As long as there have been video games, there have been hidden items in video games. Developers have always hidden secrets and Easter eggs within their products, and the practice has only increased in recent years. With gigantic games releasing all the time now, where players can collect millions of different objects, hidden items have become both more numerous and more skillfully hidden.
Naturally, this means that for a list like this, we have a wealth of options to choose from. This list compiles our favorite hidden items; the ones left as a special thank-you by the developers to only the most diligent and keen-eyed of players. It has gotten harder and harder to surprise video game players these days, what with seemingly every major video game having some secret snuck into the background of every level. Whether a reference to another game, a powerful weapon, or just an elaborate way to challenge players, these items are always meant to give players something new to discover.
Some of these items took months for players to find, while others could only be found through outside sources - or even by translating ancient languages. Some on this list are harder to find than others, but to be clear, this is not a list of the biggest challenges in video games and their rewards; it's a list of the items that were so hard to find most players went through the games without ever knowing they existed.
These are 20 Hidden Rare Items In Video Games (And How To Find Them).
Radiant armor (Breath of the Wild)
As anyone who has played the game will tell you, there are a ton of hidden items in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Some of them are more powerful than the Radiant Armor, but most of them aren't quite so easy to miss.
The armor is sitting in a secret shop in Gerudo Town, behind the clothing shop near the entrance.
But the shop won't just let anybody in, since what it's selling (male clothing) is technically illegal in Gerudo. You'll have to eavesdrop on the shop's guards to hear the password required to get in. And then, the armor itself is expensive, costing 2,400 rupees and nine luminous stones. If you want to upgrade it later, that'll cost even more stones.
Invisibility cap (Super Mario Odyssey)
Look, if you want to be invisible in Super Mario Odyssey, you'll have to put in the work. To find the hat that turns Mario invisible, you'll have to first get 500 Power Moons, and that's the easy part. That will unlock the Darker Side of the moon, which contains exactly one Multi-Moon. To get it, you'll have to go through a gauntlet.
Specifically, you have to complete a level that contains design notes from every kingdom you've visited in the game; a super-level that is longer than anything else in the game. Also, there are no checkpoints. If Mario perishes, he has to go all the way back to the beginning.
It should be noted that the NPCs of the game cheer Mario for even trying to beat it. Is a Multi-Moon and a cool cap worth it?
Phantom Bow (Battlefield 4)
In a particularly sadistic move, the developers of Battlefield 4 created the Phantom Assignments, a series of challenges that forced completists to pore over every map looking for all kinds of Easter eggs. The most evil of all these assignments, however, had to be the final one, to find the Phantom Bow.
After completing all other Phantom assignments, players had to find the dog tags from the Final Stand DLC and ride an elevator in Hanger 21 with three other players.
If you don't do it correctly, you won't survive the ride. You then have to input a code into a keypad (which players spent hours and hours cracking), and then you'll get a bow that's okay for stealth attacks at short range. That's it.
All that work for an adequate suppressed weapon.
The Bow of Perseverance (Dragon Age Inquisition)
The Dragon Age franchise has always had a special place in its heart for silly, arbitrarily hard-to-find items. There are several we could choose from for Inquisition, but Perseverance, a special rare bow, sticks out because of the effort and time required to obtain it.
To start, you'll have to head to the Hissing Wastes.
Once there, you're going to just have to look all over the place for an NPC that looks like a Chantry sister. We can't be more specific because there are no specific spawn points-- she can show up all over the map. Plus, you have to find her four times before she finally tells you to take a gift and not to falter, giving you the unique bow.
It's not the most powerful bow in the game or anything, but it's a nice pickup.
Clothes for Poogie (Monster Hunter World)
If there's one thing the Monster Hunter series is known for, it's endless gameplay systems, including mini-games. One of those in Monster Hunter World is petting Poogie, a small pig found in Astera.
Once per mission (i.e. returning after one), the player can pet Poogie, and if they get a big heart from the little pig, they can pick it up and carry it around.
This actually has some meaning, as the player can wander over certain hidden spots while carrying the pig to find hidden items.
These items tend to be cute little outfits for Poogie, including Memorial Striped, Hog in a Frog, Apprentice Fiver, and White Jammies. The hardest to find is probably the Emperor's New Duds, located all the way at the top of the observation tower on wooden platform.
Sturm (Destiny 2)
There are a lot of powerful, hard-to-find weapons in Destiny 2, but this exotic hand cannon sticks out in a lot of people's minds for its high-effort questline.
Just to get to the quest for Sturm, you have to first get its partner, Drang, which you'll get if you complete the Exodus Black series of quests.
Once you've got that (and you have to be at least level 20 and have completed the main campaign to get there), you'll then have to complete the Relics of the Golden Age questline, which has two full stages, including difficult feats you have to perform with Drang. A
fter doing all this and one final quest with a power level of 140, you will finally be given a Golden Age Engram which will decrypt into Sturm.
Isu Armor (Assassin’s Creed Origins)
Legendary sets of armor are a long-standing tradition in video games, and the Assassin's Creed franchise tends to hide one set that requires more work than all the others. In Assassin's Creed II there was the Armor of Altaïr, Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood had the Armor of Brutus, and so on. In Assassin's Creed Origins, there was the Isu Armor.
The technologically advanced suit could only be obtained if the player completed all 12 Stone Circle puzzles, scattered around Egypt, just as a start.
The player would also need to have 50 silica and venture underneath the Great Pyramid of Giza to actually convert all that work into getting the item. Once obtained, however, players noticed they were much harder to hurt.
Eevium Z (Pokemon Sun/Moon)
Pokémon Sun and Moon introduced a new gameplay concept to the world of Pokémon: Z-moves. These were moves powered up in battle to monstrous levels, but they could only be used when players had found Z-crystals, which were scattered around the Alola region in main quests, side quests, and everything in between.
A particularly roundabout side quest found the player battling Eevee trainers. Starting from the Thrifty Megamart on Akala Island, players had to find and battle the other old trainers to finally obtain Eevium Z, which let Eevee use the Extreme Evoboost move.
The trainers were found in the Trainers' School, the Tide Song Hotel, the Community Center, the Power Plant, the Cemetery, Iki Town, Hano Grand Resort, and the Steelix ship. It's a lot of work for one move!
Sapphire’s Exquisite Sapphire (Skyrim)
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim has a seemingly endless quantity of hidden items, so many that we could have populated several of these lists with nothing but items from that game. While there are certainly bigger quests for hard-to-get items, none of them are quite as valuable as Sapphire's Exquisite Sapphire.
The only way to obtain this item is first to do a quest for Glover Mallory, the blacksmith of Raven Rock.
He'll then give you a key to his basement's secret room, where you can find unique armor and a letter written to his daughter, Sapphire. If you take this to her, she'll give you the Exquisite Sapphire, the most valuable gem in the game; worth five times as much as a Flawless Diamond. Even better, Glover's letter can respawn, meaning you can mine this for endless cash.
Triple Triad Card (Final Fantasy XIII)
JRPGs can be funny. Sometimes it feels like they walk you through the game step-by-step so there's no way you can fall behind, and other times they hide secrets so obtuse you wonder why they bothered to program them at all. This item definitely falls into the latter category, as this unique playing card involves a sidequest with a very strange (and very hard to find) alien.
Pupu the alien flies around in a UFO the player must find five times just to meet him. The locations are very specific, with the area east of Timber on Mandy Beach, the Winhill bluffs, the Kashkabald Desert near Cactuar Island, Heath Peninsula, and finally Grandidi Forest above the Chocobo sanctuary.
After doing all that, if the player gives Pupu several elixirs, you'll get one single card. Yay.
The Sword of Kings (Earthbound)
You may think this charming RPG may not seem the type to have annoyingly difficult-to-obtain items, but you would be so wrong. There's a playable character in the game named Poo, who will only equip items that have "Of Kings" in the title. This means that there is only one weapon you can give him to increase his attack, and that's the Sword of Kings.
The problem is, the sword is really hard to get.
You can only find it in the Stonehenge Base, after it is dropped by a Starman Super.
Even then, there is only a 1 in 128 chance that it will actually get dropped, meaning more than 99% of these battles gives the player nothing. Thus, most kids never found it, leaving Poo to fight with just his fists.
Scarab gun (Halo 2)
If there's one series known for a wide range of powerful weapons, it's Halo, but nothing even comes close to the Scarab Gun. Packing all the firepower of a scarab cannon into one rifle, the gun never overheats despite having rapid fire. It's the most powerful gun in the entire series. It's actually difficult not to injure your own character while using it.
On the early Metropolis level, you'll have to destroy all of your own allies and most of the enemies, and that's just the start of a few different complicated methods.
The craziest one involves another player, as you'll have to stand on a box on the bridge and fire a rocket launcher beneath you, shooting yourself up to where the gun is. There's no way to survive the drop back down, necessitating a pass to the second player.
Strange Treasures (Uncharted 4)
Finding treasures is a huge part of the Uncharted experience, as every game includes dozens of hidden items scattered around the unseen corners of levels.
Uncharted 4 took the series to new heights in a lot of ways, and treasures were no exception, as there were some that took even the most experienced players hours to find.
There were three treasures in that game that stood out from the rest, namely the Strange Pendant, Strange Relic, and Strange Fruit.
All three of them are references to Naughty Dog's previous games and you can find them in Chapters 9, 12, and 21.
All three require you to use your grappling hook creatively.
Goddess Staff (Fire Emblem Awakening)
Fire Emblem is seriously reliant on turn-based strategy, and that includes equipping your team with the best weapons. However, these powerful weapons and staves are usually given freely to the player near the end of the game. Only a few exceptions in each game require the player to find the item on their own.
One of these is the Goddess Staff in Fire Emblem Awakening. It can be found by moving a character to a specific spot (one space left, two down) from the boss of Paralogue 14 (Laurent's chapter).
However, it will only work after the player has visited all four villages, and if you complete the chapter without getting it, you'll miss the item forever - with the exception of those who purchased DLC.
Soccer balls (Call of Duty: WW2)
Sometimes you just have to take a break from all that shooting and play some soccer instead. This seems to be the thought process behind the inclusion of soccer balls at Headquarters in Call of Duty: World War 2, going along with the trend of giving players manipulatable objects and collectibles in both single player and multiplayer areas.
To find the three soccer balls located around Headquarters, you'll need to practice your jumping.
All three require some well-timed jumps to reach, and the balls are brown, meaning they tend to blend in with the background of the game. Sports-obsessed fans will stop at nothing, however, and players quickly found this little secret.
Minecraft (Borderlands 2)
Players of Gearbox's Borderlands 2 already on the lookout for any Easter eggs they could find when they chanced upon a big one: a reference to Minecraft in the Caustic Caverns.
To get to the Minecraft Cave, you'll have to follow the train tracks in the area and jump up a cliff. After defeating the enemies, you'll be able to "mine" the blocks you find there, with the gold ones giving you gold, coal blocks for ammo, and so on.
Some specific blocks also give out skins that turn your character into a denizen of the classic sandbox game! There's also a chance that any given block will drop a gun skin, too.
Hand Cannon (Dead Space 2)
One of the best things about serious, scary games is that they tend to hide lighthearted jokes. One of these can be found by players who beat Dead Space 2 on Hard Core difficulty, an item called the Hand Cannon. Just to get that far, players have to complete a separate full playthrough simply to unlock that difficulty level.
It takes full two playthroughs - one on the hardest possible difficult - to obtain the weapon, but boy, is it worth it.
Easily the most powerful weapon in the game, it doesn't have an aiming reticle, and fires by Isaac simply pointing a big red foam finger at an enemy and saying "bang!" The enemy, regardless of size, will then explode.
Did we mention it has unlimited ammo and fires as fast as the player can pull the trigger?
Pip Boy game tapes (Fallout 4)
The Fallout series has always worn its past influences on its sleeve, as nostalgia is one of the core themes of the series. Fallout 4 extended that into video games, as the Vault Dweller could find six reskins of classic games scattered around the greater Boston area.
The game tapes are called Atomic Command, Pipfall, Red Menace, Grognak & The Ruby Ruins, Zeta Invaders, and Automatron, and they're based on Missile Command, Pitfall!, Donkey Kong, The Bard's Tale, Space Invaders, and Robotron: 2084, respectively. They're all fully playable, and you can find them in the Museum of Freedom, Vault 111's cafeteria, the Memory Den, the Valentine Detective Agency, and two in Fort Hagen.
Great magic barrier (Dark Souls)
Dark Souls, as any Dark Souls fan will scream at you, is not a game for the faint of heart. Case in point: some of the game's best items are hidden in an entirely optional area, which itself is only accessed through two secret passages. This is Ash Lake, where intrepid (not to mention patient) players can find the Great Magic Barrier.
The item itself is a powerful Miracle, allowing players to nearly neutralize all magic attacks for a short period of time.
That might make it worth it for experienced players, who had to trek through Blighttown, find the secret passages to the Great Hollow, navigate to Ash Lake, find the hollow of a tree, and then finally do an extremely precise drop off of a log to get it.
Forbidden Grip of the Ages (God of War)
As you may recall the recent God of War released to considerable fanfare, with fans and reviewers snapping up copies quickly. Fans who got the Stone Mason Edition also received a cloth map of the game world, complete with runes etched into the margins. This was actually information about the dwarves Brok and Sindri written in Elder Futhark, which fans then translated.
Using this, fans were able to pinpoint a Legendary axe grip, the Forbidden Grip of the Ages, in Muspelheim. Getting there is difficult in and of itself, but once on Muspelheim Tower, fans were able to look quickly in a few different directions described in the map, which unlocked the grip. Thankfully, the rest of us don't have to translate ancient runes to get it.
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Do you have any tips on other hidden video game items? Share them in the comments!