Video Game / Blade & Soul

Blade & Soul is a Free-to-Play Korean Wuxia MMORPG originally released on the PC in 2012. It was released in North America and Europe in January 2016.

The game is set in a fictional world where martial arts reign supreme, with a history ridden with conflict, greed, betrayal, demonic invasions, and martial arts legends. You play as a student of the Hongmoon School, located on the quiet island of Heaven's Reach. When the school is suddenly attacked by a mysterious Dark Action Girl named Jinsoyun, you are betrayed by one of your own and watch your Old Master die before your eyes. Cast into the sea and left for dead, you are miraculously rescued and embark on a journey for justice or revenge.

Players can choose from four races based on The Four Gods: the human-esque Jin, the lithe Yun, the goliath Gon, and the diminutive Lyn. Your race determines which class you can choose from. Blade & Soul's combat is halfway between a traditional MMO "skill bar" and a Fighting Game, encouraging you to string together increasingly-ludicrous combos and defend yourself with well-timed counter-moves.

It is an extremely popular game in Korea, boasting over 1.5 million co-current players at one point (beating even World of Warcraft's record) and a thriving Player Versus Player professional scene. A thirteen-episode anime adaptation aired in 2014.

The game also has a mobile spinoff: Blade And Soul Revolution, which features a condensed version of the main story with added storylines and character and a simplified combat system. A beta version is released in late 2020, with 1 million accounts preregistering in the first month alone.

A new game, or rather, a technical upgrade in Unreal Engine 4, was announced in 2017 alongside Blade and Soul Revolution. A showcase trailer was released in 2018 featuring upgraded visuals. News of it is rather lackluster for three years until NCSoft announced it to be released in 2021 and another trailer confirming it's playable in mobile and consoles.

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Blade & Soul contains examples of:

• 20 Bear Asses: The main quest mixes it up in places, but the side content is noted for being fairly bad about leaning heavily on this. It's alleviated a little by a few interesting bosses being mixed in there, along with the fact that once you hit 20+, you'll be able to mow through individual bears in a second or so.
• Achievement Mockery: Due to how achievement notifications work, you can get them in increments from 10 up to 1000^note  usually the highest count, but some reach up to 5000, and it shows up on your party's combat log if in one.
  • There's an achievement you can get if you die many times, with the log recording how many times you died in the game. There's even a specific achievement for letting your timer run out if you died.
  • You can also get an achievement for breaking your weapon in the middle of battle.
• Affectionate Nickname: The other disciples of Heaven's Reach, as well as Master Hong himself, call you Cricket^note a stylized translation of maknae, "youngest one". Even after he turns traitor on you, Lusung still refers to you by this nickname, lessening the 'affectionate' part of this trope.
• Afterlife Antechamber:In order to stop the demonic invasion, Cricket travels to the Spirit Realm in order to close the rifts opening on the Earthen Realm. Cricket lands on the gateway to the Bridge to the Beyond and meets the spirits of a remorseful Islim and Jinbin fighting off the demons.
• Alien Sky:
  • Whenever there is a Divine Mandate ritual attempted and failed, the sky will turn blood red and demons can fly out of a hole the blocks the sun's rays.
  • The Skypetal plains have a really Weird Moon at night that somehow mutates every living thing there to monstrosities.
• All There in the Manual: Want to know more about a named character's story and where did they come from? How certain bosses became the way they are? You better watch those trailers or read the character manwhas, if you can find the translations for them.
• Amazon Brigade:
  • Though their effectiveness is questionable, Yonkai's personal guard unit is made up entirely of women.
  • The Valindrians are composed of Lady of War Yuns who are more than capable of protecting Solak for many years. They did suffer a huge blow when the demons invaded their realm and caught them off-guard, and later when the pirates kidnap and sacrifice the civilian Yuns.
• Ambition Is Evil: Throughout the game, we see many characters pairing up with the 'bad guys' for, let's say, the wrong reasons.
• And I Must Scream: Remember those children that the Ebondrake Cult kidnapped and sent to the dark realm? All of them were turned into black pillars that corrupt everything near it. And all of them can't do anything until the player character sets them free.
• And Now for Someone Completely Different: Recent patches lets you play as Mushin and tells his story on how he became a guardian and how he sacrificed his life to seal the dark rift.
• And Your Reward Is Clothes: Aside from the Player Versus Player uniforms, clothes are entirely cosmetic and fall under this category. Some subquests reward you with outfits, but the vast majority of cool clothing is either acquired through minuscule boss drop rates or the Microtransactions store.
• Answer Cut: Post Time Skip and you assuming Mastery of the Hongmoon School, a discussion regarding training materials and where they could be found pops up. The student asks if you've searched everywhere, even under the rugs. Your dialogue choice more or less answers back "Who Would Be Stupid Enough? to hide something under a rug?" Cue the next quest prompt...
• Arrogant Kung-Fu Guy: Hajoon. Though he happens to be on your side. And post-intro, it's up to interpretation just how much of it is an act to hide how sick he is.
• Assist Character:
  • Summoners get one in the form of their cat familiar, and the class revolves around combining the summoner's magic with the cat's abilities. The cat can even revive the Summoner and other allies by sacrificing its life and can be revived within 5 seconds to assist the player again.
  • Warlocks get a Thrall, a shadowy and intimidating spirit, to help them in battle. However, unlike Summoners' cats, Thralls are only temporarily summoned before returning to their realm.
• Ax-Crazy: Anyone under the influence of Dark Chi will either attack anyone they see or turn into a hideous fiend.
• Back-to-Back Badasses: You do this with Hajoon against Dusk Adders, but sadly, it's only a one-time thing before he succumbs to the Mark of the Black Rose and dies shortly after you guys clear the enemies out.
• Badass Adorable: The Lyn race as a whole. On the human side, Poharan is one.
• Badass Longcoat: Many of the outfits for both males and females. Shout-out to the male Jin Warlocks.
• Badass Teacher: The player character becomes one after the time skip as they became the new Hongmoon Clan master. Unfortunately, all their students are slain by Mushin in an ironic repeat of what happened at the start of the game. Jinsoyun is the Sole Survivor.
• Bare-Fisted Monk: The Kung-Fu Master and Soul Fighter class. Grandmaster Nayul is one as well, complete with Chi related powers.
• Beam-O-War: Cricket and Chundoon's chi transfer appears as a beam of light whenever they heal someone or fight a demon. It's mostly used in cutscenes but there are some parts of the story where it's used in-game.
• Being Evil Sucks: A meta example. Originally, Act 4 presented you with a choice of either returning to the Hongmoon Way or fully committing to Mushin's Corrupted Path. The evil option gave you a cool outfit, but its exclusive abilities were less powerful than their Hongmoon equivalents. More significantly, the Corrupted Path locked you out of further story content and hard-capped your level at 50. This, along with the decision further segregating players into two more PvP factions, caused enough discontent that the choice was removed in later updates, and the Corrupted Path became the default, though tweaked so that the story continues and plays off of it.
• Bigfoot, Sasquatch, and Yeti: The Angler Yeti in the Avalanche Den is one of the earliest bosses in the game. Many reskins of the boss also appear in other dungeons.
• Big Bad: Jinsoyun. Mushin of the Four Guardians later emerges as a rival Big Bad, and the cause of Jinsoyun's Start of Darkness (as well as your own).
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Namsoyoo is actually a bored and manipulative Vamp who looks down on everyone she knows. She's so aching to break free from her dull country lifestyle that she hooks up with Gwon of the Blackram and leaks information leading to Bamboo Village's near-destruction.
• "Blind Idiot" Translation: The game has a questionable localization at best, which is rather unfortunate to those who have played the original untranslated version of the game. Odd things include changing story elements (which generally ended up causing more plot holes for a variety of reasons), many skill descriptions not making sense, and names being improperly translated (usually by way of fusing given names and surnames into one name). Some examples of these changes can be found here (tagged spoilers in the link).
• Body Horror: Whenever a character is being corrupted by Dark Chi, we can see the full transformation until they become a ghoulish-like creature, and it's not pretty. Jinsoyun is a perfect example. in the last battle, she transforms into a winged creature and we get a gross closeup on her transformation.
• Boss Banter: Helps in cluing that there will be a strong attack incoming.
• Bowdlerise: Some elements of the game's story were changed with the localization. For instance:
  • The use of time travel in the plot was changed to something more "mystical", though this resulted in other Plot Holes cropping up (see "Blind Idiot" Translation above).
  • Another example involved a sidequest involving a perverted and rather depraved peeping tom stealing the clothes of a woman while she bathes so she's forced to marry him (only for him to complain about the situation after the quest is over and blame the player despite it being his request in the first place). This was originally played for comedy, but the sheer Values Dissonance of the questline made the localization team change to appear less uncomfortable and seem less problematic towards western audiences.^note Details of the quest can be found here.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: The Tyrian Cultists for example they managed to get a bunch of innocent villagers attacking you after you tried to rescue them. The Ebondrake Cult managed to top them, with them corrupting the Grimhorns, Hae Mujin's fleet, and some allies that the player character made.
• The Brute: Gubong, the third member of Jinsoyun's group, is a very large, very thuggish-looking male Gon, who wields a large Destroyer's axe with ease. Compared to Jinsoyun and Yura, he doesn't talk very often, but he clearly enjoys fighting.
• But for Me, It Was Tuesday: The game's NA website invoked a variation of this trope in its news update that explained Jinsoyun's backstory.
  The day that Jinsoyun came to Heaven’s Reach became the most important day of Cricket’s life. But for Jinsoyun it was simply another step on the long road of her revenge.
• The Casanova: Jang Ghibu, the first boss in Desolate Tomb, gives off this vibe complete with his two wives and a waltz-like theme playing when you fight him.
• Call to Agriculture: The player briefly considers throwing away their game-long goal to get rid of Jinsoyun at one point to become a farmer because it would be a simpler, less stressful life than being a martial artist. In the end, however, they decided that taking down Jinsoyun must be done and if they don't do it, no one else will. And the player character can also help the villagers in Windrest, where they can fish, grow wheat and raise pigs for their students.
• Came Back Wrong: Everyone who is infected by the Dark Chi will die and turn into a horned fiend that attacks friend or foe.
• The Cavalry: After the True Yunma Khan was saved, He and Cricket assembled all the allies they have gathered into one last charge against Jinsoyun.
• Cave Behind the Falls: There is one behind Pondskip Vale, which was where the eight masters were able to find Cricket. Another one is behind Dragonscale where Cricket encounters Master Hong's spirit and learns to unleash their true potential.
• Clean Pretty Reliable: The Summoner class cat familiar eventually learns an ability called Helping Paw. The cat will perform CPR on an actually dead character. Provided the character does not release, and the cat is not attacked during it, it works every time, bringing the dead character back to life. It's very cute. In the Korean version, the ability is actually called CPR.
• Cleavage Window: If an outfit doesn't have a Navel-Deep Neckline, it'll most likely have this instead, especially if it's an otherwise fully covering outfit.
• Cluster F-Bomb: The aptly named Foul-Mouthed Granny in the Harvest Square who curses every time she speaks. It's hilarious hearing the beeps whenever she talks.
• Colour-Coded for Your Convenience: Anyone with a green, white, or blue name won't attack you as long as you're not wearing an opposing faction's outfit. In the field, monsters with yellow names won't aggro while anything with a red name (people and monsters alike) want to kill you. Also, the same goes for the opposing factions (ex.: Cerulean Order clothes have white and sky blue color schemes while the Crimson Legion sport black and red, etc.).
• Combat Resuscitation:
  • If a player was unable to recover their Chi or hit while doing so, making them truly dead, other players can still revive them by sharing their Chi. This forces the player reviving the dead to stand defenseless for twenty seconds until revival, and can easily be interrupted by attacks.
  • Summoners have 3 skills that can revive a player faster. The skill Footloose can protect a resuscitating player from harm and cut the timer by 10 seconds, and Helping Paw actually makes the cat perform CPR on the dead player and revive them in 10 seconds. If there are many players dead at a party, they have a last-ditch skill that fully revives the whole party at the cost of sacrificing the cat as long as it doesn't die while doing so. This also gives a 10-minute debuff that prevents them from being revived by a group revive skill again.
  • Soul Fighters has a skill that instantaneously revives a whole party faster than a summoner can, with the caveat that it has a 10-minute cooldown. This also shares the same debuff as the Summoner revive, which means both classes can't use a group revive in a party at the same time.
• Combat Stilettos: Many of the Action Girl characters wear them (such as Yura, Soha, Jinsoyun, and Juwol); the Yuns also have a tendency to wear high heels in many of their outfits.
• Composite Character:
  • Combining skills from the Kung-fu Master and Force Master classes will create the Soul Fighter class.
  • Blade Dancers mix the sword skills from a Blade Master with the frost skills from Force Masters.
• Cool, but Inefficient: Hongmoon 'Ultimate' skills. Each class has two variants, one usually focused on damage and the other for utility. The damage skills are generally very high burst, but their animation is so long most classes output better damage just doing their normal rotation. The utility skills are better, either for mobility or for emergency iframes, but both skills require maxed out Hongmoon focus, which charges extremely slowly passively, and still slowly even during combat.
• The Corruption: Dark Chi. It follows the Be Careful What You Wish For form of obtaining power: using Dark Chi grants very powerful abilities, but will ultimately lead the practitioner towards darkness, eventually turning them into monsters.
• Counter-Attack: Several melee classes are built around precise use of your Block/Parry/Counter skills to deal higher damage to the enemy. Assassins and Kung Fu Masters are the classes that relies on this the most.
• Crapsack World: The elected government is often blatantly corrupt and in bed with crime, and people are willing to betray one another at the drop of a hat. And this is all in addition to demons and shades popping up everywhere:
  • The Viridian Coast sees the undermanned Bamboo Guard fighting a losing battle against the Blackram Raiders, who can attack small villages with near-impunity.
  • A good part of the Cinderlands is being terrorized by a power-mad Stratus Army colonel, General Yonkai.
  • Moonwater Plains are the battleground for an active rebellion against the oppressive Talus government whilst in the grip of tribal struggles and dealing with the horrors of a demon invasion thirty years ago.
  • Solak is a ravaged continent filled with huge monsters; only small settlements have survived the non-stop onslaught of monsters and demons. Valindria is the safest part of the continent, but ever since Cricket arrived, the city became a battlefield for demons and pirates.
• Critical Existence Failure: Hitting zero health will make your character drop to the floor and can only slowly crawl away to safety or sit up and heal. Unless they are hit one more time then they are truly dead until they resurrect or wait for another player character to resurrect them.
• Crossdresser: The My Angel and After School Special outfits, available for male characters.
• Cult: The Ebondrake cult, the ones responsible for the kidnapping of children and the black pillars that corrupted everything near it on Act 6.
• Cycle of Revenge: One of the main themes of Blade & Soul is the unending cycle of pain caused by revenge. It's why Jinsoyun sought revenge, and why you might seek revenge. There was an option to avert this for the player character by choosing to break the cycle by embracing the Hongmoon Way and seeking justice instead, but it was removed in later versions of the game.
• Daddy Had a Good Reason for Abandoning You: It's revealed in Act 3 that Ilsim is the illegitimate child of Kuwin and Iksanun. Mayor Taywo and Kuwin knew this but kept Iksanun out of the loop. He had to come to that conclusion himself. Iksanun tells the player (before the realization) that it's dangerous for someone like him to get too close to anyone because his enemies could exploit those possible relationships, which is exactly what Jinsoyun does. So, chances are that if Iksanun had known about his son with Kuwin, he would've either been more helpful during the attack at Brightstone Village (the one that occurs 15 years prior to the story) or done a better job at keeping to his creed to stay far away from the village, period.
• Damage-Sponge Boss:
  • Dungeons above Ebondrake Lair have millions of health and require mechanics in order to chip away their health. Mechanics are mandatory since bosses have an enrage timer that will wipe out the party with only a little room for error.
  • Koldrak has trillions of health that has a 50 min enrage timer^note  Players have actually realized that it doesn't do anything if the timer sets to zero. Players must pick up ice that will boost their damage and must avoid his devastating fire.
• Dark Action Girl: The game loves its dark villainess:
  • Jinsoyun starts off as the Big Bad that decimated your home, uses a corrupted form of Chi, and is generally feared and hated for her villainy by many people throughout the game.
  • Her cohort, Yura, is similarly skilled (and deadly).
  • The next villain Zulia is a Light Is Not Good themed villainess, but works for Mushin and revealed to be a Warlock. She is able to fight evenly with the player character in her first appearance.
  • Empress Tayhu is the leader of the Ebondrake Cult responsible for nearly everything bad happening within act VII onwards.
• The Dark Side: "Dark Chi", a corrupted version of Chi that flows from the Dark Realm. Those who use Dark Arts to exercise control over it gain incredible power, but will eventually be consumed and transform into monsters.
• Deal with the Devil: Mushin aims to corrupt Cricket in their lowest time by tempting them to use the Dark Chi for their own ends. Cricket accepts, becoming Mushin's apprentice, and starts to practice the dark arts.
• Death Is a Slap on the Wrist: If a player character dies, they have eighty seconds to slowly crawl away from mobs that can kill them. And in case they get hit again and die, they can return to the nearest spawn point with no consequence other than losing 2 points in weapon durability.
• Death of a Child: Children get kidnapped a lot in the story and Cricket can encounter the ghost of children who were not saved in time from the Ebondrake. Their circumstances are horrifying when you discover them (being turned into corrupting pillars, mutated into seeds that causes a Zombie Apocalypse) that many wants to take down the Ebondrake no matter what.
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: Cricket has defeated Jinsoyun, a Demonic Fire Lord, Giant Spiders, Dragons, a Monster Clown, and a lot more.
• Doomed Hometown: Heaven's Reach is obliterated a mere five minutes into the game and it's fixed at the end of act V.
• Downer Ending:
  • Act 3 ends with you becoming a Fallen Hero under the tutelage of Mushin. Iksanun is killed by Ilsim, who then learns the truth from a dying Mayor Taywo, who kills himself before turning into a fiend like the rest of Brightstone Village (you even see his corpse disintegrate onscreen), which is now a fiend-infested hellhole like The Highland Necropolis. The shock causes Ilsim to catapult past the Despair Event Horizon at Mach 5 and allow himself to be surrounded and killed by fiends. Then the downer mentioned above happens.
  • In the end of Act 9, Mushin and Ryu have killed all the new Hongmoon Disciples except for Jinsoyun, leaving her and Cricket to grieve at Heaven's Reach.
• The Dragon: Yura to Jinsoyun she's actually working with Mushin. The twins Cobalt and Scarlet to Blackram Lieutenant Hae Mujin.
• Driven to Suicide: The player character tried to kill himself/herself when the wounds inflicted by Jinsoyun was too great and told by a monk that he/she will eventually turn into a demon. Thankfully, the Eight Masters came just in time.
• Dual Boss: Cobalt and Scarlet twins in Bloodshade Harbor and Shattered Masts, Fujin and Raijin in Naryu Labyrinth, Scorch and Singe in Sundered Nexus.
• Dub Name Change: Nearly all Korean names are romanized to make it easier for English Audiences to understand and remember:
  • The Maestro class is renamed to a more sensible Gunslinger.
  • The QiGong Master class is named Force Masters.
  • Swordmaster is changed to Blade Masters.
  • Lyn Swordmaster is changed to Blade Dancer to differentiate them from Blade Masters as their playstyles are vastly different.
  • Chi Masters is named Soul Fighters.
  • The Thunderer class is changed to Astromancer in order to fit its celestial-looking powers.
  • Julia's already Western name is renamed Zulia, partly to give her a more exotic-sounding name, making her an unusual case of Dub Name Change.
• Dull Surprise: Cricket's expressions during early videos showcasing the story doesn't show them emoting much. Bump into a boss? Cricket will smile. A friend dies? Cricket is crying, but they still smile. Though this depends on how you make Cricket's expression look during character creation, Cricket will still emote improperly in some scenes.
• Earthy Barefoot Character: The Lyns, who tend to be barefoot in many of their outfits. This is linked to their lore, which mentions how the Lyns have a deep connection with the Spirit Realm and the earth. It should be noted that the Lyn tend to have small, dog-like paws for feet instead of human feet.
• Early-Bird Cameo: Hajoon appears in the first part of the tutorial, but he can be easily missed as he had little to no role in the prologue, and players are not required to talk to him. Some players who did talk to him suspected that he'd get a bigger role further in the story as most NPC's aren't voiced but Hajoon was.
• Easily Forgiven: Soha forgives the player character after learning that her brother (one of the Eight Masters) sacrificed himself to save the PC's life. She says that she understands why he did it and helps Cricket in her endeavor
• Equipment-Based Progression: The game doesn't feature any stat-based leveling aside from Hongmoon Levels, but will give a class-related weapon and a set of accessories the player can upgrade.
• Everything's Cuter with Kittens: The Summoner class allows players to fight alongside a rather adorable cat familiar.
• Evil Costume Switch: A dark variation of the Hongmoon Student Uniform will drop after you defeated Mushin in a solo dungeon.
• Eye Scream: Eyes from old people are plucked from kidnapped old people in order to make "Verity Pills"
• Familiar: In the form of rather cute bipedal cats. Summoners can even customize their familiar costumes similar to the ones players can actually wear. The Warlocks can also summon an intimidating Thrall for a limited time.
• Fading Away: This is how most onscreen deaths are shown, with their bodies fading away after they're brutally killed. Sometimes, there are many dead bodies lying around that doesn't fade but they're either corrupted with dark chi or will have a chance to turn into fiends. Confusingly, NPC's grieve on some coffins strewn around even if their bodies supposed to be faded away.
• Finger Gun: Warlocks do this whenever they cast Bombard.
• Foreshadowing: A few instances:
  • Hajoon's appearance becomes more and more disheveled every time you encounter him. This hints that he's actually dying due to Dark Chi corruption.
  • If you pay attention to Cricket's responses during quests while you're playing through the game, you'll start to notice that Cricket becomes increasingly rude and aggressive towards the quest givers, foreshadowing their eventual decision to embrace the Dark Chi just to satisfy their revenge. This also serves as a subtle nod that the game is aware of how much of a Crapsack World the setting turns out to be by having your character becoming more uncharitable after dealing with some rather rude quest givers as the game goes on.
  • Before The Reveal, Ryu is shown to be in the Vortex Temple watching Cricket fight Zulia.
  • Gil, who was revealed to be Mushin in disguise a few arcs back, passes by Cricket when they are about to enter Chol Mugo's room before setting off to Solak. Later, it's revealed that Chol Mugo made a deal with Mushin and lets him in Valindria and causes the death of the Divine Maiden.
• The Four Gods: The four main races are modeled on the four gods, with the Lyn having the Kirin version of Byakko. And are practically personified in the Four Guardians.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation:
  • The Mark of the Black Rose is killing and twisting you in the same way it killed Hajoon, and once Hajoon passes, many people begin to comment on the fact that you look very, very ill, with the description of your condition one NPC gives being similar to how Hajoon looked at the end. This is not reflected on your character model, however; you'll look as you did at character creation.
  • As mentioned under Dull Surprise, giving Cricket a particularly strong expression (such as having a smirk on their face by default) can cause Cricket to improperly emote when their expression needs to change for story purposes.
• Gatling Good: Poharan in the Blackram Supply Chain Dungeon carries one when you fight her.
• Gender Bender: A foreman in the Blackram Supply Chain does this when you fight him, or her. It's hilarious to see.
  Foreman: "It's not working! TRANSFORM!"
• General Ripper: Yonkai, a sociopathic Stratus empire Colonel who is searching for Mushin's Legacy, something that could turn him into a God. He has a habit of overreacting to slights in disgustingly overkill ways and pull rank to justify his crimes. The worst part is, your character is stuck more or less subservient because he threatens to wipe out a village you swore to protect from him, and that still doesn't stop him from working villagers to death in his mine while you're doing what he asks. It's telling that not even his own men shed a tear when Karma catches up to him and he meets a satisfyingly cruel death at Jinsoyun's hands.
• Glass Cannon: The ranged classes, particularly Force Masters and Warlocks are this:
  • Force Masters can dish out high amounts of sustained damage and dodge attacks thanks to their highly mobile skills but has low defense and no protection against melee attacks. That said, they also have access to party skills that protect the whole party and themselves from damage for a few seconds.
  • Warlocks have high burst capabilities and an offensive buff that can leave enemies dead within seconds, at the cost of low defense and slow mobility. Killing their thralls can prevent them from using the buff and deprive them of one escape skill.
  • Gunslingers has the highest mobility of all classes and either huge burst capabilities that can deal millions of damage or high sustained damage depending on the build. This is offset by their abysmal defense and forcing them to use their one escape skill will make them a sitting duck for combos.
• Girls with Guns: Female Gunners aside:
  • Poharan wields a large battling gun almost the size of her body. The weight doesn't stop her from doing acrobatics with it.
  • Soha is another famous example, and she wields a large sniper. She even shows off her sniping skill in her introduction.
• The Gunslinger: The Gunner/Gunslinger class can shoot enemies and stun enemies with grappling hooks. They can even temporarily hover in the air as an emergency escape.
• Hartman Hips: Another byproduct of the art direction, and one of the default physiques for the Yun tribe, who (generally) forego large busts for wide hips (Jinsoyun, who is a Yun, fits this trope perfectly◊). Players can indulge in this themselves by making their characters this way, or avert it (either partially or altogether).
• He Who Fights Monsters: Cricket falls from the path of Hongmoon by embracing the Dark Arts in pursuit of revenge against Jinsoyun.
• Heir to the Dojo: Master Hong doesn't outright say it, but your fast aptitude in the Hongmoon Arts and his giving of the Martial Tome certainly put you on this track. Then you become this by default after everyone else is killed. At the climax of 1.0, you can choose whether to continue the Hongmoon way or turn to evil instead.
• Here We Go Again!: Act 6 is basically an inverted version of Act 1, with you the master instead of the student. It even ends with the school being attacked by an evil group and you falling off the cliff the same way as in act 1.
• Heroic Build: The members of the Gon tribe are presented with this body type by default, with physiques more muscular and taller than the other races.
• Heroic Sacrifice: in Act 4, The Eight Masters used their own Chi to cleanse off the Dark Chi inside the player character in order to save his/her life. Unfortunately, this used up their own chi and turned them into stone.
• Hidden Agenda Villain: Jinsoyun. All we know in her first appearance that she wanted to spread the dark chi everywhere and cause chaos. Turns out that she wants revenge on Mushin for killing her master Jiwan, and she is willing to do anything to do that, even killing the other two masters so she can kill him. she is not interested in anything else and was more than happy for you to kill her after killing Mushin.
• Holding Out for a Hero:
  • Justified, since only a few can purge the Dark Chi without getting infected, most civilians and soldiers know they are out of their league against fiends and can only rely on the Player Character. The best thing soldiers can do is Hold the Line against the never-ending onslaught of fiends until Cricket kills them all or closes the gate. That said, it doesn't mean the other NPCs will just stand by and watch Cricket do all the work.
  • Some side quests have the villagers asking Cricket to pick plants or kill some weak animals when they can do it themselves.
• Hopeless Boss Fight: Your first and second fights with Jinsoyun requires the player character to lose. Even if you successfully killed her by a miracle, the cutscenes act that you lost to her.
• Huge Guy, Tiny Girl:
  • Jinsoyun and Gubong, with the former only reaching Gubong's chest if you compare them side to side.
  • Also Yunsang and Juwol, with Juwol only reaching Yunsang's waist.
  • Poharan and her grandad Hae Mujin also count, with Poharan barely above Hae Mujin's knees if you put them beside each other.
• Human Popsicle: Force Masters and Kung-fu Masters have a skill that freezes them with ice if attacked. Force Masters have two versions of this, a party-wide freeze and a self-freeze that heals hp when attacked.
• Humans Are the Real Monsters: Honestly, the more you proceed through the story, the more this statement starts to make sense. Even though a lot of them are consumed by darkness, a big chunk of the antagonist are just driven by things such as egoism or greed.
• Impossibly-Low Neckline: Most of the female outfits come with this type of fanservice. Makes you wonder how the characters don't experience constant Wardrobe Malfunctions during combat.
• In a Single Bound: Using a Dragon Pulse makes your character be in tune with the Chi flowing out, making you do impressive jumps and acrobatics in the air.
• Inconsistent Dub:
  • Thanks to the shoddy localization, expect to run into this often. One early instance can't seem to keep the name of the Dusk Adders right, jumping between "Dusk Adders", "Black Dragons", and even "Black Adders" at one point. And if you're a Summoner, expect Jungsu to refer to his familiar as "Dumpling", while the game text calls her "Darling".
  • Subtitles in-game isn't consistent with the voice dubs everywhere, which means it's super rare to find a subtitle in sync with what the characters are actually saying.
• The Ingenue: Namsoyoo exudes an air of innocence and beauty once you first meet her, with many men wanting to court her. But Beneath the Mask, she's more like The Vamp as she's bored of the village life and craves for a better life, even betraying her village and father to do so.
• Inseries Nickname:
  • Jinsoyun is commonly referred to as the "Lady in Black" by other characters. This is despite her cohort Yura also wearing black, though this is probably because Yura has a lot more skin showing than Jinsoyun.
  • The Player Character is often referred to as "Cricket" as an Affectionate Nickname by everyone in the Hongmoon Clan and Old Man Cho. Everyone else just calls them "Jyan" or "Jyansei".
• Inhumanly Beautiful Race: The Yun is described as graceful and beautiful and it does show off in the characters wandering around in the games. With a bit of patience and knowledge of proportions, you can make a gorgeous preset of any race, but it's remarkably harder to run into an ugly Yun than Gon. Although tastes may differ, many people have marked that they find Yun to be the prettiest among females. Other than that they often have to most graceful outfits, whereas Gon has the fanservice-y, Lyn the cute, and Jin the 'normal' ones.
• Kung-Fu Wizard: You can certainly become this through several classes, most notably Force Master and Blade Dancer. Soul Fighters are a straight example, with the class harnessing the powers of the Force Master and combining them with the discipline of Kung-Fu Masters.
• La Résistance: The Skyhaven Resistance. who has been fighting the Talus Dominion ever since they grew in power. Unfortunately, the resistance was divided after the members learned that their commander Yunma Fei was actually a Talus Princess, making them rebel against her.
• Last Chance Hit Point: Once your HP hits zero, you are given 80 seconds to crawl away and recover chi for 20 seconds. If you get hit one more time, you're truly dead and must resurrect to the nearest spawn point.
• Light Isnot Good: Zulia wears a white outfit and fans, and is one of the most insane characters in the story.
• Little Bit Beastly: The Lyn race allows you to select from a variety of different animal ears and tails. Additionally, all Lyn sport dog-like paws for feet. The Lycandi race is also this, with their wolf ears and tail.
• Luke, You Are My Father: To his disbelief, Iksanun finds out that he is, in fact, Ilsim's father during Act III. It makes him feel even worse about not being able to help Brightstone Village when it was attacked by the Talus Dominion.
• Loads and Loads of Loading: Since the game is instanced, expect to see a lot of loading screens whenever you move or windstride in a new area. You even need to load even if you die and respawn in the same room.
• Magic Knight: The Blade Dancer class combines the swordplay of the Blade Master with the magic of the Force Master.
• Magitek: The Naryu ruins are heavily guarded by magical traps and terracotta soldiers that attack intruders within, which is impressive since the ruins were said to be made 1000 years ago.
• Man in the Iron Mask: Yunma Khan was imprisoned by Jinsoyun and forced to wear an iron mask until he was set free by cricket.
• Manly Tears: It happens from time to time.
  • No matter which gender you choose, your character will cry when Hajoon dies.
  • Another example is when Cricket finds Baymu's body. However, this time it's not you who's crying.
  • After witnessing the memory of the Four Guardians fighting together at the High Necropolis, your character is told that they've been (unknowingly) crying because they got to see Master Hong alive one last time.
  • At the end of Jinsoyun's arc, Cricket can greet the dead Hongmoon members one last time. As soon as they set off and say goodbye, Cricket starts sobbing. Master Hong even says: "Don't you cry little Cricket". Hajoon makes a remark about it as well. Saying Cricket is crying 'again' and telling them to smile.
• Master Swordsman: The Blade Master and Blade Dancer classes are said to be the bests swordsmen in lore and can attack with flashy skills.
• Mecha-Mooks:
  • All the Naryu Automatons are mechanical beings made from a thousand years ago, with the added caveat of being resistant to Status Effects since they are not living creatures.
  • The Silversteel crew is made up of mechanized humans who are connected to a network, unable to feel anything, and can only obey orders.
• The Medic: Soul Fighters and Summoners have group healing skills that can restore a party's life, but it only restores a fraction of their own health to balance it out in PvP.
• McNinja: The don't-call-it-a-ninja Assassin class, with actual magical stealth abilities and can even substitute themselves with a log as an evasion animation.
• Microtransactions: The Hongmoon Store, which either uses NC Soft's NCoin currency (bought with real money), or Hongmoon Coin (earned in a few different ways, including purchasing with real money). Naturally, it costs substantially more Hongmoon Coin to get something out of the shop compared to using NCoin.
• Monster Clown: The last boss of the Naryu Labyrinth, Be Ido. He attacks the player with his giant mecha while taunting the player every phase.
• Ms. Fanservice: Race-wise, the female Gon is this. Many of the costumes have noticeable differences in appearance between race and gender, and more often than not, female Gon will have the most provocative designs, regardless of whether or not the costume in question was already stripperific beforehand.
• Navel-Deep Neckline: Some outfits offer this, to the point that if the chest area is a little too open, then the women will be wearing bikini tops or have a Cleavage Window: to make up for the exposure.
• Nerf: As the game progresses, numerous patches were released to balance classes for PvP and PvE reasons. Here are some of the most notable nerfs:
  • The Warlock class got hit by this. After its initial release, warlocks have insane bursting capabilities coupled with life regeneration that made the class a viable fighter in PVP. This came to a situation in the 2015 Korean tournament where a wild card Warlock eradicated other competitors and won so fast that a patch was released in December 2015, hitting the class so hard that many declared warlocks nearly unplayable in PVP. The class is hit yet again with the release of the 3rd spec, which lowered the overall damage of the class.
  • When elemental skills were separated, this forces players to choose between one element to use for skills. This slightly narrowed down skill trees for classes. Unfortunately, Soul Fighters unintentionally got the worst of it due to its hybrid style, crippling nearly half the skills it needed for its playstyle.^note Before the patch, players can set skills with different elements, i.e. a warlock's dragon helix skill which is shadow, with bombard, which is ice.It went from one of the best PVP classes to one of the least used class.
  • Gunners were stupidly overpowered during its release thanks to high damage bursts that can penetrate defense, high mobility, and buff resets. In 6vs6, facing a gunner is usually an insta-kill thanks to their tab skill. Merely months later, the class was reworked and the tab skill now requires a certain buff in order to be useful.
• Ninja Log: The "Decoy" skill for the Assassin class switches them out with a log if they're hit.
• Ninja Maid: The Devotion outfit if an Assassin class is wearing it.
• Sound of No Damage: Upon using certain abilities, players are granted resistance frames, making a metallic clank sound and leaving a faded afterimage of themselves when struck, but remaining completely unharmed, as seen here..
• No One Could Survive That!: Why Jinsoyun lets you go. At first. The fact that you did survive the initial Black Rose Marking makes you of even greater interest to her.
• Not Quite Flight: You character can perform windwalking, where you can jump very high and then glide slowly to the ground, and can even control the direction of the glide. It's helpful in surviving long falls.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: Clumsy, silly Gil-Dong serves as Plucky Comic Relief through most of the Act 2, and is seen as load by everyone, only for cutscene in opening of Act 3 to reveal that he is no one else but Mushin himself, manipulating the events to regain his former powers, with no one being able to figure it out.
• Obvious Rule Patch:
  • A bug that allows players to pass through doors in dungeons, skipping trash mobs and heading straight to the boss room was discovered and players exploited this for speedruns, leaving behind other party members who didn't know this. This was resolved in a patch and players caught doing this were banned.
  • Another exploit was in the Whirlwind Valley Event, where players on the losing side would purposely disconnect in order to maintain their PVP ranking. NC Soft then released another patch kicking the disconnected players and declared that people caught doing this would never receive their items.
• One Size Fits All: According to his letter, Hajoon leaves you his black Hamoon uniform to have after he passes away. Regardless of what race you are and how you are built, it will always fit your character.
• One-Winged Angel: Thanks to the Dark Chi, every Arc Villain transforms into one in their respective final raid dungeons:
  • Jinsoyun transforms into a one-winged monster after you defeat her in Heaven's Mandate the first time.
  • Lusung gets corrupted by the Raven King and becomes a monster you must defeat and purify.
  • Zulia transforms into a monstrous bug-like in a last-ditch attempt to kill Cricket in the Temple of Elevium.
  • Chol Mugo unwillingy transforms into the Grand Celestial Emperor in Twilight Temple.
  • Empress Taywu also transforms with the power of the Dark Chi into the Scarlet Empress.
• Order Versus Chaos: The Cerulean Order and the Crimson Legion, respectively. The Order promotes a kind of benevolent meritocracy where people are assigned to the positions they will excel the most in. The Legion is a mild anarchy that advocates complete social mobility.
• Our Elves Are Different: The Yun are pretty much elves of the game, being long-lived, attuned with nature, having Pointy Ears, and elegant in their physical appearances, costumes, and architecture. The only difference being that they are female-only and have Creepy Long Fingers.
• Papa Wolf: Yunsang, the leader of the Lumang Syndicate, attacked many villages in the Silverfrost region searching for his adopted daughter Yunwa. He was captured when the Talus soldiers disguised a village girl as his daughter, making him fall to their trap. Dochun is another example, after learning that his foster daughter Namsoyoo is in the Talus Empire, he defeated other competitors in a tournament just for him to see her again. Though this ended up with him in jail.
• Palette Swap: Some outfits for sale are just recolors of older outfits.
• Pastiche: The game was designed to be one towards fantastical martial arts fiction and it shows. The story even opens with the typical scenario of the main character being pushed into action via a betrayal that doomed their home and slaughtered their friends and family.
• Perfect Play A.I.: The Tower of Infinity challengers are very challenging to face as their move sets are based on competitive Korean players. Unlike other enemies and players, they react to keypresses, skill and gear cooldowns reset after a few seconds, and attacks fast thanks to no input lag. Players need fast reflexes, high gear, and/or a good internet connection just to have a chance to conquer the top floors.
• Perpetually Shiny Bodies: In spades, though players have the option to remove this aesthetic when creating their characters. Unsurprisingly, the female characters have much more pronounced "shiny-ness" compared to male characters.^note Setting "Skin Gloss" to 5% or 10% barely adds a visible sheen to males, but the same setting makes female characters look like they've just oiled themselves up.
• Pint-Sized Powerhouse: The Lyn, a small and cute playable race that can be this depending on the class. Blade Dancers (exclusive to the Lyn Race) have a skill similar to Force Masters that can make them carry enemies bigger than themselves.
• Pirate: The appropriately named Blackram Pirates, who are the main antagonists in Act 1 and the ones who invaded Bamboo Village.
• Pirate Girl: Pretty much all the female Blackram pirates. Tae Jangum, Poharan, and Yoen-Hwa Lin are the most notable female pirates in the story.
• Player Versus Player: A major feature, and "opt-in" depending on the clothes you wear. For example, wearing a Cerulean Order uniform automatically makes you appear hostile to Crimson Legion members, and vice versa.
• Poor Communication Kills: Hoo boy. Plenty of moments come to mind, but the most memorable so far would have to be at the end of Act III.
  • Ilsim's betrayal, and subsequently the fall of Brightstone Village, could've been avoided if the mayor had just told Ilsim that Iksanun was his father. Sadly, not only does the mayor fail to tell Ilsim until he's dying, but he does so after Ilsim just killed Iksanun.
  • Yunma Fei never told anyone she was actually the Talus Princess, which caused many of the Skyhaven Resistance soldiers to turn against her for lying to them when she most likely had her own reasons why she didn't tell them.
• Pretty Boy:
  • In a cast full of beautiful ladies, Yu Chun seemingly caught the attention of many (mainly female) players. Although it was never stated in-universe, he seems to be rather popular among the players, being one of the male characters with the most fanart. He's also one of the few male NPC's to receive a unique look, unavailable in-game (unless you use mods, that is). In-game he's also referred to as a dandy.
  • To some extent, characters like Junghado and Ku Yang could fit with their Bishounen looks.
  • Dodan after he finally overcame himself and changed hairstyles, as well as behaviour.
  • All the male (especially Jin) players if one so desires in the character creation.
• Psychopomp: The Keepers are beings invisible to the human eye that guides the dead to the gates of the afterlife. Only Cricket can see them and they are usually found in the In-between, places where the dead are stuck until they move on. One such Keeper vouches for Cricket's heroic deeds after saving the Spirit Realm.
• Quick Time Event: Quite unusual for an MMORPG, if a boss uses an AOE or a one-hit kill attack, a prompt will appear to guide you when to use your iframes. This is disabled on Hard mode.
• Raise Him Right This Time: After Jinsoyun is defeated at the end of Act 4, you give her another chance at life by purging her of Dark Chi and transforming her back into a child on Jiwan's request.
• Random Number God: The game's random number generator is a spiteful beast that hates you. It hates you even more if you don't spend real money. In fact, it's so evil no one can figure out what the real drop rates are. While it's far from the only game this evil, it's evilness has a purpose. to encourage you to spend money to mitigate it (special single-use keys that remove the randomness from weapon chests). After you no longer need the item, it will then start dropping much more often. No one knows what the odds are supposed to be except the server owners and they aren't telling.
• Really Royalty Reveal: Commander of the Skyhaven Resistance Yunma Fei is the princess of the Talus Dominion. When you first meet her, she holds her own very well against the Skyhaven traitors before you arrive on the scene. Then it's revealed that Namsooyu is Yunma Khan's first child and is Yunma Fei's half-sister. Since she is Namsolyn's daughter, she's the rightful heir of the Stratus Empire.
• Redemption Earns Life: Jiwan turns Jinsoyun back into a child for unknown reasons, and trusted Cricket to keep her safe. Cricket did by teaching her the way of the Hongmoon among their other students.
• Reverse Grip: Warlocks hold their razors in a reverse grip, not that they need it to attack as they are long-range spellcasters. That said, it's shown they use it to tear portals to summon thralls and attack with dragon spirits.
• Rewarded as a Traitor Deserves: Lusung gets hit by this pretty hard, after he stumbles back to Mushin's Wings after you defeat him, Jinsoyun kills Yonkai, depriving him of his opportunity for revenge before mocking him for his human greed leading him to the situation he's in. She follows up by infusing him with so much dark chi he painfully mutates into a raven-like shadow beast.
• Ridiculously Cute Critter:
  • The Summoner's cats. You can dress them up in matching clothes with your character.
  • All the pet skins fit and the cuter they are, the more expensive they are in the marketplace.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Lusung, towards Yonkai and his men, when Yonkai threw Lusung's sister into the mines for trying to run away from a forced marriage (that's after Yonkai's men killed Lusung's future brother-in-law). It ended so horribly (his parents are killed, his sister dies in the mines, and almost all of the villagers hate him) that Lusung's hatred for Yonkai becomes the driving force behind his betrayal.
• Royals Who Actually Do Something: The real emperor of the Talus Dominion, Yunma Khan and his daughter Yunma Fei before Khan was imprisoned below Zaiwei. And both still are, as they gathered a small resistance to fight Jinsoyun and take back the country.
• Sadistic Choice: At the height of the destruction at Heaven's Reach, Master Hong is forced to choose between giving Jinsoyun Twilight's Edge or letting her kill you. No surprise which choice he picks, after which Jinsoyun deals a fatal blow to him after he chooses. Though she technically upholds her part of the bargain by "letting you go", even if it's because she's sure the Mark Of The Black Rose will finish you off.
• Shapeshifting: During the fall of Heaven's Reach (as well as in a playable memory during Act III), Master Hong transforms from a Lyn to a very powerful Gon (while still retaining his Lyn features) that can shoot out energy blasts strong enough to blast holes through mountains. In the NA version at least, it's still unexplained as to the reason behind his ability to transform.
• Shout-Out:
  • Several quests have names that reference various things. Examples include "The Bear Necessity", "Say No To The Dress", and "Bamboo Guard Needs Food Badly".
  • The Summoner quest chain includes facing a rival summoner who is apparently aware of Pokémon, as some of his dialogue consists of quotes from the series (i.e. "I choose you!" and "It's super effective!").
  • The preface of Jinsoyun's backstory on the game's website used a variation of the But for Me, It Was Tuesday quote from the Street Fighter movie.
  • The description of the horse mask in the Hongmoon Store is 'I used to wonder what friendship could be'. A lyric of the opening song of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic.
    • Another reference to a MLP song is a quest being named: 'Winter wrap up'.
  • In one of the quests, 3 NPC's named Bubbles, Buttercup and Blossom are locked up in cages.
  • There's a brave lion, a tin woodcutter, and a straw man.
  • There's a quest called Let Him Go. The boss of the ice cave instance it's in is named Queen Yul-Sa. She says "Let the storm rage on." and "Do you want to build a snow woman?"
    • Another quest is called The cold never bothered me anyway.
  • There's a quest called Do what you want cause a pirate is free!
  • The dynamic quest for killing Pokey is named That's what it's all about.
  • The Pot Dogs are named Plu Tao, Snu Pi and Gu Fi
  • There's a quest where you can find a talking flower in Celestial Basin. When you approach it, part of the flower's dialogue is "In this world...it's KILL or BE killed".
• Silk Hiding Steel: Yehara can, and has shown, that she could take on an army and go back to serving customers with a smile.
• The Smurfette Principle:
  • Jiwan is the only female Guardian from the legendary Four Guardians.
  • The major character of the Talus Dominion consists out of Yunma Kahn, Junghado, Yu Chun, and lastly the feminine Yunma Fei.
  • If you chose to make a male cricket, Sister Jinyung is the only female attending the Hongmoon school.
  • Purely looking at Jinsoyun's subordinates we have Gubong, Lusung, and Smurfette Yura.
  • Bunah among of the new Hongmoon students whenever Jinsoyun went missing.
• Skill Gate Characters: Summoners in PvP. It's one of the easier classes to control in the game with slow but hard-hitting attacks, healing skill, and a cat that can tank for them. But in PvP, more experienced players can easily counter their attacks, their healing skill deliberately only heals a fraction of their health, and the cat's limited AI is easily exploitable by classes who rely on counters. It's telling that in official tournaments, it's extremely rare for a summoner to be in the finals.
• Some Dexterity Required: Unlike other MMORPG games, the combat requires players to chain combos really fast while dodging the enemy attacks at the same time, akin to fighting games. Certain classes even need a good internet connection in order to be able to attack at all. Since most enemy attacks are telegraphed at lower levels, it can jar an inexperienced player once they reach bosses that requires them to react in a split second.
• Spell My Name With An S:
  • Rather worse here than in some other media, due to the fact that the game's translation of Korean names is largely inconsistent with Revised Romanization (the official standard of Korean romanization). Furthermore, the game is inconsistent as to whether it separates surnames and given names. For example, using the rules of Revised Romanisation, "Jinsoyun" should be "Jin Seoyeon".
  • The game's spotty editing means that in some places the game just flat-out can't keep certain terms consistent within itself. Is that one arm of the Lumang Syndicate in the Viridian Coast the "Dusk Adders" or the "Black Dragons"? A couple NPCs seem to change their minds on that one mid-dialogue sequence.
  • For characters, Zulia retained her Korean name Julia when the English localization of her part of the game was released, but quickly changed to Zulia after a patch or two. It's even lampshaded in the game by one of the Blackham Mauraders.
• Spotlight-Stealing Squad: Dodan and Chengun are going for this but it backfired horribly. Even though Cricket constantly has to save or help them, they'll always tell it was part of Dodan's plan.
• Squishy Wizard: The Force Master and the Warlock have low defenses to make up for their powerful ranged capabilities, though the Warlock does have access to a counter that blows the enemy away from them should it connect.
• Start of Darkness:
  • A flashback sequence reveals exactly how Jinsoyun got started. And the game ends up being one for you when your character embraces the Dark Arts in the need for revenge.
  • A sidequest shows how Zulia lost her entire school and became obsessed with killing Jinsoyun.
• Statuesque Stunner: The Gon race can be customized to be this, to the point that a Gon male cant fit in the cross-server lobby.
• Status Buff: Warlock/Warden Soulburn and Kungfu Master/Assassin Critical buff boost the entire party's stats for fifteen and ten seconds respectively.
• Stripperific: A lot of the female clothing designs show a lot of skin and/or emphasize certain parts of their bodies, which is met with mixed reception. Males also get in on this with certain gear, but not nearly as often.
• Supernatural Martial Arts: Par for the setting. Hell, 2/3 of the classes are not even based on martial arts.
• Time Skip: Happens in Act 6 after the player character opens the Hongmoon School and become its Grandmaster
• Together in Death:
  • General Han Sirang let himself succumb to his wounds in order to be with the Earthseer Baymu, who died in act 2.
  • There is a miniquest that allows you to talk to a dead spirit in order to find out what happened to his daughter. He was forced to abandon her in a cave. where she dies slowly from loneliness and hunger. After a Tear Jerker moment, both are reunited with each other.
  • After you fight and win against Zulia/Sansu's boss fight, her father appears and embraces her saying she will no longer be alone and the two move on.
• Tonto Talk: Parodied. In Act 4 the White-Hare Rabbit mobs generally suffer from this, with the notable exception of the Shaman variety.
  "Why do we have to sound like half-witted country bumpkins?! This is outrageous! I mean, must they disrespect us good, diligent rabbits?!"
• Took a Level in Badass:
  • After the timeskip, Dodan went from a wimpy coward that needs to be rescued a lot to a badass captain of Bamboo Village.
  • If one looks carefully, you can encounter an NPC named Bomani in the Yutay Cave where he starts as a pushover. Then next few times you see him, he gradually gets stronger till he is a challenge in Outlaw Island.
• Traitor Shot: When leaving the In-Between, Chol Mugo's wife Jisu does this, Foreshadowing she's not really his wife and is in fact Yura.
• Wall Crawl: The final Windwalking skill allows players to walk on walls and other vertical surfaces for a limited time.
• Walk on Water: Your Windwalking skill eventually progresses to a point where you can "windwalk" on top of water.
• Walking Shirtless Scene: There are a few outfits like this, for both men and women, but the trope mostly applies to men; women tend to wear a bikini top instead.
• We Hardly Knew Ye: Jinyung and Gilhong, two fellow Hongmoon students who you're supposedly close with, yet are only around for a few minutes before they're killed off, robbing the player of any time to get attached to them.
• Wholesome Crossdresser: The "My Angel" outfit is a maid outfit with wings that can only be worn by male characters, with a description stating that it was originally worn by a hero who had lost a bet, but ended up becoming something of a trendsetter when other warriors praised the hero for wearing it and began to wear it themselves.
• The Worf Effect: Flu aside, Cricket tends to get their asses handed by every single villain in the story, even after purifying themselves of the Dark Chi and mastering the Hongmoon arts.
• Worf Had the Flu: It's heavily implied that you could be a lot stronger (or at least master your skills faster) if you weren't affected by the Mark of the Black Rose. Campaign quests that don't focus on tracking down Jinsoyun instead address your blocked-up Chi and how exceptionally lucky you should be that you aren't dead from it yet.
• Zombie Apocalypse: Or a close enough variant.
  • Dark Shaman Nekuro has been experimenting with dead bodies and has the ability to turn villagers into undead warriors. He's also the cause of the undead invasion in Viridian Coast in Act 1 of the story line
  • Empress Tayhu creates a plague-like corruption in the western wing of the Dasari Palace, using the eyes of old people and children corrupted into blood lillies. Whoever is exposed to the two will be corrupted and go berserk.

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