Infinity+1 Sword

So, by the time you earn it, there won't be any evil to kill with it.

"Final Fantasy games give you a choice: you can either spend forty hours playing underwater foosball or watching chocobos screw or whatnot, which eventually gives you your ultimate weapon so that you can defeat the final boss pretty handily. Or, you can spend those forty hours actually fighting the final boss. It's up to you. You want a quick game, go play pinball."

—Lore Sjoberg, The Book of Ratings

It's the very best weapon in the entire game—even better than the Sword of Plot Advancement and the Infinity-1 Sword. But, in order to get it, you've got to put the plot on hold and embark on a five-hour Sidequest! That, or go around killing enemies until one of them Randomly Drops it.

One would think in the time needed to finish the subquest could be better spent on Level Grinding, so the Infinity+1 Sword is often more useful because it has other associated stat bonuses, unique to the character, rather than merely being stronger than other weapons (or so strong, that even leveling up can't give you that kind of strength). Also, it's unlikely the dungeon the sword is in will be uninhabited; in fact, the monsters there tend to be very XP-rich anyway.

Sometimes the sword has not been forged yet—if that's the case, it's time to call in the Ultimate Blacksmith.

If the bosses you need to defeat for it aren't optional, that overlaps with Last-Disc Magic.

As noted, this doesn't actually have to be a sword.

Of course, a Rules Lawyer will always be able to use their intimate knowledge of set theory to speculate on the cardinality of the Infinity.

Compare Penultimate Weapon, Infinity-1 Sword. Do not confuse with More Than Infinite. Infinity+1 Element is this applied to Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors. Likely to be Level-Locked Loot.

Examples of Infinity+1 Sword include:

Video game examples

Action Adventure

• The Biggoron Sword in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. The sidequest required to get it had several Guide Dang It events in it, particularly giving the saw to the carpenter's boss, where it is only vaguely hinted that the gray-skinned man possessing the saw was his son, and to boot, he's in a location (Gerudo Valley) that is unlikely you would visit at the time you start the quest, so by the time you would finally get it, you would have missed out on using it in more than half the dungeons.
  • Although it may be unlikely that a first-time player would do this, it can be obtained as soon as Link becomes an adult, so it is very useful.
    • Also, in the remake of OoT for the Nintendo 3DS the map on the bottom screen shows the location of the next person to go to.
  • Majora's Mask has not one, not two, but three Infinity Plus One Swords. The first is a "normal" sword, the Gilded Sword—while not too difficult to obtain, it requires a lot of money and good timing to get to. The second, the Great Fairy's Sword, actually counts as a C Button item instead of your usual sword—it requires hunting down fifteen Stray Fairies in the fourth temple, which you have to get all in one day cycle, and returning them to their fountain. The last Infinity Plus One Sword, the Helix Blade, comes free with the Fierce Deity's Mask—but in order to get that mask, you have to get every other mask in the game. And even then, you can only use it in boss encounters.
  • The Magic Armor in Twilight Princess, which can be a major Game Breaker during boss fights. It lasts as long as you have rupees, because when you run out it becomes an Artifact of Doom, slowing Link down.
    • The player can get around this restriction by collecting all the poe souls, which breaks the curse on Jovani and rewards Link with infinite rupees. Of course, without a guide book around, it takes several hours of scouring Hyrule to complete this sidequest, which renders it pretty pointless in a game where the boss battles aren't exceptionally difficult.
  • Link's Awakening has the boomerang as the Infinity Plus One weapon - it can kill almost anything, including the final boss, in one hit, and if you still have the magic rooster, one can throw the boomerang and then fly around invulnerable. Although the Magic Rod, a mandatory weapon, is pretty much as good, if not better against certain enemies. There's also the Level 2 Sword, which you get by hunting around for 20 Secret Seashells all over Koholint and then turning them in at the Seashell Palace. Not only does the Level 2 Sword deal twice as much damage as the regular sword, but if your health is full, the famous sword blast from the original game makes its return.
  • The Master Sword, which was an Infinity-1 Sword in most of its appearances (except for its series debut in A Link to The Past, in which both the Infinity-1 Sword and Infinity+1 Sword were upgraded versions of the Master Sword and not separate weapons, as well as its chronologically first appearance in Skyward Sword; see below), gets more respect in the Oracle games (gameplay-wise, as it is not plot-relevant in those games), in which it can be (optionally) obtained by linking the two games together and completing a sidequest. (The Infinity-1 Sword in these games is the Noble Sword.) However, this requires one game to be completed, so it doesn't have much use in that game after it's obtained. (Nothing stopping players from replaying the games in the other order to get more use out of the Master Sword, though.) The Biggoron's Sword appears as well and is obtained similarly to the Master Sword, but it is swung more slowly than the standard one-handed swords and prevents Link from being able to equip anything else without unequipping it.
  • The very first game had an Infinity+1 Sword as well, in the form of the Magical Sword.
  • A Link to The Past has the Golden Sword (no relation to the Gilded Sword of Majora's Mask), which is actually the Master Sword after it has been upgraded twice (with the previous form, the Tempered Sword, being the game's Infinity-1 Sword).
  • The Minish Cap, being the Origins Episode of the Four Sword, has it, which was previously seen as (series-wise, not chronologically) the legendary blade of The Legend of Zelda Four Swords and The Legend of Zelda Four Swords Adventures, as its example.
  • Skyward Sword, being the Origins Episode of the Master Sword, has variants of it as both the Infinity-1 Sword (in the form just called the Master Sword) and Infinity+1 Sword (in the form called the True Master Sword).
    • Skyward Sword also has the Hylian Shield (making this an Infinity Plus One Shield), which unlike the other three shields you can get, doesn't actually take any damage. This is the best shield in the game, and is earned after beating 8 (and only 8) bosses in the Thunder Dragon's challenge.
• Okami features the String of Beads, which basically turns Amaterasu into even more of a god than she already is. It gives you infinite health and ink (the game's equivalent of magic power) and ten times attack power. To get it you must collect all 100 stray beads, which entails completing pretty much every sidequest in the game, among other things. Naturally this a huge Game Breaker, but since the final bead is received upon beating the game, it is a New Game+-only item. Incidentally, this is also an instance of 108, since the beads are the "stray" small beads from the rosary of the mythical Princess Fuse, which broke when she committed suicide (though she's alive and well in the game world). The eight big beads are the power orbs held by her canine warriors.
• The Spur in Cave Story (Not so much the Sword part as the Infinity Plus One part; it's the most powerful weapon in the game). Actually, it's an upgrade to the starting weapon: the Polar Star. To obtain it, you must avoid trading it for a superior weapon until you reach a certain point.
• Castlevania: Symphony of the Night contains a well hidden sword called the Crissaegrim that attacks with four near-simultaneous blows at once, can strike as fast as the button is pressed, and deals significant damage with each individual hit. It also allows you to walk while attacking, whereas most other weapons don't allow you to. And you can wield two of them. However, it is found on only one very weak enemy in one location that has a 1-in-1000 chance of dropping the sword. Needless to say, the player has only a snowball's chance in Hell of ever accidentally finding it.
  • Symphony of the Night also has the Ring of Varda, the "Golden ring to rule over all!". Yes, that is the item's description in-game, and appropriately so. The ring gives you ridiculous stat bonuses which absolutely unbalance the game. And if one isn't enough, you can equip two of these things! It's so awesome that the game only allows you to collect it if you started a new game after you've beaten it at least once. Otherwise, the monster that drops this item will drop the similar-looking Turquoises in place of a Ring of Varda, which can be sold to the librarian, but is mostly useless.
    • And to a lesser extent, the Runesword, which flies out in front of the player and has a ridiculous range.
  • Though this is more like a "Infinity Plus One Shield," the Alucard Shield, when used with the Shield Rod, becomes the strongest weapon in the game. Yes, even more broken than the easily game breaking Crissaegrim. As a bonus, it is also far easier to obtain.
    • To clarify, you put the Alucard Shield and the Shield Rod in each hand, press both buttons at the same time, and you can actually drain enemies' life away just by touching them with the shield.
  • And let's not forget the Duplicator, which can be bought from the librarian for 500,000 gp, and is also only available after beating the game at least once. While equipped, it allows unlimited use of all items that would otherwise be consumed when used. (Although it does reduce your stats, but that can be fixed by the Ring of Varda)
    • Need convincing? Obtain the Power of Sire, which deals heavy damage to all enemies on screen multiple times and does not drop from any enemy (meaning if you use it, its gone forever).
  • Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow offers up a Crissaegrim-like weapon with slightly shorter range called the Valmanway. Unlike SotN, where the Crissaegrim can be picked up halfway through the game if you've got the bravery and the time to waste, the Valmanway can only be picked up as a reward in Boss Rush Mode, which isn't unlocked until you beat the game at least once.
    • However, the Claimh Solais can be casually picked up in a secret area. Also, the Hard-mode-only Silver Gun. And the Chaos Ring, after obtaining all souls.
    • Speaking of the Claimh Solais... Word of warning, even though it's an awesome weapon, make sure you have a backup weapon when fighting Julius Belmont. He's the hardest boss in the game AND he's got holy resistance. If you at least don't have a decent mundane or dark sword for a backup, prepare for a world of hurt. He's so badass, even game breakers fail to work against him (or at least not work as well).
    • The Valmanway is still the ultimate (crown) sword weapon in Dawn of Sorrow, but now it's only available through item crafting. The downside? It requires two boss souls, which you can only get one of per playthrough. So if you make the Valmanway, you have to give up two useful and relatively unique souls. It's incredibly worth it, though, as the Valmanway, despite limited range, absolutely destroys every early boss and most end bosses.
    • The Valmanway returns yet again in Harmony of Despair and continues to be the single most broken weapon for Soma, an already broken character when maxed out. With the correct soul combination he can use it for what is basically health regeneration with every hit and infinitely floating in one place out of many a boss' attack ranges with the correct soul and accessory combinations. And the Infinity+1 Sword gets an infinity plus one version with the Valmanway +1. It makes the game incredibly easy for Soma, but insanely boring for anyone who ends up grouped with a Valmanway Soma. Which is likely as 80% of players online use him for some stupidly boring reason. Oh, and did we mention you can dual wield them?
    • You have an alternative though: Death's Scythe. It is Exactly What It Says on the Tin and requires you to get the Golden Axe first, a very powerful overhead weapon that can only be crafted with a very rarely-dropped soul. Once you have it though, and once you have Death's soul, you can fuse the two together and get this weapon.
    • Neither of those two weapons hold a candle to the Gungnir. In addition to being a source weapon that can be picked up as you go through the game (meaning you do not even have to build it up from the paltry spear), most of the souls required to build the Gungnir are enemies that are EASILY farmed (and it requires no boss souls, meaning you still have a shot for the Chaos Ring). The final soul which is in the Pinnacle can be farmed almost comically because the bugbears needed come neatly lined up in a row for you to kill. And once you forged it, dear Barbara... the normal attack hits twice, has a long reach and the charge attack goes all the way across the screen. That's right, it's attack reach is even LONGER than the gun. The only thing stopping it is off screen damage.
    • The Claimh Solais needs to be crafted, and is much slower than in Aria, but is still one of the best weapons in the game. It has a special attack that covers most of the screen and does ludicrous damage, at the cost of a fair bit of MP.
  • Portrait of Ruin hands you a ridiculously powerful sword, the Royal Sword, for a fairly simple quest early on (A-Rank Hunter). It's one of the strongest weapons in the game, boosts several stats, and has only one disadvantage - a slow swing speed. Its only competition is... the Vampire Killer, which starts out ponderously weak but can be boosted with the defeat of a relatively simple Bonus Boss. The Vampire Killer is weaker than the Royal Sword, but it's a lot faster and has the quite-useful Holy elemental affinity.
    • If you have a wireless connection, you can use the Nintendo WFC shop to buy a Rose Stem Whip for the low, low price of 4,800 gold, long before you would find it otherwise. It's the strongest non-elemental whip in the game.
    • Portrait of Ruin also had a pair of weapons actually more powerful than those: Alucard's Spear and the Final Sword. Alucard's Spear is given to you by Wind, the guy who gives out sidequests, if you managed to master the Javelin subweapon (basically killing nearly a thousand enemies with it); the Final Sword is a rare drop from a giant armored warrior that, while having only 50 hit points, is resistant to everything.
  • Order of Ecclesia, in keeping with the Nintendo Hard nature of the game, doesn't really have anything especially gamebreaking. The equipment gathered from the bonus dungeons, while useful, isn't powerful enough to fall under this trope either. The closest thing to an Infinity+1 Sword Shanoa has is the Nitesco Glyph + Sword Glyph any weapon glyph except Redire combo; a laser BFS that is the most powerful attack in the game. in addition, there is an extremely costly room clearing "final attack" where the background goes super nova when fusion is done on a light and dark magic, which clears the entire room of any non-boss monster, and deals at least triple digit damage, but it costs 50 hearts.
    • Notice that the best attacks are Glyph Unions. The Judgment ring boosts the power of Glyph Unions when equipped. With it equipped, the Blast Attack (the light + dark one) does about 8x your INT stat in damage if it hits a weakness (as near as I can tell). With a whole lot of Hearts (190 is the max you can have in a single runthrough), the Robe Decollete, a + 8 INT helmet (such as the Stephanie), and the Death Ring (from a dead end in Castlevania) equipped and the Dominus Agony back Glyph active, you can kill any enemy weak to either light or dark attacks in a matter of seconds, before they even get to attack. Dracula is weak to light attacks. You do the math. ...So, it's not so much an Infinity + 1 Sword as an Infinity + 1 equipment set. ...And then you can get the Queen of Hearts helmet, which cuts the number of Hearts you need for Glyph Unions in half, by completing a Hard Mode New Game+. Oh, and if you spend more time than any human being should have to farm gold, your Miser Ring (which can be found in chests) becomes an Infinity + 1 Ring.
• The Mace in La-Mulana. To get it, you must solve a puzzle involving weights and balancing a scale out; on top of that, if you mess up the puzzle, congratulations, it's gone for good. Should you manage to get it, you can make it even more powerful by equipping the Castlevania and Mahjong Wizard ROMs.
• Alundra 2 has this quest to gain the most powerful sword in the game, you must do a Trading Quest all over the world.

Action Game

• The Flamethrower from the SNES version of Zombies Ate My Neighbors (Sorry, Genesis players!). There's only one of them in the entire game (400 shots), so once you run out of ammo, that's that. And it's pure Guide Dang It to find. But it does fry up Giant Spider Bosses quite nicely!
• The UV 9 "Pulsar" ultraviolet laser rifle from Crusader: No Remorse can only be bought from Weasel once late in the game and takes a lot of cash. You need to restrain yourself from desintegrating enemies troughout the game to have the money to get it when it's possible. However, the thing can strip all the soft tissue from any living target in one hit and blows up the strongest robots in three shots that don't take a lot of energy compared to the more common plasma gun. Keep in mind that the micro missile launcher is even more destructive,but it's ammo is very rare and it's not nearly as much fun.
• The eponymous Infinity Blade from Infinity Blade.
• In The Tower of Druaga, the best weapon is the Excalibur or Hyper Sword, found on floor 45. It's an even trickier Guide Dang It than most treasures, requiring two other treasures (one unusually placed on the same floor) to keep it from turning into a Potion of Death or an Infinity Subtracted from One sword that does no damage.

Adventure Game

• Nethergate has Infinity Plus One spells. The Nether Circle spells can only be found in certain dungeons, and to cast them you must be able to cast the highest-ranked spell of their associated spell circle.

Beat Em Up

• An unusual non-weapon example, the "Fist of God" punch in God Hand. Not only does it do 100 damage, it can be charged to do four times as much - and this is without releasing the God Hand, which adds another multiplier to the damage. A single hit from a fully utilised Fist of God can kill bosses in one or two hits! Appropriately, the move is only available through New Game+ and costs 600 000 gold, which is about as much as an average playthrough of the game will net the player, making obtaining it a matter of either ignoring all the powerups to save money, or spending a rather long time in the casino.

Driving Game

• In F-Zero Maximum Velocity, there is an Infinity Plus One car that also functioned as an Infinity Minus One as well. To get the Jet Vermillion, you had to A: beat every league(4) on Master difficulty. With the first 9 cars you unlock. You could also do B: race on the Championship Circuit 255 times. That is, all 5 laps, 255 times. You could also take a 3rd option: cheat. Either gameshark it or use the ingame password system. What makes this an infinity + -1 object is that the car itself is horrible on paper but awesome in practice, because of the one stat not listed in-game: The time it takes to decelerate after a boost runs out. Case in point: it's the car that holds the world records on every course but one, due to it's inability to make one jump for a shortcut.
• Gran Turismo 5 features the Red Bull X2010, created as a joint project between Polyphony Digital and Red Bull Racing. The idea behind the car was essentially "let's go build a race car that isn't bound by any stupid league restrictions!" The car features over 1400 horsepower and weighs only 550 kilograms, and can achieve lateral acceleration levels of 8.75 G's (in comparison, real-life F1 cars get anywhere from 2-4 depending on speed) and has a top speed of over 500 km/h. It is so fast that there is zero competition for it from any AI racers in-game and it is disallowed in all 'serious' online racing rooms. Acquiring the X2010 requires you to score at least Bronze on three time trials that feature the X2010 - the time is actually easy for anyone with simulation racing experience and a wheel, but scoring Gold is the hardest challenge in the entire game. Only a handful of people have gotten Gold for all three trials with a standard Play Station 3 controller.
• T.T. from Diddy Kong Racing. He has the highest acceleration and top speed of any character, and middling handling, which makes almost every race in the game an utter joke - but to get him, you have to have beaten the entire game already, then beat very challenging times on every track in the game. It's a refreshing challenge in an otherwise fairly easy game, which upon victory then makes the easy game even easier.
• In Road Trip Adventure, acquiring all the stamps gives you access to the Devil Parts. The parts comprise mainly of the Devil Tyres and Engines. Their stats are given as "unimaginable" and can take you from 0–349 km/h in a matter of seconds and can stop to a standstill from the maximum speed instantaneously. They are also able to reverse to speeds of 700 km/h, making the act of driving backwards faster than driving normally. They can be considered as a Game Breaker although all races, challenges and mini-games have to be completed before being able to unlock the demonic Devil Parts.
  • It doesn't stop you from trading the parts with a second player and , thanks to a Good Bad Bug, can be given to your teammates as well, though the game doesn't tell you that. They also cost you a super pretty penny that would require copious amounts of grinding for money.
• In the "Story" mode of Final Lap Twin on the Turbografx 16, you can't buy the best car parts, you have to find them. Once you do, your car becomes the Infinity Minus One Car. Getting all the legendary parts and taking them to a mad scientist gives you the Infinity Plus One Car, which hits the top speed without turbo, has almost limitless (and functionally useless) turbo fuel, turns without skidding no matter how fast you're going, and all but flies through the air when it hits a ramp. And the final race in the game is still extremely difficult, because the guy you're racing against has the exact same car.

Fighting Game

• In Dissidia Final Fantasy, each character has exclusive weapons, equippable only at Level 100, that are tailor-made to improve their unique aspects, and are usually the best weapons those characters can use (though there are some non-exclusive Level 100 weapons that are more useful). However, none can compare to Exdeath's ultimate weapon: Enuo's Scourge. Aside from its stats (which are good, but just as good as the other ultimate weapons), it has, like the other Exclusives, added effects based around the character. For Enuo's Scourge, those bonuses are Brave Point boost on block, and an effect called Riposte, which makes every attack a critical hit if done to a staggering character. Exdeath's abilities are based around blocks and counterattacks, meaning virtually EVERY hit he does will be done to a staggering opponent, reeling from their attacks being blocked. Boosting his Attack rating will make his critical hits do absurd damage, ensuring you'll be doing several thousand points of damage with each of his counters. And this is with a character designed to counter everything.
• The driving forces behind the events of the Soul Series of fighting games are the twin swords Soul Calibur and Soul Edge. The Soul Edge was a legendary sword sought after by countless warriors. Unfortunately, said sword is actually an Artifact of Doom, whose hobbies include devouring souls, slaughtering innocents, and becoming its wielder's Super-Powered Evil Side. The Soul Calibur was a sword created to destroy Soul Edge. The swords are often the ultimate weapons of the characters. Ironically, the motives of many characters revolve around destroying one or both of the swords, rather than claiming them as their own.
  • Talking matters of actual gameplay, the Calibur is generally treated as the "Plus One" sword and the Edge the "Minus One" sword. Soul Calibur generally bestows a Healing Factor on your character because it's a holy weapon and it's no slouch in combat either. Soul Edge is typically a monstrously powerful weapon that can cleave anyone asunder in seconds but will exchange your own vitality to accomplish that (so while you're intentionally making your own character more susceptible to damage and voluntarily handicapping your health, Soul Edge is strong enough to make up for that and thus be more practical as the Calibur is typically locked away as the "ultimate" weapon for a character). This does not apply if the character is canonically wielding said weapon (such as Cervantes using the Soul Edge swords in Soul Blade or Siegfried wielding the Soul Calibur in SoulCalibur IV).

First Person Shooter

• The Sniper Rifle and Laser sight in Left 4 Dead 2 can be considered one such weapon. The base Sniper Rifle kills any non-special infected in 1 shot, and most specials in 2 or 3. It also has semi-auto fire capability. The problem is, if you walked and fired with it (which, given the game's gauntlet crescendos, will be very often) the accuracy is so pathetically diminished you'd be wasting more ammo than with a full automatic rifle. However, getting the Laser sight almost completely erases this problem, and it effectively becomes a shotgun (the only other non-special weapon that can cause a kill with one shot to anywhere on the body) with 300 bullets (the tier 2 shotguns all have only about 130 bullets). Did I mention it can also pierce through several infected at once? Unfortunately, while the Sniper Rifle spawns resonably in most levels, the Laser sight is an extremely rare commodity. One level does have a scripted spawn for both, at the same place, but at that point you're almost done with the campaign anyways.
  • In The Passing campaign, there's the M60, a huge machine gun that never has to be reloaded, kills common infected in a single shot, and can shred a Tank fairly quickly thanks to its firepower and no reloading required. The only downside is the gun cannot have its ammo replenished and it can only be found once or twice in the whole campaign.
• In Conduit 2, the Dark Star fulfills this role, but it can only be found upon completing the game.
• In Quake, the lightning gun comes close to such a true weapon, especially when Quadded, and approaches a GM-level, Not Meant For Mortals level of weapon. If you include the 2x Rune from the quasi-official Capture The Flag mod, and yes, it did make it 8x, then no player could survive the briefest of swats from it. In fact, not much short of Superman or the magically, AKA mathematically, invulnerable could survive 8 lightning bolts at once, or, in game terms, approximately 800 dps, continuous. And that's in Quake terms, where a fighter with max armor (armor = hp there) and double health had about 450 hp equivalent. 900 hp, if you count the damage-halving rune from CTF. 1000 hp if he had that and chugged two of the max-health power ups, thus they'd last a little over 1 second under the strain. Scale that to the top end tank in the game of your choice.
  • Of course, attempting to fire the gun while even touching water instantly electrocutes you even at base damage.
• The FarSight from Perfect Dark: an Imported Alien Phlebotinum sniper rifle that's massively overpowered and features insane penetration to the point of being able to shoot through almost any wall and barrier, coupled with an Infrared X-Ray Camera scope that tracks other players for you. Yes, that's right: it can see through walls. The only disadvantages to it were a slight Sniper Scope Sway and a slow firing rate, but the rest of its attributes more than made up for it.

Four X

• The Aldrin Springblossom corvette in X3: Terran Conflict. It's faster than any fighter except the Spitfyre (also built by Aldrin), has the shielding of a small capital ship, and has the cargo capacity required to kill capital ships by either Macross Missile Massacre or Death of a Thousand Cuts from ammo-consuming guns (most weapons are Energy Weapons). Getting it requires you to finish the first plot, then laboriously gather up weapons to fit it with (it can't mount standard Commonwealth or Terran weapons).

Hack and Slash

• The sword Hymir's Finger in Drakengard. It is only unlocked by completing the Inevitable Tournament, accessible in a side-story unlocked for the third ending, in under five minutes. It is a gigantic BFS that, when fully upgraded, deals about twice the damage of the second-most damaging weapon in the game and one-shots two thirds of the game's enemies, has one of the longest reaches, can hit multiple enemies per swing, and knocks over enemies with every blow.
• Starting in "Dynasty Warriors 3" all the playable characters can obtain an extra fourth weapon aside from the normal three. These weapons in any version can be a real case of Guide Dang It as each character must play on one particular stage, completing a series of various tasks. This must also be done on the hard difficulty setting, which makes things even more challenging. Each weapon would give HUGE stat boosts to various different stats, which are different for every character. Also some of them added an element to the characters moveset. But of course that wasn't enough for Koei, so instead they decided in the Dynasty Warriors 3 Xtreme Legends update to add in fifth weapons! Same rule of obtaining them, but on a different stage, and this time you have to do it on the new VERY HARD DIFFICULTY! Good luck getting them all!
  • More Genre Savvy players will notice that the tasks required to achieve the fourth weapons are often very similar to actual events featured from its derived work of literature.
  • In the XL version of Dynasty Warriors 4 fifth weapons are obtained by playing each characters Legend Mode on Very Hard and getting the best rating.
  • Fifth weapons were surprisingly not included in Dynasty Warriors 5 XL, and in Dynasty Warriors 6 fourth weapons were removed as well.

MMORPGs

• Final Fantasy XI has Relic weapons that literally take years to get, and that's if you have a crapton of money. The upgrade process is so convoluted that the developers have actually stated that only the most insane players can get them.
  • Mythic weapons are worse. To start, it requires climbing a Bonus Dungeon to get a weak version of the weapon, killing a bunch of Bonus Bosses, some of which appear at the end of another Bonus Dungeon, followed by collecting things that require completing the same content over and over (with one item in particular that has the drop rate of a Pink Tail, yet THIRTY THOUSAND is needed), and this is followed by a series of Fetch Quests and Bonus Boss battles all leading to get three items that also have a Pink Tail drop rate. And if these items don't drop, the whole series of Fetch Quests needs to be restarted. This is capped by a final Bonus Boss where if failed, will require another set of the three items mentioned earlier. The kicker is that the Mythic weapons are seen as less useful and less powerful than the comparably easier to get Dynamis relics. We're still trying to find out what the developers are smoking, because there are time-sinks, and then there are Bottomless Pits.
  • And now there are Empyrean Weapons (because we enjoy watching years of effort gone to waste). The Empyrean Weapons currently do not possess particularly impressive stats outside their damage rating... except that they come bundled with a token weapon skill that threatens to desensitize us to discrete values. The Masamune's Tachi: Fudo has been reported to hit for 10,000 damage on an Adamantoise Boss, which is probably more than a majority of players could even parse over the course of the entire fight. Considering this is only their midstage form, that would make them Infinity Plus Two weapons once they're completed.
• World of Warcraft has a set of weapons that are extremely difficult to acquire. So much so that they have their own rarity category, Legendary. Some of these items drop from certain bosses at ludicrously low rates (Illidan's Twin Glaives of Azzinoth, Thori'dal,) others require a number of pieces of the item that drop from bosses at a high rate which combine to form a broken version of the item that has to be repaired through some sort of quest (Atiesh, Val'anyr,) others combine the best of both worlds and require multiple items with ludicrously low drop rates that the player must use as part of a quest to form them (Thunderfury, Sulfuras.) Additionally, the Kael'thas fight in Tempest Keep temporarily grants the entire 25-player raid fighting him a number of these items (which fade in 15 minutes or when you leave the area) as a sort of Eleventh-Hour Superpower.
  • Some of them have been removed from the game however. Ateish, the only legendary item for non-healing casters (Locks, Mages and Boomkins) was removed when Wrath of the Lich King lanched.
  • Recent updates to Wrath of the Lich King have added two more Legendary class items: Val'anyr, a mace for use by healers that must be crafted from rare drops from Ulduar bosses, requiring a number of trips through the instance to gather them; and Shadowmourne, the sister-axe to Frostmourne, the sword borne by Arthas himself. It can only be obtained at the end of a very long questline requiring many trips through Icecrown Citadel to gather rare crafting materials and feeding the nascent axe the souls of 1000 inhabitants of the instance, culminating with the defeat of many of the hardest bosses in the instance while the wielder of the nascent axe does special actions during the battle.
  • The Cataclysm has brought 2 more weapons. The first being Dragonwrath, a new caster staff that requires going into Firelands for mats and in the Nexus dungeon up in Northrend. Said staff can also grant the wielder its own unique flying mount. The 2nd is the Fangs of the Father, a pair of daggers made only for a Rogue. The questline requires going into the Dragon Soul raid to gather the mats and going to Ravenholdt and Gilneas for the specific questlines.
  • There are also allegedly "artifact" quality items only available to GMs with stats such as "Kill all enemies in a 30 yard radius. (Cheater.)"
    • Artifacts are in fact 'real' items in WoW, but are only found when created specifically by a Game Master. Martin Fury was accidentally given to a player in 2009 and used to kill nearly 15 of what at the time were the most powerful bosses in the game, including the 25-man hard mode of Obsidian Sanctum. Needless to say, bans were issued and at least one GM lost their job.
• The game Ragnarok Online has the godlike equipments. Each is made by a quest that takes certain almost unattainable items dropped from the castles, so only the leader of a guild can get them. AND, if that wasn't enough, the quests themselves are unlocked by having yet another uncanny quest completed by 50 diferent players. And the items ARE worth it, even.
  • That's just the official ones. Donation items in private servers can devolve into Infinity Plus Five items.

Platform Game

• In Ratchet and Clank, one could simply purchase the R.Y.N.O., the most powerful gun in the game... for a whopping 150,000 bolts. The price for the different versions of R.Y.N.O increases with each game.
  • In Tools of Destruction, one cannot even buy the R.Y.N.O. IV and must run around looking for pieces of the blueprint. The reason for this is because Gadgetron deemed the weapon too dangerous and not only discontinued it but scattered the blueprint throughout the galaxy (the guy who gives you the thing in exchange for the complete blueprint even casually mentions it's banned in three galaxies). Seeing as how this same company had no problems with making and selling a portable black hole launcher (point away from face), it should come as no surprise the new Rip Ya a New One is a major Game Breaker.
    • Many of the pieces are just hidden in plain sight, but a few are real Guide Dang Its if you're on your first playthrough and/or don't use your map much. The Stratus City, Rykan V, and Kreeli Comet pieces spring to mind.
    • Also, the Game Breaker status is somewhat mitigated by the fact that you can only get the last piece literally moments before you face the final boss. Who has enough health to take every single shot of a fully loaded R.Y.N.O. IV and still not die (though it does take more than half of his health).
      • And that is why the developers were kind enough to give us New Game+. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you, the Omega RYNO 4-Ever. Upgradeable for increased damage, of course.
    • The trend is continued with theRYNO V. Good news, there's less schematic pieces to collect, and one can locate them all with the updated Treasure Mapper Gadget (Though the last piece is found right before the final fight with Nefarious). More good news, it's also a major Game Breaker.
    • The RYNO VI can only be unlocked if one completes all of the secret lab challanges. Fortunately, it can be used during the final boss fight (But it'll still take tons of shots).
  • In a similar vein, Ratchet: Deadlocked gives us the Harbinger/Supernova, created by Dreadzone after one of its top gladiators stated that the R.Y.N.O. was a "Weak sissy from the sissiest place in Sissyland." To top it, not only is the Harbinger/Supernova absurdly powerful, it has a special Omega version that can be upgraded a grand total of 99 times, and have a damage rating of 10,000. The thing is (possibly because it's a major Game Breaker), you can't pick up any ammo from ammo crates; you have to buy it at the vendors.
• Sonic the Hedgehog 2 first gave players access to Super Sonic after gathering all seven Chaos Emeralds in the bonus stages. Completely invincible, superfast, and with ludicrous jumping ability. Hell, even touching him makes quick work of bosses. The Sonic Adventure games made him into an Eleventh-Hour Superpower, due to him being too broken to use during regular gameplay.
  • Sonic 3 and Knuckles gave Tails and Knuckles a Super form as well, neither of which have been seen in-game since...
  • Combining Sonic 3 and Knuckles could get you Hyper Sonic (assuming you got both Chaos and Super Emeralds), which is Super Sonic with a dash ability that could clear all enemies from the screen. If Super Sonic broke the game, this shattered it into microscopic pieces.
    • The Super and Hyper mode were 100% completion type bonuses which took a while to unlock and gave you the true ending, so it was seen as an award for doing so (the first Sonic had emeralds but no Super/Hyper mode and they added in there to reward the player) so it doesn't intrinsically ruin a normal runthrough of a game, and it *is* optional.
  • After a long time, Sonic Colors brings back the Super Form and introduces it into 3D, something previous Sonic games haven't done. While it's more a Bragging Rights Reward as it requires you to gather all the red rings and beat every Sonic Simulator stage, it makes getting S ranks much easier since being in the form will grant you points every few seconds. Only catch, you can't use it in boss fights.
• Mega Man ZX had the Omega biometal, which you could only acquire by either beating the Bonus Bosses (accessed by plugging in two Mega Man Zero games) or Omega himself on normal and then beating the game. Its special ability is an infinite Overdrive to get a crimson aura similar to Omega's. All of the special sword attacks have elemental properties. All normal shots are instant charged blasts and on top of that, infinite usage of Zero's old Giga Crushes, including the Rekkoha.
  • OX isn't actually the best thing to get the dolls; remember, getting the necessary Rank 4 involves not hitting the boss's weak point, and OX is basically a slower ZX with extra bells and whistles. The real reason to get Model OX is to have fun with the full-charge down-buster Beam Spam.
• In Mega Man X, the Hadouken and Shoryuken. And Maverick Hunter X made the Hadouken usable on the final boss..
  • Mega Man X Command Mission has X's new version of the Ultimate Armor and Zero's Absolute Zero armor.
• Mega Man Zero
  • The first game has the Jackson cyber-elf, which grants invisibility.
  • In Zero 3, entering cyberspace in the penultimate level forces you into a Bonus Boss battle with the first game's Phantom. The reward for defeating him is the Ultima Boots, which possesses all the abilities of the other Foot Chips.
• Mega Man Legends has the shining laser.
• Kirby & the Amazing Mirror has two Copy Abilities, arguably the two best ones in the game by a mile. They are also the only two abilities in the game that can perform all three ability-specific actions: cut strings, break gray blocks, and pound pegs.
  • Smash gives Kirby "familiar fighting moves", specifically his moveset from his appearances in the Super Smash Bros.. series, which includes attacks from several other abilities. For most of the game, it's only available by beating a Master Hand or Crazy Hand miniboss, until you hit every big switch in the game to unlock the copy ability room.
  • Master, an upgraded Sword ability, is given to you for the final boss battle, and after clearing the game it becomes freely available in the Hub Level. It can take down nearly any regular enemy in one hit, as well as taking out minibosses in a matter of seconds. More importantly, it can break blocks, pound posts, cut ropes, light fuses, and anything else you'd need to solve any puzzle in the game, encouraging you to hunt down any treasures you missed.
    • It's also the only ability in the game which, if you lose it, is not instantly destroyed upon contact with spikes. In fact, it doesn't even time out, giving you all the time you need to get it back.
• It's prequel, Kirby's Adventure, featured the very rare UFO which couldn't be taken between levels and let the player fire one of the most powerful attacks in the game at will.
  • Likewise, Kirby Super Star featured two: One in the Milky Way Wishes section which grants the Copy ability, allowing Kirby to get any ability in the game before obtaining it. However by the time the player will find that, it's all but useless as they'd already have access to all the abilities anyway. The other is more arguable as you always have access to it, but the Wheelie Rider ability is designed to be a hard-to-use complete game breaker with extremely high damage stars... that only work in two player mode.
  • Kirby Squeak Squad also featured the Ghost ability, which allows Kirby to take control of any enemy. However by the time you get it is useless as you've already cleared most of the levels and the ability itself has limited usage.
• Wario Land 4 has the Black Dog/Big Lips/Big Fist/Black Dragon items, which can be bought for about 20 mini game coins before any boss battle. However, this isn't merely an equippable weapon that's powerful, nope, you just enter the boss battle, and get to watch the item being used to send the boss to literally two health points from death before the battle even begins.
• Iji's Null Driver.
  • Practically, the Massacre, as the Null Driver is a LITERAL Game Breaker.
  • The Massacre "only" requires playing through the game without killing anyone. The Null Driver requires collecting every ribbon and finding every secret poster (many of them Guide Dang It), as well as beating every sector in Sudden Death mode. Then you have to make it through the entire Bonus Dungeon with a single hitpoint.
• The Legendary sword and armor in Wonder Boy in Monster Land, the former of which is obtained by defeating the well-hidden King Demon boss. In the sequel, Wonder Boy III the Dragons Trap, you start out with the Legendary equipment and lose it after being cursed, but you regain it towards the end of the game.
• The Water Sword in Prince of Persia: Warrior Within. To obtain it, the player must complete an optional nine-part "quest" which spans the whole game. On top of that, the plot actually forks, depending on whether the player enters the final boss battle with it or not.

Real Time Strategy

• The Terminator Armour suits in Dawn of War 2. There are 3. One you get in a main quest mission. The other 2 you can get in 2 side quest missions, that are the most difficult missions in the entire game (the last mission is a walk in the park after this). One involves killing an insanely powerful Warboos after going through waves and waves of looted tanks and nobs. This is the easy one. The hard one involves killing an Eldar Avatar of Khaine that is invulnerable to all melee weapons and some ranged ones, after going through scores off Fire Prism tanks to get to him. And both of them have at least 100 times more hit points then all your units combined. And they heal.
  • Though there're serious discussions about "are Terminator Armour better than Power Armour", especially Avitus. One of the reason for this is another IPOS: Neverending Hail of Destruction. This godly Heavy Bolter can do ungodly amount of damage to almost everyone (except against Monstrous Creatures or vehicles of which the punishment is reduced, but your team will have other stuff to counter these problems anyway). If you bring it to the final battle and turn on Focus Fire frequently, Avitus can basically hold a section of the line on his own.
• Company of Heroes' Jagdpanther and King-Tiger are literal personifications of this trope, (albeit they aren't swords but more like Tanks with BFG's) though the Jagdpanther is a more pure version and the King Tiger is this with a mix of Mighty Glacier. They become more so when you realize that both of them are only attainable if you select a certain doctrine (Tank Destroyer Tactics and Terror Doctrine, respectively) and only come into play very late in the Skirmish games.

Roguelike

• The Trident of the Red Rooster, from Ancient Domains of Mystery (aka ADOM), is unquestionably the best weapon in the game; it grants immunity to every element as well as see-invisible and a massive mana boost, has especially awesome damage and accuracy with useful slaying properties, and also automatically returns when thrown. It is also necessary for the best endings. Unfortunately, it is gained after finishing a series of Guide Dang It sidequests, many of which are also pretty Luck Based. It's kind of amazing anybody's ever collected it at all.
• In the Roguelike Shiren the Wanderer, the most powerful sword in the game cannot be found in dungeons or on monsters; it has to be created by finding the most powerful sword you can find in dungeons or on monsters, upgrading it to the maximum level, and then have a blacksmith upgrade it again to turn it into said sword. That's still not the best weapon in the game though. The REAL Infinity+1 Sword is the result of many dungeon runs and a painstaking amount of Item Crafting. After getting the sword, you need to acquire every weapon in the game that has a special property and fuse it to the sword with Fusion Pots in order to get what you want. And you really need to tell the difference between a normal pickaxe and an indestructible pickaxe. Since the entire process probably requires you to complete everything in the game, and the use of warehouses means that this can only be used in the main dungeon that you will have already completed, this is also an example of Bragging Rights Reward. (And possibly Too Awesome to Use, unless you're playing the SNES version and have a Dividing pot and two Withdraw scrolls.) But hey, at least you got yourself a sword that has a swastika on its hilt and a blade that looks like an impossible energy burst, right?
  • Mah boi, this sword is what all true Wanderers strive for.
  • And it goes quite nicely with a Rasen-Fuma shield that halves explosion and fire damage, prevents theft of your items, cannot rust, slows hunger, increases your chance to dodge normal attacks, reflects magic, and returns half of any normal damage done to you.

Role-Playing Game

• According to the game info in Breath of Fire I, the hero's best weapons are, in order: Dragon Sword, Emperor's Sword, Tri-Rang. The player will realize during gameplay that the order actually goes: Tri-Rang, Emperor's Sword, Dragon Sword.
  • The Tri-rang is the 2nd strongest of the 3 weapons, but is the lightest AND hits everyone on the screen. To get it, take Adult Nina (and her Great Bird form) behind a tower at the top of the world map. No level grinding, no epic sidequests, just find the tower, press B, pick up Uber-weapon. Of course, if you didn't read the FAQ, you won't know it's there.
  • You can get the Emperor's Sword by checking behind the throne after you defeat Jade. While it doesn't give you the area effect that the Tri-Rang does, it does more damage overall, making it useful for boss fights...if only it didn't pale in comparison to your Super Mode.
  • The Dragon Sword...isn't even very good; it's worse than a variety of weapons the main can use come end of the game, INCLUDING the strongest storebought weapon available to him.
    • For those wondering why you'd even bother with the Dragon Sword: It's one of five Plot Coupons you need to access your Game Breaker ultimate Dragon form. And, with a little Sequence Breaking, you can obtain it very early in the game, just after Karn joins your party. Enjoy your Disc One Nuke.
• In Breath of Fire II, Spar's ultimate weapon, the 9-TailWP, can only be won from a certain enemy called the Zodiac in the Infinity dungeon. However, the random drop rate is only 1-in-256, and even worse, the Zodiac will usually drop an ArmyGL instead, a much more common piece of armor.
• In Breath of Fire III, it's not so easy: The Goo King Sword can only be obtained from the (You guessed it) Goo King. First of all these enemies don't show up often. Then, unless you're faster than lightning and manage to steal its beloved Green apple, it'll flee. If you succeed, you must fight it, and it is the hardest normal monster in the game. Also, you get the weapon by chance. Yes. You have to beat it and HOPE you'll get it as a reward. The best way to ensure a better chance..is to fight TWO of them...and even then, you'd be better off just moving on a little while ahead and fighting the Big Bad.
  • • The semi-ultimate weapon, the Royal Sword, is much easier to get though. You can either find it as a reward of a small Sidequest in the Desert of Death or buy it from Manillo if you have caught certain rare types of fish in the fishing game.
• This gets worse in Breath of Fire IV, where the ultimate weapon for Scias, the Render, can only be acquired after repetitive fishing for tens of hours, and when acquired isn't actually that great, since its power depends on how many enemies you've fought. Then there's the Slayer, which can only be bought after the game is over from a cameo character from the third game, and starts out as a "Rusted Sword". This sword has an abominably low attack power, and you need to kill no less than 1000 enemies with it before it turns into the Slayer!
• Chrono Trigger's Frog has as his central life's goal the acquisition of an "ultimate" sword called Masamune. Of course, since it is obtained as part of the plot relatively early on, it is supplanted by vastly superior weapons as the game goes forward. One of the endgame quests that can be undertaken before the battle with Lavos is a quest to refine the Masamune into an even more ultimate sword, which is truly Frog's best weapon.
  • Also in Chrono Trigger, giving a certain stone to Melchior late in the game will allow him to create the Rainbow Sword for Crono, arguably the most powerful weapon in the game, with a ridiculously high critical hit ratio (70%!!).
    • The DS Remake rewards you for defeating the new Bonus Boss with an even more ultimate weapon (The Dream Blade) for Crono with an even more ridiculously high critical hit ratio (90%!!!).
  • About half the characters in Chrono Trigger get these. Before you can get the Rainbow Sword, for example, Lucca uses that same stone to create the Wonder Shot, a gun with randomized damage output which is, on average, the strongest weapon in her arsenal, by far.
  • At the end of his personal end-game sidequest, Robo picks up two weapons: the Terra Arm and the Crisis Arm. The Terra Arm is his best weapon by stats alone. The Crisis Arm has the potential to be even stronger then that. Its damage algorithm is decided by the last digit in his current HP count. If that number is 0, it does nothing. If that number is 9...
  • Ayla, who fights with her bare hands, starts out with her weapon classified as "Fists". Level Grind her enough and that will change to "Iron Fists" which confuse enemies on a hit. Level grind her even more, and these turn into "Bronze Fists" which will score 9999 damage on a critical hit. Every. Single. Time.
    • And in the DS remake, you can earn an accessory from the first Bonus Dungeon that can only be equipped to Ayla. The Valor Crest not only gives her a 50% counterattack rate when hit, but it boosts her critical hit rate. Now, imagine the possibilities of combining that with the Bronze Fists.
    • Also in the DS remake, Robo can obtain a weapon with the same effect as the Bronze Fists.
  • In Chrono Cross, the spirits that inhabit the Masamune (plus their older sister) transmigrate into that game's main character's weapon, becoming a weapon even more ultimater than the one Frog got. AKA the Mastermune.
    • Also in Chrono Cross, Glenn (who happens to be named after Frog's human form) can acquire the legendary holy sword, Einlanzer. This seems to be his Infinity+1 Sword, until you go to a parallel reality and get that world's version of Einlanzer - after which Glenn will use both at once.
• The various Ultima (or Celestial) Weapons in the Final Fantasy games. Sometimes requires the completion of a really long side quest, or clearing the Bonus Dungeon.
• The final dungeon (which takes place on the moon) in Final Fantasy IV has an optional sidequest, where you must get a Pink Tail from a Pink Puff to acquire Adamant Armor, the best armor in the game, bar none. It's helped by the fact that everyone can equip it. The only problem is that the tail is so rare, you will spend hours aimlessly walking around their very small spawn area because the combined encounter and drop rate is around 1 in 16082.
  • If you're playing one of the "Hardtype" versions (anything except II US or IV JP easytype), then you can use the Siren item to guarantee an encounter with the Flan Princess. Too bad the drop rate is still ridiculously low, though. At least 1 in 251 sis slightly more realistic of a chance.
  • And they expanded this subquest in the DS remake: now there are several critters that drop tails at ridiculously low rates. Even the Treasure Hunter augment doesn't really help much (as all it does is double the drop rate). That said, there is a bonus to doing the expanded quest: the gear you get from it is the only gear that you can take with you in a New Game+.
• Even though some of the Twelve Legendary Weapons from Final Fantasy V are the best of their type, some, like the Excalibur, are outclassed by weapons like the Ragnarok. Then there's the Brave Blade and the Chicken Knife, whose power falls and rises respectively depending on how many times you fled battles. The Chicken Knife is the more popular option, though.
  • Final Fantasy V also had the Excalipur/Excalipoor, a sword used by an anticlimactic boss near the end; while its attack stat was incredibly high, it would usually do a ridiculously low amount of damage. That is, unless you threw it or used it with Goblin Punch, either of which ignored its special effects...
• What is actually named Ultima Weapon in Final Fantasy VI is the Infinity + 1, but its mechanics keep it from being useful until the final dungeon. Its attack power depends on the user's max HP and level and it ignores defense, so at higher levels it'll ignore do several thousand damage a swing and with the right stat bonuses it can easily do 9999 damage.
  • The Ultima Weapon is rivaled by the Lightbringer. It has 255 power, boosts Speed, Strength, Stamina and Magic by 7 (+ 7 is the highest boost any equipment piece gives), and + 50 Evade and Magic Block. It also automatically scores a critical hit at the low cost of 20 MP per attack, and has a random chance to cast Holy to do even more damage. You get the Lightbringer by betting the Ragnarok in the Colosseum, which is also a very good sword in its own right though inferior to the Lightbringer.
    • Originally, the weapon was translated into "Illumina" which may be the more prolific name among the English community.
  • The Advance bonus dungeon introduces a new Infinity Plus One Weapon for each character, including the swords Apocalypse and Save the Queen.
• Ultimate weapons in Final Fantasy VII are remarkably easy to come by. In the most extreme case, you have to kill an optional boss. Some of them have bits of Guide Dang It, but there literally isn't a single one that doesn't have the requisite hints in the game itself. Level 4 Limit Breaks, on the other hand, are either stupidly simple to get, or require acts too bizarre as to make you wonder what the hell the developers were smoking. The worst is Tifa's Final Heaven, which requires you to play a piano in a flashback, choosing a particular option, then a minimum of twenty hours later, go back to that same piano and play the same tune from memory. And if you don't have Tifa in your party it doesn't work. Whoops.
  • Uniquely, all the Infinity+1 Sword weapons are made more powerful if you know what they're linked to. The Ultima Weapon, for example, is more powerful based on Cloud's current HP to max HP ratio. The same goes for Cait Sith's HP Shout. The Missing Score, Barret's ultimate weapon, does more damage if it's equipped with fully upgraded materia. The Venus Gospel and Limited Moon (for Cid and Red XIII respectively) do damage based on their current MP to max MP ratio. The Conformer for Yuffie does more damage the higher the enemy's level. The Death Penalty for Vincent increases in power based on his number of kills with any of his weapons. Finally, the Premium Heart for Tifa increases in power based on her Limit Level and Bar. The higher both are, the stronger it is.
• The weapons themselves don't become ultra-powered in Final Fantasy VIII, but Squall's final weapon gives him his final Limit Break: 17 consecutive hits that almost always do 9999 damage each. If he gets an 8-hit wind-up, that's 250,000 damage—more HP than the final boss has...
  • And Squall will always get the full range of hits on Ultimecia, because he gets a special Renzokuken attack sequence for the final boss.
  • Squall actually has a special Renzokuken sequence for a few enemies and bosses throughout the game; the most memorable, in my opinion, are Tiamat (which is tantamount to a CMoA if you finish her with it) and Jumbo Cactuar (which is a serious CMoF due to its/his/her reaction to every hit).
• A variation exists in Final Fantasy IX, whereby in order to obtain Steiner's Infinity+1 Sword, the Excalibur II, the player has to go from the start of the game to a point roughly halfway through the final dungeon and search in a specific area, in less than 12 hours. In a game that spans four discs.
  • This time limit is infamous for making One Hundred Percent Completion impossible on the EU version due to the game not having been adapted to the European 50 Hz refresh rate, which makes it run a bit slower while the timer (which is linked to the PSX clock) runs normally.
• The ultimate weapons in Final Fantasy X come in three parts each, some of which are fairly simple to uncover (you'll stumble on Auron's almost by accident) and some of which are legendary in their frustration value.
  • Auron's in particular is nearly a Game Breaker - it boosts his damage based on how injured he is, making it possible to deal maximum damage (and one-hit-kill most compulsory bosses) at a relatively low level if he's badly injured.
• Final Fantasy XII features several weapons that are only made available through completing difficult subquests, most of them involving gathering rare items that only drop from certain monsters once in a blue moon. These weapons include the Ultima Weapon (of course), the Danjuro, the Whale Whisker, the Tournesol, and the Zodiac Spear. Ironically, the Zodiac Spear, most powerful of them all, is actually the easiest of the game's uber-weapons to get...provided one has a strategy guide so one knows which chests not to open in the early part of the game.
  • The most ridiculous is the Wyrmhero blade; you have to kill Yiazmat and Omega Mk XII, and then complete a fishing mini-game to get the components for it. Of course, now there's nothing to use it on.
• In Final Fantasy XIII any weapon can be an Infinity+1 Sword but you have to level it up and use an item that costs 2 Million Gil or farm a certain Boss in Mook Clothing (there is a trick to make this easier) and pray for a drop. Using these weapons gives the AP + 1 ability in the addition to the weapon's normal effects...this is the only way to get this ability. Even though these are the Ultimate Weapons, more upgrades are available. Leveling the sword to maximum power requires an additional 1.6 Million gil, though this is hardly necessary; a fully-leveled team can quickly defeat the final Bonus Boss using fully-powered Tier 2 or basic Tier 3 (Ultimate) weapons.
• Vaan's Anastasia sword in Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings starts out as a fairly average weapon (he'll probably have better ones especially if you've been crafting, and you should). After going through an incredibly grueling Bonus Dungeon with freaking Yiazmat as the Bonus Boss ten times the Anastasia becomes the most powerful weapon available to Vaan. How powerful? He'll be able to take down the aforementioned Bonus Boss by himself.
  • It doesn't even stop at ten times, in theory, with enough grinding, it's possible for Vaan to become enough of a power house that he'll even one-hit-kill the final boss fight's level 100 bahamut(which his attacks is usually ineffective against).
• The four mystic weapons are one of the many optional collections available in SaGa 3. They seem to have a unique element associated with them that bosses (and Dwelgs, for some reason) are weak against. There's even one boss that can only be killed with the mystic weapons.
• Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles had a set of Infinity Plus One equipment for each of the four races. The problem? To get items created, you have to get an item's crafting scroll, and the right materials, and then take to a blacksmith and have it made. All of the ultimate weapons require a rare drop, sometimes multiples, from the boss of a particular dungeon, and virtually require you to own a Game Boy Advance to know how to get enough points to have a chance of that drop set appearing. This is mitigated by the consolation prize: Even if the item you want doesn't appear, there's still some good loot to be had.
• Final Fantasy I has a lesser example: Masamune, the most powerful weapon in the game (it gave by far the highest attack and accuracy bonuses, had the highest critical hit rate and, unlike virtually all other top-level weapons, could be used by any class) was acquired on the penultimate floor of the final dungeon, but only if you took a relatively long detour, making it still an example of this trope.
• Save the King, Save the Queen, and Ultima Weapon in Kingdom Hearts. In Kingdom Hearts II, you can create each of these (using a somewhat more streamlined system) and acquire the Fenrir Keyblade, which is slightly stronger than Ultima Weapon though the latter has useful magic bonuses. And just to go over-the-top, once you've made these things you can make them again, this time adding a "synthesis enhancement" ingredient, to make the Infinity Plus Two versions. (Not so much for Ultima Weapon, as there only exist enough Orichalcum+ in the game to make it once.)
  • Fenrir is simpler to get than Ultima. You just have to beat a Bonus Boss, rather than collect a bunch of items. But easier? That depends of if Sephiroth is That One Boss for you.
    • Birth By Sleep has the Ultima Weapon again, and a Keyblade made out of Ice Cream called Sweetstack that is slightly weaker but has a 100 percent Critical rate. In addition Terra and Aqua have additional weapons that have incredible attack power but magic so low it's in the negatives and vice versa respectively.
• The Devil's Arms from Tales of Symphonia had variable attack power based on how many enemies the character in question had killed throughout the course of the game, and you could even save the kill-count for New Game+ for truly insane power. However, their true power was only available after beating the game's toughest boss.
  • Tales of the Abyss had the Catalyst Weapons, which worked roughly the same way: weak as hell when first acquired, attack-power-based-on-kills after beating the most powerful boss in the game. Additionally, said boss also holds the best Capacity Core in the game; you can only acquired this by stealing it from her, and you can only steal from her when she's staggered, which, as you might guess, does not happen often.
  • The Fell Arms in Tales of Vesperia work the same way. After you defeat the True Final Boss, the Fell Arms' strength increases by the number of kills that the character has acquired. Combine this with the cape you receive from defeating Dhaos in the 200 man melee that transforms Destruction Field into a massive attack known as Dhaos Blast and Yuri becomes an absolute monster in battle. The difference here is you can keep the activated weapons on a New Game+ and they remain activated. Fortunately the ability to save the kill-count was removed or they'd be the mother of all Game Breakers. As it is, it still takes a good while to grind enough kills to make them the best weapons again in a new game.
    • The Play Station 3 version to save kill-count was added to the grade shop, and isn't particularly expensive either. To compensate (though barely), if you power up all the Fell Arms, the final boss gets a new third form. Also, even with the extreme attack power they can rack up, it'll barely be enough to fight the Spiral Draco.
  • Though not a weapon, the "Star Breaker" Gauntlets and the "Healer's Ribbon" errr...Ribbon, give you the Technical 3 skill, which means ALL ARTES cost just 1 TP. Couple that with Marta's broken speed casting late game and you've got an infinite photon/prism sword/divine saber combo, which can trap the final boss, making sure he never TOUCHES YOU.
• In Romancing SaGa, there is a Special quest reserved for the Ineffectual Loner (He is the only one who can hear the spirit of the sword) that involves you actually forging the Infinity+1 Sword known as the Demonbrand. Also it starts off as a rusty katana perhaps better suited to cutting food. Video.
  • But to be fair almost all tempered weapons in that game can become the Infinity+1 Sword through tempering.
  • In Romancing SaGa 3, there are a few Infinity Plus One weapons for each weapon class. The best one is probably the Dragon Spear, which has awesome damage and an exclusive waza that also deals a lot of damage. It's also the hardest one to get, as it Randomly Drops from Dragon Rulers.
    • You can get a two for one deal if you are playing as Harid and going for his strongest weapon; the boss guarding the Infinity+1 Sword is a Dragon Ruler! You can net both Sword and Spear in one go.
    • This can also be true in the Ice Galaxy since the guardian of the Ice Sword (Best 2 handed sword which also damages the enemy that attacks the wielder) is a Dragon Ruler also.
• In Star Ocean the Second Story, the final weapon of the main hero is the "Eternal Sphere", which can only be made through a certain path of upgrades from a unique sword gained from the Inevitable Tournament. If you sell off that sword after acquiring a better one, unaware of the inherent and entirely unmentioned potential, you can say bye-bye to the Infinity+1 Sword.
  • The upside? With a bit of luck and a little more Save Scumming, you can aquire the Infinity+1 Sword as soon as you can leave town.
• The four Infinity +1 Weapons of EarthBound can be earned as random drops from defeating a certain type of enemy (different for each). It's a grind, however: the weapon only has a 1 in 128 chance of dropping.
  • And Ness' is actually found after the Point of No Return, and you can't even save with it without backtracking to the beginning of the last area, and can't use it for anything but that area and the final boss. (He at least has an Infinity-1 Sword, but that's beside the point.)
• Each Shadow Hearts game has sidequests for each character to obtain their best weapons and most powerful skills. These often require actions being taken throughout the entire game, in addition to the main storyline.
• Persona 3 has the Monad Block, a Bonus Dungeon only accessible the first time in January. The best weapons of each type are found in rare (yellow) chests on specific floors. They usually have 400 attack power and 99% accuracy, as well as an additional effect. Persona 3: FES, however, has even better weapons, which are created via the game's new Item Crafting feature.
  • Persona 4, unfortunately, is a little more annoying about it. The true best weapons for each character cannot even be found except in a New Game+, and even then can only be collected by beating down a randomly appearing Bonus Boss. It's not a terribly hard bonus boss, if you prepare properly, but each time you beat him he'll only drop one item. This means that to get everyone's weapons you'll have to beat the exact same boss seven times. Then seven times again if you want to get everyone the best armor in the game.
• Technically not a weapon, but still increases your characters' powers to ridiculous levels, the Sheriff Star is an accessory in most Wild ARMs games that you obtain after fighting Ragu O Ragula, the most difficult Bonus Boss in the largest Bonus Dungeon in the games.
  • In Wild ARMs 4, 5, and XF you could make your own Sheriff Star. It was usually very pricy and often required use of the Black Market, which you shopped with character levels instead of money. This graph shows how hard it was to make a Sheriff Star in the fourth game from scratch, without relying on stealing or random drops. Yes, you read that right, 8080 levels and near 1.5 million gella.
• Tales of Phantasia has "Excalibur", a sword markably better than the game's purported Infinity+1 Sword, the Eternal Sword. To get it, you need to visit the secret dungeon below the Morlia Mineshaft (which has the most powerful enemies in the game, The Very Definitely Final Dungeon notwithstanding). Conveniently, you also get the spear version of this, a weapon you've had once before but had it confiscated, and the most powerful summon in the game—three Infinity Plus One Swords for the price of one dungeon.
  • In later Tales games (except for Tales of Symphonia, the prequel of Phantasia), the Eternal Sword itself was the Infinity+1 Sword, generally won by defeating Cless, the protagonist of Phantasia, in some kind of arena. He's generally a lot stronger and faster than he was back then. For extra fun, turning the difficulty up adds in either Phantasia's White Mage or witch. (Keep in mind, the White Mage can stop time.)
    • It should be noted that in Tales of Eternia, the Eternal Sword was only the ultimate weapon in terms of sheer power, sacrificing other stats for it. Not to mention its Time element weakens it against certain enemies. The game had a few other weapons like it too. The true Infinity+1 Sword was the Last Fencer. While not as strong in terms of sheer strength, it had no element, and the advantage of raising all stats at once. It also may or may not be named after one of titles Cless gets in Tales of Phantasia.
• In Xenosaga Episode 1, the AG-05, the final and most powerful A.G.W.S. available for purchase, sells for 300,000 G, a truly ridiculous sum in that game. It is certainly possible to buy it, but by time you've killed enough enemies to have that kind of money, your characters are invariably so high level that they're more powerful on foot than in the A.G.W.S. anyway!
• In Xenoblade Chronicles, there's the True Monado, which is obtained in the final battle. It can be carried over into a New Game+, which ends up making multiple cutscenes look rather ridiculous, as they'll play out as though Shulk were using whatever inferior weapon he would normally have at those points, leading to silliness like you hitting a Mechon For Massive Damage, only for Shulk and/or others to exclaim "It's not working!" in the cutscene that ensues.
• The Frying Pan weapon in Fable can either be this or a Joke Weapon, depending on whether or not you acquired all the clues needed to find it; if you do, you'll get a massively-powerful weapon with four augmentation slots, but if you don't, you'll get a weapon with no slots which does 0 damage.
  • There's also Skorm's Bow, the best longbow in the game, which you can only acquire by sacrificing someone at Skorm's temple at the right moment in the night. Although you can do this at the very beginning of the game, before getting even a single experience point, so it's really more of a Game Breaker.
  • The Sword of Aeons in Fable if you're evil, or Avo's Tear if you're good, although Avo's Tear only appears in the expanded re-release of Fable.
• Fable 2 has the Red Dragon pistol. You get it by completing with a perfect score in the shooting gallery. It does immense damage with a single shot, but in manual aim mode it's true power is realized... yeah, it fires as fast as you can smash the Fire button.
  • The Daichi. Only the Master Axe and Master Hammer have a higher attack damage, but even so, their both extraordinarily slow in comparison. In the time it takes for one of their swings, the Daichi does just about three. By the time a character using those is halfway into the battle, the Daichi is done. It also doesn't hurt that its augments boost the damage, add shock damage, and make the hero more attractive.
• Valkyrie Profile 2 has an Infinity+1 Sword that epitomizes the "so hard to get that it becomes useless" issue. Getting the "Angel Slayer" requires completing the bonus dungeon ten times, each time being harder then the last. The only challenge higher than a tenth playthrough of the bonus dungeon is to start a new game on a higher difficulty—and you lose the sword when you do that.
  • It does possibly help you fight the Hamsters.
• In Super Mario RPG, obtaining the Lazy Shell equipment involves a bizarre Fetch Quest that requires going way off the beaten path, but the end result is the best weapon for Mario and the best armor for Peach.
  • The Frying Pan, although not as good as the Lazy Shell, is still a very powerful weapon, enough to allow Peach to do damage on par with Bowser. It can be bought, if you know where to look.
• The Dragon Bracelet in Blue Dragon; to get it, you have to find, kill, and collect a fang from each of five dragons, four of which don't even appear until you've talked to Elder Bauhm, whose village can only be reached by the Mechat.
• Most of the Gatito threads in The World Ends With You, which you can get after beating the main game (with the exception of Pi-Face's Cap); as well as the samurai gear, and some of the weirder clothing you get while collecting the Secret Reports.
  • And the Black Planet pin set (also known as the Darklit Planets). The Black Planet pins are pretty good by themselves, but put all six of them in one deck and you've got what is possibly the most destructive pin set in the game, because all of them deal substantially more damage if all six are in the deck together. The catch? You only get one of the pins from Hanekoma, though if you try putting the cartridge into different DS's you might find another one to buy there, and you have to hunt down the rest by getting Noise to drop them. Incredibly powerful Noise, who can only drop them on the highest difficulty level, and you have a snowball's chance in hell of them dropping it without setting your HP incredibly low or chaining battles together. Alternatively, mingle with someone who has the whole set and buy it off of them.
  • And the HP Hax Feather gives 30 attack, 30 defense, 2000 HP and three fusion stars. Anyone who says they don't use it, either hasn't finished the BRV grinding yet or is LYING.
• Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne: Not a weapon, but a thing called a Magatama which is ingested by the main character to make him immune to EVERYTHING except Almighty attacks and gives him + 10 in all stats except Luck. First, you need to get a broken sword then go to the Cathedral of Shadows, then proceed to a weird temple that appears out of the ground and fight 4 guardians and many monsters of varying difficulty from bloody hard to mega hard. Worth it though.
  • Nocturne has one other possible contender for this title: Completing the Burial Chamber special battles in the required number of press turns awards you with perhaps one of the games greatest prizes on the second run-through: the Demi-Fiend's second Press Turn. Makes Hard Mode significantly easier after Matador.
  • But while either of these things might be an Infinity+1 Sword in any other game, this one is so hard that even both of them together won't make it a cakewalk.
• In Ultima VII: The Black Gate, the game didn't even come with the Infinity Plus One Sword, the Black Sword—it was added to the game through an expansion pack, Ultima VII: Forge of Virtue. As Infinity Plus One Swords go, it ranked right up there, making the rest of the game ridiculously easy—including such things as Instant Magic Recharge, one-shot kills on ANY creature, etc. It had to be created in the expansion pack, and was useless without the demon who was trapped in the hilt. In the game's sequel, Ultima VII Part Two: Serpent Isle, you wind up having it teleported away from you, and when you find it again, you must release the demon inside in order to escape the dungeon you have been imprisoned in.
• In The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion, it is possible for players to create their very own Infinity+1 Sword by doing a custom enchantment on a regular weapon. This involves finding the biggest possible type of soul gem and filling it, which practically qualifies as a sidequest in itself and is something only very high-level players, or players who are "clued in" by various quests can accomplish. Then, the player has to either complete a long string of side quests or pay real money for the official "Wizard's Tower" mod, and game money for the appropriate equipment. With all that done, he can finally put a custom enchantment on his weapon. A common choice is both weakness to magic and magical damage enchantments, which is a Game Breaker.
  • Additionally, one of the game's official downloadable content mods adds Mehrunes Razor, a dagger with, among other things, a chance to instantly kill anything it hits. The dagger is found at the bottom of a nine level dungeon.
  • Shivering Isles introduces the Dawnfang/Duskfang, which deals heavy base damage, heavy additional elemental damage based on time of day in-game, instantly recharges when the weapon transforms, both the dawn and dusk forms can transform into even more powerful versions of themselves when you kill a certain amount of enemies, and the fact it's a longsword means one could combine this sword with the 100% Chameleon trick to become an unstoppable juggernaut to boot.
• The Elder Scrolls: Morrowind gives us Goldbrand, one of the best swords in the game. To acquire it, one must swim down to an unmarked and destroyed offshore statue and talk to it's head. The head will tell you to that it wants to be rebuilt, but only by this one crazy orc. Once you find the orc, he tells you that he needs a book that is only available from one bookseller. Once you recover the book and bring it to the orc, you still have to wait two in game weeks before the statue is finished and you get the sword.
  • Furthermore, Goldbrand can be upgraded to Eltonbrand - en even more awesome sword, but only if you're a vampire and (at some point) if you have a certain exact amount of gold in your inventory.
  • Despite all of that, the Black Hands Dagger is still more powerful. Each attack is guaranteed to deal three times as much damage as Eltonbrand and can even do much more sometimes. Also it blinds your opponent and heals you for as much damage as it deals... considerably more powerful than any other sword in the game (including ones you enchant yourself).
  • The first expansion to Morrowind, Tribunal, gives you TWO of the strongest swords in the game at the end of the main quest. You have to beat a living god to get them, though.
• The Spirit Sword in Grandia Xtreme. To obtain this weapon, the player must beat the game, travel to some of the bottom floors of a 100-levels randomly-generated dungeon in which the player can only leave every five floors, and can only return if such an "exit" was made into an entrance, at which point the exit cannot be used and the player must advance five more levels down just to make an exit. Making matters worse is that the sword is the rare drop of a fairly difficult enemy which is (thankfully) not rare on these floors. The only "easy" method of ensuring the player gets it is to equip one of the more useless characters with a ridiculous rabbit-themed set of armors and skills which are likewise rare drops of equally ridiculous, and nearly impossible to kill, cute rabbit-like enemies. Even then, you will be seeing an awful lot of the common drops. This is not the only time the game does this to the player.
  • In Grandia III, the Spirit Sword makes a return as the Infinity+ 1 weapon, and has an extremely similar method of acquisition, with the exception that the player must defeat the enemy, and cannot resort to stealing, running away, reentering battle, stealing, etc (as can be done in Xtreme). Luckily, this enemy is right next to a save/recovery point. Unluckily, this enemy is extremely difficult for no apparent reason.
  • Neither of the first two Grandia games have secret weapons that could be considered Infinity+ 1 Swords. However, if one hacks items in the first game, an item called the 100 Sword will appear. It would be an Infinity+ 1 Sword had it been included in the game proper as the final weapon (the Spirit Sword) has only 70 + STR while the aptly-named 100 Sword has + 100 STR. There is also a 100 Fire Mace in the game files for no reason in particular.
• In Lufia 2: Rise of the Sinistrals, protagonist Maxim spends roughly half the game in search of Dual Blade, a weapon which will magnify his energy enough to challenge the titular villains. Yet the Dragon Blade, a prize offered at the Forfeit casino, offers much better stats (though at the cost of a weaker IP ability).
  • Lufia 2 has the Infinite Plus One Ring in the form of the Egg Ring, which one gets from defeating the Egg Dragon. But how to fight the Egg Dragon? You have to find all the Dragon bal....err.. eggs scattered throughout the world multiple times. After granting your wish several times, he'll fight you instead, and is one of the most vicious bosses in the game if fought legitimately, or can be killed in one round. The Egg Ring grants whomever equips it with maximum stats and will pretty much guarantee that person will NEVER die and always do max damage.
  • Then there's the weapons from the Ancient Cave. Some of them are the strongest weapons (and armor) for different characters, but if you get them is completely random and you can spend hours after hours trying to.
• Even Pokémon has some items like this for certain Pokemon. Pikachu has the Light Ball, which turns it into a Glass Cannon. Cubone and Marowak have the Thick Club, and Farfetch'd has the Stick. The former two only have a 5% drop rate, but they both Double the attacking power of their respective Pokémon, which in Marowak's case, raises its attack to the second highest of all Pokémon, only beaten by Shuckle when it uses Power Trick (which is an unreliable strategy anyway). The Stick only raises critical hit ratio, however.
  • None of those items are even banned or feared as much as Soul Dew, which turns Latias and Latios from Uber-level Pokemon to absolute Gamebreakers.
  • Wobbuffet, seriously. Finding, catching, and leveling him is ridiculously annoying in normal playthroughs, but he is the one pokemon that acts as a counter to everything.
  • In addition to items, legendary Pokémon are basically the Infinity+1 Sword combined with Bonus Boss or That One Boss. Especially event Pokémon like Mew, which is capable of learn any move in the game.
    • Mewtwo in Pokémon Red, Blue, and Yellow versions was a straight example of the trope. It had the highest base stat total in the game, but could only be obtained after fighting the final bosses the Elite 4, at the bottom of a treacherous cave filled with high level Pokémon, and was notoriously difficult to capture when encountered. Fortunately, the game's other Infinity+1 Sword, the Master Ball, would capture Mewtwo without fail. There was also the fact that, in those first generation games, Psychic types effectively had no weaknesses due to some programming errors. As the strongest Psychic type, Mewtwo was so overpowered in that generation that putting him on your team was almost cheating.
  • The move Return can function as a mix of this, Disc One Nuke and Magikarp Power due to how it works. Power of Love indeed.
• In the online RPG Murkon's Refuge, there are two Items of Specialness for each character class. You most likely won't find them until you reach the deepest dungeon levels, and even then you have to dive into pools and hope that you're lucky enough to get one. Even rarer than the Items of Specialness is the Rod of Catastrophe, an item that casts one of the highest Sorcerer spells in combat with no loss of Mana points and can be used multiple times in combat.
  • There's also a literal sword, far rarer than the rod, but not as handy as a bottomless supply of free CHAOS spells.
• In some games, particularly Book I of Ys Book I and II, and Ys IV: Mask Of The Sun, the Infinity Plus One equipment doesn't work against the Final Boss, so you have to switch to a certain lower level set of equipment.
• The Sol Blade in Golden Sun: The Lost Age is one interesting example, as it lies in an easy-to-find treasure. Yet, all other weapons pale in comparison to the sheer damage-output of this weapon. The only two swords that come close are Excalibur and the Tisiphone Edge. (The former needs an Ultimate Blacksmith, the latter is a rare drop)
  • This is Golden Sun. There are no "rare" drops, only drops that are harder to engineer than other drops.
  • Although Excalibur has a 5% forge rate and the material used to make is found in chests and dropped by Sky Dragons in the Bonus Dungeon.
  • You forgot the Darksword, which is even more powerful than the Sol Blade, and if you got the Cleric's Ring out of Crossbone Isle in the first game, the only drawback is losing the Sol Blade's devastating unleash.
  • The Sol Blade is back in Dark Dawn, and it's no less powerful. However, a set of Infinity Plus One Equipment exists in the form of the Umbra Gear, and not only do they make Sveta an anti-elemental tank (each gives 20 points to two Resist values, and the knuckles are her best weapon bar none, and that's not counting the massive stat boost Beastform grants), they are all required to complete the game. The Sol Blade is, too, but it comes in at the final dungeon anyway.
• In Fallout 3, there is the Experimental MIRV, cannon that launches eight miniature nukes at once and kills anything it hits in one shot. As well as the huge cost of a single shot making it Awesome but Impractical, getting it requires finding the place it is hidden in and finding the five password tapes for it scattered around the wasteland.
  • The Mysterious Stranger's .44 Magnum would also fall into this category, as it causes roughly the same amount of damage as the MIRV in one shot. The disadvantage is that it's only available through hacking or sheer dumb luck.
  • A more practical Ultimate Weapon would be Lincoln's Repeater. It's the only .44 Magnum rifle in the game, it can be repaired with ordinary hunting rifles, it does a lot of damage and sneak attacks can one-shot-kill most enemies. About its only drawback is that ammunition for it is relatively scarce, but it doesn't need very much anyway.
    • Sadly, Lincoln's Repeater becomes a lot worse in the new DLC Broken Steel. Granted, you'll still be an unstoppable force of mass destruction until about Level 18, but it's main appeal has always been either sniping or use in V.A.T.S. in combination with the perk Grim Reaper's Sprint, which makes you pretty much invincible as long as you can kill your enemies in one V.A.T.S. sequence. However, when regular enemies start having 1.5 times as much health as Deathclaws - who are still quite lethal - and survive your assaults quite easily, you'll be pretty much a sitting duck for the Feral Ghoul Reavers and Albino Radscorpions with the powerful, accurate but horrendously slow Repeater and those Big Guns and Combat Shotguns suddenly become a lot more appealing! The dart gun is still quite broken though...
    • What can easily compliment the Repeater in terms of usefulness is the Gauss Rifle added in the Operation Anchorage DLC. Deals nice damage (even some splash damage!), has a sniper scope and scoring a critical hit even knocks down the target for four seconds. And it uses microfusion cells for ammo which are plentiful late in the game, unlike the extremely rare .308 used by sniper rifles. Only problem is the low rate of fire as it must be reloaded after every shot. And it uses the Energy Weapons skill which can present a problem for characters leveled towards using conventional guns.
      • Fallout 2 also had a Gauss Rifle which fits this trope perfectly. Landing a critical to the eyes WILL kill most enemies, no questions asked. To quote the Fallout wiki: "the Bloody Mess trait is seldom necessary to see the most violent death animations" (which in this case means blowing a sizeable hole in the target's torso). Another excellent weapon is the YK42B Pulse Rifle which, while very short-ranged, deals the highest damage of all single-shot weapons in the game, even without criticals. Scoring a lethal critical literally vaporizes the target!
        • Pick the righ perks, and you can instant kill doing ZERO damage...
  • Screw all those guns The Terrible Shotgun is what I'm talking about. from the fallout wiki "Critical Hit damage with this weapon is actually applied individually on each pellet the weapon fires in a shot outside of V.A.T.S.. If all nine pellets critical hit at the same time (such as in a point-blank sneak attack critical attack), the weapon's total critical damage is 9 x 40 = 360! And with the Better Criticals perk, it can go up to 540. Add in the base 80 power of the weapon, and then double the whole thing because of the sneak attack bonus, and the weapon's total damage turns 1240, quite close to that of the Fat Man itself! In fact, if the damage is increased further with a head shot, this weapon's destructive power against a single target becomes even greater than the Fat Man, being able to kill even a Super Mutant Behemoth with a single sneak attack critical head shot!"
    • To reiterate, under the right conditions this weapon can be more powerful than a nuclear explosion!
  • There's also the "Liberty Laser", Liberty Prime's Laser Vision. Ever wanted to throw a big, badass, 5000+ damage dealing Lazorbeem at an Enclave trooper? Now you can!
    • By the way, have you heard? The .44 Magnum's damage is, quite literaly, Over Nine Thousand.
• Mass Effect actually makes it quite easy to acquire the Infinity Plus One Swords:
  • In Mass Effect 1, all you need to unlock the Spectre-grade weapons is to acquire more than one million credits. Though there are actually Infinity Plus Two weapons as well which don't appear until your character nears level 50, as there are two tiers of Spectre weapons, and then the Infinity Plus One Bullets and weapon mods... All of which are available at a fraction of their usual price for finishing the Pinnacle Station DLC. Good thing, too, as those guns will be needed to not make playing a flurry of perfect decisions or Trial and Error Gameplay while playing Insanity or Hardcore difficulties. Needless to say, starting a new character on those difficulties will be quite rough.
  • In Mass Effect 2, the Infinity Plus One weapons and armor are for sale; the stuff available from the DLC packs are better than any of the gear available in the game itself.
    • In-game, however, there is the Widow Sniper Rifle, found on the Collector Ship. With the right combination of points and ammo (warp is your best bet), it's possible to one-shot almost any enemy in the game, even on higher levels. Its slow firing rate and low ammo capacity makes some people argue for alternate sniper rifles, but they're kidding themselves. Widow's where it's at.
    • These weapons do manage to avoid Bribing Your Way to Victory. All of them are significantly more difficult to aim than your other weapon options, which means they take more actual playing skill to use, which gets rewarded with a damage upgrade.
• Enchanted Arms has the Omega Golem, with the ability to reduce ANY and all enemy's HP to exactly 1, regardless of defensive Enchants. This is offset by the fact that you have to do 4 sidequests before you can do the actual quest to go through 50 (or was it 40?) floors of doom, all guarded by the toughest monsters in the game as Random Encounters, which will sap the ever so vital Vitality Points from your characters. The boss himself is tougher than any other boss, boasting no elemental weakness, 99,999 HP, 9,999 EP, said Game Breaker, and the standard attack deals OVER 1700 HP worth of damage, AND can nail you to the floor. Even IF you beat him, the core for said Golem requires 275 of EVERY kind of gem, he comes up at level 1 only 15 or so VP, and he takes up a good amount of the field. Suffice to say, if you are willing to get and train said Golem, ALL boss fights will be a breeze.
• Neverwinter Nights 2 - Taken to ridiculous extreme with a Enchanted Papyrus Blade (paper sword?) that actually makes you good at using that kind of sword. True, its appears to be a hidden bonus but the main point of the game is also to put a ridiculous powerful sword back together, the Sword of Gith, used to save the world.
• Riviera: The Promised Land has the Fanelia, one-shot weapon that deals 999* 8 damage, which is far more than any other weapon in the game. It's actually not that hard to gain, but requires some unconventional thinking as it was hidden in the ground in Undine Springs after you complete mission 5 or 6. You need to dig it 5 times, while 4 times before you will be prompted that there's nothing there.
• The Witcher has a legendary ARMOR with all the trappings of an infinity plus one sword, such as a famous wielder/wearer, it must be reassembled from various fragments, an explict quest is required to gain it and it was crafted by Gnomes.
  • It's possible to get two Infinity Plus One steel swords, which are still practical because oils with different effects can be applied to each and the player can switch between them. It's also possible to get Infinity Plus One silver swords, but only one can be kept and there's only one optimal oil for silver anyway.
  • Unlike most Infinity Plus equipment, the armor and swords don't come on the verge of the final fight, but the player is given a goodly chunk of story and action to make the most of them.
• Shin Megami Tensei 1 has sword fusion, which allows you to fuse certain swords with demons. There were a few nice ones, including one that required you to fuse three elementals to the blade in succession, and one that required a component you could only obtain just before fighting Maou Asura - i.e. at the very end of the game. The sequel took this even further - you now had even more combinations and possible swords. At the very end of the tree, you had the sword Hinokagutsuchi, which scored three hits, had amazing accuracy and damage, and turned its targets to stone. To get it, all you had to do was follow a convoluted expert-level fusion process that consumed seven original swords and sixty-seven demons. For even more fun, the sword could be further fusioned to create the Brahmastra, the best gun in the game, or the four pieces of your female companion's ultimate armor. (Which, bad graphics aside, looks downright Stripperiffic.) To sum things up, in order to get the best equipment ever, you need EIGHT infinity plus one swords, so you have to bind five hundred and thirty-six demons, and obtain fifty-six baseline fusionable swords. Oh, and did I mention those swords are random drops? Have fun!
• The Granstream Saga has the Onimaru, which is twice as strong as the 'best' sword you would get normally. Surprisingly, you find it very early in the game, if you use the Cat's Eye somewhere in the west wall of the church basement in Arona. It sometimes causes instant death to enemies if it hits them while they're performing long attacks. The icing on the cake? The instant death thing even works on bosses.
• Mario & Luigi: Partners In Time has an Infinity+1 Sword in the Ulti Free Badge. What exactly does this equippable item do you may ask? Gives you an INFINITE supply of attack items, which, considering the massive power of them (up to 999 damage for many, and infinite for others), allows the user to literally flatten the opponent under a barrage of hugely damaging special attacks if they have even just one of the item they want to use. It can also, thanks to this pretty much kill the final boss in about ten minutes.
  • To a lesser extent, the Supreme Slacks and 100-Point Pants, which are both dropped very rarely by certain enemies in the final area.
  • Multiple exist as some useful special moves in Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story. You've got the Magic Window and Mighty Meteor attacks for the bros (the former is easy infinite hit, latter gives free ultra powerful items are every use, and is good in the Gauntlet) and Magikoopa Mob/Brogger Bonker for Bowser, which are extremely powerful but also extremely easy to use to well.
• In Paper Mario, the quite useful Lucky Day badge can only be obtained after delivering a chain of 14 letters, requiring at least thirty minutes outside of the main plot.
  • Not to mention how long it takes to get all of Chuck Quizmo's 64 Star Pieces for all badges and 100% completion!
• Parasite Eve 2 has two of them. The first is the Gunblade, which with the right ammunition, will deal damage in the thousands. The other is the Hypervelocity railgun. While it does have a 10 second charge up time, it also deals damage in the thousands. Both are rewards for getting the best rank in the game (which you can only do in the New Game+)
• There's a whole bunch in Dark Cloud. You get the best of them by beating the game and then completing an extra 100 floor dungeon. For extra points, you can then level up said weapon, granting it the suffix '+ 1'.
  • Worth mentioning is that due to the weapon upgrade system of Dark Cloud and its sequel, it's entirely possible to upgrade any weapon to Infinity Plus One status, except for the starting weapons in the first game.
• Dragon Quest has Erdrick's Sword, which, while not required to beat the Final Boss (except in the first game, where no other weapon will hurt the boss), certainly makes it considerably faster/easier. And of course, there's Erdrick's Infinity Plus One Armor, which not only protects the hero from poison swamps and barriers, but restores his HP with every step. From Dragon Quest II onward, the true Infinity Sword is always capable of extreme damage, but always cursed in some way.
  • Later titles have the Metal King Sword which can be obtained from extremely rare drops from Metal King Slimes, collecting enough mini medals, or buying at the casinos.
• In the Baldur's Gate series, pretty much anything with a + 5 modifier is essentially this. Examples include:
  • Crom Faeyr: A + 5 Warhammer that grants a massive strength boost and is capable of one shotting certain monsters.
  • Carsomyr: A Paladin-only greatsword that grants magic resistence and can dispel an enemy's magical benefits, and potentially gets upgraded to + 6 in the Expansion Pack.
  • The Flail of Ages: A multiheaded flail that does several types of elemental damage at once. Was originally a + 3 in Shadows of Amn, but Throne of Bhaal added more heads to increase it to + 5. Plus, the + 3 version can be obtained fairly early in the game.
  • Also, the Vorpal Blade a.k.a. Silver Sword. Despite being only +3, it nevertheless is capable of one-shotting anything it hits.
• In Skies of Arcadia: Legends, there is a sword for Vyse that requires you to fulfill a ridiculous number of requirements to get, of which the three hardest are getting 90% of treasure chests in the game, finding every discovery, and killing 2500 enemies. Getting every moonfish in the game is another difficult requirement. Fortunately, you can get the second-best sword for Vyse just by recruiting the Ultimate Blacksmith, getting a rare mineral, and then paying him to make a sword out of it.
  • Final Cupil is another example of an Infinity Plus One Weapon. You see, the White Magician Girl's main weapon is a Ridiculously Cute Critter that can shapeshift into a weapon. The strength of the weapon it can shapeshift into increases as you feed it these things called chams. In order to get it to its strongest form, you have to find all thirty normal chams, plus all three super chams. One of the super chams requires you to finish a ridiculously long fetch quest in order to get it. The upshot is that the White Magician Girl goes from having the weakest primary attack in the game to having the... second weakest! Final Cupil is stronger than Aika's ultimate weapon, as it should be considering the difficulty in getting it. Final Cupil can usually do more than 600 damage per hit (never mind that at this point, Vyse's Cutlass Fury might be doing 9999 damage per hit). Though statistically, Final Cupil is stronger than even the above sword for Vyse; it's just that it's not being used by someone meant as a fighter.
• Most of the equipment in Dragon Age that would count for this trope has to be bought for obscene prices (100+ gold for starters). One exception is Vigilance in Awakening. You only have to kill a powerful Bonus Boss for one of the key components needed to forge it; the rest of the components aren't terribly difficult to make/buy/find. It gets better; the sword can be customized—it can be either a longsword or greatsword, made to have better accuracy and cold damage or better power and fire damage, and the blacksmith offers a choice of other extra bonuses too. This is on top of the basic bonuses the sword provides. It even has a unique appearance (which is unfortunately bugged if you installed the Warden's Keep DLC too). The sword is so awesome it even gets mentioned in the epilogue and seems well on its way to becoming a Soul Edge expy.
  • In the original game, this role was fulfilled by Starfang, a sword forged for the Warden out of Thunderbolt Iron, which is easily the best longsword/greatsword available in the module. Unfortunately, because it was only attainable with the Warden's Keep DLC, you couldn't import it to Awakening or any other DLC campaign without the aid of mods.
• In Exile/Avernum, there are multiple weapons that are made for a specific monster to kill. The top example being Demonslayer, a sword that you have to find the parts of. Due to how the damage caps, technically, fists are the strongest weapon.
• The Level-10 guns in Freelancer. You can only get them by looting a few far-flung derelict fighters, or by going trough a Jump Hole to an Eldritch Location and fighting Nomads, the nastiest enemies in the game. They aren't the most amazing weapons due to their slow refire rate and bad long-range accuracy...but the Nomad guns actually consume no power, meaning that if they make up enough of your weapon loadout you can fire forever, and they're deadly at close range.
• In Mega Man Battle Network 5: Double Team for Nintendo DS, to unlock super powerful Bass Cross Mega Man, you first have to complete the completely same game on GBA so that you could complete it on Nintendo DS with couple of bonuses.
  • Some of the Giga Chips are possible Infinity Plus Ones. Many of the FortePlus/BassPlus/BassAnly chips deal far too many hits not to be used with Attack+ 10's, and you get them from the inevitable fight with him at the end of the Bonus Dungeon. From EXE3, FolderReturn cost a fortune in Bug Fragments and broke the game into little tiny pieces. In Star Force, drawing one of the AM-seijin Giga Cards is a fantastic "kill all enemies" button.
  • FolderReturn in EXE3 wasn't the Game Breaker, NaviRecycle was. The general consensus at the time was that, if you needed to use your folder more than once to win, there was something wrong with your folder. NaviRecycle, on the other hand, was essentially a replay button for the last Navi chip (essentially summons, and powered up to match), including any bonuses attatched to it. With the right 5 chip combo and a bit of luck and timing, any enemy in the game could fall to it, and that's assuming it survived the first shot...
    • FolderReturn, however, additionally acted as FullCustom. Theoretically, a user could continuously end the round immediately through the aforementioned chips, until the opponent no longer had chips available. The user, on the other hand, would still have their entire folder to work with. Combined with a certain glitch, as well as legitimate customization in the game itself, the chance of this happening isn't as small as one would think.
  • Oh dear god Hub.BAT. Battle Network 3's is such a perfect example it hurts. It requires getting to Secret Area 3 (which in itself requires half the Standard library and at least one Giga chip), fighting your way through a long, twisty path full of horrid Random Encounters (with a nerfed character - thanks, Press Program!), and finally fighting a twenty round chain battle with some of the most annoying monsters the game had to offer. And once you had the thing, you had to know the style-specific enabler code. And to make it worthwhile, you also had to know the compression command. However, just tossing it onto Mega Man made you ridiculously powerful, to the point that practically every metagame Mega Man was wearing it, halved HP or no.
  • Its predecessor, HubStyle/SaitoStyle in Battle Network 2, is also a prime example. It had most benefits of Hub.BAT / Saito Batch, plus no elemental weakness. However, to get it, you had to S-rank every V3 Navi in the game, which in turn required completing the WWW Area first, which itself had several requirements.
• Inazuma Eleven 3 has a number of special abilities served as this such as Omega the Hand, Maximum Fire, and Prime Legend, though it's quite acceptable since you still get to do a lot of things after you beat the final boss.

Shoot Em Up

• R-Type Final features several extremely powerful ships which require two hours of game-time with the previous ship in the series, meaning by the time you get them you're probably good enough that they're entirely useless.
• The eponymous Heavy Barrel. One always felt compelled to collect the pieces to get it - though playing without it was more fun than playing with it.
• In the side scrolling shooter Hydorah, the last weapon can only be gotten by going through several out of the way levels. Oddly enough for the genre, this weapon is an actual sword.
• The MOONLIGHT laser blade and the KARASAWA laser rifle in the Armored Core usually falls into this category, at least in the earlier games. The former could potentially shave off half an AC's health with one hit and its blade wave produced an explosive energy burst. The latter, with the right parts, made the game laughably easier. The KARASAWA, despite its recurring status, got the nerfbat after AC2:AA. The MOONLIGHT lost a bit of its destructive power but instead got a significant increase in blade length. Both parts in the first game have to be found in difficult and risky areas.
  • In Project Phantasma however, both get one-upped by the FINGER part which you unlock once you top the Arena. One of the lightest parts in the game, but ridiculously overpowered with its wide-spread, but tightly concentrated rapid fire which gives it insane close range power and doubled by the fact it carries 3000 rounds. Phantasma alone can be killed in less in a minute with this thing.

Simulation Game

• Almost all of the Ace Combat superfighters have hard-to-achieve requirements, usually including New Game+, but they are Game Breaking enough that the demands are almost justifiable.
  • The Falken in AC5 only required the player to destroy several hangars located in out of the way locations in missions to obtain.
    • More specifically, it requires completing the story mode no less than 1 and a half times, as the hangars are located in Yes/No level paths, so you have to choose one side, then the other on the next playthrough. After that, you still need about 570,000 credits to buy one. If you're lucky, you can sell off all your planes to earn this much just in time for the final level on the 2nd playthrough. Totally worth it though.
  • The X-02 Wyvern can be unlocked in Ace Combat Zero simply by having an Ace Combat 04 save on the same memory card. The price is prohibitive but is still possible to purchase on the first playthrough provided you managed your money and scored enough kills to afford it.
  • If you have the (real) cash, you can get the Prototype (fixes the stability problems of the stock) or Razgriz (hardens the armor, fixes stability, looks cool in black) CFA-44 Nosferatu as DLC in Ace Combat 6. Normally, you would have had to slog through the campaign on Hard mode, but you can get it at the beginning of the game (complete with ADMMs and railguns). Oh, and while you have to buy the stock planes with your in-game cash, any DLC planes you purchased are free.
  • Ace Combat: Assault Horizon offers the Nosferatu as DLC, but it's weapons have been nerfed and brought more in line with the rest of the game. After completing the story mode though, you gain access to the PAK-FA for free missions and online play. The Trinity weapon is one of it's special weapons. While you only get three of them, they'll destroy anything (including you if you don't fly away). Unfortunately, it's an unguided bomb (good for ground targets), and the majority of the game is fighting against other planes in the sky.
• Airforce Delta Strike features over-powered aircraft from various other Konami games such as the Vic Viper and Jerry Mouse as bonus planes.
• The Mineral Town and DS flavors of the Harvest Moon series gives you Infinity Plus One Tools in the form of the Mythic tools. It takes effort to get all six: you have to level up your regular tools to full, then find the cursed tools via mining, then lift the curse on each one, turning them into Blessed Tools, AND THEN you have to pair them with Mythic Stones and a boatload of gold to the local blacksmith (Saibara or Gray, depending on the game) to gain the Mythic Hammer/Axe/Watering Can/Sickle/Hoe/Fishing Pole. Made harder in DS by the fact that you can't save scum the mines until you have six Mythic Stones - you can only posess one of them at a time. Although a few are more powerful than they're worth: A fully charged Hammer will destroy every poundable object on screen... including your fencing. Ditto the Axe (in DS) and your fruit trees.
• In Princess Maker 2 the war gods sword is the most powerful sword in the game. If you can beat up the war god you can beat anyone else in the game in your sleep. It does have one effect however, it's required for the "Hero" ending.

Stealth-Based Game

• The later Syphon Filter games has a funny example in the E.P.D.D, which is a long-range, sure kill, stealth weapon with infinite ammo that you can only unlock by getting the best rating in certain tasks, such as performing non-lethal KOs or stealth kills. Why is it funny? Because in the first game, it was called the Air Taser and served as your default Emergency Weapon. Unsurprisingly, less broken weaponry like combat knives and short-ranged tasers were used in its stead in later games, but they still kept it as a hidden weapon, making this one of the rare instances that an item found itself on both sides of the power spectrum.
• Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eaters Patriot is simple -- just clear the game. Metal Gear Solid 4s on the other hand requires a no Alert, no Continues, No Kills (of humans; tranquilizing an enemy who falls to his or her death counts, but GEKKOs and Scarabs don't), no recovery item (normal and iPod-assisted natural regeneration is fine), no special item (Stealth Camo or Bandanna), Speed Run on The Boss Extreme... where everything that's not a "Now Loading" screen (but the "Press Start" prompt does count!), between-Acts install time (including the "Press Start" prompt), and a post-Act results screen counts towards the 5 hour time limit. Yes, even the Start menu and the Play Station 3 home screen.
  • Or you could use a cheat code.
• Both Assassin's Creed II and Assassin's Creed Brotherhood have the Sword of Altaïr, the games' only "primary" weapon with maxed-out stats. (AC2's Papal Staff requires poisoning the Pope, preventing you from clearing the story). In II it is automatically unlocked when you clear Sequence 8 (about two-thirds through the story, or four-sevenths with the DLC), but can only be bought at the Monteriggioni blacksmith and is the game's most expensive weapon at 50,000 florins. In Brotherhood it's only usable during the first Core Memory (story mission), but if you complete all of the Assassins Guild challenges it's unlocked at the Tiber Island Hideout and does not need to be bought. Story-wise it can be unlocked about halfway through the game after recruiting one's first two Assassins, but completing the challenges may require grinding (mainly for Arrow Storms and signaling Apprentices during combat).
  • The Armor of Altaïr was II's Infinity Plus One Armor, granting as much Health as a complete Missaglias armor set but unbreakable, and only unlocked by clearing the six Assassin Tombs, which were mainly platforming missions.
  • Brotherhood also has the Dagger of Brutus, a Short Blade with maxed-out stats, unique kill animations and a hidden effect making enemies more likely to flee an encounter. It's acquired along with the Armor of Brutus (equivalent to the Armor of Altaïr) when the player clears all six of the Lairs of Romulus (equivalent to the AC2 Assassin Tombs) and then goes to the underground cell where the Armor and Dagger are stored.
  • Assassin's Creed: Revelations has both the Master Assassin Armor and Ishak Pasha's Armor, though the former can be obtained as soon as you can recruit and level assassins, the latter requires a certain story mission to be beaten that unlocks an area where one of the collectibles for the armor is contained. In the case of weapons there's Yusuf's Turkish Kijil, the Almogavar Axe and Altair's Sword.

Survival Horror

• Resident Evil 4 has not one, not two, but THREE (in post-Gamecube versions, FOUR) of these. The Infinite Rocket Launcher and Chicago Typewriter are available for a million PTAs at any merchant after completing the main game once, and getting a five star rating on every level in Mercenaries earns the Handcannon, which can be upgraded to do the most damage of any weapon in the game and have infinite ammo. Beating the game on Professional mode earns the Plagas Removal Laser.
  • Technically, every weapon can become one of these when fully upgraded. When all upgrades are bought, a ridiculously expensive one becomes available. For instance, the Striker gains an ammo capacity that takes roughly an hour to empty, the SMG gains damage equal to several pistol clips per bullet, and the Broken Butterfly magnum gains damage rivaled only by the Rocket Launcher and the Handcannon. Restarting the game with a New Game+ using these weapons is terribly fun. Oh, and bear in mind the Handcannon is terrible without all its upgrades. Without them it uses an ammo that is very hard to find, selling the ammo to make money for the upgrades is a simpler option.
  • In Resident Evil Darkside Chronicles, the Linear Launcher fulfills this trope in terms of power, but is much easier to get then the average Infinity+1 Sword. All you need to do is beat every level on Hard difficulty (admittedly, the Operation: Javier 4/6, which are full of tough enemies, including a number of Demonic Spiders, and end with That One Boss, with you taking roughly 1.5 damage in 4 and double damage in 6, aren't exactly cakewalks), and your reward is a weapon with S rank Attack and Stopping Power (both of which can be raised to S+, the best rank in the game, for 22000 gold each), a massive splash radius, and infinite ammo. It does need to charge between each shot, but once you've upgraded that to its maximum, it's roughly 2 seconds between shots that can wipe out any non-boss enemy on the screen.
• The first Fatal Frame game has an Infinity+1 Sword in the form of a camera upgrade. If you photograph every ghost in the entire game, which at best can be completed early through a second playthrough, the Zero function makes the game ridiculously easy—rather than have to spend time charging each shot, your camera stays at full charge all the time. It's basically the equivalent of upgrading from a flintlock rifle to a minigun. Oddly, this isn't the hardest upgrade to get; the reward from getting perfect scores in battle mode is much more challenging and virtually useless, since you're limited to equipping only one upgrade at a time.
• Dead Space 2 has the Hand Cannon, which basically turns the game into a walk down easy street, no matter the difficulty, seeing as it has unlimited ammunition and kills in one hit. And if it doesn't kill in one hit, it'll most likely kill in about three. So what do you have to do to get it? Beat Hardcore mode. And what is it exactly? A red foam finger which Isaac "shoots" by yelling "Bang! Bang!" or "Pew! Pew! Pew!"
• Dead Rising has the small chainsaw. The absolute king of weapons that could kill most bosses in six hits and the Elite Mooks of the game in one or two. And if you gather the right books, it will won't break until after 2160 hits, meaning you can essentially use nothing but the small chainsaw for the entire game (except for the sniper rifle for early bosses, and the Assault Rifle or "Machinegun" for Special Forces / later bosses).
  • The sequel has two: The Six-Shooter and the Knife Gloves. The Knife Gloves are basically this games small chainsaw: only difference is that they can be built (i.e. you can have more than one of them) and no books boost its durability to Game Breaker levels. The Six-Shooter on the other hand holds sixty rounds, has ridiculous accuracy, and does very good damage. Pulling it out in any boss fight is basically an instant "I win".

Turn-Based Strategy

• Not a weapon, but the Haro equipable part from Super Robot Wars can turn any mech into a game breaker or HPHGCP in Alpha Gaiden, which is capable of doing the same. Same for the W-Up unit in the few games it appears in, because it grants a buff dependent on how many parts slots a mecha has. Mount one of these things on a four part slot mech and watch the carnage. It's even worse in Impact, where you can get TWO and mount them on the same unit.
  • Some of the unlockable mecha pass into this, like Great Zeyormer in J, Shin Getter and Sanger Zonvolt and his Thrudgelmir in Alpha Gaiden, the HM Black Selena in R, and the Gespenst Type S and Visaga in Original Generation.
  • You get most with out doing anything! Usually these either are obtained later on or they're Magikarp Power, like the Turn a Gundam after it unlocks all its abilities in Z, (It was meh to average in Alpha Gaiden), Zeyormer in J and MX, where you get it VERY early on and it's near unstoppable (though useing it on J unnecessarily will cause you not to get Great Zeyormer, but the regular version is Game Breaker incarnate as it is), Ideon in Alpha 3, the Nirvash Spec 2, Spec3, and Aquarion in Z, usually Mazinkaiser and Shin Getter are the strongest things you'll get, and you don't have to do anything for them. (Except in @ Gaiden for Getter but it's VERY easy. Which makes its Dissapointing [{Awesome but Impractical Stats]] even more annoying considering you get something like Mazinkaiser alongside it) You pretty much start the game with tons of infinity plus one swords in hand. Of course they need upgrades as you go along.
• In the Disgaea series nearly any weapon in the game can become extremely powerful by fighting in its Item World. However, the true Infinity Plus One Sword of the games can only be found within the deepest levels of the best items.
  • Disgaea also has the Hyperdrive, which allows any character that equips it to teleport anywhere on the battlefield save for the Dimensional Gate in Item World maps. In the original, it was awarded for going through all 100 levels of an ultimate item and defeating the Item God 2 (which is level 6,933) on the 100th floor, while in the PSP and DS remakes, it is only awarded if all 100 levels are done in a row without exiting out in between. Note that the only way to revive a fallen party member is to exit out.
• Final Fantasy Tactics Advance has a set of infinity plus one equipment: The Sequence Sword, the Peytral armour, the Sapere Aude Rod and the Acacia Hat. Each of them were capable of growing by one point in their main stat every time a certain repeatable quest is completed. These quests didn't occur very often, however it was also possible to do two-player co-operative missions that also awarded both players (or just one in the case of hunting missions) with equipment growth.
  • Only the Sequencer and Peytral return with the same mechanics in the sequel, Final Fantasy Tactics A2: Grimoire of the Rift, but instead are powered up a point whenever any character uses an Opportunity Command, even before getting the weapon. On top of that, the two missions you get them for aren't even that difficult later on in the game.
  • The original Final Fantasy Tactics has the Knight Swords, weapons only equipped by Knights, Dark Knights, and certain special classes. While Defender, Save the Queen, and Ragnarok are nothing special (they're good, but not jaw-dropping), the two standout weapons are Excalibur, which grants permanent Haste to the wielder, and Chaos Blade, which has the highest power of any weapon, grants permanent Regen, and can petrify an enemy on contact. And they're all one-handed, meaning you can equip both of them with the right ability. You can get one Excalibur in normal gameplay (at the moment when difficulty in the game becomes strictly optional, as Orlandu is equipped with it when he joins you), but Chaos Blades can only be acquired in the Bonus Dungeon.
• While the final weapons for the main Lords in each Fire Emblem game don't really match this trope exactly (well, it is technically possible to 'miss' some of the Lord weapons like Falchion in certain games...), each game generally comes with a half dozen to a dozen S ranked weapons you can get (but don't need...unless this is Fire Emblem 6). To kick this up a notch, Fire Emblem 10 had 13 SS Ranked weapons that you could hand out to your party. Granted, Fire Emblem games are often Nintendo Hard and while you don't NEED them in a technical manner, you do need them in an "Oh God, oh God, we're all going to die!" manner.
  • And the gold medal of this trope goes to the Narga Tome, from Fire Emblem 4. It's only usable against 13 enemies, by a single character. Said character is already broken as-is; with the Narga tome, she's nigh unstoppable. She could easily defeat the final boss (who even cuts your characters' power in half and gets guaranteed critical hits under 50% health) single handedly, without even gaining a level in her life, due to the tome giving her insane stat buffs and negating the boss's debuff. (It's also completely missable- while the game tells you "Go get this weapon or youwill die", poor Princess Yuria is Brainwashed and Crazy (and trying to kill you) the moment before you can pick it up- forcing you to deal with quite a hurdle before you can get it, and if, perchance, you kill her...)
• In Tactics Ogre and Knight of Lodis, this is the Snapdragon. It turns a party member into a sword that is based off their own stats, giving insane boosts to the stats of whoever wields it.
  • Not to mention you can get multiple ones.
• In Phantom Brave, clever use of random dungeons, bottles (an enemy monster type that makes it easier to acquire items you summon your phantoms into), titles, and a number of otherwise "useless" job classes means that you can do this with any weapon you hold, and you can deck your entire party out with their own Disc One Nuke if you so choose. And since Phantom Brave has a Weapons Kitchen Sink, this means that you can make yourself an Infinity Plus One Sword...or Book...or Loaf...or even Fish.
  • If, however, you want the item described as the Ultimate Sword; the Divine Blade Yoshitsuna; you have to go through 99 stages of a high level Dungeon without restoring the game; and then there is a 5-15% chance that the Dungeon Boss will have it; which you then have to steal.

Visual Novel

• It is the ultimate weapon of one of the main villain rather the hero but Gilgamesh's drill sword Ea is undoubtedly the most powerful weapon in the Fate series. So powerful that it is dubbed "The Devourer of Worlds" and is the only known "Anti-World" class Noble Phantasm. If not for Gilgamesh's cocky personality and dislike for using the sword, he could have easily obliterated everyone.
  • On a smaller scale before Gilgamesh's introduction, we have Excalibur the Sword of Promised Victory
  • Ironically this means that it is actually Excalibur's sheath, Avalon, is the true Infinity+1 item, as activating it would completely negate the attack of either of the above weapons.
    • Just as the Arthurian legend explained. The scabbard was always supposed to be the most important part of Excalibur, but nearly everyone forgets in favor of the sword.
• Bliss Stage First and Final Act, based as it is on the Tabletop Game, requires you to complete the Romance Sidequests to get these... wink wink, nudge nudge, say no more guv'na!

Non-video game examples

Anime and Manga

• Played straight in Soul Eater with Excalibur, a sword that gaves you wings of light, the ability to move at a blinding speed and is so sharp it can cut through space and time. However, he is so obnoxiusly annoying, that no one (but the chosen one) wants to have him as a partner.

Gamebooks

• The Sommerswerd, the Sword of the Sun, from the Lone Wolf series. You get it in the second book, which seems somewhat game-breaking, but its later awesomeness makes up for it by far. To get its full potential out, you require certain Kai skills during that book: Sixth Sense gets you a description about how the sword improves your Sixth Sense, and having Weaponskill (with the sword) gives you the "extra" CS bump of + 10 instead of + 8.
  • You can get the + 10 without Sixth Sense.
    • To clarify: The author's intention was that you would get the sword's powers immediately if you had Sixth Sense ("At once the power of the Sommerswerd is revealed to you."), and if you didn't, you didn't gain its powers right away, but gradually unlocked them over the course of practicing with it. This was meant to add a bit of variety to the game and illustrate the increased power of your Sixth Sense, nothing more. The problem was that in the original book, the section where you don't have Sixth Sense skipped the part where you gradually unlocked the sword's powers! This was corrected in later printings.
  • Some of the later books have weapons that are either even stronger than your solar blade (e.g. the Power Spike) or don't create near as much attention when trying to deal a preemptive strike (e.g. the Ironheart Broadsword). For the most part, however, the Sommerswerd is the best you're going to get, due to being unable to keep the more powerful weapon at all.
  • Due to the Herculean task of properly maintaining balance across the entire series (a problem the author himself has freely admitted), combined with the fact that while some players may have gotten the Sommerswerd in Book 2, anyone who hasn't read that book won't have it (and will never again have a chance to get it), many players have come to see the Sommerswerd as being nearly the epitome of Blessed with Suck. To keep the books challenging, fights will be much harder if you have the Sommerswerd, boss enemies will have much stronger weapons, and Lone Wolf will come across like a somewhat clumsier oaf (case in point—the scene in Book 11 mentioned above, where a surprise attack with the Sommerswerd is far less effective than the alternative). In some ways, having the Infinity+1 Sword will actually make the game harder for you, to the point where some players will choose to leave the sword at home before playing through certain books (like the aforementioned and notorious for this sort of thing Book 11).
  • The Prisoners of Time and the infamous Chaos Master deserves special mention. (The other foe where the Sommerswerd is a handicap is Zakhan Kimah, but there are ways around this.) As mentioned before, the Chaos Master will be a lot stronger if you fight him with the Sommerswerd than if you don't have it and are able to obtain the Ironheart Broadsword. The problem is that if you don't have the Sommerswerd (you can't keep the IB), the LAST battle, a doubleheader against the condemned Sommlenders and Vonotar, will be nearly impossible to survive. I guess what I'm trying to say here is 1. a mighty sword of the gods being weak against two enemies out of the dozens you'll face doesn't come close to justifying doing away with it and 2. completing The Prisoners of Time by ANY means is an Infinity Plus One task regardless of what kind of hardware you have.
• The White Sword in The Fabled Lands. Has +8 attack and you cannot ever lose this sword, even if you are robbed captured or killed.

Newspaper Comics

• In FoxTrot, Jason comes across Doomulus Prime, which is essentially a one-handed version of this page's image. However, he loses internet connection as he is about to click on it.

Tabletop Games

• Magic: The Gathering has Sword of Kaldra. If you combine it with Shield of Kaldra and Helm of Kaldra it gets even better.

Web Comics

• Homestuck features five Infinity +1 Weapons for the strife specibi of each of the humans plus Vriska - the Warhammer of Zillyhoo, the Quills of Echidna, the Royal Deringer, Ahab's Crosshairs, and the Fluorite Octet. By way of extensive weird time shit, Jade obtained and sent John miniatures of the Warhammer, Quills, Crosshairs and Deringer, plus the Con Air bunny rebuilt as a cyborg, as a birthday present in response to a Skaia cloud vision where he was being confronted by Jack Noir. Problem is, Jack gets his hands on the present first, and that's pretty much where everything started going downhill for everyone involved. Later, the kids procure the properly-sized versions of the weapons through further application of weird time shit.
  • John goes Up to Eleven by alchemizing two Infinity +1 Swords together: the Warhammer of Zillyhoo + the Fluorite Octet = The Pop-A-Matic Vrillyhoo Hammer.
• Swords, naturally, did this one — there's Sword of Almost Midnight, Sword of Actual Midnight… and Sword of Absolute Midnight (but that's 20 more floors down).

Western Animation

• In episode 18 of Young Justice, "Secrets", Harm gets his hands on The Sword Of Beowulf - a Claymore that grants the wielder a Sword Beam and nigh-invulnerability with a catch... one must be pure of heart to wield it. Unfortunately, it doesn't discriminate if the wielder is pure good or pure evil. Fortunately, Harm experiences a brief moment of regret at having murdered his sister...which causes the sword to reject him for having the tiniest bit of good in his heart.
• This was spoofed with the "Sword of a Thousand Truths" in the South Park episode "Make Love, Not Warcraft", which parodied World of Warcraft. Of course, Blizzard being Blizzard, they actually added a sword with this name to the game after the episode aired, although they later renamed it to "Gladiator's Slicer".
• In Ben 10: Ultimate Alien, Azmuth created Ascalon—a sword capable of manipulating the primal forces that govern reality. It grants its wielder a Sword Beam, a suit of Powered Armor, the ability to tear holes in reality to teleport anywhere, various other superpowers...but abusing its power can lead to an Earthshattering Kaboom. And even this terrible weapon wasn't enough to permanently kill Diagon.
  • In the finale, Ben uses his own Infinity+1 Sword: Ultimate Way Big. It's not enough. But then Ben picks up Ascalon, and having it and the Ultimatrix gives him enough power (even without turning into any alien) to apparently erase Diagon from existence.

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"Sometimes an Infinity+1 Sword is just an Infinity+1 Sword"

—Sigmund Freud.