Exclusive Enemy Equipment

Any weapon or item that can not be found by normal means and is only available by searching the bodies of fallen enemies and/or by stealing from living ones. Common in First Person Shooters and similar games. If the item is found on the body of an enemy who did not or could not use it in battle, it may be an example of the Impossible Item Drop.

Contrast Unusable Enemy Equipment.

For the Role-Playing Game version, see Randomly Drops.

Examples (by platform):

Game Boy

• Starting with Pokémon Gold and Silver, the first games in which Pokemon could hold items, wild Pokemon would occasionally be found holding items. Sometimes these were common items like berries; other times, they could only be found attached to wild Pokemon, and even then only rarely. For example, a wild Chansey would sometimes be holding a Lucky Egg, which increases experience gain by 50% for the Pokemon holding it and thus speeds up leveling immensely. These could be found by capturing the wild Pokemon and taking the item off of it from the menus or by using a move called Thief on the Pokemon while fighting it. (Simply knocking out the wild Pokemon wouldn't cause the item to drop.)

Game Boy Advance

• Mega Man Zero 4 has the Z-knuckle, which allows you to obtain the weapon of an enemy if you successfully defeat one using it.

Game Cube

• In The Legend of Zelda the Wind Waker, Link can pick up and wield enemy weapons after defeating them (and sometimes they just get thrown aside through circumstance). Unfortunately, they can't be carried through doors and they're usually not that useful on the grounds that you've already defeated most of the enemies in the room (Phantom Ganon's awesome glowing sword comes to mind) and usually aren't as powerful as Link's own sword anyway.
• The Resident Evil remake lets you decide whether or not to give Barry back his gun after he points it at you. If you refuse, he'll die, and you'll get to keep his gun - a .44 Magnum that will One-Hit Kill anything, even the final boss.
• In Fire Emblem 9, the only way to get Poisoned Weapons is by stealing.

MMORPG

• In the MMO La Tale there are certain enemies who drop their weapons, such as the Bogles dropping their Bogle Swords. These weapons are usually much more powerful than store-bought weapons, but also much more difficult and expensive to upgrade as you level.
• City of Heroes uses this for certain costume pieces. Rikti and Rularuu Weapons, Vanguard Equipment, and Roman Armor can be earned via gameplay.

Nintendo 64

• There are certain weapons in GoldenEye which can only be obtained by fetching them off of bodies—even more, there are certain things James Bond can do with these weapons only on levels where an enemy can, such as simultaneously wielding a submachine gun and a grenade launcher, though he can use both independently on other levels and there is a Game Breaker glitch allowing you to dual wield separate items in other levels as well.

PC

• Dwarf Fortress's wooden weapons, which (aside from crossbows) can only be made by the elves. They're pretty much worthless for actual fighting, but they make great training weapons.
  • As of the new version, dwarves can now use the other 2/3 of the weapons available only by trading with foreigners or looting foreign invaders.
• The "Alien Weapon" in Marathon can only be obtained from the corpses of Pfhor enforcers. Depending on the game, it acts as a sort of flamethrower, or a very accurate rapid-fire weapon. The downside is that it's alien technology that you only know how to operate on the level of "point and shoot", and which is incompatible with your armor systems—you can't see how much ammo it has left, and can't reload it; just toss it when it's empty and pick up another one.
• Redneck Rampage had the Alien Arm Gun, which was an actual cyber body part that had been grafted to the aliens that fired it at you. You apparently rip it off their bodies after killing them, and fire it by yanking on dangling tendons.
• In the earlier X-COM games (UFO and Terror from the Deep) manufacturing alien equipment required a) prising the items from the cold, dead bodies of your opponents and b) having sufficient Phlebotinum. A run of bad luck could leave up unable to build various useful devices and weapons, leaving looting and pillaging your only way to increase your stocks.
  • X-COM Apocalypse also had this with some weirder items such as Brainsuckers and Entropy launchers... you simply couldn't ever build them. Anything you could build didn't require special resources, but certain things that you could only buy would cease to be available to you if their manufacturers decided they didn't like you or joined up with the aliens instead. Raiding an arms producer gave you the chance to grab loot at a 100% discount. This was the only way to obtain Marsec's (glitched) psi-defense helmet.
• Partial credit for Dark Forces—the weapon used by the Phase II Dark Trooper was not usuable by the player for most of the game. Eventually, Kyle's allowed to pick it up and use it.

PlayStation

• In Final Fantasy Tactics, certain articles of equipment never drop from any fallen foe, nor found in any shop, and can only be acquired by stealing from still active enemies, usually dangerous boss characters. Once the boss is defeated, the equipment is Lost Forever, unless it's a type that can be scrounged up with the Secret Hunt ability.
  • The original Japanese release of Final Fantasy Tactics had a problem with this. Elmdore was the only enemy in the game to have the Genji equipment, but he had the Maintenance ability which prevents you from stealing it, making it the only Exclusive Enemy Equipment in the game. Their American PS 1 port removed his Maintenance ability to allow you to steal his equipment. War of the Lions restored it, but added a Bonus Boss fight it could be stolen from.

PlayStation 2

• The Kingdom Hearts series features wands and shields that can only be scavenged from the enemies who wield them. The later games have one or two boss-level versions.
• In Warhammer 40,000: Warhammer 40,000: Fire Warrior, Kais often found himself deep into Imperium or Chaos territory, having to use scavenged weapons to fight. Unfortunately, you could only carry two weapons, and one of them had to be a Tau gun, which really sucked when you ran out of weapons for your other gun, and no Tau weapons were handy. The fact that the Tau weapons (in the original tabletop, easily the universe's best mass-produced weapon) were crap didn't help matters much.

Super Nintendo

• In Front Mission, the Calm and Gust Wanzer parts are only used and dropped by early enemies. Yup, they're so bad, they can't even be bought.
• Wild Guns allows you to pick up dynamite thrown by the enemies and toss it back at them.

Xbox

• In Halo, where the Covenant energy weapons, which must be retrieved from slain opponents in most of the game, are often the only ones available. Since they run out of energy quickly and cannot be recharged by the Master Chief, and the player is only allowed to carry two at a time, much of the game is spent scavenging weapons off of the dead. Fuel rod guns also explode shortly after the grunt using them is killed.
  • In the sequels, however, not only can you take Covenant weapons from their cold, dead alien fingers, but you can also find them in racks on purplish storage crates. These were usually better, too, as a Covvie weapon taken from a rack almost always had a totally full battery.

Multiplatform

• The Fire Emblem and Shining Force series do this often with the bosses' weapons which can't be found anywhere else but are very powerful and usually magical. In the case of Fire Emblem as the weapons break with use you'll never see the weapon again after it's broken.
  • Shining Force fortunately has the Egress spell, which returns you back to the last Abbey you were at. If you're good at Video Game Stealing, you can take multiple of a rare or unique item by refighting battles, and stock or sell the extras. Since this returns you to a town before the fight, you may even "arrive in town" with items you shouldn't have, and sell them for absurd prices. Heat Axe, anyone?
• In Assassin's Creed II, Ezio cannot buy or permanently hold onto Heavy Weapons (axes or two-handed swords) or Polearms, but must take them off those Elite Mooks (Brutes and Seekers respectively) and will drop them to do Le Parkour and several other situations; he can pretty much only carry them on foot at ground level while walking or jogging. By the time of Assassin's Creed Brotherhood, he can buy a Heavy Sheath to carry axes or two-handed swords (taking the place of the Medium Weapon slot) but still cannot hold onto polearms permanently.
  • There was an exploit in 2 where if the player's Medium Weapon (longsword or bludgeon) or Short Blade was knocked away by a Brute and he picked up another or disarmed a guard with one, it would "stay" with him (signaled by a "Weapon changed." message), though it might not appear in his Inventory or Armory, and might be lost; this could also be done after the story, since he would start with no Medium Weapon or Short Blade equipped. In Brotherhood this can be more easily done so long as one equips a Heavy Weapon at the Blacksmith or Hideout armory (after buying a Heavy Sheath), since their special attack is for Ezio to hurl it at his target or straight forward, leaving the Medium/Heavy Weapon slot empty for Ezio to fill with another Medium or Heavy Weapon.