Video Game / AdventureQuest 3D

"True Crossplatform MMORPG"

— The tagline for the game.

A re-envisioning of the original AdventureQuest game in 3D. AQ3D is the fourth major MMO from Artix Entertainment, and the first one to be in 3D. It heavily incorporates ideas from AdventureQuest Worlds. The game prides itself on its Crossplatforming feature, allowing allowing players to play simultaneously on PC through Steam, and mobile devices (Android and Apple).

The game follows the custom hero Player Character, who awakens in Death’s domain after dying for unknown reasons. Death immediately offers a deal to the hero: Death’s key to the Land of the Dead was stolen by Vane the Voidking, and it’s up to the hero to retrieve it. To accomplish this task, Death makes the hero his champion, granting them immortality... but they’re still susceptible to being temporarily incapacitated in combat.

The hero then confronts Vane, who reveals that he knows the hero already, as they were a legendary hero that has since been forgotten during their previous life. That, and they’ve lost all of their previous powers and skills. An immediate Curb-Stomp Battle ensues, ending with the hero being thrown all across Lore and into Dragonwatch Keep. The story then follows the hero’s exploits and rise to their former power across Lore, all while retrieving runes to activate a location in the Travel Portal to retrieve a legendary weapon, and recruiting more and more allies to assist in the struggle against Vane and his goons... aaaaand getting involved in the typical Lampshade Hanging and Hurricane of Puns typical of Artix Entertainment games.

The gameplay is rather simple: There are multiple classes to choose from, with four to start with, but you can unlock more through daily quests (although some also have the additional prerequisite of having another class at rank 10). You can change into any class at any time outside of combat. Each class has five skill slots: three for normal skills, one for a cross skill that can be used from other classes, and one ultimate skill that charges up and becomes available as you deal damage or provide healing, depending on the class.

The player can also visit various NPC’s and gather materials from various monsters, dungeons, and quests to craft different sorts of gear and cosmetics. Crafting uses a real-time timer before the crafted item can be received, but this time limit can be bypassed using Dragon Crystals.

The game and its storyline are still highly unfinished. Nonetheless, the game is open to all players, and it usually receives updates on a weekly basis. Now that its out of Open Beta, the main story has yet to be finished.

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Adventure Quest 3D provides the following tropes:

• 20 Bear Asses: Most story and side quests forces the player to kill a lot of mobs and gather quest items.
• Absurdly Spacious Sewer: There is one below Yulgar's inn, where Blob Monsters spawn aplenty.
• Adaptational Badass: Melodia was a Damsel in Distress in AdventureQuest Worlds, while here she's the certified battle maid who once punched a tavern guest's teeth out after being called a "tavern wench".
• Adaptational Personality Change: Galanoth. In the other games, while he is obsessed with killing dragons, he still has time to crack jokes, cares for his troops, and even spares dragons who are not threats. Here, he is much more serious and far more obsessed with killing dragons. He also does not waste time mourning deaths, being prioritizing the mission above all else.
  • He might also be a different person, as it eventually turns out there's more than one dragonslayer named Galanoth in this game.
• Adaptational Distillation: Virtually every NPC has a much less prominent backstory and characterization, due to the much more limited dialogue, cutscenes, and the fact they almost always stand solitary in one location.
• Adaptation Species Change: Safiria has always been a vampire in the other Artix games, typically the Queen of Vampires. Here, she starts off as a normal human. Subverted when she later turns into a vampire, specifically being the reincarnation of Safiria, the first vampire.
• Adaptation Dye-Job:
  • Robina typically has light brown chestnut hair, while here, it's ginger red.
  • Blizzy's fur has gone from sky blue to bluish-grey.
• Affably Evil:
  • Morgul the Necromancer in Darkovia. He serves evil but he's a pretty chill guy to talk to and doesn't appear to wish the player any harm.
  • Most of the necromancers on the Isle of the Dead and Tower of Necromancy. They go about their awful jobs such as mass-murder and soul-stealing in a very casual and business like fashion with seemingly no sadistic intents. They are also very chummy with the Hero and seem genuinely sincere to him/her.
• Allegedly Free Game: The game is most certainly free to play, with the majority of features accessible to all players. However, the Guardian class and any connected quests and cosmetic rewards requires a membership paid with cash (19.99 for the base, 49.99 for the Dragon Guardian pack). In addition, bank vaults and a very, very substantial number of the cosmetic items can only be purchased via the in-game currency of Dragon Crystals. While the game does provide you with the means to get Dragon Crystals via the daily chests and some quests, the number you get tends to be pitifully small (with only an occasional chest drop where it exceeds triple digits), requiring either coming in every day for months to gain anything of note, or being incentivized to drop some cash for more substantial amounts.
• Amazing Technicolor Population: Players can customize with any skin tone.
• Animate Inanimate Object:
  • Myx in Mystcroft is a talking cauldron.
  • For the first time, you get to craft your own Doom Weapon, the Necrostaff of Doom and Talking Weapon at that.
• Armor and Magic Don't Mix: Completely averted, the game makes no distinction on armor types at all, and there's no stat distinction between physical attack and magical attack; it's possible to wear a full heavy-looking armor and wield a massive sword and still be as strong a mage as anyone else.
• Artifact of Doom: The Necrostaff of Doom. After it was created, it tried to possess the hero but the hero was able to fight it off. The staff became loyal to the hero after its defeat. Or maybe not...
• Art Shift: Everything now rendered in 3D, the biggest project Artix Entertainment has ever undertaken.
• Ascended Extra:
  • Melodia was a minor character in AdventureQuest Worlds during the "Throne of Darkness" Saga, here she's a battle maid in Yulgar's Inn. She even gets a Death in the Limelight, being killed when Vane attacks Old Battleon.
  • Jimmy the Eye plays his largest role in an Artix Entertainment main game. This is the first time Jimmy himself speaks and he serves as a quest giving NPC. This is also the first game to elaborate on Jimmy the Eye's backstory, where it's explained Warlic accidentally collapsed the dimension where flying eyes are native, and in trying to save the flying eyes he encountered Jimmy, who helped seal up the dimension before the damage could spread.
• Ax-Crazy: Evette in the Tower of Necromancy 7th floor wants the Hero to stay with her and create undead experiments for eternity and tries to kill them after stating their intention to leave. Even the Doom Staff is freaked out by her.
• Author Avatar: As with all the Artix Entertainment games, in-game Non-Player Character versions of various devs can be found throughout the game, the most prominent ones being Artix, Warlic, Cysero, Faith, Galanoth, and Dage.
• Badass Army: Galanoth's Order of DragonSlayers, dedicated to eradicating Dragon kind.
• Badass Boast:
  • Galanoth gives one when he hears the Great Fire Dragon will awaken.
    Galanoth: I am a DRAGONSLAYER. NO dragon... no matter how powerful... lives. I have been hunting this beast for half my life. It won't escape again. Ready the troops. We assault Mount Ashfall at Daybreak!
  • The Hero gives one when conversing with Morgul in Boog's tavern.
    Morgul: You don't even know the horrors that lurk in Darkovia Forest.
    The Hero: The horrors in Darkovia forest should be more worried about me.
• Bad Boss: Talyn the DragonLord treats his minions like expendable tools. He doesn't bat an eye when his dragon partner gets killed, even thanking the The Dragonslayer who slew it, as it allowed him to find a stronger dragon to bond with. He also treats one of his dragon generals like trash, even scoffing it when it suggested being a candidate for the DragonLord to bond with.
• Bedsheet Ghost: You can have one as a pet. Some candy trickster spawns in Mogloween is this.
• Behemoth Battle:
  • A core mechanic of the Breaking Benjamin battle concert revolves around two angelic titans, Pulsarian and Eclipsion, fighting each other in the background. During certain parts of each song, two portals will open and lead players to one of the titan’s essences that can be killed, giving a point to the other titan and causing the other essence to despawn. The ultimate victor of this battle is the final boss you will fight.
  • There’s also the final boss of the World Tree storyline, which pits the now-gigantic hero against the Void Knightmare.
• The Berserker: The Berserker class, where the lower their health, the stronger the damage they can deal.
• Big Bad:
  • The Necroknight for the Doomwood maps.
  • Hallows Eve for Mogloween 2016.
  • The Yetun for Frostval 2016.
  • The Shrade for Friday the 13th events.
  • DragonLord Talyn and Akriloth for the Ashfall maps.
  • Exvidius for the Arcangrove maps.
  • Omen Tenebris for the revamped Heartwood maps.
  • ShadowSlayer W/Wolfwing for the Darkovia saga.
• Black Market: Gaz the Sneevil runs one of these in Battleon.
• Big Bad: Vane the Void King, who is the overall main villain of the game.
• Blob Monster: Lava Blobs and all the blob monsters scattered all over the world.
• Bloodless Carnage: The game is darker than its predecessors, but this trope still applies in the first fight cutscene. The hero is stabbed, maimed, and crushed by a rock (and still lives thanks to a deal with death) but not a single drop of blood is shown. Considering this is still a family-friendly game, it is understandable why blood isn't shown.
• Booby Trap: Daitengu's forest has a lot of spike traps scattered all over the map that deals a huge amount of damage or even kill players if tripped.
• Boss Battle: Every map will have at least one of these.
• Boss Subtitles:
  • Used before the Shadow Entities fight in Darkovia Castle, as well as the introduction for Silvan in Heartwood's Guardian Tower.
  • Also used before the fight with the Son of Braken.
• Bribing Your Way to Victory: Mostly averted, but you can buy some item materials needed to craft some high-end gear. Classes can be unlocked using dragon coins, bypassing the grind to do the daily quest required to unlock it.
• Cap: Currently stands at level 35, and it increases every story patch.
• Captain Ersatz:
  • Robina Hood, a female version of Robin Hood.
  • Shrade is Jason Voorhees in all ways but name, complete with a hockey mask, machete, and emerging from a lake.
  • In the same area, Fleshette is a gender-swapped Freddy Krueger expy. Her dungeon even involves escaping a nightmare, and the final boss fight takes place in a boiler room.
  • DreadFool is essentially Deadpool with a jester motif.
• Celebrity Star: Breaking Benjamin collaborated with the game and have their own story.
• Cat Girl: With the equipment, players can customize their characters into this.
• The Chosen One: Continuing the trend, once again the Hero serves as one, this time being Death's Champion.
• Chronic Hero Syndrome: What sets the Hero aside from the pessimistic Morgul, s/he will never give up on helping someone else no matter how great the risk to their personal safety.
• Cloud Cuckoo Lander: Little Dread believes Hooper to be one since he's quite paranoid of a Lychimera in the forest.
• Colossus Climb: Some Boss Battles allow a version of this, where players can climb features in the environment and attack the boss using ranged spells (via the mage class), where the boss can't reach them. However, this only works if the boss is taking damage from players on the ground, otherwise, the boss will instantly recover the damage.
• Companion Cube: There are other inanimate objects the player can have as a pet, like a crate or a beach ball. The player can even have a stone as a pet.
• Cowardly Boss:
  • Daitengu’s boss fight has you searching for him in a forest of bamboo, and he teleports away once his HP gets low. He later spawns a clone of himself and powers up during the final phase.
  • The Cryptodirax in Heartwood, who repeatedly runs around the map while players farm materials required to be able to even attack it. When it does become vulnerable to attacks, it’s only a bit before it runs away and has to be baited again. It also restores its HP while resting in between bouts of running about.
• Cult:
  • There is one dedicated to Nightlocke, with cult members guarding the Nightlocke tombs in Bone Cliffs.
  • There's also the Crimson Circle, a group of evil dragon worshippers that serve Talyn.
• Curb-Stomp Battle:
  • Vane easily defeats The Hero the first time they meet, smashing and flinging them after effortlessly showing off his prowess.
  • Akriloth swats away Talyn like a fly in a rage after the latter boasts he will make Akriloth his slave.
• Damage Over Time:
  • Rogues and Rangers are capable of inflicting poison on enemies that saps health over time. Certain monsters are also capable of this as well.
  • Mages later gained the Ice Spear ability that also has this effect. They also have the cross-skill Damage Rune, which deals a large amount of damage over time.
  • Dragonslayers, Pirates, and Necromancers also inflict these sorts of debuffs as part of their skills.
• Darker and Edgier: While most Artix Entertainment games don't shy away from violence, but in this one, right-off-the-bat the first mission has the Gero getting stabbed like a pincushion, crushed by a rock, and flailed all over by the Big Bad, setting the tone of the game.
• Dark Is Evil:
  • The Necroknight, an undead lich who resides in an Evil Tower of Ominousness and commands an undead army.
  • Shrade, an undead Serial Killer who emerges every Friday the 13th.
• Dark World: Greenguard forest has a dark world that is accessible by an orb.
• The Dead Can Dance: The Raveyard, which opens up every Mogloween. All skeletons groove to the beat and one of the bosses is named after Daft Punk.
• Death Is a Slap on the Wrist: In-Universe example. The hero can't die as they are dead at the start of the story, but is given immortality thanks to a deal with Death. If the hero dies in the game, they'll just be punted back to the entrance, and in cutscenes, the hero will be back up after a few seconds.
• Dem Bones:
  • The Necromancer class can summon skeletal minions to help fight monsters.
  • Doomwood and all its dungeons are full of skeletal monsters.
• Do Not Taunt Cthulhu: Dragonlord Talyn learns this the hard way once we awaken Akriloth without any tributes, smugly claiming to Akriloth's face that he will become his slave in taking over Lore. Akriloth doesn't take this too kindly and showed Talyn why he's a mere ant to his power before smacking Talyn over to the other side of the volcano and falling on the lava, killing him.
• Don't Fear the Reaper: Death himself is a major character that helps the player, partly due to the fact that Vane snatched his key, and it’s the hero’s job to get it back.
• Dracolich: The player can get one as a pet. There's a giant Dracolich platers can fight in the Underworld gate and Arena of Souls.
• Draconic Humanoid: Zakaru, the caretaker of the Dragon Graveyard, is one and a dragon necromancer to boot.
• The Dragonslayer: Galanoth, as per usual. Along with his order of DragonSlayers. The hero can join the order and become a dragonslayer as well.
• Dual Wielding: The Berserker and Rogue classes can dual wield whatever weapons they are holding. There are some weapons that lets player do this even if they didn't equip the mentioned classes, mostly guns and sword/shield weapons.
• Dungeon Crawling: The first major Artix Entertainment game to feature dungeons, where there are maps with monsters that don't respawn after being killed, and players needing to clear rooms to move on. In earlier versions, they required dungeon keys to be accessed, but this was later removed.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: Early appearances of 3D Dage had him as a long-haired human wearing a skull mask. Later appearances have him more in line with his classic appearance from AdventureQuest Worlds, a skeletal lich clad in armor.
• Elemental Powers: The mage class can cast fireballs, ice, and lightning strikes.
• Evil Is Burning Hot: Talyn the DragonLord, the Great Fire Dragon, and their fire minions.
• Expy: ShadowSlayer W is one to Vampire Slayer E from the original AdventureQuest and Shadowslayer Z from AdventureQuest Worlds. In fact he may be a Legacy Character to them.
• Familiar: Jimmy the Eye serves as this to Warlic.
• Fantastic Racism: Galanoth and the Order of DragonSlayers aim to kill every last dragon in Lore, not caring if the dragons are good or evil. They stop this goal once Kord becomes the new Galanoth, focusing on protecting people from evil dragons instead.
• Fantasy Kitchen Sink: Just like the other two Adventure Quest games, the game is mostly medieval fantasy mixed with other heroic fantasy genres. There are even some cyberpunk, mecha, futuristic, and many other genres mixed in the game.
• Fighter, Mage, Thief: Once again, the starter classes are Warrior, Mage, and Rogue, with Guardian as the Membership class.
• Forced Transformation: There's a horse in the guardian tower that's actually a guardian who is stuck in the form after an accident.
• Fur Against Fang: Like every other Artix Entertainment game, vampires and lycans are at war with one another. However this is the first time you can see the forces fight against each other in real-time, where NPC monsters battle one another in the streets of Darkhurst and you can join in to attack one of the sides. However, this will still lead to the other enemy attacking you once one of the brawling enemies is defeated.
• Ghost Ship: The wreck of the Vengeance appears as a dungeon during the Yokai Isle storyline, players can fight the captain’s ghost as the boss.
• Giant Squid: The Braken bosses are all examples of these. In the Lolosia storyline, Captain Rhubarb's ship is attacked by a Bracken once.
• Glass Cannon:
  • The Mage class is this to a degree. It's able to fire off very strong ranged attacks like Fireball and Lightning, but it's not very helpful up close, due to said powerful attacks having a long charge time. This got rectified with a patch that shortened the Fireball charge time, as well as adding the fast charging "Ice Spear" Damage Over Time ability and the Finishing Move "Meteor Shower".
  • Berserkers are also these in that they sacrifice their own HP in order to make their attacks much faster and more damaging. They do have a self-healing buff, however, but their HP still tends to waver in low percentages, so they often die to hard-hitting attacks.
• Guest-Star Party Member: The player character him/herself is one to the DragonSlayer Order.
• Good Is Not Nice: Galanoth is certainly a hero, but can be quite harsh and mean. With a heaping helping of Revenge Before Reason.
• Goggles Do Nothing: As part of the 2017 April Fools event, Artix Entertainment offered free VR 2D goggles for players, that are purely cosmetic. No stats or abilities whatsoever.
• Halloween Town:
  • Darkhurst, the town on the outskirts of Darkovia.
  • There’s also Mystcroft, which only appears during Mogloween events.
• Harmless Freezing: In Frostvale, there's Rayray who's only clad in boxers in the middle of a freezing snowstorm. He turns to a block of ice if you bring the items he requested, and the hero has to get Holly's help to unfreeze him. He's fine once you unfreeze him. Players can even acquire a travel form that encases them in a block of ice.
• Hate Sink: DragonLord Talyn is as despicable and unlikable as AE villains come with no redeeming qualities whatsoever. He treats his own dragon like an expendable slave and was glad when a DragonSlayer killed it so that he could seek out a more powerful dragon, plans on enslaving the Great Fire Dragon so he can lay waste to the world, tried to create a human farm to serve as a food source for said dragon where he treated humans like livestock, and kills Essa for no reason just as the heroes were starting to feel some hope.
• Headless Horseman: The Headless Horseman of Mystcroft is one, who has a burning pumpkin for a head.
• Hellish Horse:
  • For lack of a better trope, the sick unicorns in Arcangrove are aggressive and will attack anyone. The boss monsters Todd the Derpicorn and Herp the Derp evenas they are one of the most powerful open world boss monsters.
  • The Legion Horse mount has barely any skin on it, showing off its bones and flesh. Its eyes and exposed flesh also glow a sickly blue color in contrast to the usual normal fire.
• Hello, [Insert Name Here]: As with every Artix Entertainment game.
• Holy Halo: These are an entire subtype of purely cosmetic helmets, most of which are offered through daily chests. There are a few exceptions: the Halo of Hue and its burnt variant, which is crafted from combining all the daily chest haloes (sans the Halo of Balance) into one in Yulgar’s Inn, and the Lightning Halo is crafted from a whopping 2000 Tengu Feathers (when the boss, at most, only drops about 8 a run) and the rare Lightning Cloud pet.
• Homemade Sweater from Hell: Blizzy sells one in Frostvale, and its item description even lampshades this trope.
• Human Sacrifice: One of Talyn's Evil Plans was enslaving all the villagers of Brimston Village, then using them as tributes to be fed to the Great Fire Dragon. To further exemplify Talyn's monstrousness, he intended to breed the humans to create more offspring as dragon food, treating them as livestock on a farm.
• Hunter of Monsters:
  • Artix hunts the undead, as per usual.
  • ShadowSlayer W, who hunts vampires and werewolves.
  • Dread Hood and her order, who hunt werewolves.
• Hurricane of Puns: As a staple of all Artix Entertainment games. But unlike the other games, the hero doesn't do a lot of puns, but the game makes it up with item and NPC names.
• Inexplicably Identical Individuals:
  • All the male player characters and female player characters have the same facial structure, with the only difference being the skin color and hair color/style. For a while, all players had blue eyes before eye color customization was enabled, which was joked about in-game.
  • All Moglins (sans Zorbak) also have the same basic design, with an identical ever smiling face, with the only difference between them being their fur color.
• Innocently Insensitive: Morgul. He doesn't seem to mean harm, but always ends up saying hurtful things in regards to the well being of Anne's family from Brutal Honesty to requests that are too soon.
• Interspecies Romance: Safiria, who is human in this incarnation, and Vlad, who is the vampire prince, is shown to be in love with each other. Unfortunately, King Drachus has other plans for Safiria.
• In the Back: Dragonlord Talyn kills Essa this way while after the player character parts with her.
• Item Crafting: Players can craft nearly everything in order to create clothes, weapons, or items needed for more crafting.
• Item Farming: Takes after its predecessors, where players endlessly kill monsters to drop items so they can craft powerful gear.
• It's Personal: The player character says this about Talyn after he kills Essa in front of them.
• Job System: Like the other games, the player can choose and max out jobs they want. To unlock a new class, you'll have to do a daily quest from the class trainer, and it takes 1000 class tokens to unlock it.
• Jungle Japes: The World Tree has elements of this, and has inspirations from Mayincatec.
• Killed Off for Real:
  • Slifsgaard is killed while protecting the hero while they are traveling in the dream realm. He stays behind as a ghost and is even fine with his predicament.
  • Essa is unceremoniously killed by DragonLord Talyn by being impaled In the Back with his sword.
• Kill It with Fire:
  • The Guardian class can fire a flame stream, hitting multiple targets at the same timw.
  • Several fire monsters in Ashfall can perform fire attacks as well.
  • The dragons, particularly Akriloth, are fond of the fire breath.
• Knight of Cerebus: DragonLord Talyn, whose arrival permanently plunges the game into a much darker tone. Prior to his appearance, there was very little sense of urgency, with even his predecessor villain, the Necroknight, being hammy and Played for Laughs. However Talyn amps ups the stakes and changes the game from "explore the land" to "save the world".
• Lava Pit: Ashfall features these. If players fall in the lava, it triggers an instant respawn without the player actually dying.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: In Darkovia, when the Hero asks if a vampire bite victim could be saved by a potion or spell, the following exchange occurs.
  Morgul: Wake up! This isn't a fantasy where you're the hero. What are you going to do? Run around collecting ingredients to magically save the day?
  The Hero: Yes!
  Morgul: Sorry you're in Darkovia now.
• Lethal Lava Land: Ashfall is located near an active volcano. Apparently, there's even a village settlement near the heart of the volcano.
• Level Scaling: Certain dungeons and areas will scale all players to the same level to make it fairer in farming and looting.
• Living Battery: The Arcangrove mages hide the secret that all of Lore is powered by a huge mythical being. Tyrus Kel discovers this and deserts the order, and the player is tasked by the mages to kill him. Tyrus has intentions to free the being, but it's actually happy to be used as a battery in order to atone for its part of destroying the world in an ancient war.
• Living Legend: This version of Galanoth is said to be a famed legendary DragonSlayer, though Galanoth himself dismisses these claims. Following his death, Kord takes up his armor, title, and identity to become the new Galanoth.
• Living Statue:
  • Gargoyles will appear as still statues until approached where they will attack the player. There's also the fact that not every gargoyle statue is alive.
  • The Shadow Entities boss fight in Darkovia Castle has you fighting spirits that inhabit two huge gargoyle statues.
• Living Structure Monster: The Wall of Pain in the dream plane is a wall with a demonic face, that primarily attacks by shooting fireballs out of one of its eyes, using totems to shoot beams, and having spikes appear on the floor.
• The Lost Woods:
  • Doomwood is a forest overrun by the undead.
  • Darkovia forest is inhabited by vampires and werewolves.
  • Arcangrove is a huge forest filled with magical creatures.
• Mad Scientist Laboratory: The 2019 and 2020 Mogloween dungeon has you fighting in one... and you’re the subject of the experiment that involves fighting an onslaught of monsters while avoiding buzzsaws from the floor and death rays.
• The Magocracy: Arcangrove, which is ruled by the Council of Archmagi who is hiding a secret within their ranks.
• Mascot Mook: Frogzards, stated by the devs to be Artix Entertainment's most iconic monster.
• Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game: The third one Artix Entertainment has made, and by far their biggest project to date.
• Medium Awareness: The Hero, like most Artix Entertainment protagonists, is quite aware of what kind of game they are in. Best shown in the Tower of Necromancy arc when they sarcastically guessed what type of boss is waiting for them on top, leaving the staff speechless as it is the exact boss waiting at the top.
• Mix-and-Match Critters: Aside from the other staple critters from the other games, Drickens are half dragon half chicken.
• Money Grinding: One of the most farm heavy games Artix Entertainment has ever concocted, with monsters giving very low gold drops, and the various bosses a bit more. The only way to earn gold quickly is to find the item drops that sell for large amounts of gold at once.
• Multi-Platform: Promoted as a "true cross-platform MMORPG", where players can play and interact in real-time on PC or mobile devices.
• Mythology Gag:
  • Galanoth's backstory is revisited, with him having a vendetta against a Great Fire Dragon. This dragon is heavily implied (and later confirmed) to be Akriloth, who appears in both DragonFable and AdventureQuest Worlds, as the dragon who killed Galanoth's family.
  • There is a Call-Back to the Elemental Orbs Saga from DragonFable.
    • The Tower Pass segment of the "Dragons of Ashfall" Saga has DragonLord Talyn acquiring a Fire Orb from underneath a Guardian Tower.
    • Darkhurst's Guardian Tower reveals the Darkness Orb was kept there.
  • Another DragonFable callback occurs at the Isle of the Dead. The Player gets stalked by a Shadow from the Plane of Darkness who manipulates them into crafting the Necrostaff of Doom, before inhabiting it. It then reveals it intends to kill the Player and possess their corpse as a vessel. This is exactly what happened with Caitiff, who inhabited the Skullstaff of Doom and possessed Serenity. Unlike Caitiff, this one is defeated promptly, becoming loyal and subservient to the player.
  • Tower of Necromancy involves climbing a tower serving as a necromancer academy with Noxus in charge. Where have we heard that before?
• Nature Spirit: The Voice of the Forest in Heartwood can be considered one, being a sentient tree (or in earlier versions, a rock face) that acts as the forest's guardian.
• Necromancer: Morgul, who can be found in Boog's Tavern in Darkhurst.
• Nerves of Steel: Galanoth is barely phased by the news of Essa's death, not because he doesn't care, but because he's so focused on the mission he doesn't have time for idle grieving.
• Ninja: Thyton in Westmere is one, and is even the trainer for the ninja class if the player wishes to be one.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: In Isle of the dead, you can help a necromancer set up his tower so he won't get scolded by his mistress. Only you find out the tower is supposed to attract mermaids so shipwrecks will happen more and they will have bodies to use for their craft. The hero is flabbergasted at this discovery.
• No Fourth Wall: In-game characters are aware they exist in a video game. Unlike previous Artix Entertainment games this is done less for fourth wall humor and more for convenience in giving guides to players.
• Non-Player Companion:
  • Not companions exactly, but there are NPCs on certain maps who will assist players in attacking monsters. They include Campbell (Battleon and Heartwood) and Jimmy the Eye (Greenguard).
  • Kord is a more literal example, actually accompanying the player for several Ashfall maps and fights alongside them in a Boss Battle.
  • Both Kord and Senna are NPC helpers that partake in the Dragon invasion of Battleon in helping fight off the dragons.
  • Shadowslayer W will actively help the player fight off waves of vampire knights and werewolves in two Darkhurst quests.
• No Ontological Inertia: If a necromancer dies, the skeletons they summon die with them. The same goes for the mobs that can summon mooks.
• Oculothorax: This game also features Artix Entertainment's famous flying eyes (a giant eyeball with bat-like wings and a tail). They can be found in Greenguard, Heartwood, and the Battleon Bank, coming in red, blue, and gold color variants. Jimmy the Eye is a friendly NPC version.
• Omnicidal Maniac: DragonLord Talyn's end goal is to awaken the Great Fire Dragon, enslave its mind and bond with it, and use its power to lay waste to all of Lore.
• One-Man Army: Galanoth can fight off hordes of dragons all by himself. If you let him attack while he is at your party, he can finish off all enemies without problem.
• Our Gargoyles Rock: Gargoyles appear as monsters on Bone Cliffs and Shadowskull Bridge. There's one particularly strong gargoyle on Bone Cliffs called the Stoic Gargoyle which serves as a mini-boss of sorts.
• Our Goblins Are Different: Sneevils and Fire Phans, they are diminutive goblin-like creatures, the former of whom have a very marked taste for boxes.
• Our Orcs Are Different: Trolluks, a combination of trolls and orcs.
• The Paladin: Artix, as per usual. The players can also choose to be a paladin class if they like.
• People Farms: A sign of just how much of a bastard Talyn is his plans to breed humans as livestock to provide food for the dragon he plans to awaken.
• Permadeath: The Son of Braken boss fight kicks out anyone who dies during the dungeon. And don’t even think about waiting for them to run back in, because the room closes shortly after the first phase starts.
• Perpetual Smiler: All moglins have a permanent smile on their faces, with Zorbak having a Slasher Smile.
• Properly Paranoid: Hooper in Darkovia Forest believes there is a Lychimera (a mix between a werewolf and a vampire) lives in the forest, but Little Dread and the player doesn't believe him. The hero and him were able to summon one after gathering food that attracts the monster.
• Quest Giver: Every map will have at least one, sometimes several of these NPCs.
• Rain of Arrows: One of the Ranger’s skills involves this over an area-of-effect radius, dealing tick damage to enemies caught in it.
• Resurrective Immortality: You have this by virtue of being the Champion of Death.
• Revenge Before Reason: Galanoth has a huge vendetta against Akriloth, to the point of wanting to let Talyn awaken him just so he can take him down, despite how much devastation the dragon may cause to the innocent, and he's willing to throw away the lives of all of his Dragonslayers for a shot at him, something Kord, his second in command, doesn't agree with at all. This eventually comes to a head during the final missions, in which Galanoth turns against you for the sake of his pride and revenge, and you have to fight him. Galanoth ultimately sacrifices himself to allow you and Kord to finish off Akriloth.
• Ridiculously Cute Critter: The ever present Moglins look really cute in 3D.
• Rising Water, Rising Tension: After defeating the Son of Braken’s first phase, he sinks into the water as the room begins to flood. You have to find the correct lever to open the door, or you will be trapped underwater taking damage over time. The lever puzzle is repeated in the second phase, this time, however, you’ll have to dodge attacks from his tentacles.
• Rock Monster: The caves in Heartwood Forest and the World Tree have a lot of rock elementals scattered all over the map.
• Sacrificial Lion:
  • Essa is a Quest Giver NPC in Brimston Ruins who the player got to know a bit of backstory on. However after finishing her quests and the Hero is celebrating with her, DragonLord Talyn shows up out of nowhere and impales her through the back with his sword.
  • Galanoth himself also dies, but in a Heroic Sacrifice to allow you to destroy Akriloth once and for all. Because the Dragonslayers built themselves around Galanoth, Kord takes up Galanoth's armor, title, and identity, becoming the new Galanoth
• Shapeshifter Mashup: A boy who was bitten by a werewolf and a lycan at the same time is hinted to transform into a hybrid between the two.
• Series Mascot: Artix Von Kreiger, Robina Hood, and Twilly.
• Shout-Out:
  • The Brain Slimes and Brain Ticks are a nod to Brain Slugs from Futurama.
  • After the first battle with the Necroknight ends, and the Hero declares he's finished, the Necroknight will say: "You fool! This isn't even my final form!"
  • Shrade is a full-blown carbon-copy of Jason Voorhees. In his second appearance, he resides in a Campground where he emerges from the lake and had killed many of the campers years back.
  • In the Ashfall DragonSlayer Camp there are two books titled the "Fifty Shades of Slay", "Dragon with the Girl Tattoo", and "Magical Creatures and Where to Kill Them" by Toot Slaymander.
  • The April Fools event featured VR 2D goggles with one of the warning taglines being "If your video gaming lasts longer than 48 hours, please contact a doctor immediately— or acknowledge that you may be trapped in a Sword Art Online or Dot-Hack scenario, in which case, let us all pray you are the main character and not a fodder worthy side-character who is doomed to not make it past episode 2."
  • As part of the Artix Entertainment Star Wars tradition, weapons based off lightsabers called starswords were released to commemorate May the 4th. They are also sold by a robotic Moglin NPC called M-06-L1N, who has BB-8's color scheme.
  • The Battleon Bank Manager is a humanoid owl called Hedwig Hootenheim and one of the boss monsters guarding a bank vault dungeon is a dragon.
  • Mystcroft features a giant skeleton called Jacked Skellington and a Frankenstein Trolluk called Trollenstein's Monster.
  • In Boog's Tavern, Squee the Tavern Moglin will say "ALL TALK AND NO BATTLE MAKES SQUEE A DULL BOY."
• Slippy-Slidey Ice World: Frostvale, which is coated in slippery ice, although players can't actually slide on the ice surfaces.
• Solo Class: Like in AdventureQuest Worlds, there are classes that can solo pretty easily. The guardian, necromancer and rogue classes are some of the good ones that can solo bosses without any trouble.
• Spikes of Doom: Yulgar's west wall has a dungeon where falling from the platforms will land the player on these.
• Spin Attack:
  • The Warrior class has one of these attacks called "Whirlwind", where the player spins with their weapon, doing damage to all surrounding enemies.
  • Berserkers have a similar skill that is quicker but lacks the defense debuff given by Whirlwind.
• Squishy Wizard: Mages lack melee abilities and specialize in long-range spells. They often serve as lurers in groups or parties.
• Starter Villain: Omen the Voidknight.
• The Straight and Arrow Path: The player character can use both bows and guns as ranged weapons. Bows deal more damage in groups of enemies while guns only focuses on one enemy at a time. However, both of these weapons can only be used by Rangers and Pirates respectively.
• Talking Is a Free Action: Usually. But as the game doesn't absolutely enforce this - cinematics get played while the player remains immobile - it's entirely possible for a scripted aconversation at the start of a battle to occur while the battle has already started and the player or NPC allies are under attack. (Cinematics don't normally use sound, so if you can hear a fight going on it's a good indicator.)
• Travel Transformation: A few items (available through in-game purchases) allow players to shapeshift into travel forms that can move faster than standard players. These include the Shadow Wolf morph, the Baby Dragon morph, the Armored Baby Dragon Morph, the Dricken morph, Lil' Skelly Travel Form, and Were-Pumpkin Root.
• Trick Arrow: The Ranger’s ultimate skill has it turning their arrows into explosive magical ones, dealing heavy splash damage to enemies close to the current target.
• The Undead: No shortage of these guys. Skeletons can be found aplenty in Doomwood Forest, Bone Cliffs, Shadowskull Bridge, and Ashfall's DragonSlayer Camp. Other undead like zombies, and bone spiders can be found in several dungeons. Ghosts can be found in Mystcroft, Mogloween dungeons, Camp Gonnagetcha, and Darkhurst.
• Unicorn: There are a lot of unicorns in Arcangrove. Healthy unicorns, sick unicorns and derpy ones like Todd the Derpicorn and Herp the Derp. The player can even have a derpy unicorn as a pet.
• Vampire Hunter: ShadowSlayer W hunts vampires and werewolves for a living. His Distaff Counterpart, Dread Hood, primarily focuses on werewolves.
• Voluntary Shapeshifting: Instead of mounts, players can transform into several morphs that turns them into animals, plants, or objects and boost their speed until they transform back.
• Wake-Up Call Boss: Akriloth is the first big boss to make heavy use of AOE attacks. Surviving the battle requires getting out of the area before the attack goes off.
• Wide-Open Sandbox: Just like its counterparts, aside from the story quests, you can choose to do side quests in any order they want as the monsters are scaled to the player's level.
• Wings Do Nothing: Wings are only for aesthetics, so players can still fall on booby traps.
• Wise Tree: The Voice of the Forest, who guides Reed into becoming a fearless guardian after undertaking his quests.
• With Us or Against Us:
  • Galanoth tells the player character this in their first meeting.
    Galanoth: Dragons are the enemy. If you're not with us, you're against us. Join us in fighting these monsters or stand aside.
  • Upon Kord's ascension to Galanoth's rank, he is considerably less fanatical about the whole thing, focusing on protecting the innocent from evil dragons rather than the approach of the original Galanoth.
• Wutai: Yokai Island is mostly Japanese themed place with samurai, yokai, ninja, and tengu scattered all over the place.
• Year Inside, Hour Outside: Inverted in the Lightovia, the light counterpart of Darkovia, where time passes faster inside than outside.
• You All Look Familiar: In the earlier days the customization is still lacking causing nearly everyone to have Only Six Faces. It's even lampshaded in the design notes.
• You Mean "Xmas": Just like AQ, DF, and MQ, Mogloween (Halloween), the Harvest Festival (Thanksgiving), Frostval (Christmas), Heroes Heart Day (Valentine's Day), Good Luck Day (St. Patrick's Day), Grenwog (Easter), Planet Day (Earth Day), and Freedom Day (Independence Day).