Video Game / Dragon Nest

The four starting classes. From left to right: The Cleric, the Warrior, The Sorceress, and the Archer. Not shown: the other five classes. (Tinkerer, Kali, Assassin, Lencea, and Machina)

Dragon Nest is a free-to-play MMORPG developed and published by Eyedentity Games. In Dragon Nest, players pick one of nine classes (which can specialize at higher levels) and fight through hordes of standard and not-so-standard fantasy nasties in a cutesy, Super-Deformed world. The game has an Always Over the Shoulder camera (with the Gears of War angle more akin to MMO fighters like S4 League rather than the traditional position in World of Warcraft — era MMORPGs) and plays like a Third-Person Shooter with a focus on short-to-middle-range combat and melee.

The game world is highly detailed and most of the maps are large, with higher-leveled missions sporting multiple alternate paths, many levels of elevation and secret rooms packed with destructible objects. The majority of areas are instanced for each party to keep gameplay smooth on weaker machines and the only 'massive multiplayer' interaction takes place in towns where players can trade and chat (the initial release allowed players to use combat skills in towns but this feature is currently disabled, possibly for technical reasons). In these gathering places players have access to a variety of standard social networking tools like private chatrooms and party finders.

Combat is similar to the Dynasty Warriors series, where even normal attacks will (barring glitches or lag) hit everything the animation connects with, and enemy attacks can be dodged on sight. Skills can be huge, devastating, and gorgeously animated, especially for the magic-based classes. Despite all the power at the players' disposal, caution is still necessary as all enemies have at least one attack than can stagger or launch the Player Character and even Mooks have a nasty habit of cooperating to juggle or 'stun-lock' the player to death. Most bosses are usually much larger than the Player Characters, much more resistant to interruption, and have proportionally more massive attacks. They also have a horrifying tendency to show up in the same capacity as a Degraded Boss later on — only without the degradation!

The game is often compared to Vindictus, another free-to-play Action RPG published by Nexon.

Prior to September 28, 2016, the North American version of the game was published by Nexon, before handing control over to Eyedentity.

Also has a character sheet in progress. Please move individual character tropes to it.

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This game contains examples of:

• A.I. Roulette: In place for most enemies. The game compensates for the inevitable bad rolls by increasing the number and strength of enemies at higher difficulty levels.
• All of the Other Reindeer: Carderock Pass. Maybe only one or two quest-givers in the town are nice to you; the rest either do physical harm to you in "cutscenes" or treat you like garbage in their quest lines, of which most of the problems therein are either out of your hands or their own fault. You will want to slug a few of these people by the end.
• An Adventurer Is You:
  • The Warrior is a melee DPS character who wields two-handed weapons. Can choose between a Sword (fast but weak), a Hammer (slow but powerful) and an Axe (an average between the two). He can advance into a Swordsman or Mercenary. Advanced classes are the Sword Master, who uses swords exclusively and can pull off ranged energy attacks while rewarding a player skilled enough to get in close with short Cooldowns for improved combo ability, and the Mercenary, a scrapper type fighter who uses heavy blows to plow through enemies and gets stronger the more damage he takes.
  • The Archer is a ranged DPSer who plays like a Third-Person-Shooter and uses longbows, shortbows and crossbows. She can advance into a Sharpshooter or an Acrobat. A sharpshooter focuses on long-ranged attacks to destroy enemies from afar. An Acrobat stays in close range and excels at unparalleled mobility, mixing up kicks and other physical attacks into combos to stunlock enemies to death.
  • The Cleric is a combination of the Tank and the Healer. In addition to being able to heal and buff, the Cleric also has the highest HP pool in the game, and has the ability to block enemy attacks. With GLADUS TEK MA! (It was actually supposed to sound like: Goddess protect me! ...But it came out as Engrish.) As a Priest, he places an even greater focus on support with the ability to summon relics that can heal/buff allies while damaging/debuffing enemies; he also gets access to light-element magic spells. As a Paladin, he becomes the ultimate tank, with buffs to improve his own survivability, numerous defensive abilities that revolve around blocking or otherwise mitigating damage, and short-lived self-buffs to give himself tremendous offensive power for raining holy judgment on foes.
  • The Sorceress is a Black Mage type Nuker who specializes in powerful, Area of Effect magic spells that inflict debuffs and damage-over-time effects. She has an extremely high mana pool that lets her spam skills like there's no tomorrow, at the cost of being fragile up close. The two job advancements of the Sorceress, Elementalist and Mystic, affect the elements of magic she specializes in. Elementalists use fire and ice magic, with fire focusing on dealing high amounts of damage and ice on disabling enemies with slow and freeze effects. Mystics use lasers, miniature black holes, and some time-control abilities, including a way to make cooldowns meaningless for the entire party for a brief period of time.
  • The Academic is the Token Mini-Moe who can choose between using a giant cannon or a Bubble Gun. She works well as either a DPSer or a supporter and can summon a Mini-Mecha, Alfredo, to aid her in battle. Her two job advancements are Engineer (specializing in physical damage) and Alchemist (specializing in magical damage). The Engineer uses a cannon as her signature weapon and gains spells for Alfredo to use at his disposal as well as the ability to summon Mechaducks and automated turrets; one that calls for More Dakka, one that launches bombs, a literally cool tower, and one that shoots CHAINSAWS!. She can also load and stock up on bullets in order to cast devastating cannon attacks that are limited by bullet expenditure rather than cooldown. The Alchemist, on the other hand, uses chemical concoctions that either generate "alchemy bubbles" or consume said bubbles for a stronger effect. The Alchemist uses fire and ice elemental spells in her attacks in one tree, while going down the other focuses more on poisoning her enemies.
  • The Kali, a tall, buxom, dark-skinned shaman enchantress who fights using either a pair of fans or chakrams. Regardless of her specialization, her style of fighting is extremely acrobatic and evasive. As a Screamer, she can summon various spirit totems, ghosts, and possessed puppets to help her by providing buffs, debuffs, and more attacks, as well as unleash torrents of dark magic for area attacks. As a Dancer, she can attack rapidly with her spins and chakrams and call forth giant spirits to mimic her movements as she attacks. She can also support the party with a dance that can create a variety of buffs, from healing to increasing damage.
  • The Assassin is a Fragile Speedster who uses ninja weapons and various forms of ninjutsu. As a Shinobi, he mixes up kunai, shuriken, and chain whips with plenty of martial arts moves to pummel enemies with extreme damage. His other specialization, the Taoist, balances light and dark elements to support his allies as well as attack foes with shadow clones and other elemental attacks.
  • The Lencea is a lance-wielding lass with elegant but deadly strikes. She can elect to barrage foes with waves of energy blades from her swings, or fight up-close with heavy physical attacks. She can also create circles on the field to buff allies, as well as juggle her unique fatigue mechanic to give her tremendous boosts of power for short periods of time.
  • The Machina is a Lightning Bruiser Cat Girl who wields a large metal claw and specializes in rushing enemies down. Many of her skills can be linked with one another, and often involve jumping straight into the fray and bashing enemies left and right. She also has a variety of defensive buffs to aid her and her allies.
• Anti Poop-Socking: A fatigue system was in the Korean and Japanese version, only allowing you to play so many dungeons per day. Replaced in the US with a rested experience style system, where you get double experience as long as you have energy left.
  • In the NA version, the drop rate is decreased to 20% of its normal rate for you if you're out of PWR.
• Arc Villain: The game's Story Arc format results in many Big Bads (ensemble and/or duumvirate) that have appeared in each of the game's arcs.
  • Prologue arc: Cleric, Academic, Lancea and Sorceress classes have the traitorous Cleric Jacob and the Dragon Cult serving as the Big Bad. On the other side, the Warrior, Archer, Kali, Machina and Assassin classes have a few members of the Dragon Cult themselves as the Big Bad.
  • Calderock Village arc: Elena is a Dark Elf Queen who is at war with Calderock Pass who has been turning goblins into hobgoblins and plans to use the poison across the city. It is revealed that she's one of the apostles of the Dragon Cult. Elena is also a part of a Big Bad Ensemble with the Black Knight Velskud, who is revealed to be one of the former Six Heroes before becoming hungry with power, as well as him being Rose's captor.
  • Saint Haven arc has the Black Knight Velskud once again acting as the main antagonist of the arc, having had escaped after Elena's defeat in the Point of No Return, with his hatred becoming more full-forced as he is chased by Argenta, Geraint and the player to the Black Mountain, before revealing himself as the Black Dragon. However, there is another Big Bad Ensemble with Bishop Ignacio, a traitorous bishop of the Order who serves as The Mole to the Dragon Cult, who plans to use the artifacts the players obtain in order to awaken Serpentra, an artificial dragon. He later shows his true colours after he betrays them and kidnaps Rose, when he is revealed to be one of the Dragon Cult's apostles.
  • Lotus Marsh arc where in the first half, Karahan, the brother of Karacule and later revealed to be another Dragon Cult apostle, is the undoubted Big Bad of the arc, where he later goes into a Villain Team-Up with the Ancients and the Dragon Cult, forming a Big Bad Triumvirate. The second half, on the other hand, is a Big Bad Ensemble which involves the fallen warrior Barnac, who is revealed to be alive but is beyond corrupted to the point that killing him is the only option as how Terramai offered; and there's Rose, of all people, who is later revealed to be Rosalinde, a Dragon Follower and later another apostle of the Dragon Cult who betrays Velskud, becomes the Knight of Kaleon and steals the jewel of the Black Dragon.
  • Tel Numara and Tel Rosa arcs has a Big Bad Ensemble between Jasmine, Comelina/XD-26's creator, and her clone army, as well as the Dragon Cult. But there's another villain in the ensemble, Professor K, who wants to kidnap Daisy for his own purposes. He also happens to be on par with Jasmine on who can get the dragon jewel from Daisy, albeit Jasmine later overtakes him as she was able to take the jewel from her creator's body to bolster her army and herself.
• Artificial Stupidity: Bosses, minibosses and Giant Mooks will often charge through clusters of smaller monsters and send them flying in order to attack the player. This is a boon when said smaller monsters are mages.
• Ascended Meme: In-game only. The "GLADUS TEK MA" meme is now officially recognized by DN NA◊.
• Automatic Crossbows: The Archer's crossbow acts for all intents and purposes like a three-round burst submachine gun.
• Barrier Maiden: Argenta is revealed to be severely weakened due to using part of her power to hold the world in one piece. Gerrant is a gender-flipped version during his time in Saint's Haven as his Nest prevents enemies from abducting Rose.
• Beam Spam: Several Mystic skills have this property but the Sword Master gives the term a new meaning when he gets his final skills. Then he becomes a Lunar Knight. The Lencea is looking to continue the trend with her Valkyrie specialization.
• BFS: The Warrior can wield a sword that's as big as he is.
  • The Sorceress has one too in the form of the Elestra's Icy Shard EX (Freezing Sword EX in at least one of the versions) which creates a bunch of frozen swords from the ground, ending with a huge BFS.
• Big Bad Ensemble: Due to the format of the game's story being divided into Story Arcs, it wasn't until the Heart of Merka arc (Level 80+) where the game sets up the potential primary villains of the game. This includes the Army of Destruction led by the High Guard Tryan and later his right-hand man Mamon after Tryan was killed by Grele, where its minions are comprised of powerful beings known as Childs, who are all linked to the Goddess Vestinel and are plotting to target Lagendia after the Monolith's destruction; Vernicka, the President of Merka, later joined the ensemble after revealing to have been plotting Hiver's attempted assassination, and is the one responsible for using the mysterious device to empower Child Mamon in an attempt to steal the jewel from Hiver; and Vestinel herself, the evil goddess and the creator Mistland who is the primary cause of Lagendia's problems, serves as both the Greater-Scope Villain and The Ghost, as she's directly tied to the conflicts within the entire game herself, before she becomes the main Arch-Nemesis of the Anti-Goddess Faction. After Vernicka's troubles were dealt with, Mamon and the Army of Destruction and Vestinel both serve as the primary villain ensemble of the game.
• Big Bad Friend: Cleric Jacob for the Cleric PC. His betrayal haunts the PC for a long time. (Well, until the PC finish the Specialization quest where he sort his inner world.)
• Big Bad Wannabe: Elena the Dark Elf Queen attacks Carderock Pass at least two times with an army of monsters, and seems to consider herself The Rival to Argenta. Ironically, she considers Elena little more than a nuisance. To put things in perspective, the story's current antagonist has administered several Curb Stomp Battles to both Argenta and the player character, while Elena is ultimately defeated by a hobgoblin and a poochum after he mutates the former's family.
• Big, Screwed-Up Family: The player Cleric has this, which is the reason why he left the family to attain clerichood.
• Bling of War: The NX shop costumes can certainly fit this.
• Booze Flamethrower: The Pirate Gnoll Bladesman enemies do this as their ultimate attack, which causes a burning effect that lasts for a little under ten seconds.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: There are several instances of this in the game.
  • In a side quest, Honest Ed makes a gamble with the player character to sell a defective Seliana album to Kaylinn... He then tells you to delete your character if you fail!
• Bribing Your Way to Victory: The standard Nexon formula of fancy costumes that give extra stat bonuses. As with other Nexon MMOs the perks have been growing with each update but the game's demanding mechanics require skill from even the most monumentally geared players. Now that the game is published by Eyedentity themselves, this trope is noticeably much more watered down.
• Broken Pedestal: A series of Friendship quests by Stella involve looking into the memories of Kasarana of the Six Heroes who's highly regarded amongst fellow sorceresses. The memories the player finds portray her in a very human way, causing Stella to turn livid and call the player out for slander.
• Burn the Witch!: Jenny wants to sneak into the sorceress' coven at night, tie them all up, and burn the place down. It's not due to any racism, just that they treat her like shit constantly. She doesn't feel that way about the sorc PC, though, since she's the only one that's nice to her. She still wishes you'd buy her crap instead of just selling her yours, though.
• Carry a Big Stick: The Cleric can use wands and maces as their weapons. Several mid-level hammers also have this design despite their classification.
• Casting a Shadow: The sorceress, but they're not exactly evil. It's more like The Power of the Void.
• Chosen One: Rose, the "Prophet."
  • It Sucks to Be the Chosen One: Being The Chosen One has caused Rose to be kidnapped by a series of monsters who want to use her latent powers for their own evil purposes.
• Clear My Name: While the player was off in a dungeon, David spreads slander about the player, claiming that he/she had betrayed and sold out the town. The player's name is cleared on the next quest.
• Clone Degeneration: The Academic turns out to be a clone of her "sister" Jasmine, along with over 20 more clones, made from a limited magic source in place of her heart which will eventually run out. Hence, the only way to extend her lifespan is by absorbing what remains in another clone, which is the very story behind her job change quest.
• Combat Medic: The Cleric. Helps that they can become the best tanking class as Paladins, and are capable of dishing out some decent damage. The Priest has more of a focus on the medic part, but gain a few skills that can nuke to a degree.
• Combo Breaker: The Priest and Mercenary both have an attack that allow them to Knock Back anyone near them if they're flinching from an attack.
  • The Alchemist's version puts enemies around her to sleep!
  • The Force User/Mystic has Time Interruption, which suspends enemies in melee range in time.
• Cool Airship: The Albatross.
• Cool Down: What do you expect?
• Cordon Bleugh Chef: May. She can cook if she has a good recipe, but that isn't usually the case.
• Counter-Attack: The Priest gets a skill that allows him to retaliate with a blast of holy magic if he's hit. It also knocks back any enemy in the radius of the blast. The Paladin takes this farther, getting three skills that allow this. One has him performing a Shield Bash after a successful block, launching whoever just attempted to attack him. Another is the same thing, except he retaliates with a blast of magic instead. The final is also the same, but with the Paladin performing a Ground Pound to knock away anyone near him. The Mercenary performs a shout that has the same effect as the priests' Counter-Attack. However, all of these counters are only effective against melee attacks.
  • One Sword Master skill gives him the unique ability to counterattack while standing if he manages to parry.
• Critical Hit: There's a stat to increase chances of this, and the Archer (and the Assassin to a lesser extent) specializes in this trope a lot. She has two skills which boost critical hit rate, one that maxes it out for around 30 seconds, and a 10% boost for 6 minutes. The Sniper's first skill, Lucky Shot, gives a fairly high chance to nearly double critical hit damage.
• Crossover: With Noblesse.
• Cutscene Incompetence: The player has to fight through a dungeon of monsters to the Black Knight, who promptly hands your character's butt back to them within moments. This happens at least a few times in the story quests. Though, it can be justified as the Black Knight, AKA Velskud is a dragon or becomes a dragon early on in the quest chain, while the player is a simple human or elf.
• Cutscene Power to the Max: Averted with Gerrant. When you accompany him during a story quest he can easily clear the map without you if you detour to grab treasure, though he doesn't bother to avoid attacks (Well, he doesn't need to, he automatically blocks attacks). His pathfinding is also relatively good. Interestingly, the fence that he destroys during the quest intro can be attacked when the player goes in without him and it is the only fence in the entire map that goes down from a single normal attack despite the fact that his skills are at least ten to twenty times more powerful than the versions the (Sword Master) player gets later on.
  • At the end of the level 32 to 40 main questline, your character will grab a heavy metal pole and swing it wildly at the Sea Dragon's mouth to free Gerrant. Fine if you are a Warrior, Cleric, Lencea, or Machina but watching a weak Sorceress, Archer, Tinkerer, and Kali do it? Wow.
• Cycle of Hurting: During the North American Closed Beta, the level cap was such that for most of the currently available content, people were unable to access the skills that would let them escape a combo in midair. As a result, when facing a large group of fast enemies, getting hit a single time meant being juggled until half or more of your health was gone with no means of escape. See Demonic Spiders in the YMMV section.
  • Put a few Swordsmen that spam Cyclone Slash on the same PvP team, and watch the opposition get juggled into the air for half their Hit Points. It's no wonder Swordsmen are at the top of the PvP Character Tiers list.
• Damage-Sponge Boss: The Ogre is this whenever he shows up in a low level area and even in his own area after the Dark Elves are gone. His attacks are slow and telegraphed (though they're pretty hefty if they connect) but he has a momentous amount of HP. Have fun shaving it off if you're soloing.
• Dark World: The Mistland, the world of the evil goddess Vestinel is always described as an ominous and barren world filled with evil beings prior to the arrival of the adventurers. In truth, it is almost similar to Lagendia besides it is a bit barren.
• Deadpan Snarker: Your character. In quest dialogues, you can get quite snarky and lampshadey about RPG conventions or the quest giver getting overdramatic.
• Death from Above: Paladin can drop a giant cross from the sky, and has the skill Electric Smite, where he leaps up then smashes into the ground, creating lightning bolts.
  • The Priest drops smaller relics that can either heal, fire lightning at nearby enemies, immobilize the opponent, or cure debuffs. Later, Saints upgrade their debuff-curing relic, which gains the ability to push back everything nearby upon landing. The drop damage of the priest's relics is far lower, though.
  • The Sharpshooter also has a skill named Rain of Arrows. The aerial attacks of each class can also qualify.
  • The Force User's Summon Comet and Meteor Swarm spells. More like Comet of Doom actually.
  • The Sword Master gets a skill that throws a barrage of Sword Beams down from the air. Particularly nasty since few classes have anti-air attacks.
  • The Engineer gets two skills; Make it Rain, which a bomb is thrown into the air and the explosions rains missiles, and Chemical Missile, which is what the name implies.
  • The Screamer has Phantom's Rage, which makes her jump into the air and fires four dark magic blasts to the ground below.
• Death Is a Slap on the Wrist: What happens when you die during a dungeon? You use up one of your life stones and return to the battle at full Hit Points and Mana at no penalty. You can do this up to five times a day. It can also be quite difficult to die, if equipped with some decent Magic or Rare equipment. There's even a title you can earn if you die five times in a row, and dead players even get an advantage as they turn into a ghost, allowing them to travel to a more advantageous position before they revive.
  • Slightly less cheap are the resurrection scrolls which enable revival 6 and up. However, they're given as leveling rewards in at least one version.
• Degraded Boss: Almost all bosses appear in later dungeons as regular enemies, and usually in swarms at a time. When the boss in question is That One Boss, this leads to the Demonic Spiders trope.
  • A number of Master mode and Abyss mode maps duplicate their bosses and mid-bosses instead of (and sometimes in addition to) making them stronger compared to Hard mode. Then there are the Nest maps which are largely populated by those monsters rather than Mooks.
• Dem Bones: Fallen Goblins are often resurrected by Bretheren Shamans as skeletons. Then there's the Boundary of Darkness, where for one wave you will have to defend a statue from every fallen enemy from Goblins to fallen Ogres.
• Die, Chair, Die!: Barrels, crates, tents and the like, and they drop a few coins at times. Some board missions require you to smash them to get quest items.
• Difficult, but Awesome: Several mechanics in the game take a lot of getting used to, but when mastered can devastate any enemy.
  • Air juggling, especially for Warrior classes. Novices will have trouble connecting with their initiator skill once the enemy is in the air but an expert can kill his opponent before either hits the ground even if aerial recovery is used.
  • The Mercenary's Punishing Swing is effectively a mortar with ludicrous vertical and horizontal range but if the player can't judge its trajectory properly it will often overshoot or fall short of its target.
  • The Sword Master's Hacking Stance requires good timing and positioning to land and is hard to chain into from other skills but it will often be the Finishing Move if it connects due to the large amount of damage dealt.
  • The Priest's Lightning and Bind relics usually fall about 5 meters in front of him, but he is completely vulnerable to melee-range attacks during the casting animation. However, if the Priest casts towards a wall, the relics will instead land on top of the Priest, knocking back any nearby enemies that were intending to pound him into the floor. Required knowledge for the few Priests that intend to PVP.
• Disappeared Dad: The Warrior PC's father, Lambert/Liam.
• Disproportionate Retribution: The Academic's tutorial involves her shooting down goblins as they took a vase-like device of hers and played catch with it.
• Dub Name Change: You may be confused when you see that North America has a "Tinkerer" instead of the Academic. This trope is why.
• Eldritch Abomination: The Void Dragon.
• Elite Mooks: Certain normal enemies in a group will sometimes spawn with titles that make them tougher to take down, which occurs more frequently on higher Difficulty Levels.
• Emote Animation: Every single one of the classes has his or her own versions of a set of emotes.
• Epic Flail: Clerics have these as one of their weapon options. Flails have the most physical damage and crit out of the three, but is also the slowest weapon compared to the wand and mace. However, the downside can be entirely averted as long as the Paladin's self-buff Sacred Hammering is active. It creates a magic hammer afterimage for your weapon and makes every weapon have mace animations.
• Escort Mission: The Cleric's advancement to either a Paladin or Priest involves him going through a dungeon protecting a Poochum which represents his faith. Said Poochum is also extremely fragile, requiring constant attention. Also, the PvP mode Protect has one person on your team be designated as your team Captain. Your team loses if your Captain is killed. Everyone who isn't the Captain will respawn after a few seconds if killed. Unlike the Cleric's escort mission, the team captain has a massive health buff.
  • The goblin rescue quests and the Warrior's job advancement are this in theory but the NPCs in question are capable and/or durable enough to fend for themselves unless the player is sleeping. And if you do the goblin quests, then their grandfather joins you in combat when you fight the dark elf responsible for what happened to his grandchildren. And he is a powerful ally.
  • Inverted during the main attack on Velskud. Gerrant makes whole groups of monsters (including the dungeon boss!) disappear with his massive attacks.
    • It's repeated twice more with blind Gerrant and Velskud. Set the difficulty to Abyss and enjoy the spoils.
• Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas: Honest Ed is a money-grubbing bastard who's entirely willing (and seems to relish the chance) to wipe the player character out of existence and murder sentient plant creatures to make medicine from their corpses. You sell something he thought was utterly impossible to sell, proving yourself a better merchant than him (this isn't relevant to the trope), and ask how he'd like it if someone killed his mother and made medicine out of her (this is)..
• Face–Heel Turn: Velskud/The Black Knight was one of the six heroes who defeated the Black Dragon 50 years ago, and then took the Dragon's lustre for its power and is now the new Black Dragon, though according to the Tinkerer storyline, he makes a Heel–Face Turn at some point in the next 50 years.
• Fake Ultimate Hero: David is a self-proclaimed example. And also a riff at a certain kind of player.
• Flash Step: The Sorceress Class's Blink spell, but the Force User Class has the Teleport spell which is reminiscent of the Doraemon Anywhere Door.
• Foe Romance Subtext: Warrior Trainer Chandler and his "rival" Typhoon Krag.
  Chandler: I still remember the feel of his breath against my cheek as our weapons clashed for the first time...
  Player Character: Too much information. TOO MUCH INFORMATION!
• Form-Fitting Wardrobe: The Sorceress. Dark Elves, too.
• For Science!: The reason Korin justifies testing his Immortal armor on you by attempting to run you through with a spear.
• Friendly Fire Proof: Averted with the Ogres, where then can end up bashing their own Mooks around. Played straight with the character classes in dungeons and with your teammates in PvP. Otherwise, players would probably end up causing more damage to their own team than to the opponents'.
  • The Physician's Love Virus skill however, can turn friendly fire on for anything it hits.
• The Gambling Addict: The player Sorceress has shades of this. It was stated that she spent the last five years gambling away all her money, and the other Sorceresses aren't too happy about this. ESPECIALLY Cynthia.
• Game-Breaking Bug: Dragon Nest features an equipment system which gives additional stats and various Status Buffs, Debuffs or extra damage depending on the suffixes imbued on them, which have cooldowns after activating. These so-called "procs" trigger for a low chance if you managed to land a hit on the enemy using your weapon and/or getting hit by enemies with the armors on.
  • Now, The SEA server got hit by a rather interesting bug. The armor proc cooldown stacks with the weapon buff cooldown, so there is a high chance that if the armor buff is triggered first, then the weapon buff will not trigger for a maximum of three minutes. The people who knew about this decided to ditch their suffixed armors and keep their suffixed weapons since weapon buffs have no cooldown. As of date, it has been fixed.
  • At one point, every version had a different weapon proc-related bug that was known as Damage Transfer. Imagine a Spam Attack being launched. Now, quickly activate another far more powerful skill before your previous attack hits. When your first attack does finally hit and your weapon proc is triggered, the attack power of your second attack is transferred to the first attack, causing a single hit in that attack to inflict upwards of 10x more damage than it was supposed to. Some attacks had the transfer bug work for multiple hits as opposed to only one. It was so game-breaking that bosses died much faster than intended, and some players began to take advantage of this bug against other players in Ladder PvP. It has been fixed as of early 2013.
• Game Mod: There's a site called Dragon Nest Mods (or Dragon Nest Modz, the new place) where you can find a variety of mods, from targeting reticle mods to appearance changing mods. The client will break if you attempt to update while they're installed, due to Nexon frowning on them. Modders have a way to avoid this, but it won't be mentioned here.
• Gold–Silver–Copper Standard: 100:1 ratio, so 1 gold is 10000 copper coins.
• Guys Smash, Girls Shoot: Mostly played straight, especially with the four original base classes (Warrior, Archer, Sorceress, Cleric). The Warrior, Cleric, and Assassin are the male melee fighters, and the Archer, Sorceress, and Academic are the female ranged attackers. Their later-earned specialized classes allow this to be averted to a certain degree. On the flip side, the Kali is a female hybrid of melee and ranged combat, while the other female class, the Lencea, is a spear-wielding melee specialist.
• Glass Cannon: The Archer is this to a degree, while the Sorceress plays this trope completely straight.
• Harder Than Hard: There are actually two difficulties above the Hard difficulty when running dungeons. There is the Master difficulty which is pretty much just another buff to the enemy stats and increase in number of enemies spawned. Then there is the Abyss difficulty, which is not only harder than Master but also contains boss versions of regular enemies at regular intervals, as well as frequently making you face TWO copies of the End Boss in the last room. The double end bosses are always those that become mooks later on.
  • And then there is the Chaos difficulty (above Abyss) on the dungeons of level 60 and above. This difficulty makes you unable to complete any quest that isn't specific to Chaos difficulty, adds more enemies and enemy types (e.g. mages in the first area of Shadow Grave, the new sub-boss of Wailing Wall), changes a few mechanics, and makes it so the boss area always has 2 bosses: the regular one, and another random boss from another dungeon of similar level (lv60 dungeons and lv70 dungeons are separated for this). For example, Shadow Grave (lv70) can have the boss of Abyss of Heat (lv70) or Wailing Wall (lv75) on top of the regular boss.
• Heal Thyself: The cleric's healing spell and relic, along with potions.
  • The Physician has Injector, which heals her for a small % of her damage dealt (the EX version heals her allies too) and Heal Shower. Also, the Kali has a buff that gives her attacks Life Drain.
• Hidden Agenda Villain: The Black Knight. Also, Bishop Ignacio.
• Hoist by Her Own Petard: As part of her villainous plans, Elena starts using poison to turn goblins into monstrous hobgoblins. The subjects of this process include a family of friendly goblins who the player helped out earlier in the game. Elena eventually gets contaminated by her own poison and transforms into a mindless shadow creature. She then gets knocked off a cliff by the grandfather of said goblin family, who turned himself into a Hobgoblin to get revenge for his precious grandchildren.
• Hyperspace Arsenal: Lampshaded by Bailey regarding the Goblins when you chat with him to get his friendship.
  • The Mercenary's Punishing Swing produces a large bomb out of thin air. The Archer at least has a quiver as part of her equipment.
  • The Archer can somehow shoot dozens upon dozens of arrows, while her quivers are more like two tiny pouches on both sides of her thighs, and are only seen holding three arrows each. She also doesn't even bother with pulling out an arrow to fire it; instead, all you see is her drawing her bow back and firing.
  • Also the Academic, you can wonder where she is pulling those big weapons.
• Implacable Man: The Mercenary and its advanced jobs are one of the few examples when they use their Iron Skin buff, which makes them immune to most disabling effects for a period of time. Many of their attack skills can also power through enemies' and other characters' attacks without this buff. Unlike in most other MMORPGs bosses tend to avert this trope and can be staggered, stunned and even air juggled especially when a full party attacks them together.
• Incredibly Lame Pun: The Funky Space Mask's description lampshades this:
  "You might call this mask 'out of this world,' but that would make you a bad person."
• Instant Runes: The Tinkerer has them. Hers are gear-shaped, because she uses Magitek.
• Interface Spoiler: If you open your NPC Friendship and check every page, you will realise you can befriend Velskud, the Black Knight.
• Interspecies Romance: One of the elf NPCs was in a relationship with a human once. The human broke up with her after finding out how long elves live. Then he died in battle. All this happened fifteen years ago, and a series of quests involves finding out the whole story.
• It Has Been an Honor: Gerrant says this to the Player Character, just before his death.
• Jerkass: There are quite a lot of NPCs who are rude and unpleasant to the player character, (mainly all of the Sorceresses, except for Stella (downplayed) and Tara (played straight)) and most of them aren't too grateful for you helping them. Interestingly, this varies from each server version.
  • One of the airship ticket handlers, Sorenne, is very unpleasant to everyone she meets. Justified, however, as she's poor and she needs the money for her family, but they no longer let her charge for tickets. She only acts like this in the NA version however, she's quite kind in the SEA version.
• Kick Them While They Are Down: Played straight. Players and monsters alike will continue attacking your character when knocked down. All of the classes even get attacks that are made to perform this. The Warrior performs an elbow drop, the Cleric stomps twice and kicks the target away, the Archer performs a spin kick that is capable of chaining into another kick, the Sorceress simply stomps on the target several times, the Academic whips out an oversized magnifying glass to burn the monster, the Kali does a backflip kick, the Assassin repeatedly stabs the enemy on the ground, and the Lencea pokes the enemy with her spear.
• La Résistance: The Anti-Goddess Faction, a resistance faction in Mistland whose members broke away from Vestinel's will, are a group of Mistlanders who seek to oppose Vestinel, the evil sister of Altea and the Shadow Dictator of Mistland, and her ruling, as well as stopping the terror the Army of Destruction is causing following the collapse of the Monolith that weakened the barriers between two worlds.
• Late-Arrival Spoiler: The Tinkerer's storyline mercilessly spoils many things, like how Veskuld makes a Heel–Face Turn and that Brother Jacob is a Dragon Cultist and gets killed at the hands of the cleric.
  Brother Jacob: So, I'm just another villain that he kills, huh?
  • The game itself spoils the plot twist that Rose undergoes a Face–Heel Turn with one of the openings that coincided with the later-released classes.
• Lethal Chef: Just as you thought May's cooking was bad, there's a quest where you see a memory of Kasarana of the six heroes making a dish for Gerrant to try. There are visible pieces of hounds in it. Gerrant takes one bite and praises it... for being a devastating biological weapon that can One-Hit Kill orcs.
• Light 'em Up: The cleric has a spell that is this in a nutshell.
• Living MacGuffin: Rose, which is why she is always kidnapped.
  • The Kali, to a lesser extant, although she can actually defend herself.
• Loads and Loads of Loading: Almost all maps outside of the hub towns (and even some maps inside the hub towns) are instanced and loaded in chunks, meaning that the player will have to sit through a minimum of two loading screens when going from a quest giver to a dungeon and several within the dungeon itself. Fortunately the load times are rather short and each new update introduces maps with larger zones between loads. In particular, Desolate Isle is one continuous map with no breaks.
• Lovable Sex Maniac: Morin makes many lewd comments about your character. He also thinks Hernandez (an old man who thinks showing any skin whatsoever is horrifically indecent) is smoking hot.
• Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me: Clerics have a skill that negates all damage of a certain number of hits. It's somewhat impractical at times, since it interrupts whatever you were doing. Including if you were charging up a spell with a long casting time. The Paladin expands on this, getting skills to perform Counter Attacks, and even gets a skill that effectively renders him invincible for a short time, but is immobile and incapable of attacking. Some enemies carry shields, requiring the player to either break them, use attacks that bypass the shield, or hit them from the side or back. The brief phrase the cleric speaks also spawned the Gladus Tek Ma! Memetic Mutation.
• The Mole: Brothers Jacob and Cedric from Mana Ridge, who it turns out are Dragon Cultists.
  • The player cleric has to kill the both of them.
• Manga Adaptation: Believe it or not. It currently only has two chapters and while it changes up some events in the plot, it's still manages to be pretty decent for a tie-in manga.
• Medal of Dishonor: You can get a few titles which are pretty much this. One is for failing an enhancement several times in a row, another is getting killed 5 times in a day, and a few others are simply getting killed by certain bosses.
• Mercy Invincibility: If you're knocked down, you're invincible if you roll. You also get a brief period of invincibility during your character's Recovery Attack.
• Money Spider: Played for Laughs. Spiders rarely drop Knitting Needles, whose description claims that spiders are master knitters who sell their products for extra income. Otherwise averted, as most enemies drop very little currency, if any; bosses, however, tend to drop at least enough to repair your gear after a run.
• Monty Haul: Low level missions (up to 16) tend to drown players in equipment and crafting gems to the point where they will often be NPC'ed in stacks along with Shop Fodder due to Trading House prices being forced down to NPC levels from oversupply. High level missions (32 and up) are stingier with equipment but still shower players with the ubiquitous Agate, though this time you'll need every piece you can get due to enhancing being a Luck-Based Mission. Oddly enough mid-level (16 to 32) mission coffers are the tightest, resulting in a lot of Money Grinding.
• Most Writers Are Human: Adeline/Adelynn comments that the romance book ^note A book about an Interspecies Romance between a human and an elf based off of her relationship with Yorick/Eureke that she borrowed from May has a few glaring, but understandable flaws (such as the fact that there are very few male elves and that Adeline was the one who did most of the rescuing) due to the fact that the writer's a human.
• The Movie: Yep. A CGI film based on the game was produced in 2014, and was followed by a sequel a couple of years later. Like the games, the movie is a fantasy adventure film, and uses characters based on the game's NPCs and the player characters.
• Multi-Mook Melee:
  • Gobarta has you fighting 300 goblins.
  • After Level 32, it gets replaced with one that has you fighting 500 monsters. Note the word "monster" and not "goblin". It sends Ninja Kobolds, Orcs, and even Hobgoblins at you!
• Navel-Deep Neckline: Every single Sorceress and Dark Elves have outfits with plunging necklines. Then there's the Kali, whose belly dancer outfit leaves her Underboobs and midriff exposed.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: The entire level 32 to 40 main questline. You unknowingly help Bishop Ignacio, a secret Dragon Follower, revive the Sea Dragon that Geraint and his team defeated 50 years ago, causing Geraint's death as he tries to fight it while injured from the fight with the Black Dragon. With Geraint's nest broken due to his death, Ignacio takes the opportunity to kidnap Rose.
• Noodle Implements: Stella wants to frame Enoch & get him excommunicated from the Divine Order, so she needs "a goat, a sewing machine, thirty feet of rope..."
• Obviously Evil: Bishop Ignacio looks suspiciously more similar to the ghoul enemies than most of the other NPCs in Saint's Haven (which Kayleen constantly teases him about). As expected, he turns out to be a lot less holy than he acts when you first meet him. Gerrant actually gives a hint earlier in the game when he tells the player that the Bishop is very different from what he remembers, but being blind he can't investigate further.
• Only Sane Man: The Player Character, interacting with almost any quest giver in the entire game.
• Our Dragons Are Different: The Dragons described in the backstory are pretty much Physical Gods. Various dragons played major roles in both past event and the story itself. Some of them are outright villainous who appeared in raid Dragon Nests while others disguised as humanoid NPCs. Also, Argenta, Gerrant, and Velskud AKA the Black Knight are actually the Silver, Gold and Black Dragons in humanoid forms.
  • The Sea Dragon which serves as the first raid boss in the game.
  • The Green Dragon which is the second raid boss who turned out to be Karahan.
  • The Desert Dragon which serves as the third raid boss. The raid itself is the memories of the dragon before it was first slain by the first King of Saint Haven.
  • The Black Dragon which once the Six Heroes defeated years ago, and returned to haunt Saint Haven again. It turned out that Velskud stole the dragon's core and became the dragon himself, and later it was taken away from him by the Dragon Followers and its leader Feder became the new dragon. He served as the fourth raid boss.
  • The Red Dragon the fifth raid boss, is the other half of Feder who returned after his defeat as the Black Dragon. Its other half remain on the original Red Dragon, Rubinart who appeared as a recurring NPC in the Monolith story arc.
  • The White Dragon, who didn't appeared as an antagonistic dragon unlike others and only appeared as a young boy named Iona.
  • The Gold Dragon who is the true identity of Geraint.
  • The Silver Dragon who turned out to be Argenta.
  • Daisy, the little girl NPC also revealed to be a Dragon.
  • The Assassin pc is a descendant of the Void Dragon, created by Rubinart the Red Dragon.
  • The Ancient and Chaos Dragons, the dragon brothers of goddess Altea who once battled the Beyond Dragon of goddess Vestinel. After the dragons' deaths, their essences are broken and each piece give birth to the aforementioned dragons (except the Sea Dragon).
• Poison Mushroom: Most food items have a rotten or toxic version with a sickly grey tint that can be hard to see. Better have item labels on at all times since the minimum HP or MP penalty is a whopping 30% and you may accidentally snarf one while picking up loot if you can't see its name on the screen. Mercifully, the 100% foods' dark counterparts also take off 30% or 50%.
• Precursors: The Ancients. They're supposedly extinct by the time when the game takes place, but there's still one person with Ancient ancestry who inherited their power. The plot revolves around the villains attempting to gain control of this power.
• Non-Fatal Explosions: The boxes of bombs you can find in some dungeons do Scratch Damage to you. The most dangerous thing they could do is throw you into something that can hurt you. Though, the Warrior is capable of using his weapon as a baseball bat to lob a bomb at you as one of his skills, and it can dish out a decent amount of damage.
• Our Elves Are Different: The archer trainers' dialogue indicates that they are Really 700 Years Old, in harmony with nature and mildly amused by all the crises humans (and Dragons!) are going through. They're pretty pleasant about the whole deal, though. Less pleasant is Elena the Dark Elf, who wishes to Kill All Humans. The archer Player Character isn't very different from the other PCs, so it's unclear if she averts this trope or plays it straight.
• Painfully Slow Projectile: The Priests' Grand Cross. It's so slow that you can simply outrun it. Just make sure you don't get hit with one. It hurts. A lot. Though, it's slow speed is somewhat offset with its huge projectile size.
  • The Sorceress' Glacial Spike is also slow but it is her longest ranged attack until her class change (it remains one of the longest ranged if she chooses to become a Mystic), it can hit multiple times while traveling through a target and it can knock weaker enemies back.
• Power Fist: The Warrior's secondary weapon is a large gauntlet that he uses for all punching attacks.
• Protection Mission: In the Daredevil Faire, there's a mission where you have to protect three helpless soldiers from orcs.
• Psycho Serum: Seems to be to be used to turn Goblins into Hobgoblins as the Mook Maker responsible is topped by a vat of glowing purple liquid.
• The Paralyzer: The Cleric and Sharpshooter get Paralyze Bolt and Ankle Shot respectively. The Cleric's Paralyze Bolt completely immobilizes the targets, stopping them from doing anything for 1.5 seconds. The Sharpshooter's Ankle Shot lasts for two more seconds, but only stops the targets from moving. The Priest also gets a relic that automatically immobilizes any opponents within it's radius.
• Razor Wind: The swordsman has a skill that summons a hurricane... that is very, very painful in PvP. Though, it only does a few hundred damage each hit, turning hurricanes into a Death of a Thousand Cuts. It also juggles the targets continuously until it disappears. So put a few hurricane happy swordsmen together and the enemy team would probably Rage Quit after a few matches.
• Recovery Attack: All of the classes have different attacks when knocked to the ground. The Archer performs a spinning kick, the Warrior performs a quick slash, the cleric performs a Ground Pound and the Sorceress fires a blast of magic. However, these attacks are often too slow in PvP, meaning the best way to escape from an attack is to roll away. Your character will eventually get to their feet if on the ground for a few moments.
  • Some classes also obtain secondary recovery attacks when they reach their second job. The Mercenary performs a staggering shout that he can use any time he's hit with an attack that flinches him. The Swordsman can recover from being attacked mid-air with a cross energy blade. The Alchemist can put enemies around her to sleep.
• Red Shirt Army: The Soldiers of Saint's Haven are rather fragile, with weak attacks and will rarely ever survive any of the dungeons they appear in on Master or Abyss difficulty unless the player character actively attempts to protect them. The only reason they're there is due to the storyline, where Saint's Haven sent some soldiers to reinforce you during the attack on a fortress. It doesn't help when your soldiers are often outnumbered at least two to one on higher difficulties.
• Religion of Evil: The Dragon Cult, Evil Counterpart to the Divine Order. Jacob hints that there is more to it, however.
• Repeatable Quest: They're called commissions, but still have the same function. A recent update also added daily quests for farming Goddess Teardrops... but removed the functionally identical daily achievements for farming Goddess Teardrops.
• Robot Me: One for bosses in Tel Rosa area, the Neo-Apocalypse is a robotic imitation of the Judge Apocalypse, which itself is a some kind of time-travelling ship that came to life by corruption of Vestinel.
• Shockwave Stomp: The Stomp skill and Alfredo Stomp.
• Shock and Awe: The priest class can specialize in lightning and electrocution based attacks such as Chain Lightning to even summoning an actual lightning bolt to fry enemies in front of you
• Short-Range Long-Range Weapon: All of the bows when using their normal attack, though some of the special shots can travel across the map. The Longbow's regular arrow can reach a mind-numbing six meters while the short bow and Automatic Crossbow are practically melee weapons. The Sorceress isn't much better off.
• Shout-Out:
  • One of the gifts you can get from the Theme Park is made by "Wisher Frice".
  • One of the items you receive from one of the quests is given by Pirate King Ropi.
  • Do not forget the 300 Sparta Goblins! There are Persian Goblins as well. The player fights both sides and their leaders — which fittingly enough happens in a carnival attraction — and the quest dialog dismisses the lot of them as raving lunatics.
  • The dances of each class is a reference to a real life dance. The dance that all of the classes have is Brown Eyed Girls- Abracadabra. The Sorceress' unique dance is Wonder Girls - Tell Me. The Archer's unique dance is Lee Hyori - U-Go-Girl. The Cleric's dance is Rain - Rainism, and the Warrior's dance is Seo Taiji's Nan Arayo. Here is the page with a video on each dance, and here is a clearer version of the Warrior's dance. This is due to Dragon Nest's Korean origin.
    • The Academic's unique dance is Beyonce - Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It). This shows the Academic's dance
  • You can get mail from an unknown plumber with an Italian (typing) accent, asking why you're chopping up the mushrooms he needs to get "big and-a strong".
  • Loffy the Beggar's name and The Pirate King quest line are references to One Piece, first made explicit upon reading the first diary entry.
  • One of the quests is called Ghosts: Busted.
  • After you kill his pet spider, the first boss of Volcano Nest yells "You shall not pass!"
• Slippery Skid: One of the Academic's spells, Wax, does this to her enemies.
• Small Girl, Big Gun: The Academic, her gun is as big as herself.
  • Justified as the Academic became much younger after an accident while travelling from the future. The gun's size was made for a much older her.
• Small Name, Big Ego: May. David, on the other hand, makes her look humble.
• Some Dexterity Required: A number of skills have hit boxes placed quite far from the player while others have smaller areas of effect than their graphics indicate and even smaller regions in which they can hit multiple times. Aiming these properly takes practice. Much of the difficulty in playing the Force User / Mystic class comes from the fact that most of her skills have this feature.
• Space Whale Aesop: From an item description:
  "Let this be a lesson: Brush your teeth, or someone's going to steal them and use them for item crafting."
• Spin Attack: The Mercenary has several and using an Axe executes one on every third swing.
• Stone Wall: The Clerics. Clerics are the tanks of Dragon Nest, but don't get any movement skills, other than the basic dodge that all classes possess. The Paladin somewhat offsets this somewhat with a skill where he charges straight forward with his shield.
• Story Arc: The main quest is split into arcs by level and the region.
  • Level 1-9: The beginning which the story differs by the character's class (though Warrior and Archer share theirs).
  • Level 10-24: The arrival to Calderock pass until the defeat of Manticore and the repair of the airship.
  • Level 25-32: The first half of Saint Haven arc, which ends in the rescue of Rose from the Black Army.
  • Level 33-40: The second half of Saint Haven arc which ends in the attack and defeat of the Sea Dragon.
  • Level 41-50: Part One of Lotus Marsh arc which involves the Ancients and the Dragon Cult.
  • Level 51-55: Part Two of Lotus Marsh arc which involves the meteorite and the alien lifeforms corrupting the natives. This also marks the betrayal of Rose.
  • Level 55-60: The Tel Numara and Tel Rosa arcs which involves the following: The fate of Kali's hometown, The conspiracy of Jasmine, Professor K exploiting the dragon essence within Daisy, and the memories of the Desert Dragon.
  • Level 60-70: The first half of Anu Arendel arc which returns the Dragon Cult in action that poisons the homeland of the Elves.
  • Level 70-80: The second half which is also known as the Monolith arc which marks the defeat of the Dragon Cult after they attempted to destroy the Monolith.
  • Level 80-90: The damage of the Monolith weakens the barrier that protects Lagendia from Mistland. The heroes then arrive to Mistland to prevent any eventual threat about to leak into Lagendia, only to find its interal strife.
• Suspiciously Specific Denial: During his friendship quest, Belin mentions adventurers thinking his cousins break adventurers' weapons on purpose & steal legendary items from them. Your character didn't steer the conversation in that direction.
• The Psycho Rangers: The four Mirror World heroes, one of each player class. Separately they're less powerful than the player should be by the time they're encountered but together they demonstrate why most Player Versus Environment encounters feel a little under - tuned for a full party (Hint: It's not because the monsters are too weak).
• The Turret Master: In the form of the Priests' relics. One shoots lightning, one heals, one removes debuffs, and one immobilizes any enemies near it. All of them last for around a dozen seconds before disappearing, and all except for the lightning relic have a Cool Down around a minute long.
  • The latest class to arrive in Lagendia is the Academic, who can advance into The Engineer, a literal example of this trope. Among her towers, we have a Gatling Gun tower, a Bomb tower and the Ice Pump tower. Advancing into the Gear Master gives her another tower: the CHAINSAW TOWER.
• The War Sequence: This happens a few times during the storyline quests. All of them so far also involve the Soldiers of Saint's Haven.
  • Any Abyss-difficulty mission will turn into this. The Priest can solo most of them, given right skills and gears.
• Time Travel: The Academic/Tinkerer Class came from the future.
  • Our Time Machine Is Different: It de-ages you into a 12-year old girl (though justified, as she is a clone...)
• Tournament Play: The Korean version was included in the 2011 WCG. The class performances were rather surprising considering the Metagame at the time — The 1V1 final was between an Acrobat (considered relatively balanced) and a Priest (considered mildly underpowered in PVP despite being crucial in PVE), with the former coming out on top.
• Toxic Phlebotinum: the Dragon Lustres, which are crystalline fragments of the Tempest Dragon's flesh that landed across the world after it was defeated.
• Transformation Is a Free Action: Averted horrifically during Gerrant's battle with Leviatha. He does a wing pull and appears to prepare to go into dragon mode, only to be stabbed through the chest.
• Tsundere: Standard personality for the high ranking Sorceresses who treat all player classes like dirt but occasionally let slip that they are actually pretty impressed, while ironically the novices tend to be shy and unsure of themselves. Argenta as well, as while she starts out cold and spoiled she has a few slips before 'officially' defrosting as the player completes her questline.
• Underground Monkey: Most of the game's monsters are variations of a much smaller number of archetypes, with several locale-specific versions and in some cases a skeletonized undead version. This is no cause for complacency, however, as most variations tend to have a different signature move or additional attacks.
• Unknown Rival: An orc, at least according to an NPC's fantasy, challenges the player to several duels via the mailbox. As he keeps getting defeated his brothers show up to make things 'fair' but in the end they don't amount to much.
  • He shows up again later on having lost his memory, but he can't help but think the player character and him were dating and they had a breakup. The player character is predictably horrified by this accusation. The amnesia issue is cleared up rather quickly and he goes right back to the hopeless challenges.
• Useless Useful Spell: The Cleric's basic healing only heals 8% max HP, plus a fixed number that increases as you upgrade the skill, and has a cooldown of 60 seconds before you can use it again.
  • More useful because it was changed to gain an increased healing percentage at certain ranks. The ranks in-between the percentage increases are more or less a waste of time.
  • The Healing Relic can be even worse, since it bases it's healing off the magic damage of the cleric. Don't forget that Clerics are Stone Walls... so at best, the relic can heal small amounts of health, unless you deck your priest out with lots of magic damage equipment to increase it. Though, once the relic and basic healing are used together, it can recover a decent amount of HP.
• Vain Sorceress: All of the Sorceresses in this game are vain to various degrees. The PC Sorceress is more greedy than vain, however.
• Villainous Rescue: At the end of the Sea Dragon Nest, Leviathan catches the PC off guard but Velskud arrives to claim its Lustre, killing it in the process.
• Vision Quest: The Cleric's Specialization quest.
  • Battle in the Center of the Mind: With the ghost of ex-Cleric turned Dragon-Cultist Jacob as an end-boss. It's an Anti-Climax Boss, though, representing how the Cleric is actually strong enough to overcome the trauma.
• You Get Knocked Down, You Get Back Up Again: Averted. Both players in PvP and monsters in PvE will attack your player if knocked down. This also leads to a Cycle of Hurting as your character is never given the time to get back on their feet, due to a brief delay after every attack before your character can roll or perform a Recovery Attack.
• You ALL Look Familiar: With a few exceptions, higher leveled equipment does not significantly change how your PC's outfit looks. The majority of customization comes from costumes bought from the cash shop. This also applies to Saint's Haven Soldiers. Every. Single. One is identical to the others. Even the named guards use the same model as the unnamed guards!
  • This is even lampshaded by the blacksmith in Saint Haven, saying something about how the blacksmiths do have slight differences whereas the storage keepers are all just clones of one another.
• Zombie Apocalypse: The Ghoul Mode in PVP.

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