Mooks Ate My Equipment

An enemy in a video game, or tabletop game, which finds equipment or items that the player character has to be its favorite food. If it gets its mouth (or other form of digestive organ) around you, you might suffer damage but a weapon/item/tool/piece of armor that you have is the real meal.

Or they might even find items laying on the ground. As long as you are going to need it, they are going to try to eat it.

Now even though the item eaten can vary, it's almost never something that would make the game Unwinnable, or even have the item be Lost Forever, just something that makes you really hate this enemy.

Sometimes you have the chance to get the item back, often by killing this enemy quickly. Other times it's just lost and you have to get another copy of the item.

A Sister Trope to Bandit Mook.

Compare Video Game Stealing, Ninja Looting, No Item Use for You.

Contrast Feed It a Bomb.

Examples of Mooks Ate My Equipment include:

• The floating skull in the bridge in The Goonies II, which eat your boomerang.
• Like-Likes in The Legend of Zelda games. They started off eating your shield (and in the first game, only your upgraded Magical Shield), but in later games they can eat other equipment or even rupees. Depending on the game you can save your equipment if you kill/escape them quickly enough.
• In Dungeons and Dragons, there were several types of monsters that loved eating your equipment. Rust monsters were universally loathed by warrior types for their penchant for instantly destroying and eating anything metal that they struck or were struck by, such as their prized magical swords and armor. Oozes were notorious for eating away anything they touched that wasn't immune to acid.
  • Some crafty players have tried cutting off a rust monster's antennae to cause this to their foes in turn (of course, this also destroys loot).
  • Forgotten Realms from long ago have a type of magic daggers called Rust Blade (and a corresponding variation of flying daggers) that does the same and is made using rust monster's antennae. As a side effect, rust monsters smelling this thing go into feeding frenzy and don't stop until devoured it, after which they are either healed to maximum possible hit points or if already there, go into pre-mating feeding frenzy (that is, try to gorge oneself on metal again, and ram everyone who carries any).
• Munchkin has a creature that counts as a curse rather than as a monster. It keeps eating your equipment until it randomly eats itself.
  • An item in Munchkin Cthulhu is a set of Bagpipes. Rather than try to eat it, there's a chance the monsters will attempt to mate with it. And yes, if they do, you lose the item.
• The Devourer in Alternate Reality. Even has an in-game song about it. This creature appeared when you had too many inventory items and ate them.
• Nethack has acidic monsters whose slime/blood erodes your weapons, rust monsters and rust traps to rust iron, gelatinous cubes that eat organic materials and disenchanters who eat your items' magic. Some can be negated by enchanting your gear to make it rust/fire/rot-proof, but disenchanters are Goddamn Bats for a reason.
• Dungeon Crawl has jellies that eat items left on the dungeon floor or even doors. Feeding items to jellies is even necessary if you want to gain favor with Jiyva, the god of slime.
• Ragnarok Online has the various species of Poring, that by and large like to munch on whatever items are on the floor. It's possible to kill them to retrieve whatever you lost, but if you somehow manage to drop something valuable, have that thing eaten, and are then killed by a high-tier Poring, those items are up for grabs to whomever takes the offending jelly-bulb down.
• Gears of War 3: Feral Tickers.
• Sonic Shuffle featured "precioustones", gems you could use for an assortment of effects. One of the precioustones you could pick up wasn't a gem at all, but a fairy called "carbuncle" that ate precioustones; once it ran out of gems, it would eat itself.
• In Super Smash Bros Brawl, Munchlax eats items on the ground.
• Final Fantasy Tactics Advance features Bladebiters, who will eat your weapons if given the opportunity. Also, the Sniper class has several skills that can destroy pieces of armor.Luckily they're not that accurate, but you really don't want to take the chance of your Infinity Plus One equipment vanishing completely...
• Dark Souls has acid. The Gaping Dragon boss and the pyromancy Acid Surge reduce the condition of your gear dramatically, and broken gear is gone no matter how much Titanite you used to upgrade it.
• Kid Icarus features the greedy Pluton, which will swipe your arrows of strength if they touch you.
  • The Pluton returns in Kid Icarus: Uprising, where it'll steal weapons and powers you've collected in the level. Thankfully, now you can kill them to claim your items back, but beware- if you don't do it quickly, they will disappear with your re-appropriated loot.