History Main / RareRandomDrop

*** From the NES version: The Dragon Potion, an item which allows you save your game anywhere (even the interior of a dungeon or tower. But it only saves gold and character levels, on reload you appear at the last place you physically saved at). It is a rare drop from Metal Babbles, provided you can ''find'' them and ''kill'' them. Multiple times.

* In ''VideoGame/KingdomHeartsCoded'' this can happen, but you can unlock a special cheat that allows you to multiply the drop rate of the various command chips dropped by enemies in exchange for lowering your maximum HP, up to 16 times its normal rate. The difficulty level of the game also affects enemy drops. A few of the game's strongest enemies will drop stat-boosting chips on Critical mode, the highest difficulty.

* ''VideoGame/{{Palworld}}'':

* ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyX'' had Dark Matter, which was not only a very rare drop from bosses you had to ''pay'' to fight, but also needed in obscene amounts [[ArmorOfInvincibility to craft armour with Ribbon]]. You could also get Armor with Ribbon on it by framing Dark Yojimbo as well, but getting armor with Ribbon and three free slots for specific person is also quite rare, and armor with Ribbon, Break HP Limit and two free slots even more so. Amusingly, some of the rarest drops in the game could be guaranteed... [[EveryManHasHisPrice through bribery]].

*** Additional...fun in relation to pink tails. The only way to find the monsters that drop it in the DS remake is to use an Alarm item. Otherwise the room is completely clear of random encounters. So, at least now you have a 100% chance of encountering the enemy, right? Well, you now have a 1/64 chance of the Princess Flan dropping any item AT ALL, and a 1/64 chance of it being a Pink Tail. So the probability is now 1/4096. And since you can only carry 99 of them you'll have to travel a lot to the shop in order to replenish (or [[SaveScumming reload]] if you dont get it).

* ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyX'' had Dark Matter, which was not only a very rare drop from bosses you had to ''pay'' to fight, but also needed in obscene amounts [[ArmorOfInvincibility to craft armour with Ribbon]]. Amusingly, some of the rarest drops in the game could be guaranteed... [[EveryManHasHisPrice through bribery]].

* ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXII'' took things to somewhat ridiculous length: not only does every monster have common, uncommon, rare and ultra-rare random drops (and a fifth class of drop that requires you to purchase a 'monograph' describing that class of monster), but also (different!) lists of random [[VideoGameStealing steals]] and 'poaches'. Crafting Tournesol, the game's InfinityPlusOneSword, requires multiples of the rarest loots from the rarest monsters.

* ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyIV''. Two words: Pink Tails. They are held by one enemy - the Pink Puff or Flan Princess, depending on the translation - found in one room, with approximately a 1-in-64 chance of encountering it. Though they appear in groups of five, each one has a 1-in-20 chance of dropping an item, and if they do drop an item, it has a 1-in-64 chance of being the Pink Tail, which is the only way to get the best armour in the game. Do the requisite arithmetic and you'll see you have a 0.39% chance of getting the Pink Tail in a fight against the Pink Puffs, and a 0.0061% chance of a given random encounter resulting in the Pink Tail being dropped. Alarm clocks trigger an encounter with them 100% of the time though, but you can only carry 99 of them.
** Additional...fun in relation to pink tails. The only way to find the monsters that drop it in the DS remake is to use an Alarm item. Otherwise the room is completely clear of random encounters. So, at least now you have a 100% chance of encountering the enemy, right? Well, you now have a 1/64 chance of the Princess Flan dropping any item AT ALL, and a 1/64 chance of it being a Pink Tail. So the probability is now 1/4096. And since you can only carry 99 of them you'll have to travel a lot to the shop in order to replenish.

Related to LuckBasedMission. In {{MMORPG}}s, if players fight among themselves to get one of these it becomes LootDrama, with the rare drop serving as an AppleOfDiscord. If you need lots of dedicated item-hunting to get anything remotely fun, see EarnYourFun.

* In the ''VideoGame/RuneFactory'' game series ItemCrafting is a major part of the game. To create the vast majority of powerful equipment and potions requires many battles with the various monsters, to get the RandomlyDrops components you need.

* Gemstones in ''Franchise/ShinMegamiTensei'' games, of which ''Persona'' is a MorePopularSpinoff. They can be dropped by any enemy and can be used varyingly to acquire some GameBreaker items, demons, or fusion benefits, but the drop rates are utterly horrendous, to the point that in ''VideoGame/ShinMegamiTenseiIVApocalypse'', the only game which has a specific DLC intended to help with farming gems, said DLC isn't enough to trivialize their acquisition or use.
* ''VideoGame/{{EarthBound|1994}}''. Its 1-in-128 items have become the focal point of several [[SelfImposedChallenge fan quests]].
** The most infamous example, the Starman Super dropping the Sword of Kings, was parodied in a ROMHack: the "Starman Super Duper", when defeated, would "laugh, roll a virtual d128, and warp away".[[note]]Though the odds of the parody enemy's drop were only 1 in 10. This being an unencrypted hack, that may have been part of the joke.[[/note]]
** ''VideoGame/Mother3'' is a bit nicer, with a 3% to 5% chance of getting good weapons from certain enemies.
%%* The ''VideoGame/BreathOfFire'' series. Numerous examples of this.
%%Like? This is a textbook Administrivia/ZeroContextExample as written.
* ''Franchise/{{Pokemon}}'' has the unique problem in that the frustration-causing random drop is more often than not the Pokémon themselves. Some appear very rarely in the wild, with 1-in-20 odds or worse. The frustration is compounded by the fact that you have to weaken these monsters without defeating them, as well as hoping they've got the right gender, nature, etc. Chansey (and the Lucky Egg it may carry), Feebas (which only appears in 6 or 4 fishing tiles depending on the game, out of 212 or 50) and Munchlax (0.3% chance of appearing in 4 specific Honey Trees) are the most famous ones. This really comes to a head in ''VideoGame/PokemonSunAndMoon'', where most of the Pokémon that debut in this game are rare, with a 10% encounter rate or less. A returning favorite, Salamence, can be found in the wild in the first quarter of the game--but you'll have to find Bagon first, which has a 1% encounter rate, then provoke it into an SOS Battle where it calls allies to help (but not always, and the allies don't always appear when called), where Salamence has a 1% summon rate. You may spend less time catching that Bagon and leveling it up until it evolves into Salamence than you would finding that wild Salamence.
** ''Shiny'' Pokémon only have a one in '''4096''' chance. (8192 prior to Generation VI) Legendary Pokémon and starters can be Shiny as well, so start breaking in (or outright breaking) your soft reset fingers! Luckily, like the item example above, Generation IV and V introduced ways to boost this probability, and Generation VI doubled the basic chance of finding a shiny Pokemon, meaning that under ideal circumstances, you now have around a 1 in 338 chance of getting one, which while still low, is far more reasonable.
** The Pokérus! Each encounter has a '''1 in 21,845''' chance of giving it to you (in [[VideoGame/PokemonGoldAndSilver Gold and Silver]]). Luckily you don't have to ''catch'' it for it to spread, just battle, and it can spread to the rest of your team after getting it. It will double the amount of Effort points you get in each battle.
** The enigmatic Mirage Island of [[VideoGame/PokemonRubyAndSapphire Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald]]! Every day a number between 0 and 65535 is generated. In order to access the island, you have to have a Pokémon in your party with a personality value that matches the number of the day. Did we mention that the Personality Value of a Pokémon can be anywhere from 0 to 4,294,967,295? The only thing worthwhile about Mirage Island is a particularly rare berry tree.

* ''VideoGame/GoldenSun'' series can either work this way or the opposite, thanks to how easily you can manipulate the RNG. Killing an enemy with the elementally-appropriate Djinni increases the gold and experience you gain from it and multiplies the chance of it dropping something... but for those items with a drop chance of 1/'''256''' the results are less than appreciable.

* ''VideoGame/MonsterHunter'' has tons and tons of drops, but the most rare ones will inevitably be those that the most difficult bosses have. Lao-Shan Ruby and the Large Elder Dragon Jewels are infamous for this.
** Each monster has its own rare drop depending on their rank and their threat level. Low-tier Bird Wyverns have a small chance of dropping Bird Wyvern Gems in High Rank and Fey Wyvern Gems in G Rank, while most other low-tier monsters can drop Wyvern Gems in High Rank and Large Wyvern Gems in G Rank. The threats higher up on the food chain have their own unique rare drop, usually something along the lines of "[monster] Plate/Marrow" in Low Rank, "[monster] Gem/Ruby" in High Rank and "[monster] Mantle/Pallium" in G Rank, with the occasional outlier to this naming system, such as the Nakarkos Soul Orb. Most Elder Dragons have their own unique drop in High Rank, but they have a slightly higher chance of dropping an Elder Dragon Gem; in G Rank, this item gets replaced with a Large Elder Dragon Gem entirely.
** Other monsters drop more "normal" rare items. An example would be the Kirin, who has a small chance of rewarding a Lightcrystal, Novacrystal or Purecrystal in Low, High and G Rank respectively. These items can normally be found in mining outcrops with an equally small chance.
** The game does justify the rarity of certain rare drops ("plate" and "head" type items most notably) - the description explicitly points out these are pristine trophy-quality monster parts, and you had to mess the monster up pretty badly before it stopped moving long enough to try and carve them off.
** Some monsters usually have a low chance of dropping a certain item, but that chance rises drastically if you complete certain objectives. For example, Fatalis is guaranteed to drop the Fatalis Evil Eye if you can wound its head twice.
** Carried over for the CrossOver in ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolidPeaceWalker''. Rathalos drops plans for the Taneshigama, one of the most useful weapons in the game, and Tigrex and Gear Rex drop parts of the most powerful Co-op weapon in the game. With a 1% chance. Enjoy your grind.
* In ''VideoGame/KingdomHeartsCoded'' this can happen, but you can unlock a special cheat that allows you to multiply the drop rate of the various command chips dropped by enemies in exchange for lowering your maximum HP, up to 16 times its normal rate. The difficulty level of the game also affects enemy drops. A few of the game's strongest enemies will drop stat-boosting chips on Critical mode, the highest difficulty.
* ''VideoGame/SuikodenII'' has this with the upgraded forms of Fire (Rage) and Lightning (Thunder) Runes. If you wanted more than one you could freely attach (and you did, as they were useful in many ways), you had to hope for a drop from specific enemies near the endgame.
* The ''Seeker of the Deep'' ExpansionPack of ''VideoGame/LostOdyssey'' included some ridiculously good, ridiculously hard to get randomly dropped accessories.
* This happens in ''VideoGame/LiveALive'', with the [[GameBreaker Cola Bottle]], a powerful accessory and attack item. It is a rare drop from a GuideDangIt OptionalBoss, which means that it is quite possible for the player to not realize that the aforementioned boss can even DROP a different item to its normal drop.
* ''VideoGame/RaidouKuzunohaVsKingAbaddon'' features Ukemochi liver, a useless item that's necessary for exactly one sidequest, which in turn is necessary for OneHundredPercentCompletion. The only way you can get it is by donating money to a shrine, at 300 yen a pop, for a roughly 1/256 chance of getting it. Cue an hour and a half of standing there throwing money at the shrine hoping to get it.
* ''VideoGame/EtrianOdyssey'':
** In all games, you get raw materials from the enemy corpses, which you can then [[ShopFodder sell back to the local shops]] both for cash and to help create even better weapons, armor and other supplies. However, monsters don't always leave things behind, and many monsters also have Conditional Drops, which require you to [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin meet certain conditions to trigger]], like defeating it in a single turn or finishing it off with a certain element/status effect. Even if you meet the conditions, they ''still'' don't always drop, unless it's a boss... and many times, getting a boss to drop their special item also blocks the ''regular'' drop. Most horridly, there are a few, select high-level enemies whose rare drop is both random ''and'' conditioned - killing the enemy under the required conditions only unlocks the possibility of actually getting the item. Sometimes, the "condition" behind a conditional drop is merely that the item has a very low drop chance, making it ''entirely'' up to RNG whether you get it or not, and you have almost no way to influence it.
** [[VideoGame/EtrianOdysseyI The first game]] plays this trope straight with the [[InfinityPlusOneSword Shinryu Sword]]. The sword itself is forged and not dropped by enemies, but the materials used to make the sword (the Fire Scale, the Volt Scale, and the Ice Scale) are dropped by the [[OptionalBoss three elemental dragons]] ''only'' when they are killed by an attack of the element they resist the ''most''. In the first and second games' remakes, the Shinryu sword instead requires non-conditional but rare drops from the Dragons, which may force many a player to break out the Formaldehyde to obtain them.
** ''VideoGame/EtrianOdysseyIIITheDrownedCity'':
*** There's an {{NPC}} who frequents the local bar called Scavenger Toma. His whole purpose is to [[GuideDangIt tell players how to meet most of these conditions]], all for the low-low price of a drink or two. Subsequent games continue this trend with a bar NPC that helps with divulging the requirements for conditional drops.
*** In another hint of kindness, the game also introduced a new item that guarantees all item drops, including rare, conditional, and mutually exclusive drops, if used on the same turn you kill the enemy. Very useful for those difficult conditional drops, but whatever you do, don't waste them on easy drops or screw up while using it: in all games in which they appear, you only receive half a dozen or less given to you in total. If you want to buy your own, you have to... yes, farm other enemies for their drops (specifically, a tough [[BossInMookClothing F.O.E.]] available only in the [[BonusDungeon post-game stratum]] - good luck).
** ''VideoGame/PersonaQShadowOfTheLabyrinth'', being a spinoff heavily based on ''Etrian Odyssey'' games, carries many of the same drop conditions. Thankfully, for the ones that are required for Elizabeth's requests in this game the game will tell you what you need to do, but it can require a surprising amount of strategising sometimes, since often you need to defeat an enemy with an element it ''resists''.
* ''VideoGame/MegaManXCommandMission'' wasn't too bad about random drops, but one standout instance was if you were going for X's X Buster Mk-III or Zero's Z-Rapier+, both of which only had a 1% drop rate from one enemy in the final dungeon. You could boost those odds with Good Luck Force Metal, which increased item drops by 3% for each one equipped, but getting more than one of those required finding a specific enemy and beating it for the items to make it.
* ''VideoGame/DragonQuest'':
** ''VideoGame/DragonQuestII'':
*** From the NES version: The Dragon Potion, an item which allows you save your game anywhere (even the interior of a dungeon or tower. But it only saves gold and character levels, on reload you appear at the last place you physically saved at). It is a rare drop from Metal Babbles, provided you can ''find'' them and ''kill'' them. Multiple times.
*** The infamous "Mysterious Hat". The only enemies who can drop it are the Magic Vampirus (a normal late-ish game enemy that's only in a few select areas) and two of the bosses in the final boss rush. It has a notoriously low drop rate well below 1%. This item is so infamous that Pokémon creator Satoshi Taijiri originally got the idea of trading collectibles in video games while grinding countless hours for the thing, only for his friend to somehow get two.
** Although not an item, recruiting a Metal Slime or its family members in ''VideoGame/DragonQuestV'' is ''hard''. For the first one you recruit, you have a 1/256 chance of recruiting it and a 1/1054 chance of recruiting a second and third. Considering how tough they are once they reach their cap, that's fair. However, keep in mind that they are hard to find. The ordinary Metal Slime isn't too hard to find (they appear commonly in Whealbrook Cavern), but the Liquid Metal Slimes are very rare and typically appear with a bunch of Metal Slimes or other recruitable monsters, meaning if you get a crit on another recruitable monster after you killed the Liquid Metal Slime, you ''won't'' be able to recruit a Liquid Metal Slime for that battle. Fortunately, they aren't required, but they are very helpful against the bonus boss.
* Enemies in ''VideoGame/RecettearAnItemShopsTale'' randomly drop ingredients needed to fuse the best items to sell in your store (or equip on your hired adventurers). Each enemy also has a rare drop, which is needed for better fusions or, in one irritating sidequest, to recruit Caillou as an adventurer.
* ''VideoGame/{{Xenogears}}'' has the Trader's Card, an item that greatly increases the chance of getting rare drops. It is [[GuideDangIt very easy]] [[PermanentlyMissableContent to miss forever]] and there are some items that will ''only'' drop if you have the Trader's Card.

* In ''VideoGame/ValhallaKnights3'', after the player has obtained all the "Job Cards" which can be found in several treasure chests within dungeons, on the field or which can be received as a gift from the respective cast for achieving the maximum affection, further "Job Cards" can only be found inside normal or sometimes golden treasure chests after defeating a specific enemy clan and even then do they have a rather low probability to drop. Apart from that, there are certain classes which can only be obtained by an [[EliteMook utterly challenging enemy]] in an 99-Floor [[BonusDungeon post-game dungeon]] in the same manner. Furthermore, certain "Job Cards" can be bought on the PSN-Store for 150 Yen to allow the player to save some hours of desperate hunting.
* In ''VideoGame/TheDenpaMen'', almost all monsters have a secret piece of [[OneSizeFitsAll clothing]] they can possibly drop (including the {{Superboss}}, who can be thankfully fought as often as the player likes). Some clothing can be purchased in the store, but some of it is monster-exclusive. There is a skill that can force monsters to drop items (and it's fairly easy to abuse in the PlayableEpilogue, where AP-resorting items become purchasable), but it only causes their most "common" drop to appear. And collecting all the items in the game is considered part of HundredPercentCompletion and even unlocks rare goodies in the second game. Happy hunting!
** ''The Denpa Men 2'' classifies all enemy drops into either the Normal, Rare, or Very Rare categories. There are equipments (which tend to be rare and rather expensive themselves) which will increase the drop rate for items of the different categories, and a few skills (such as Gimmie Gimmie and Keep It Rare) that increase drop rates for items or rarer items specifically. Like the first game, collecting all the items gives you HundredPercentCompletion, but the sequel thankfully keeps track of which monsters drop what items for you, and also whether those drops happen to be normal, rare, or very rare. However, there's a limit on how much a drop rate can be increased, and for most Ultra Rare drops, their maxed-out drop rate is still something like [[RandomNumberGod 0.5 percent.]]
* ''VideoGame/{{Opoona}}'' features many rare random drops, including, from the [[BossInMookClothing White Monk]], the best defensive equipment in the game. Normally, you're only supposed to get one of them, and by completing a fairly lengthy CollectionSidequest too, but if you're willing to fight multiples of one of the strongest non-boss enemies in the game, you can indeed get as many as you have the wherewithal for. Similarly, another fairly strong enemy, the Old Pipes, can drop the Sonic Attack--an extremely powerful equipment that you ''can'' buy, but which costs nearly 100,000 [[UniversalCurrency matia.]]
** Certain enemy types also carry equipment, exclusive to their "[[PaletteSwap species]]", which grant you powers related to that species. Among the best is the Jet Ring, which is one of exactly three pieces of equipment in the game to increase speed, and by a ''much'' larger amount than the one you can purchase. The enemy type the drops it is also notorious for running away, especially when the player is at high levels. On a similar note, the local brand of MetalSlime ''also'' has its own extremely rare random drop, the Point Chip. Befitting for a MetalSlime, it grants you free experience.
* ''VideoGame/LufiaAndTheFortressOfDoom'' has the Might equipment, the strongest gear in the game, most of which can only be obtained through Rare Random Drops.
** ''VideoGame/LufiaTheLegendReturns'' has a 480-attack InfinityMinusOneSword obtainable as a random drop...from generic enemies ''[[DiscOneNuke on the very first continent]]''.
* In ''VideoGame/FallenLondon'', opening a Surprise Package (obtainable only as gifts from other players or a relatively rare card) has a 1-in-1008 chance of giving you a Blemmigan Secretary. The Blemmigan Secretary isn't the ''best'' companion in the game, but it does have higher Persuasive than most other companions and [[RuleOfCool looks cool]].
* In the remake of ''Videogame/NocturneRPGMaker'', enemies have a 0.75% to 2% chance to drop an item. While this doesn't sound too bad at first, the catch is that the drop covers a huge range of items, with varying chances for each item depending on their usefulness. While it's easy to get a few drops, getting specific drops can take a while.
* In the postgame of the first ''VideoGame/YokaiWatch'', there are four secret Yo-kai you can fight and recruit: Tengu, Dromp, Zerberker, and Kyubi. However, the only way you'll have a chance to fight each is if you bring them a specific rare random drop from an enemy. And the enemies that drop the items have no connection to the items they drop--for example, the Ancient Flower you need to fight the earth spirit Dromp comes from Lamedian, a pun-based Yokai. And if you lose the battle versus the secret Yo-kai? You need to bring them another rare drop! Fans commonly consider the quest to be a GuideDangIt because of this.
* In ''VideoGame/GranblueFantasy'', SSR drops from raids are only found when a golden chest flips with a rainbow effect and harp chime to denote the rare drop. These are only estimated to have a 2% chance of happening and even then, it's not necessarily guaranteed to be the weapon the player wanted.
* ''VideoGame/DarkSouls'': There are plenty of hard-to-get items, often dependent upon repeatedly killing a specific enemy, but special mention goes to the Old Ironclad and Heide Knight armours in ''VideoGame/DarkSoulsII''. The game in standard play contains exactly ''one'' Old Ironclad, and it only spawns a certain number of times, so if you can't get it to spit out its gear before it stops spawning, you've missed out until you use a Bonfire Ascetic. The Heide Knight armour (not to be confused with the Old Knight armour) is even worse; there are only a handful of Heide Knights in the game, they're tough minibosses, and only a Bonfire Ascetic will allow them to respawn once killed.
* ''VideoGame/DarkestDungeon'':
** While most trinkets are available as rewards for completing quests, a few unique ones are only available as rare monster drops. For instance, the Tempting Goblet is rarely dropped by Bone Courtiers (and their difficulty variants), and three music boxes are only available from Madmen. You may also find Very Rare or even Ancestral Trinkets after finishing a random battle.
** In the Colour of Madness DLC, the Thing From The Stars wandering boss has a chance of dropping either Memories (which are used to build the best district in the game) or a few unique trinkets. Not a great chance; just a chance. Also, the Thing doesn't appear consistently and is actually pretty hard to kill.
* In ''VideoGame/NiNoKuni'', there's the double-sign familiars, and both single and double Planet sign familiars. While the chances of taming any familiar range from 10% to lower, finding a familiar of an uncommon sign can take several dozens to several hundreds of battles before one finally becomes willing to be serenaded into joining your party.
* ''VideoGame/{{Parameters}}'': Any specific letter of NEKOGAMES for GottaCatchThemAll, takes multiple clicks of the rectangles, and any specific letter is dropped randomly as well, any specific letter is rare.
%%* ''VideoGame/TalesOfSymphonia'': Beast Hides are a rare drop from Wolves.
* ''Videogame/VagrantStory'': [[InfinityPlusOneSword The Excalibur]] is one of the most prized drops in the game, being a great weapon in its own right, as well as being useful for converting other weapons into damascus using the ItemCrafting mechanics and always dropping alongside the equally-prized Arturos gem. There is a single enemy that drops it, and that enemy only spawns in one of the deepest chambers of the BonusDungeon [[GuideDangIt under a specific set of circumstances]][[note]]Ashley must enter the room it spawns in with 149hp or less[[/note]]. The sword itself will drop about 3 kills out of 255, or 1.17% of the time.

* ''VideoGame/FireEmblemGaiden'' features this, though other games in the series do not. The infamous Sol, Luna and Astra lances are only obtainable from less than 1% drops from specific monsters. Bandits also have a ''very low'' (around 0.01%) chance of dropping the highly sought-after Angel Ring.

* ''VideoGame/WorldOfWarcraft'' has a vast amount of items that are too numerous to individually name here, and a lot of the offenders are mounts and mini-pets that either world drop or rarely drop from their boss or mob. However, most players agree that one of the rarest items in the game of all time belongs to the Big Love Rocket, a giant pink rocket flying mount. You can only get it from the Heart-Shaped Box that drops from beating the Apothecary Trio during the Love is in the Air (Valentine's Day) event. You only get one box per day, and the event last for two weeks, meaning that you can only get 14 boxes per year before the event is over. The mount itself has a roughly .03% chance to drop from the box, and if you don't get it? Better luck next year.
* Played seriously straight in {{MMORPG}} ''VideoGame/MapleStory''. Monsters have a very good chance (roughly 50~75%) of dropping some money (Mesos) and an "ETC" drop unique to the monster (or monster type). They have about a 1-in-10 chance of dropping potions or material ores, a ''very'' rare chance of dropping equippable items, and an ''extremely rare'' chance of dropping scrolls (which are used to upgrade equipment) or throwing stars. A coupon in the game's cash shop doubles the drop rate of monsters killed by the user. It doesn't help that sometimes only one particular enemy drops a particular item. Or that there's no indication that a miscellaneous drop is needed for a quest you don't have. Or quests that ask you to get an item, but don't say what enemy drops it. Then there's the major bosses Zakum and Horntail, who are guaranteed to drop at least one Zakum Helmet or Horntail Pendant each time they're killed, it's ''how many'' that drop that's random. All of their other drops are subject to Random Drops.

* In ''VideoGame/AnarchyOnline'' the greatest example would be the Sparkling Scimitar of Spetses (a stupidly rare item dropping from a semi-boss from the 2nd hardest area in the known game) is so ridiculously rare that it is counted among the forums. The numbers are kept as to which dimension (of the 3 this game has) has dropped how many... at last count, it was STILL IN THE SINGLE DIGITS for dropping after at least 3-4 (maybe longer) years of play in the game that allowed the zone.
* ''VideoGame/{{Everquest}}'' had some mean ones. One otherwise uninteresting newbie zone had a high-level halfling that spawned every few days in a random location, disappeared after two minutes whether anyone killed her or not, and had a one in eight chance of dropping a very expensive item.
* In ''Everquest II'', in most zones, monsters will drop an "exquisite chest" (a chest containing the best kind of treasure, Fabled) 0.0126% of the time. Of course, which Fabled treasure drops depends on random chance and which monster dropped the chest...

* ''VideoGame/KingdomOfLoathing'' uses this extensively. Fortunately you'll be able to buy some of them, so you can choose to get a lot of money if you don't want to face the odds.
** One of the more infamous ones was the Hot Egg, a familiar hatchling that dropped from a certain enemy during the Brushfires event. The drop rate was ridiculously low--about 1 in 1000--and none of the usual mechanisms for increasing drop rates worked on it, so all you could do was kill enemies all day (limited to ~300 per day because of the game's AntiPoopSocking) and hope you got lucky. [[EpilepticTrees This didn't stop people from inventing crazed theories about how to make it drop, though.]]
** Another equally or more infamous ones are Warbear Black Boxes during the Crimbo 2013 event. To get even a chance of obtaining once, first you had to find a warbear badge from a warbear officer, which is also a random drop. The badge unlocks access to the third floor, where you can fight warbear high officers, who drops Black Boxes, ''once per badge''. It's very hard and costly to farm officers for drops because not only do the officers get increasingly stronger, you had to equip an item that limited your base stats, which requires you to charge with a limited item for it to work, plus only a limited selection of items improved item drop rates from warbears. The Black Box was assumed to have less than 1% chance of even dropping, didn't even do anything until Crimbo was over, and sold for ''billions'' in the market. Players eventually found out what the Black Box did: [[spoiler:It allows you to craft warbear items using whosits, and the only exclusive items you can craft from it were fairly average equipment.]]
* ''VideoGame/WarhammerOnline: Age of Reckoning'' averts this to a degree. Although there are still random drops, when you get a quest to get, let's say, 10 wolf eyes, at least the game have the decency to give two eyes to most wolves, and no quest has a <1 drop ratio. You also get fairly good items from influence and even better ones for cheap if you have renown, so the rare-drop ones aren't all that needed.
** Also, many items will drop as broken versions that can be repaired into an item your class can use. Unfortunately this is not true of some of the higher-level set items.
* ''VideoGame/CityOfHeroes'' has Purple Recipes. These only drop from enemies around 50 (the cap), getting one your character has any use for is another thing entirely, and getting the one you actually want quite the exercise in patience. Thankfully with so many players and a Market, the one you want is usually for sale, and although it'll likely be pretty expensive, the Purple that was trash to you might be a treasure to another.
* ''VideoGame/AceOnline'' has the Boss Armors. The items needed to craft them come from bosses that spawn only three times a day in places where you can fight the opposing faction (so you'll probably have to fight them too) with insanely low chances to get them. Not only that, but when you try to combine them there's a 50% chance of failure and you lose the items if that happens. There are more examples, but no one is as insane as this one.
** The Episode 3 Part 1 however, makes it somewhat easier; there're three bosses in Pandea Maps that can drop any one of the unfinished boss armor. The corresponding item has the same quirk. There's only one slight problem; the entire Pandea maps are {{Scrappy Level}}s made of [[EverythingTryingToKillYou aggro, aggro]], and... [[SerialEscalation more aggro]]. [[DepartmentOfRedundancyDepartment And more aggro]].

* ''VideoGame/StarWarsTheOldRepublic'' has its fair share of rare item drops, but especially notable among these is the Czerka Crate-o-Matic, an item so rare that the vast majority of players don't even know that it ''exists''. Its drop rate can be estimated at 1 in 1 billion, though at least it has the possibility of dropping from just about any level 50 encounter. It gives its user the ability to [[CosmeticAward disguise themselves as a random inanimate object for 30 seconds]].

* In ''VideoGame/PhantasyStarOnline2'', there are a handful of drops that are notoriously rare simply because they only drop from a single miniboss that is ridiculously uncommon to encounter in the first place and/or just has a crap drop rate for said item. The standout examples are Elder Pain (which also happens to be the only weapon in the game tied to a part break), Coat Edge D, Coat Doublis D, and Elder Pain Omega (the much rarer and stronger variant of the aforementioned weapon).
* ''VideoGame/GuildWars2'':
** Many of the bosses have one item that has a very low chance of dropping, and then an even lower chance of it being a high value Exotic rather than a basic blue item.
** Precursor Weapons, which are used to create the [[InfinityPlusOneSword Legedendary Weapons]], are incredibly rare drops in the open world. They can technically drop from any activity at any level, but the most reliable source is the Mystic Forge. By sacrificing four valuable Exotic weapons, there is a less than 2% chance of getting a Precursor. The strain was alleviated somewhat when the first expansion allowed crafting of Precursors.

* ''VideoGame/AncientDomainsOfMystery''. Many items that are important for various quests (notably the amulet of life saving) are random drop items. Where the Creator really extracts the urine is when you are required to find a boar skull as part of the Ultra ending quest. Said boar is [[RandomEncounters only encountered infrequently]], is in the highly-dangerous overworld and even ''then'' rarely leaves a skull. Low-to-mid-level players frequently starve to death or spend 60-''320'' game days trying. Higher-level players resort to dooming themselves to increase the encounter rate, or hunting for an item that grants one wish (also only available by random drop, and extremely rare).

* ''VideoGame/{{EarthBound}}''. Its 1-in-128 items have become the focal point of several [[SelfImposedChallenge fan quests]].