Exclusive and Inaccessible Items in Games

If you stop and think about it, you can think of countless items that exist in games. Some are rare, some are legendary, some are common. There are all kinds of things you can find through quests, exploration, and rewards. But there are some that are extremely rare, so exclusive that they're no longer obtainable.

There are some that you get through special or seasonal events, which you don't know if they'll ever be repeated in the future (and, in general, they never are), or partnerships with other IPs that simply ended for commercial or technical reasons and, from one moment to the next, became inaccessible to anyone who wanted them.

So let's think about and remember some of the rarest items that players who got them have, and those who didn't get them can no longer have. And if you have any questions, leave a comment.

During the launch and promotion period of Horizon Forbidden West for PlayStation 4, HoyoVerse and Sony brought Aloy, the robot dinosaur hunter, to Teyvat as an extension of their partnership on the game. There was no reciprocity regarding Genshin Impact characters or items in Horizon, but the game's protagonist made it to the gacha game "practically complete."

Besides Aloy, she has her signature bow, "Predator," a bow that works exclusively for players connected to PSN. She has her distinctive look, a long background that connects her to the world of Genshin Impact, and is voiced in English by Ashly Burch and Ayahi Takagaki in Japanese (the same voice actors who voiced Aloy in the Horizon franchise). All perfect, right?

The only thing missing are the constellations. In Genshin Impact, each time you get a new copy of the same character, it's converted into an item that unlocks a new special ability. But Aloy didn't have this care when she was ported to the game, which made her as strong as the other characters. Therefore, she ended up being a character far behind the others. Today, only those who have played Genshin from the beginning have access to her, and new players have no way to obtain one.

Early on in Warframe, Digital Extremes launched a special program called Founders, available between December 2012 and November 2013. These developer support packages were similar to early access for other games, but with the promise that the reward would never be made available again. The rewards were exclusive weapons, such as the legendary Excalibur Prime, as well as Skana Prime and Lato Prime.

The Excalibur Prime is a variation of the starting weapon, the Excalibur, with a unique look and slightly improved attributes, such as maximum health and armor. The same applies to Skana Prime and Lato Prime: versions with better damage or stats than the originals. The gameplay impact isn't dramatically unbalanced, but their exclusivity has turned these items into status symbols within the community.

Currently, only those who purchased the Founders Packs can use these Prime weapons, and they can't be obtained through drops or in the store. Veteran players display these pieces of equipment as a sort of "trophy" in missions and on the ship, while new players can only see them from afar, as Digital Extremes has already confirmed that they will never be added back to the game.

In the classic Pokémon franchise games, capturing legendary monsters was simply not possible while playing normally. Mew, Celebi and Jirachi were examples of this. These Pokémon were only available through official events organized by Nintendo, usually involving physical distribution in stores, fairs, or tournaments. Players had to take their cartridge to a distribution point, where the monster was transferred directly to their save. Each event had a specific time and location, which drastically limited access to them.

Mew, for example, could only be obtained in Pokémon Red/Blue at official events in Japan and the US, while Celebi was released in Pokémon Gold/Silver mainly in Japan, using the Mobile System GB peripheral, and Jirachi came via the special Pokémon Colosseum Bonus Disc on the GameCube — exclusive to North America.

After each event, it was no longer possible to catch these Pokémon in the original games. Nowadays, anyone who has one of these Pokémon in their original save not only keeps a rare pet, but also proof that they were present at a historic moment in the franchise. However, when the cartridge battery dies, these rare items are lost forever.

In the chaotic universe of Team Fortress 2, the Golden Frying Pan is more than a weapon: it's practically a myth. This golden frying pan functions like any standard melee weapon, but its true value lies in its prestige and effect: when you eliminate someone with it, the enemy transforms into a glowing golden statue. A visual effect that made the item instantly recognizable.

It could only be obtained as an extremely rare drop by completing contracts in the Two Cities campaign or the Gun Mettle and Tough Break events, but with absurdly low odds: 1 in 10,000 or more. Valve never made the Golden Frying Pan available outside of these events, and even within them, the drop rate was absurd.

Result: very few players in the world own one. It remains active and functional, but it only appears in the hands of collectors or veterans who were lucky enough to get one at the time. For those who started playing later or didn't participate in these contracts, there's no way to get one.

The World of Warcraft Trading Card Game (WoW TCG), released in 2006, brought physical cards that, in addition to working in the tabletop game, came with codes to unlock exclusive mounts in the MMO. Among the most desired were the Spectral Tiger, the Big Battle Bear and the X-51 Nether-Rocket. These mounts were not available through any other means: either you bought the card packs and were lucky enough to get a loot card, or you went without.

With the closure of the WoW TCG in 2013, production of new cards and codes ceased. Since then, these items have become virtual trophies, still visible in-game—and fully functional—but unobtainable to new players without resorting to million-dollar trades on the secondary market.

Those who already have them can still display and use the mount normally in Azeroth, making it clear to everyone that they were present during the TCG era. There’s no prospect of these rewards returning, making them officially lost to those who didn't claim them back then.

In EVE Online, CCP Games built a complex virtual economy, part of which involves items that existed only in extremely limited quantities. Famous examples include the Gold Magnate and Opux Luxury Yacht ships, as well as exclusive SKINs from past events and promotions. The Gold Magnate, for example, was awarded to the winner of an official tournament in the game's early days, and almost all of the original copies were destroyed in battle, leaving very few remaining in the persistent universe.

Some SKINs also follow this exclusivity pattern: they were distributed as rewards for physical collector's editions or in-person CCP events, and were never offered again. Now imagine seeing one of these and even shooting down the ship with it? You're destroying a rare piece.

In the case of ships, beyond their collectible value, they have a real impact on gameplay—they are fully operational and, because they’re in the hands of very few pilots, carry immense strategic and economic weight. New players may see them piloted on very rare occasions, but there's no way to obtain these relics of the past.

Among the countless legendary rarity items in World of Warcraft, few carry such a mythic aura as the Pendulum of Doom. It's a two-handed axe that drops at the end of the Uldaman dungeon, originally unlocked at level 40. Despite being only a progression item for characters at this stage of the game, its drop rate is so absurdly low that it's become a coveted item for collectors and veterans alike.

The weapon doesn't have any event exclusivity or limited edition—it's technically always been available in the game. But in practice, what defines it is its extreme rarity. Players tell almost unbelievable stories of how many times they had to clean Uldaman before seeing the axe fall. One of the most famous accounts, documented by the community itself, is of a player who had to complete more than 2,292 runs between the retail version and WoW Classic before finally obtaining the item.

The Pendulum of Doom today has almost purely symbolic value. It doesn't compete in power with the modern weapons introduced in expansions, but displaying it on your account shows that you belong to a select group of players who had the patience—and luck—to pursue it.