You Can Kiss .04% Of My Ass!

So. RPGs. You are often awesome, but also often frustrating. Why, why, why must you make me seek out rare items from usually equally rare monsters? And even if the monster isn't rare, why is it that I could slaughter thousands and still just end up with nothing but potions?

Explain.

I make fun of this concept in RPGs all the time. "Oh, you can only get this awesome weapon from me if you go up to the dangerous avalanche prone snowy mountains of death and get a silvery golden hair scrunchy! One of the monsters there drops it! In the meantime I will stand here, torturing you with said awesome weapon of amazingness. You know you want it."

Okay. Since you can't just kill the random townsperson and take said item, you look on Gamefaqs or in the strategy guide and find out what drops this stupid item and how often. That's when you get the bad news. And when you go on the Gamefaqs message board 90% of the topics involve people asking how they can get this stupid item easier. And the horror stories of people who spent 45 hours trying to get it. 45 hours?! The game programmer wanted me to waste that many hours of my life looking, hoping for this stupid pixelated baddie to drop this fucking thing?! Why is this viscous beast carrying this item anyway?! He's holding money, too - hell, I'll buy it off him! How much does he want?

It's kind of ridiculous. And while it's not a hair scrunchy I'm currently searching for, the circumstances are nearly as stupid in Final Fantasy IV.

So there's this rabbit. Yeah, a rabbit. Here's the little demon spawn:
His name starts out as Namingway, but considering he's having some kind of identity crisis, he keeping moving around the world, taking on different career paths and changing his name every time. My personal favorite so far has been "Cheatingway, the two timer" after he panicked and revealed he was dating two human females at once. Disgusting reasons aside, I don't think any subsequent names will live up to that.

Especially his current one. "Puddingway".

I swear I am not making any of this up.

So Puddingway wants me to find this certain pudding for his girlfriend. (He was able to settle on one, apparently. The other girl is still crying her eyes out that even a hormonal rabbit didn't want her.) She wants a "rainbow pudding". And he'll wait here patiently until you bring it to him.

Great. Onto the web I go - where can I find this shit? And does it have anything to do with Bill Cosby?

So I find out what kind of monsters drop the pudding. I don't know about you, but I wouldn't eat some pudding that was dropped but some random disgusting blob monster:


Ew. And that's only one kind. Anyway, I find out these blobs are easy enough to find - no problem, right?

Wrong.

Then I get a look at the drop success rate.

0.04%

In case you ain't good at math, that's a LESS THAN ONE PERCENT DROP RATE. Are they kidding me?! And then I saw all the posts for people begging for help and the guy who spent 45 hours looking for a rainbow pudding dropped by a blob of mustard.

The rational side of my mind says: Fuck it. It's a game. Move on with your life.

But the gamer side says: ...I gotta complete this quest.

So what's a nerd to do?

I am by no means a completionist when it comes to games. In fact I rarely get 100%. But I have had times where I spent an godly amount of hours with a controller in my hand, slashing monsters with a sword and casting cure when needed. (Final Fantasy X and XII both come to mind...) But at the same time I have a life here. I have a job. I can't be chasing pudding until the wee hours of the morning for some stupid ass lazy rabbit that should be getting it for his own goddamn girlfriend.

So I'm gonna back off for now. Make the rabbit sweat a bit. Apparently there's some kind of augment I can get later in the game that makes it easier to get rare items. Then me and mustard blob can talk again.

In the meantime, rabbit, better change your name to Waitingway.