The harderst item to obtain via random drop?

[Mblaze]

I remember that back in the days it took me literally half a day to farm The Heaven's Sword in Symphony of the Night. I wonder if there is any item that is similarly troublesome to get in the Advance collection.

[benjymlewis]

Some of the endgame monsters in Aria of Sorrow have ridiculously low item drop rates. the Final Sword and the Demon Mail in particular are.... really rare.

A lot of souls are also pretty rare. Peeping Eye is easy to farm, but its soul drop is ludicrously low.


Harmony of Dissonance also has a bunch of really rare drops, but nothing in particular comes to mind, since none of them were really all that useful.


Circle of the Moon - most of the cards have pretty low drop rates. I remember Saturn in particular is a pain to get, since it's rare AND dropped by a tough unique monster.

If you're going for completing the bestiaries, then you don't really need to worry about Circle outside of the cards, since this game doesn't even have an in-game bestiary. If you still want a file with one of every item collected anyway, then it's best to accomplish this in Thief Mode - the final unlockable bonus mode that boosts your Luck stat to ridiculous heights.

[Mblaze]

Originally posted by benjymlewis:

Some of the endgame monsters in Aria of Sorrow have ridiculously low item drop rates. the Final Sword and the Demon Mail in particular are.... really rare.

A lot of souls are also pretty rare. Peeping Eye is easy to farm, but its soul drop is ludicrously low.


Harmony of Dissonance also has a bunch of really rare drops, but nothing in particular comes to mind, since none of them were really all that useful.


Circle of the Moon - most of the cards have pretty low drop rates. I remember Saturn in particular is a pain to get, since it's rare AND dropped by a tough unique monster.

If you're going for completing the bestiaries, then you don't really need to worry about Circle outside of the cards, since this game doesn't even have an in-game bestiary. If you still want a file with one of every item collected anyway, then it's best to accomplish this in Thief Mode - the final unlockable bonus mode that boosts your Luck stat to ridiculous heights.

Thank you for this reply. So the worst is yet to come, as I haven't even touched AoS yet. So far, the biggest problem I've had was getting the Bear Ring and the Saturn card too in CotM (for them it took me about an hour, with all the luck enhancing items) and Floating Boots in HoD (which took me almost twice that long).

[ShinkuTear]

Circle has the benefit of a truly properly functional Luck stat enhancing drop rates, so even though things like Pluto Card and Bear Ring are less than 1% drop, since those are the base rates you'll really have several % chance. Especially if you hunt them in Thief Mode, which might actually hit drop rate cap on stuff like that.

Meanwhile there are several dozen drops, soul and item/equip alike, that are sub 1% in Aria, and Luck stat doesn't actually function in any meaningful way, leaving you with only Soul Eater and Hard Mode bonuses for Soul rates, and maybe a ring that affects drop rates?

[benjymlewis]

I thought it was Dawn of Sorrow that had the busted luck stat. Is it really broken in Aria too?

[Kraleck]

Luck in Aria of Sorrow doesn't make a dent in drop rate calculations unless you have thousands of points in it (which is impossible without extreme hacking).

That said, Peeping Eye Soul, Saturn Card, Demon Mail, and a select few others tip the scale of how BS they are to farm. Some from low rates, some from tough baddies, and a few from both...

[seedmole]

In any case, you can use the game's rewind feature to "save scum" your rng for quick farming. Worked on the bird ladies of CotM for their rare drops, as well as for full heals.

[Devalaous]

Originally posted by benjymlewis:

A lot of souls are also pretty rare. Peeping Eye is easy to farm, but its soul drop is ludicrously low.

Huh, guess I got lucky, I already have one near the very beginning.

[Mblaze]

I found this list.
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/gba/930975-castlevania-double-pack/faqs/70738
It seems the bone pillar's, zombie and gargoyle have the smallest soul drop rate. Which I can confirm since I've been trying to get the bone pillar's one for two hours :/

[HeraldOfOpera]

Originally posted by mblaze:

I found this list.
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/gba/930975-castlevania-double-pack/faqs/70738
It seems the bone pillar's, zombie and gargoyle have the smallest soul drop rate. Which I can confirm since I've been trying to get the bone pillar's one for two hours :/

To be fair, zombie you can probably get with an afk setup if any exist due to how they work. The real tricky ones are Sky Fish and Tsuchinoko for similar reasons of being very difficult to find the creature in the first place. The latter is particularly infamous for the catch-22 that the Soul Eater Ring makes it significantly easier but is also one of the few things that soul is useful for (the other is the Chaos Ring).

[Mblaze]

Noted and thanks.

[AkumaOuja]

Originally posted by mblaze:

I remember that back in the days it took me literally half a day to farm The Heaven's Sword in Symphony of the Night. I wonder if there is any item that is similarly troublesome to get in the Advance collection.

Circle of the Moon's RNG is legendary. There are major components of the DSS system and ultra rare items that spawn as like a 0.0001% chance on enemies that only appear as a hidden background element in a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ boss room that disappears forever if it's killed or runs away that you need to kill while crouched mid-air and other random nonsense.

Combined with the toughest Dracula fight of the franchise, the level up requirements being boosted for the US/EU releases, a dark palette, most kids not knowing what a metroidvania ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ was when it came out, unusual mechanics for the franchise at the time and even for the franchise now, and no shop and previously mentioned low drop rates with no guide to what can drop what, and CotM had a *rep* and still does.

[ShinkuTear]

Originally posted by AkumaOuja:

Circle of the Moon's RNG is legendary. There are major components of the DSS system and ultra rare items that spawn as like a 0.0001% chance on enemies that only appear as a hidden background element in a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ boss room that disappears forever if it's killed or runs away that you need to kill while crouched mid-air and other random nonsense.

While I sorta get your point about the Drop RNG being wild, your exaggerations are extreme. Especially since Circle just might have the kindest Drop RNG of the 3 GBA Vanias, due to how absurdly powerful the Luck stat is.

The lowest drop item is Heart Ex, off of a King Moth, at 0.2%. King Moth is also the worst source for Heart Ex by a large margin. Lowest drop Card is Pluto, off of Trick Candle, at 0.4%.

Due to Luck stat, by time you can hunt a Trick Candle, your Pluto drop chance will be much closer to 2% or 3%, or closer to 25% in Thief mode.

The 3 Candle enemies are indeed in old boss rooms but not as 'a hidden background element, they are posing as candles that did not exist there before and are not even copying local candle appearance (especially obvious in Cerberus room). They also don't disappear forever, and the only one with any nonsense to kill is Mimic Candle due to it's 990 HP (Time stop via the hourglass subweapon and it is easy)

The other candles have such low HP (150 and 200) you can reasonably kill them in 2 whip hits, and you have time for 3 before they escape.

If you wanna complain about Drop RNG, Aria is the real problem, due to no functional Luck stat(RIP Items) and the only ways to reasonably boost Soul drops are the Soul Eater Ring and playing on Hard Mode.

[Mblaze]

I've been trying to get the Mandragora soul for three hours with no results. From my point of view the grinding in AoS outclasses this one from CotM.

[knighta]

Originally posted by mblaze:

I've been trying to get the Mandragora soul for three hours with no results. From my point of view the grinding in AoS outclasses this one from CotM.

I take it you are using the soul eater ring? I got it within a few tries with the ring or am I just lucky?

[Mblaze]

Originally posted by knighta:

Originally posted by mblaze:

I've been trying to get the Mandragora soul for three hours with no results. From my point of view the grinding in AoS outclasses this one from CotM.

I take it you are using the soul eater ring? I got it within a few tries with the ring or am I just lucky?

I haven't gotten it yet (but good to know it exists, thanks). All I had worn was the Lucky Charm and the Miracle of Light ability (+8 LUCK). Btw it eventually dropped but it took me almost 4 hours to get, lol.
Also the bomber armour soul was pretty troublesome to collect. But at least I managed to level up Soma from 41 to 45 lvl while farming for it xD

So yeah I don't think that list I've posted above is really that reliable.