Stuck Items

The game you're playing allows you to swap equipment in slots on party members. There're some slots the game won't allow players to empty. There are three categories of this trope:

1. Defaults. A character comes with an item that can't be removed.
2. Un-Unequipables. You can equip the item but only once. Often an effect of Cursed Equipment.
3. Swappables. You may reequip the slot but never leave it empty.
4. Undroppables. You may pass this thing from one inventory within the party to another, but not abandon it. Also, either can't be sold, or will persist in the shop inventory until you buy it back. Obviously, done to prevent Unwinnable by Mistake situations with losing Plot Coupon items; sometimes also items for side quests, so the player won't miss a non-essential, but cool reward.

Examples of Stuck Items include:

• Across multiple editions of Dungeons & Dragons, cursed magical items are examples of the second type: once the curse has activated, the item will re-appear in the relevant slot and force the user to use it even if it has been physically destroyed. Usually requires a specific spell or combination of spells just to allow the item to be unequipped and thrown away. Probably the Trope Codifier.
  • Nethack and many other Roguelikes use the same mechanic, you can't remove a cursed item once equipped without removing the curse first, sucks to be you, especially if it's an Amulet of Strangulation..
• Used for flavor in Baldur's Gate: Minsc won't allow Boo to be removed from one of his potion slots.
  • Imoen also starts BG2 with a belt which cannot be removed and has flavor text saying she's been stuck with it as long as she's been in the dungeon. It provides a few hidden immunities to ensure she survives to reach the exit and trigger the plot, and it's gone when you get her back later.
  • And Edwin has a non-removable amulet that's there because the devs wanted him to be really good at spellcasting but the engine doesn't allow for someone to just be given extra spell slots.
• In Eternal Sonata, you can't unequip the Weapons or Armor slot, only swap.
• Occurs in a few Final Fantasy games.
  • In Final Fantasy IX you cannot have your weapon slot be empty, though you may change weapons around and run around "naked" except for your dagger/staff/racket/spear whatever. In Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy X, and Final Fantasy XIII you can't have either your Weapon or armor slot be empty.
  • In Final Fantasy VIII, each character only has one weapon, which can be upgraded (or downgraded), but can't be unequipped.
• in Lost Souls MUD, some cursed items display sticky behavior. Hijinks ensue when players decide it is more cost effective to have their buddy hack off the hand with the cursed ring on it, then reattach the limb, than to get a remove curse spell cast on them.
• The Last Remnant gives a little control over party member equipment. You can get them to request certain pieces if it matches their equipment focus and will upgrade their weapons over time, but there is no way to manually change their stuff.
• Occurs in several games in the SaGa / Final Fantasy Legend series:
  • In SaGa 3, guest party members equipment is stuck, including any gear they equip in empty slots.
• Mytics in SaGa Frontier all have some form of armor permanently equipped, usually "Mystic Mail", although Mesarthiim and Dr. Nusakan have a "Mellow Ring" and "Mystic Shirt" respectively.
  • Depending on their body type, Mecs have one to four pieces of equipment that can't be unequipped, ranging from laser cannons to missile launchers to medkits.
  • In SaGa Frontier 2, some characters are stuck with unequippable weapons, the most notorious exemples being Gustave, who will always have his steel sword equiped (which hopefully upgrades as the story goes on), and Gustaf, who inherits Gustave's sword, which is pretty much an Infinity-1 Sword at this point of the game, and Firebrand, an another Infinity-1 Sword (though being less powerful than Gustave's sword, so Firebrand is utterly useless to Gustaf, except for providing Fire Anima and balancing the negative effects of having a steel weapon equiped). Actually, with his two weapons slots occupied, Gustaf can't equip the Infinity+1 Sword of the game, or any other weapons for that matter, which prevents him, an already powerful character in his own right, to acheive a Game Breaker statut.
  • Romancing SaGa: Minstrel Song features this: certain recruitable characters have equipment that can't be removed. These include The Minstrel, Diana, Prince Niedhart and the various Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep" "generic" mercenaries. This prevents the player from pulling a reverse So Long and Thanks For All the Gear on them, and can also hinder attempts to outfit them with the best equipment.
  • In Unlimited Saga, Kurt and Michelle have cursed gauntlets that can't be removed, only upgraded through the game's distinctive Character Customization.
  • Romancing SaGa 3 also has a fair number of characters with unremoveable items: the assassin-type character can't remove his secondary weapon (although he gains an upgrade for it late in the game), the snowman can't remove the crystal that keeps him from melting outside of his homeworld, the vampire can't remove his cloak (although it's not like you'd want to because it's one of the best armors in the game and any other armors that share its name that you can normally obtain are vastly weaker), the bard can't remove his lute, the crippled swordsman can't remove his prostehtic arm and so forth.
• The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion won't allow you to drop quest items. This is to prevent you from making a quest Unwinnable by losing quest-essential items. Also, said items are weightless. Unfortunately many items will not properly have the "undroppable" tag removed long after they are no longer needed and at least once (Molag Bal's quest) an item that needs to be dropped to complete a quest may get flagged as undroppable. Most of these are unfixed as of the last official patch, requiring fan-made patches to fix (If you are on a console, well, sucks to be you).
• Planescape: Torment: The Nameless One can equip and unequip armor normally, and the body armour of everyone other than the Nameless One, Annah and Grace is stuck. Some characters have items that can't be replaced, like Dak'kon's Zerth Blade, Vhailor's helm, and Fall From Grace's journal. Other characters have eqipment slots that can't be emptied, but can have other items swapped into them, like Annah's daggers, Nordom's crossbows, The Nameless One's Eye and Morte's teeth and Annah and Grace's body armour. Most even have voiced lines if you attempt to try.
• Star Ocean 1 had accessories that couldn't be removed from Phia and Ioshua.
• There's a Vocaloid song about the singer being stuck with "cursed glasses" she can't unequip, which is a problem because she has 20/20 vision normally and with the glasses on she can't see. ... yeah, it's pretty weird.
• The Wild ARMs games generally let you upgrade your characters ARMs (or change their ammunition), but the ARMs themselves are character-specific and can't be unequipped.
• Justified in Warcraft 3 which has several (plot-important) items that can't be dropped; if you could drop them it'd be a Lost Forever situation.
• In World of Warcraft, you cannot un-equip the backpack you start with, ever. Which is annoying, as there are a few easily attainable alternatives readily available with 4-6 slots more.
• Gear weapons in Xenogears.
• Nethack: Cursed armour, rings, or amulets can't be removed, and cursed weapons can't be unwielded; cursed loadstones can't even be dropped. There are several ways of dealing with these problems, many not at all obvious.^[1]
• Red Faction: Guerilla: Mason's sledgehammer is a default that can't be exchanged for a another weapon. On the other hand, it's the single most versatile weapon in the game.
• In the Suikoden series, the True Runes can't be moved or removed from their bearers. The same goes for certain other characters with "special" Runes, whether or not said Runes are actually unique and plot-relevant.
  • Furthermore, some characters actually have armor pieces which cannot be removed or upgraded, usually owing to the person's profession (such as Mina's Toe Shoes, as she's a dancer).
• Demon's Souls gives you a bunch of items that remain bound to you during the whole game: the Augite of Souls (a glowy rock that frequently serves as your only source of light), Nexial Binding (a bangle you can use at any time to escape a level at the cost of all your souls/money), Blue Eye Stone (used to enter another player's world as an allied Blue Phantom), Black Eye Stone (used to invade another player's world and hunt them down as a Black Phantom), and after you fulfill the right conditions, the Red Eye Stone (used to enter a duel with another player).
• In Chrono Trigger, you cannot completely unequip any equipment slot on any character - they're all filled by default, and all you can do is swap them (with the slight exception of your time on the Blackbird, where the slots temporarily empty for everything except Ayla's weapon). The same applies to weapons and basic armor in Chrono Cross, but nothing else.
• Albion applies this for all plot-important items. Unfortunately the dev team neglected to consider that "King Tharnos's Permit" allows you to deal with a Broken Bridge either through directly using it, or through selecting a relevant conversational option. Only if you use it directly will it be removed from your inventory—otherwise, it stays with you forever. At least it doesn't weigh much.
• The Lufia series has cursed items, which after being equipped cannot be removed until you pay a priest to remove the item for you.
  • Curse Of The Sinistrals brings the "swap only" plate to the table, with everybody coming with default equipment.
• Golden Sun has cursed weapons that are very powerful, but have the annoying side effect of causing paralysis when fighting. Once equipped, you can't take them off unless you visit a priest to remove the curse from the character. The weapon will still be cursed though.
  • Though you can equip a special ring to remove the paralysis effect, making it a powerful weapon you probably won't want to remove anyway.
  • Civilization V: Capital cities cannot be razed. Even if the original owner is defeated entirely, the city is there to stay for the entire game. This includes city state cities, and serves some purpose in that this allows players to liberate both major civs and city states, which is especially useful for a diplomatic victory. On the other hand, its impossible to get rid of such cities if you wanted to build another one in a better location nearby.
• In Jagged Alliance the biker mercenary Nails refuses to take off his leather vest... unless for another leather vest, for instance a kevlar-reinforced one (hint hint).
• In Kingdom Hearts 1 & 2, Sora and company cannot unequip their main weapons, although the Trio can change their weapon to another of the same type. Sora always has to have his Keyblade equipped; Donald and Goofy: their respective Stave and Shield, and any World Partner comes default with a weapon that can't even be switched out for another.
  • The same goes for Birth By Sleep, in which Terra, Ventus and Aqua can switch out Keyblades, but cannot unequip them leaving them with nothing.
    • In the case of the keyblade wielders, this is justified; the keyblade is usually the only weapon available to them, and their "weapon slot" is actually just a keychain used to modify the keyblade's attributes.
• The Dragon Quest series has cursed weapons that can only be removed with special methods once equipped. The moment you equip them, you'll hear an ominous tune play, which has become a sort of staple in the series.
• Some Harvest Moon games have cursed tools that can't be removed when held. Very annoying if you accidentally equip them with the switch tools button shortcut.
• Subverted in Valkyrie Profile. Lenneth's Nibelungen Ring has all the usual signs that it can't be removed, but it really can be and not wearing it at certain points in the game is necessary to get the best ending.
• The original Call of Duty and its expansion have a form of this - pistols are considered separate from the normal two-weapon limit, and you can't drop one unless you find a different one. However, after the first game's American campaign, you don't always have one to start with (this, combined with their general low damage, is probably why CoD2 and later dropped the dedicated pistol slot).
• Happens in Tales of the Abyss with Guest Star Party Member Asch. He comes pre-equipped with "Maestro" equipment, basically his uniform as God-General, that refused to be removed unless you use cheat devices. When you first get him, his equipment is top-notch and his accessory very useful, but the next time you can actually control him the rest of your party has clearly outclassed him.
• Pokémon has types one and three. Key Items, once obtained, can't be tossed or sold. Trying to toss gets you a "That's too important to throw away", which is annoying in the early games, which limit your space severely, with items whose purpose has already been fulfilled, like the SS Anne ticket in Gen I after you finish with the ship.
  • At least one slot in your party MUST be filled at all times. It can be any Pokemon, but if you try to deposit that last one in the PC, you'll get a "That's your last Pokemon" message and be stopped from doing it.
• Idea no Hi allows changing and removing most clothing on a character but underwear can only be replaced, not removed, for obvious reasons.
• Wizardry VII has 33 cursed (including powerful benign items that are quest rewards) and 140 undroppable items, 4 have both flags. Wizardry 8 got 40 cursed and 72 undroppable (including all items from Wizardry VII that can be retained to the end and imported) items, 3 also cursed. Accumulating weight of the undroppables can become a problem.

1. ↑ Turning them into meat and chewing them off, anyone?