Basic Trope: Your starting gear is perfectly adequate from start to end, perhaps better than other weapons.
- Straight: The "Start Blade" in "Alice's Great Adventure" can be used throughout the whole story without ever tapering off in quality.
- Exaggerated: The Start Blade is the game's best weapon, thanks to everything else being a Joke Item.
- Downplayed: The Start Blade has fine stats for endgame, but there's more than a few swords that knock it out of the park if Alice goes looking for them.
- Justified:
- The Start Blade is a Sword of Plot Advancement and is better than other swords for a reason.
- The game uses an Evolving Weapon system, so the player can make the Start Blade as strong as they want it to be rather than bothering with other swords.
- The game uses stat-scaling rather than simply determining that X weapon does Y damage of Z type. The Start Blade scales with an additional stat compared to every other weapon's one or two.
- It scales with all stats, and "Start" is actually a corruption of "Stat."
- One of Start Blade's uses is that it can start any machine whose keyhole it's plugged into.
- Alice's Great Adventure focuses more on playstyle than gear stats. The other weapons handle significantly differently, so that the player would have to spend an hour in the starting area to re-train themselves in their usage.
- The Start Blade has more SkillGem Slots than any other weapon.
- Inverted: The Start Blade (despite its name) is the game's final weapon and its strongest. Alice's starting sword, the "Finish Blade" (again, despite its name) is microscopically pitiful in comparison.
- Subverted: The Start Blade has enough stats to take Alice through the first two acts, but a Difficulty Spike makes it harder to justify keeping around.
- Double Subverted: If Alice does keep it around, it becomes the "Finish Blade."
- Averted: The Start Blade is Better Off Sold at the second merchant for a better sword.
- Enforced: "Alice's Great Adventure" has a durability system. The Start Blade never breaks and its stats follow the player's level to prevent it from being useless.
- Exploited: Alice keeps the Start Blade on her throughout the whole story not just because of its decent stats, but because the player knows a negative secret event is tied to the swapping of Alice's weapons.
- Defied: Alice is not allowed to keep her Start Blade beyond the first act, to avoid the player relying on it the entire game.
- Discussed: "Y'know, Alice...we're about to fight Emperor Evulz and save the world. I'm surprised your first sword lasted this long."
- Conversed: "My dad's Start Blade is so good. I don't even need to spend my money on other ones! I might just fight Emperor Evulz with it."
- Deconstructed: The world is in medieval stasis because the starter swords and items are so practical that people don't see the necessity of further technological development. Seeing this, Dark Lord Zurk develops a spell that renders him immune to the starter gear.
- Reconstructed: Zurk however does not account for immunity to starting attacks and abilities. Alice can't hurt him with the "Start Blade," but her first magic spell completely overwhelms him.
- Played For Laughs: Alice starts her adventure With This Herring, which shows surprising lethality against every enemy she faces, even the Big Bad.
Back to Starter Gear Staying Power.
