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While it's called '''Rare Random Drop''', the trope also applies to objects found in chests, treasure and other random things where the chances are very low, but those cases aren't as prominent as the [[Random Drop]] implementation.
Related to [[Luck-Based Mission]]. In [[Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game|MMORPG]]s, if players fight among themselves to get one of these it becomes [[Loot Drama]]. If you need lots of dedicated item-hunting to get anything remotely fun, see [[Earn Your Fun]].
{{examples}}
== Video
=== [[Action Adventure]] ===
* The ''[[Castlevania]]'' series has a lot of examples:
** ''[[Castlevania]]: Curse of Darkness'' has any number of items that only very rarely drop from enemies. This is the ''only'' way to acquire many of the materials needed to make weapons and armor. However, most of the materials can be stolen from ''other'' enemies, so it's not quite so bad. That being said, since stealing in this game works by locking onto an enemy, waiting for them to do a specific action that leaves them open for stealing, getting right next to them and then pressing a button, some of the items can be even more of a pain in the ass if you can only steal their item with a ridiculously good timing, using obscure gimmicks or avoiding a hard-to-dodge attack with perfect timing and be positioned correctly right afterwards.
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** Every relic except two in ''Lament of Innocence'' are found throughout all the levels, like good hidden items should be. With the exception of two. These two are the rare drops for somewhat difficult to kill monsters and it's rather frustrating to try to obtain them...
=== [[Fighting Game]] ===
* In ''[[Super Smash Bros.]]. Melee'', there is a 1 in 151 chance of getting Mew from a Poké Ball, and a 1 in 251 chance of getting Celebi. Disappointingly, they only appear and fly away, but reward you with a lot of points, and an alert after the match is done telling that you met them for the first time.
** This also happens in ''[[Super Smash Bros.]]. Brawl'', but with severely decreased chances of getting any legendary Pokémon at all. This being the case, however, most legendary Pokémon are much more lethal; Mew drops CDs, Celebi drops trophies, and Jirachi (who wasn't in ''Melee'') drops a ton of stickers.
** For all those die-hard completionists, Brawl's Subspace Emissary will be HELL. To get [[One Hundred Percent Completion|all the trophies in Brawl]], you have to play Subspace Emissary, and have a trophy stand randomly drop during all the [[Boss Battle]]s. When it comes to Meta-Ridley, it's incredibly frustrating - not only is there a ''time limit'' on the battle, but unless you have ABSOLUTELY PERFECT timing, the trophy will most likely drop into a bottomless pit if you're not fast enough. Luckily, trophy stands appear much faster in this battle.
=== [[First Person Shooter]] ===
* ''[[Borderlands]]'' is the [[FPS]] equivalent of this (its initial pitch: "[[X Meets Y|Halo meets Diablo]]"). It, too, has a list of super-rare ([[Downloadable Content|DLC]]-exclusive) weapons known as "Pearlescents". These [[Infinity+1 Sword|super-strong]] firearms drop at a rate of 1 for every 60 orange (the previous highest-level category) items. Of course, they're a ''little'' more prevalent than you might think, thanks to a [[Good Bad Bug|multiplayer glitch]] that allows for easy item duplication.
* The folks at Valve have decided to throw the unlockable weapons of ''[[Team Fortress 2]]'' into this category with rates based on time played, and made the achievements "useless." The first day had absolutely horrendous drop rates, and most of the time it was weapons you already had, so [[Sarcasm Mode|you can imagine how fun that was]].
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** And now with the Engineer Update, Valve has decided to gift 100 Golden Wrenches to the community, which you can find by chance for every time you use the crafting system. Given that well over 20,000 people are playing TF 2 at any given time, and the fact that you need items to craft in order to craft, the chances of finding one of these Wrenches is exceptionally low. This hasn't stopped the community from complaining about it, of course.
=== [[Hack And Slash]] ===
* The ''[[Diablo]]'' games feature items that aren't just randomly dropped, but ''randomly generated'' from thousands of potential combinations of attributes, special abilities and base weapon types. Runes (items you can place into other items to make them better) are particularly glaring, with some high-level runes having such tiny chances to drop (1 in millions, and even that requires finding enemies even capable of dropping the runes in the first place) that most hard-core players have never seen a legitimate one (ones created by hacks, of course, are another matter entirely). In fact, one person apparently estimated that one has a better chance of getting hit by a falling plane that was struck by lightning than one does of finding the rarest rune. Nobody knows if that estimation is true, but you get the idea.
** The rune example is fairly straightforward, but it can get much more complex: A base sword, for example, might have an inherent range of say 5 +/- damage and 10 +/- quality. So, just getting a "max" sword would take at least 15 rolls of that sword, of which, the top swords are also rare. Then, the top prefix is "Cruel," which varies between 200-300% added damage. The top suffix is "of Eviscration" which also varies by 20 points. It is estimated that maybe 1 sword has ever existed that was truly "perfect." You would need 10's of thousands of rolls to get a perfect roll, but you would probably need somewhere around 100 million of that sword to get 10k with that roll to even have a chance at the perfect stats. And then, there's the "Etheral" version, which is 1/3 as common as the regular version. Only 1 300% Cruel, Etheral, Elite class, 2 Socket sword has ever been found.
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* ''[[Ninety-Nine Nights]]'' is a terrible offender in this category, with the final boss being almost unbeatable without an item which randomly drops (Or more likely does not drop) from one of the finite number of enemies within the last level, often forcing you to restart the mission hundreds of times over before it finally drops.
=== [[Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game|MMORPGs]] ===
* ''[[Final Fantasy XI]]'' is such an offender that we won't bother to list any of these drops, there are just too many.
* ''[[World of Warcraft]]'' is another major offender. No need to add examples, the list would be nearly infinite.
* Played seriously straight in [[Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game|MMORPG]] ''[[Maple Story]]''. 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.
** The Malaysia exclusive map (guess what it's called) has somewhat broken drop rates- i.e. something around twice or thrice that of the original maps. ''This stacks with the event bonuses''.
** This aspect is where some quests become truly, stupidly hard. For instance, there's one quest where you have to find a little fairy's lost glass slipper. The slipper was stolen by the fire boar enemies in the mountains around Perion. No one is quite sure of the drop rate, but you can stand there and kill - quite literally - ''thousands upon thousands of fire boars'' and never see the item.
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* "Dynasty Warriors: online" has such a horrible way to deal with its [[Random Drop]]s that if you want something special you’ll probably have to deal with this trope.
=== [[Roguelike]] ===
* In ''[[Nethack]]'' this trope is primarily averted: every enemy will drop everything it carries upon death, and maybe something else that it wasn’t carrying too.
* ''[[Ancient Domains of Mystery]]''. 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 [[Random Encounters|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).
=== [[Role Playing Game]] ===
* ''[[Final Fantasy IV]]''. Two words: Pink Tails. They are held by one enemy, found in one room, with approximately a 1-in-64 chance of encountering it ''and'' a 1-in-64 chance of dropping the proper loot once defeated—and that's the only way to get the best armor in the game. For those of you who didn't study math, that's a whopping 1-in-4096 chance per encounter. 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 odds are the same (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.
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* Although not an item, recruiting a Metal Slime or its family members in ''[[Dragon Quest V]]'' 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.
=== [[Turn Based Strategy]] ===
* ''[[Final Fantasy Tactics A2]]'' murders you thanks to this trope. What you can buy is determined by what pieces of loot you bring to the Bazaar, which is determined solely by how much of a lucky bastard you are. This means that it's almost impossible to tune your team to your liking until much, much further into the game, since most classes require that you have enough abilities in others to unlock them... and abilities are granted by these same items you depend on luck for finding. So you end up having to get by with whatever you have available.
** Or by looking at the ''guaranteed'' loot given for completing a mission.
* ''[[Eternal Eyes]]'' has many different items available as drops, but one of the most valuable is Magical Puppets; they're the raw material for your [[Mons]], and each one you get equals a new unit. All monsters can drop them, but the chance is ''very'' low, and if you don't waste a turn opening the treasure chest it's in (no way to tell until you open it, of course), it stands a good chance of being destroyed by one of its former allies. A few chapter ends will simply give you a new puppet, so you ''will'' gain new units if you progress through the story normally, but if you want to expand your army further? Get to grindin'!
== Non-
=== [[Web Comics]] ===
* Parodied in ''[[Sluggy Freelance]]'' when Torg plays an [[Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game|MMORPG]] and is beyond frustrated with his first quest.
{{quote|'''Torg:''' "I've been putzing around for ''hours'' beating little salamanders to death with a stick in the hopes of [[Organ Drops|getting a tongue]] out of them. And it's annoying because apparently not too many of them actually ''have'' tongues."}}
* In ''[[Cheer]]'', Alex and Lita get trapped in an MMORPG world (thinking that they're dreaming) and are asked to get a Rat Tail that is "dropped" from rats. Lita, who has played the game on her computer, [https://web.archive.org/web/20140829144808/http://www.cheercomic.com/?date=2009-02-27 tries to get the item drop through the normal methods]. Alex, who has not, gets tired of waiting for the "drop" and [[Cutting the Knot|just uses her newfound magic powers to remove the tail from a dead rat]].
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