Item drop

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An item drop—also called a "drop"—is a type of reward received in video games and table-top role playing games for beating an enemy or opponent; specifically a drop is a tangible object in the game world that the enemy possesses and "drops" when it is defeated. In some games the enemy may have and drop multiple items, and the item(s) may have been used by the enemy against you. An item drop is a guaranteed reward for beating the enemy; when an item doesn't always appear it is called a random drop or a rare drop.

The following are very common drops:

• Money
• Curative items
• Weapons
• Armor
• Raw materials (i.e. base metals or alchemy items)
• Tradable or exhangeable items that are otherwise useless to the player

Here are some examples of item drops:

• In The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, when you defeat the mace knight guarding Princess Zelda's prison cell at the beginning of the game, he drops the key to the cell so you can rescue her.
• In Digimon World 3, defeating a Cardmon will get you a Booster pack for the card game.
• In the original Megaman game, when Megaman defeated one of the Robot Masters, they would drop a container that held their weapon and Megaman had to pick it up. Other games show Megaman simply absorbing their energy to gain the weapon.

The following are not considered as "drops":

• Experience points—a representation of knowledge, skill and strength gained while fighting enemies and not gained from the enemy itself.
• Gifts—Some enemies do not die and give you items either as admiration of your strength and skill, or as a payoff to get you to leave them alone.
• Treasure—Some enemies guard treasures found in chests or rooms located behind them, and are merely blocking the way to them. In some games like Secret of Mana, enemies drop treasure chests, which represent item drops in that game.

[edit] Random Drops

A proper item drop is one that an enemy will always give up when defeated, in certain cases there is only a chance of getting an item, these are called random drops.

If an item is a random drop, then:

• If the enemy has a specific item, then there is a chance it will drop the item or not.
• If the enemy has multiple copies of a specific item, then there is a chance of dropping a random number of that item.
• If the enemy has muitiple items, then the enemy will drop one of those items, selected at random; or it may drop one of those items or nothing at all; or each item will have an independent random chance of being dropped.

[edit] Rare Drops

A rare drop is similar to random drop, except the chances of the item being dropped are very low; most often a rare drop is a valuable item that is dropped by a somewhat common enemy. In some situations, an enemy holds multiple items, some of which are fairly common and are usually dropped when defeated, but there are one or two valuable items that show up very rarely - these are often referred to or listed as the enemy's "rare drop". Also, in some games the enemy has an item as a random drop, or a multiple of that item as a rare drop.