Starter Gear Staying Power

many RPG systems start a player off with crappy starting gear you want to ditch as soon as possible. Lancer says "lol fuck that, you start with the best Mech in the game"

— Reddit user Andreus in this meme about Lancer

In many game genres (like Role-Playing Games) the player usually replaces the Starter Equipment with new weapons, armor and items as they progress through the game; constantly swapping out their gear for stat boosts, abilities or whatever other perks are necessary.

This is not that.

This trope happens when (whether it's due to ease-of-use, an update or other weapons lacking comparative luster) the game's starting equipment carries you to the end of the game or even through post-game content.

May be a Jack of All Stats or Sword of Plot Advancement. Evolving Weapons are especially likely to become this.

Not to be confused with an Emergency Weapon, which is a weak back-up weapon that remains in your arsenal as a last option (usually in games with Breakable Weapons) - though there is the occasional overlap.

Compare Magikarp Power, where you're saddled with something useless but can turn it into something devastating with enough use (or the right event).

Contrast Better Off Sold, for when this trope isn't in-play and your starting weapon can be thrown away as soon as you get something better at the first shop. Also see Infinity +1 Sword, for when the game's (usually) last piece of equipment can carry you past everything.

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Examples:

Action-Adventure

• Cave Story: At the start of the game, you enter a house and pick up your first gun to defend yourself with while the owner is asleep. Over the course of the game you get the opportunity to trade the gun in for more powerful weapons, but if you decline, you can take it back to the original owner who will upgrade its abilities to become the most powerful in the game.
• The original God of War trilogy started you off with the Blades of Chaos, Whip Swords with enormous versatility, range and combo potential. While other weapons are available, by the time you get them, you're probably comfortable with the Blades' style, and you've probably sunk a couple levels of Evolving Weapon upgrades into them. And on top of that, they're just cool.
• Versus Umbra: The Quick-Sphere, your starting weapon in First Strike. It doesn't deal much damage and isn't as flashy as the other weapons, but it's fast, has infinite ammo, and even gets knockback and better criticals with version ups.

Adventure Game

• Indiana Jones and His Desktop Adventures has the whip as a starting weapon. Though the characters tend to stress that it's merely a temporary weapon and that you should find something more potent instead, it turns out that the whip is really useful thanks to having a range of two tiles—even if there is an obstacle one tile in front of you. Which means that you can whip enemies to death through walls or impassable rivers, which makes combat a great deal safer.

First-Person Shooter

• AMID EVIL has the Axe of the Black Labyrinth, a melee option and the only one of your weapons that doesn't use mana. One swing does more damage than many of your early ranged weapons, and it has the ability to pull enemies towards you at close range. It's more than capable of dealing with most of the basic mooks you'll see in each chapter, dealing double damage against Claws of Evil, and triple damage against Hands of Evil and Crysharks, making it a viable option for when you need to save mana.
• Battlefield 3 has a staggering number of gun unlocks, but for the assault, engineer, and support, the default weapons can still throw their punches with the best of them. In particular, the USMC starting weapons are all based off of the M16/M4 series, and as such have the fastest reload in the game, and the second best stats for everything else.
• BioShock:
  • BioShock: You can collect a stunning array of weapons with special ammo, but nothing is ever so useful as the Wrench given how well it synergies with abilities like Electro Bolt, along with the Tonic upgrades that offer the Wrench extra damage, faster attack speed, and the ability to steal health and EVE. Alternatively, Electro Bolt remains a staple in many a player's arsenal, so much that some players pretty much never spend ADAM on extra plasmids as a result, since it's fantastic for stunning enemies long enough to land a killing blow with various firearms. Then there are the Wrench Lurker tonics, which causes the Wrench to deal massive damage against unaware enemies. They're clearly intended for stealthy players going for a Back Stab, but it just so happens that an enemy that is currently being stunned by Electro Bolt counts as "unaware"...
  • BioShock 2: Since you're playing as a Big Daddy, you start off with the Bouncer's Drill, and it will last you through the entire game. Like the Wrench from the previous game, the Drill synergies with the Electro Bolt (although somewhat Nerfed), and there are Tonics that improve its extra damage and give it the ability to steal health and EVE. Unlike the Wrench, however, the Drill can be upgraded like a gun for extra damage, reduced fuel consumption, and the ability to reflect bullets. The Drill can also gain a powerful Dash Attack, whether as a reward for researching Brute Splicers in the base game, or as a Tonic in Minerva's Den. While it needs fuel for its stronger attacks, said fuel is plentiful and cheap. If you play your cards right, the Drill can outperform your guns. There's also a Tonic that cuts EVE consumption in half but forbids you from using any guns, further encouraging you to ignore them and focus on beefing up the drill.
  • BioShock Infinite: The Broadsider Pistol is a versatile weapon with a large ammo pool and decently-sized magazine, both of which can be made even larger with the right upgrades. Its firepower isn't too bad either, being reliable against non-heavy enemies. The Possession Vigor is also effective at crowd control, with its cheap, basic upgrade allowing you to take control of almost every enemy, and its more expensive upgrade greatly reducing the amount of Salts it uses. When the effects of Possession wear off, if the target isn't a heavy-hitting enemy or a machine, they'll commit suicide so that you don't have to finish them off if a fight has been concluded. It's an effective way to instantly kill the weaker enemies.
• Brutal Doom, a gameplay mod for the classic Doom games, gives you an assault rifle as your starting weapon. It has good damage and accuracy and the ability to aim down the sights. It makes clearing out imps and zombie soldiers a breeze, and it's also useful against stronger enemies like Hell Knights and Mancubi if you can consistently hit their heads.
• Call of Duty single-player campaign missions typically start you with a primary weapon which is the best adapted for the mission at hand, and is often superior to anything you can pick up in the level, sometimes even kitted out with sights and attachments that can't be obtained in the level. Your secondary starting weapon is typically a pistol that can be swapped out for something found in the level for variety or utility.
• Command & Conquer: Renegade: Though the game for the most part subscribes to the Sorting Algorithm of Weapon Effectiveness, many players stick to the simple, plentiful autorifle and the pistol you start with. Sure, it's one of the most basic weapons in the game but its accuracy, speed, and control is such that the weapon can carry experienced players through entire levels until you eventually reach the point where it's outright replaced with the chaingun. The pistol, meanwhile, has the unique features of being silenced and carrying infinite reserve ammo, something that keeps its usefulness through the whole game, especially when infiltrating buildings.
• The Descent games have always had many kinds of awesome, flashy and hyperdestructive weaponry, but due to huge energy consumption and rarity of pickups, you'll probably kill most enemies using the laser - the weapon you start with (albeit suitably upgraded).
• Escape from Tarkov: The Mosin rifle for snipers, due to the requirement on sniper skills necesary to get kappa ammo effective at any range, easy to use, the relative cheapness of the rifle, the weapon keeps being relativelly useful for most of the situations and can make the early game much easier.
• GoldenEye (1997): The silenced PP7 will be your most common pistol to use. It doesn't alert enemies, where louder weapons either cause Respawning Enemies or an accidental mission failure (e.g. alert a guard to make him accidentally shoot or throw a grenade at an innocent victim), has an insane range capable of making pixel-perfect kills and starts with 100 ammo that is plentiful for missions. Its silenced properties make it essential in the harder difficulties, where waves of enemies are way harder to deal with.
• Half-Life series:
  • The Crowbar in all installments is used mainly as a puzzle solver, and as the more effective way to eradicate Headcrabs and Barnacles.
  • In both Episodes of Half-Life 2, the Gravity Gun is the first weapon Gordon receives, and given the plenty objects that are found across the levels, it's used a lot, if not more than the Crowbar itself. The achievements even incentivize doing so. "Zombie Chopper" from the base game requires you to play through the entirety of Ravenholm using only the Gravity Gun, while "The One Free Bullet" from Episode 1 requires you to beat the entire Episode firing only one bullet, which is used very early on to shoot the lock off a gate. The latter still allows you to use the crowbar, grenades, and rockets, but given that you can't carry very many grenades or rockets at once and that meleeing everything to death is typically a bad idea, the Gravity Gun will be your main workhorse.
• In Halo: Combat Evolved, the first weapon the player receives is the M6D Pistol, which proves to be one of the most powerful and reliable weapons in the game, having high damage, headshot capability, and plentiful ammo for it everywhere. The pistol wasn't intended to be so strong, but a last minute change to the game's code boosted its damage to ridiculous levels.
• Hell Let Loose: Many of the default loadouts are actually better to use than the unlockable ones, with the most notable example being the default Sniper loadout, which comes with a Sniper Rifle, sidearm, and two frag grenades, while the unlockable loadouts only come with the rifle, plus a handful of situational weapons such as mines and smoke grenades, or in the case of the Soviet snipers, nothing else at all.
• Hexen's Sapphire Wand is the basic weapon for the mage. The basic weapons cost no mana, and in case of the wand, is the only one that's ranged. It remains a powerful starter weapon because it is precise and can penetrate multiple targets. The other weapons can still do more damage, but the wand itself remains useful as it conserves mana for the more powerful weapons. The other two classes have melee basic weapons, which are better suited as an emergency weapon.
• Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy: Though you start the game with the lightsaber for the first time in the series, it remains the best weapon in the game, and the improved swordplay, along with not needing ammo for it, almost renders the other weapons irrelevant.
• Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2:
  • The pistols are weak and boring compared to the more powerful guns like an automatic shotgun or an assault rifle, but the pistols are the only weapons that have Bottomless Magazines and are also the only weapons that can be used Guns Akimbo for extra firepower. There's even an achievement in the first game for completing a full campaign using nothing but the pistols.
  • In Left 4 Dead 2, a melee weapon will often be found early on if not at the very start of the campaign, but its ability to One-Hit Polykill the Common Infected makes it a reliable choice whenever a horde shows up. It will normally replace the pistols, but if you're incapacitated, you get to pull out one extra pistol as a last resort.
• Prey (2006) has an impressive amount of very original weapons of creepily biological construction, like an acid-spraying shotgun, explosive crabs used as grenades, a gun that launches those same crabs (no, really) and a bow made of spiritual energy that can kill the soul of enemies. And yet, the weapon you'll be using most of the time is the humble energy rifle with sniper attachment you begin with, because of its good mix of damage, fire rate, and precision. The fact that it regenerates a small amount of ammo if the reserves are low doesn't hurt either.
• In Rainbow Six Vegas 2, the starting weapons in each category are usually the ones with the best overall stats; later weapons you unlock as you play the game are mostly for gameplay variety rather than being statistically superior than the guns you start with.
• System Shock 2, with its RPG Elements, had one or two, especially if you were playing the OSA. Cryokinesis is one of the starting powers and though you get amazing, highly destructive spells abilities at higher tiers, this is still the most-used due to its low Psi-point cost, robot-damaging ability, and scaling of its damage with your PSI stat. The wrench you pick up at the very beginning? Still useful right up to the endgame for whittling down immobilized enemies before you deliver the coup de grace. With Adrenaline Overproduction and the right OS upgrade, it becomes a killer.
  • The wrench is also the only weapon not to suffer from wear and so requires no maintenance, in addition to needing no ammunition. It's also a silent killer that won't attract enemies in nearby rooms. Did we mention it requires no skill training whatsoever, unlike the resonating crystal mace that requires SIX points in exotic weapons for equivalent performance?
• ULTRAKILL: The Revolver you get in the beginning of the game is the most versatile weapon even later on, thanks to solid damage, useful alternate fire-modes, and having synergies with other weapons. It can even be upgraded into a much stronger but slower version. The Feedbacker (your first arm) is also versatile, as it lets you parry for extra damage and health.

Mecha Game

• Dynamix created Earthsiege and Starsiege, and provided us with impressive weapons like the Electron Flux Whip, a Lightning Gun that carves enemies to pieces, or the Plasma Cannon, a Homing Projectile-firing energy gun. At the end of the day, though, a combination of a simple EMP to bring down shields followed by basic autocannons are some of the most useful weapons in the first game, handily chewing even larger Cybrids to pieces without taxing your energy reserves, and often with plenty of ammunition so that even a few misses aren't so detrimental, unlike missiles. Starsiege diversified its weapons further, but it accidentally gave us another simple starting weapon that can still carry players through much of the game — the Blaster, a small, basic energy gun that has a frightening ability to wreck anything it hits by damaging both shields and armor equally well with respectable power at long range.

Platformers

• The Kirby series plays with this by having a lack-of-starting-gear staying power. While Copy Abilities are almost always more fun to use and are by no means useless (barring Sleep), if you don't have one, Kirby's ability to turn nearly anything he inhales into a projectile is much more powerful than newcomers might think.
• In the Mega Man franchise, the standard Buster you start out with is usually your go-to, for its simplicity, consistency, and its lack of a need for weapon energy. Titles that include the charge shot give it even more versatility. Later iterations of the franchise, like Mega Man X and Mega Man Zero, even provide ways to alter the standard Buster's characteristics, most famously the Force Armor's damaging plasma balls that it leaves behind as it passes through enemies.

Role-Playing Games

• Cyberpunk 2077 has "Dying Night", a unique Militech Lexington machine pistol that does extra headshot damage and reloads quickly, given very early to V in Act 1 after the Sandra Dorsett rescue job concludes the Prologue. Because it's the only Iconic Weapon that is first given to you at the lower Uncommon tier, it can have its existing stats buffed via crafting relatively cheaply for a while. Overhaul it to Legendary-tier at the maximum-level stages, and it is a monster when paired with deft use of bullet ricochet effects that aim-snap the bullet trajectory to targets, helped along by ricochet damage bonuses added as you overhaul its rarity tier.
• From Software games such as Dark Souls and Bloodborne revel in this trope. Even though you can find all sorts of fancy weapons and magic as you progress, your starting gear is almost always designed to be completely viable from the start of the game until the end as long as you make sure to keep upgrading it as you go, and in many cases will even end up being superior to all that fancy stuff. In fact, Dark Souls 2 may be the only real exception to this as all of it's classes were designed to have a flaw to them instead of being well rounded like the other games, which means that some start with subpar weaponry that should be replaced as soon as possible, and one class starts with no weapon at all (although it's even possible to make that endgame viable if you obtain a certain ring).
• The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall will give you some starting equipment based on the choices you made during character generation. If you answered one particular question a certain way, you'll receive an Ebony Dagger as part of your starting equipment. Ebony is the second best crafting material in the entire game.
• In Fate/Grand Order, the Mystic Code: Chaldea and the Chaldea Combat Uniform are two of the earliest Mystic Codes players acquire, but they're also two of the most popular Mystic Codes for players to use. The former is a versatile Jack of All Stats that is applicable in almost any situation. The latter has the unique and incredibly powerful Order Change, which opens up an enormous number of strategies for new and veteran players alike by allowing you to swap out one Servant in the frontline with one in the backline.
• Final Fantasy:
  • Final Fantasy X provides the original example. Tidus starts out with Brotherhood, a sword that does Water-elemental damage; it's gifted to him by his friend Wakka, and like Cloud's Buster Sword it cannot be sold. However, a scene about a third of the way through the game allows the sword to power up, gaining STR +5%, STR +10% and "Sensor". Aside from the fact that some enemies are immune to Water damage, Tidus could do a lot worse than simply wield this sword throughout the entire game; aside from doing some serious grinding to build your own Socketed Equipment or gain his Infinity +1 Sword, it's basically his best weapon.
  • Final Fantasy VII Remake: The game's Evolving Weapon system allows each character's starting weapon to remain useful as the Jack of All Stats weapon, compared to the more specialized options obtained throughout the game. Cloud's iconic Buster Sword is the most notable example of this due to his own balanced stats.
  • Accidentally present in Final Fantasy VIII. The starting gear is nothing impressive, but between enemies having Level Scaling and the utterly broken Junction system, the entire motivation for upgrading weapons is gone (aside from the fact that The Hero gets new finishing moves for his Limit Break if you upgrade his to the max).
  • Final Fantasy XIII: The game's Hint System doesn't explain Weapon Synthesis in the slightest beyond the XP Modifier. Since the game enforces an Evolving Weapon system anyway, upgrading your starting equipment to endgame levels is not only easier but simpler (and less resource-intensive) than actually taking the time to experiment with what vendors give you.
• Kingdom Hearts III: The Kingdom Key is the starting weapon in nearly every installment and generally goes the way of the dinosaur. But KHIII adds the ability to wield multiple Keychains as well as upgrade them, so the Kingdom Key is never truly outclassed. If anything, its innate Damage Control ability makes it invaluable for defensive builds - doubly so for a Critical/Level 1 playthrough, which will see your health chunk like flakes.
• Downplayed with the Prototype Vibroblade in Knights of the Old Republic. It's a really good weapon you get before leaving the tutorial level, and better with the upgrades you can scrounge. Before you get a lightsaber, it's best as your main hand weapon. Once you do get a lightsaber, the "balanced" bonus and the stats still make it a decent fallback weapon in the off-hand if you have the feats for dual-wielding, as a vibroblade will cut through shielded enemies that slow down lightsabers or blasters. It also makes a strong off-hand weapon for Canderous or Zalbaar.
• In Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order: In a game with so many characters that you treat them as equipment pieces (it's actually fairly late before you can actually start equipping characters), you start off with Guardians of the Galaxy which has Star Lord, the character who has the most number of synergy with other characters. In a game where synergy is a huge factor in winning tough battles, Star Lord can be used all the way so long as you take into account his lacklustre physical stats.
• Enforced in Tyranny: Barik's armor is fused so tightly that he can't remove it for any reason, although it can be upgraded at the Forge. So if you're using him as the party tank, any other heavy armor you loot becomes something to sell off.
• The Gadgeteer class in Wizardry 8 is a case of this. On the surface, they seem to just be rogues with guns and are weaker in combat, and start with a homebuilt gun that they occasionally tweak as they level up. The trick is finding gadget parts, which are usually far in between, and putting them together to assemble powerful weapons of destruction while that omnigun becomes one of the most potent ranged weapons in the game when its owner reaches a high enough level. If the player knows what she's doing, a Gadgeteer can become one of the most powerful characters in the party.
• Enforced in Xenoblade Chronicles 1; the Monado is the only weapon that Shulk can equip for the vast majority of the game, scaling its damage output automatically depending on his character level (everyone else needs to update and replace their weapon on a regular basis). It's not until the Wham Episode at the endgame that Shulk has the capacity to equip variants of the Monado with different stats.

Roguelikes

• Enterthe Gungeon: Has Blasphemy, the starting weapon of The Bullet, is a sword that doesn't require any ammo and can erase any bullets or special attacks flying at you with a single swing - in a game where dodging bullets is the primary challenge. That, and the fact that it also shoots relatively powerful projectiles when your character has full health. At worst, it's a simple way to rack up heart containers on easy master rounds; at best, it can turn even the end-game boss fights into a cakewalk when used properly.

Shoot 'em Ups

• Thunder Force VI: The starting ship, the Phoenix, counts, it starts with all of its weapons and both Craws, and never loses them on dying like ships from past games. This isn't so much that the ship is better than the others but that almost all ships on this game are broken, just go to the Game Breaker's page.

Stealth-Based Game

• Assassin's Creed: Newer, flashier weapons regularly show up throughout playthroughs in any of the games, but typically the hidden blade, the first weapon you get, will remain useful from start to finish.
• Some of the earliest unlocks in the Hitman World of Assassination Trilogy fall under this. The game gives you the ICA 19 suppressed pistol, three coins and the fiber wire from the get-go. While the pistol and the fiber wire usually get replaced with better or more utilitarian items (like the Silverballer, F/A pistol, or the Krugermeier for the former, lockpicks, scramblers, hammer, baseball bat for the latter), the coins have become something of a persistent item to bring along, in part because NPC's bend over to pick them up. When Hitman 3 launched, the Camera is literally this, as all levels let you bring it in to scope out areas ala a sniper rifle scope, as well as providing justification to take pretty pictures.
• Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty: You can acquire assault rifles, missile launchers, sniper rifles, grenades, and many other weapons. However, the weapon you will most often use is the M9 pistol modified to shoot tranquilizer darts (especially when you are going for a 'no-kill' playthrough). The silenced weapon doesn't trigger alerts from enemies hearing the shot, and it incapacitates enemy troops in a single hit to the head, a mechanic that all games after this have in some way.
  • In Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater the tranquilizer Mk 22 is even more useful, due to stamina kills being one of the focuses of the gameplay, though in return the suppressors can degrade with use and you don't get an easy-to-use Laser Sight with it.
• In Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor, all players meet Grûblik the Flogger as their first orc follower by branding him in a tutorial mission. However, while you can brand many other, better orcs later on; some players have stuck with Grûblik and even carried him to Middle-earth: Shadow of War for being a decent, if not an above-average quick and aggressive captain.
  • The sequel allows you to upgrade your followers and introduces a new class system for orcs. Destroyer orcs can specialize in throwing bombs. While you can upgrade them to deal elemental damage, some players prefer to leave them with basic bombs, since they stun enemies and don't have a chance to trigger any Hate traits.
• Syphon Filter: The air taser in the first game, it appears in your inventory at the start of the game and its enemy stunning abilities if pushed long enough will burn the enemies to crips, and it's considered a silent weapon so it doesnt alert the other enemies when it is used, making it one of the most useful things you can carry.

Survival Horror

• Dead Space: The game offers a slew of good tools and weapons for different situations, but the starting Plasma Cutter is such a versatile, reliable, Boring, but Practical weapon that a lot of players won't even bother even trying anything else. There's even the "One Gun" achievement for playing through the whole first game using only it. Since the game incentivizes picking only one weapon and sticking with it, it makes sense to go with the most versatile option available.
• Resident Evil – Code: Veronica: Has the knife. Yes, THE KNIFE. In this game, the knife has the interesting property of detecting multiple hits. This allows you to easily attack anything too slow to put you in a Cycle of Hurting. Even Hunters can be easily taken down this way. This means that you can save your ammo for nastier enemies. It's a piece of cake to beat the game this way with handgun or even shotgun ammo in the triple digits.

Third Person-Shooter

• In Aliens: Fireteam Elite, your starting weapons (i.e. the iconic Pulse Rifle and the pump-action shotgun) aren't the absolute best-in-class, but they're close enough that for all practical purposes it doesn't really matter, and they in fact slightly out-DPS many of the fancier weapons you can unlock along the way. Overall the game does a good job (with a few exceptions) of making sure all weapons are relatively balanced, so there's no "meta" gun and you can go with whichever one feels most comfortable to you.
• In Anthem (2019), the game intentionally has weapon scaling so that if your gear is lower quality/level than expected, the game will scale the enemies to match. Shortly after release, it was discovered that the scaling was more aggressive than intended, making the starting rifle the strongest weapon in the game. This has since been patched.
• In Remnant: From the Ashes, the starting Hunting Rifle, Coachgun, or Shotgun you get when picking your starting archetype can hold up all the way to the end of the game as long as you keep them upgraded. The Shotgun in particular recharges weapon mods faster than most other guns, so if your build revolves around spamming the hell out of a particular mod, you're probably going to want to put it on the Shotgun.
• Splatoon:
  • The Splattershot Jr. that new players start with is one of the most effective and easy-to-use weapons in the game. The main weapon uses very little ink per shot allowing it to be fired for a long time before needing to refill, and has a fast rate of fire with a fairly wide spread so it covers turf easily. Meanwhile, its loadout always includes the Splat Bomb as a sub weapon (giving it a bit of a ranged option) and a team-wide defensive option as a special. While the main weapon's wide spread combined with low damage and short range means it usually won't win in a direct firefight, thus making it a poor choice in ranked modes, it is nonetheless a regular sight in Turf War matches.
  • Your starter equipment can also serve as this, so long as you're okay with forever looking like a scrub. The game gives you headgear, clothing, and shoes that grant Quick Respawn, Ink Recovery Up, and Special Saver as their main abilities: while not the optimal combination for every weapon kit out there, especially if you're an experienced player who doesn't necessarily need the safety net that these abilities provide, they are still solid perks that are worth having. And if you like the rookie look but want different main abilities, then Splatoon 3 allows you to swap them out for different ones that do fit your preferred play style if you have enough ability chunks to do so.

Turn-Based Strategy

• Advance Wars has the Infantry. Weak, small, only three movement range, and no special weaponry. However they're cheap to deploy, can cross mountains, rivers, and shoals, and can capture properties. They seem small in a world of tanks, bombers, heavy artillery, and the science-fiction arsenal of Black Hole, but if you don't deploy enough Infantry to take properties and hold them, which in turn provides you much-needed funds and places to heal and resupply, you will lose that match.
• The BattleTech turn based tactical game provides several examples of very plain but very useful powers. Notably, all four of the starter skills are dull, but priceless.
  • Multi-Targeting allows the pilot to split their weapons fire between two or more targets. This is great when you have multiple weak targets to eliminate, want to suppress multiple enemies and remove their evasion stacks, or just have a weapons loadout with different optimum ranges and want to use each weapon for best effect.
  • Sure Footing gives a 'Mech an extra evasion stack and, provided it didn't run, jump, or charge in for a melee strike, will also reduce the stability damage it takes. This makes the 'Mech harder to hit in the first place, and still tough to knock down.
  • Bulwark grants a passive +20% boost to damage reduction if in cover or while guarded. This effectively increases your 'Mech's armor value by 40% as long as you are in cover.
  • Sensor Lock allows the pilot to detect enemies as well as jam their sensors, remove evasion stacks, and break an ECM bubble. This allows pilots to deny the enemy's attempts at stealth or electronic warfare.
• Fire Emblem:
  • In most games, iron weapons are available at the beginning and have the lowest damage output, but are surprisingly effective later on. Granted, this depends on enemy resilience, which varies by game, but overall they often get the job done if they're in the hands of a reasonably strong character. More powerful gear weighs down the user (lowering their speed) and has lower accuracy. Later games would add bronze weapons, which are even weaker than iron and available even earlier, but these don't fare so well as the game progresses, acting more as the typical noob equipment.
  • Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones has a character example in Seth, who is the most powerful unit in the beginning of the game and has stats rivaling your trained units even in the endgame. Unlike other characters of his archetype, Seth also has a high growth total with a good growth distribution, which means that he is much less likely to slow down in performance later in the game. He's pretty much essential for fast, efficient clears and it's often said that the game is even easier if it's just Seth and a lord. To top it off, Seth has the highly desirable Anima affinity, notable among other affinities for granting both offensive and defensive bonuses to any unit he supports with. He puts in a fairly strong argument for being the franchise's best character.

Other

• In the Give Yourself Goosebumps gamebook The Curse of the Cave Creatures, you're given a choice to start off as a Hunter or a Spellcaster. If you chose the latter, you'll be given a magic wand as default equipment and the option to pick three out of four spells. As it turns out, regardless the choice you make, in the Final Battle against the Cave Spirit your wand is compulsory — every other spell is useless and leads you to your death. Naturally, the book has several Schmuck Bait to trick you into losing or destroying your wand before the final encounter.
• In the Infocom Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy game, one of the starter gear objects is "the thing your aunt gave you that you don't know what it is actually is." It is impossible to get rid of, and it is also a Bag of Holding. You also start with "No Tea," which turns out to be crucial to solving the most important puzzle in the game.

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