of which have a 1% chance of appearing in Rank 10 chests, the rarest), items obtained from completing quests (some of which [[SocializationBonus require connecting with other players]]) AND items that can only be found through DLC. And some of these items must then be transformed through alchemy.

* Played straight in ''VideoGame/DungeonMakerTwoTheHiddenWar'', big time. Food is one of the biggest, since the players raise their stats by eating and most food items have to be gathered from dungeon creatures. It's also required to grind for items to boost the stats of some items, such as shields and the stat-boosting root sprites. There's also a lot of farming required to gain normal items too, thanks to a system where the drop rate of an item is much lower until after the first time you collect that item.

* ''ShinMegamiTenseiImagine'' removes the need to farm monsters by letting players gather "remains of Tokyo" (basically, refuse) which can be sold to [=NPCs=] or recycled to craft weapons.This is surprisingly the fastest way to earn money:completing a level 70-ish dungeon rewards the player with the equivalent of 20-30.000 Macca, while the same amount can be gathered in about 15 minutes while standing in a level 14 zone.

* In ''{{Borderlands 2}}'' players can farm for very powerful or useful 'Legendary' weapons and equipment from enemies that usually have ludicrously low drop rates for those items.

* In ''{{Borderlands2}}'' players can farm for very powerful or useful 'Legendary' weapons and equipment from enemies that usually have ludicrously low drop rates for those items.

* In ''VideoGame/Borderlands2'' players can farm for very powerful or useful 'Legendary' weapons and equipment from enemies that usually have ludicrously low drop rates for those items.

* In ''Borderlands2'' players can farm for very powerful or useful 'Legendary' weapons and equipment from enemies that usually have ludicrously low drop rates for those items.

* In Minecraft, players ''construct'' colossal [[http://www.minecraftwiki.net/wiki/Tutorials/Mob_Grinder Mob Towers]], which are focused mob-spawn areas, and Mob Grinders, to kill off the resulting mobs. These can produce (in extreme cases) hundreds of items per minute and allow the player to just stand there and gain items. The most helpful drops include gunpowder, arrows, and Ender Pearls. Notably, XP is ''not'' given, and players either have to modify their designs to only mostly-kill mobs (so the players can land the [[CriticalExistenceFailure final blow]]), or just do without.

* Often necessary for crafting/upgrading certain items and equipment in ''TalesOfVesperia''.