Ultra Rares
Ultra Rares are items that are extremely rare drops, designed to be acquirable only through chance (or loads of meat). Jick has done an incredibly good job of keeping them virtually inaccessible to farmers (at least, as inaccessible as to occasional visitors).
List of Rares
Your Chances
"PLEASE BE OF NOTING: As of ~May of 2005, system mechanism by which Ultra Rare items drop have been changed, and Bashy not have had time to develop adequate theory for current. Therefore, post of this FOR ENTERTAINING MINT PURPOSE ONLY. " Quoth the Bashy, nevermore.
No official statement has been made on the mechanics of these drops, however some information has been decoded from one of Bashy's statements on the subject which produces the following guess as to the method by which it is determined when a given character gets an ultra-rare. Please note that Bashy himself mentioned that he never saw the actual code.
- Each character has a "step counter" which is hidden from everyone and increments each time they spend an adventure. This step counter resets to zero when it reaches some predetermined maximum (probably 50). Unless your step counter is at exactly the right number (the number itself is also unknown, though the obvious choice would be 0), you have no chance of getting an ultra-rare.
- There are certain times of day chosen by the server at random during which the ultra-rares will be available. It is very likely (in fact, virtually certain) that these times change from day to day. It is unknown how long these intervals are and how many of them there are every day. It is also unknown whether there is a fixed number of these intervals for all the ultra-rares, or whether they are each tracked separately.
- The first character to adventure in the appropriate area with the right number on their step counter during the time interval for the day has a chance of encountering the appropriate monster and fighting it. Should they defeat the monster, the item's drop is automatic.
- On very, very rare occurances, two adventurers will get to the appropriate area at the right time with the correct number, and both get to fight the monster - this is massively more unlikely to happen than even encountering the monster to begin with.
There has been much debate over the best strategy to acquire one of these. As yet, the only way which seems to have a good chance of paying off in the long run is to save your meat.