Enshrouded is a Wide Open Survival Sandbox Action RPG. Think Breath Of the Wild meets Valheim; or Tears Of The Kingdom meets Dark Souls.
You play as an adventurer who wakes up from a vault to discover that large parts of the world have been encased in shroud.
This game includes examples of:
- Action Bomb: There are red beetles that explode upon contact with the player. Or upon death. The explosion can be exploited against other enemies.
- Aerith and Bob: Alongside relatively common names like Emily, Oswald, and Cade, we also have more unusual names like Athalan, Gormander, and Pikemead.
- Beast Man: The Vukah, large, bearlike humanoids, can be found in camps scattered across the map. Though hostile by default, they can be rendered neutral towards the player with the use of a late-game perk. The same can't be said of the Vukah Brawlers, however...
- Big Creepy-Crawlies: There are giant hostile bugs that attack the player. In later areas, the player can encounter flying and exploding versions.
- Body Horror: The Shroud seems capable of taking over people within it, and turning them into shambling zombies with mushrooms sprouting out of their bodies.
- Cast from Lifespan: The shroud meteor spells, shroud elixer, and Guard of the North armor, are all quite strong, but reduce the amount of time you can remain in the Shroud before succumbing to its deadly effects.
- Chain Lightning: One of the more advanced spells, appropriately named Chain Lightening, is a lightning that hops between enemies.
- Circling Birdies: Stunned enemies have grey whirls above their heads.
- Combat Resuscitation: It is possible to revive other players, should they run out of hitpoints.
- Conspicuous Electric Obstacle: In spires and some dungeons, there are emitters that regularly shoot out balls of lightning.
- Defector from Decadence: According to the lore, recruitable crafting npc Athalan Skree was once this, being a member of the elite Guard of the North. She defected when she discovered that her commander had lied about why they were in revolt against the king, and was actually only after power.
- Dem Bones: Animated skeletons of various kinds can be found in Hollow Halls.
- Double Jump: One of the unlockable skills allows the player to jump again mid-air. Many platforming segments from the mid-game areas on require this skill to successfully navigate.
- Another perk allows the player to do this while gliding, giving them a vertical boost via magic wind. Unlike the double jump, which drains stamina, this skill drains the players mana reserves.
- Dungeon Bypass: With the help of gliders, it is relatively simple to skip most of the elixir wells to get straight to the shroud root. Its also possible to skip portions of the larger world-dungeons and get right to the boss-fight, or the loot, by finding a high place to jump from.
- Durable Deathtrap: Despite being abandoned for an unspecified amount of time, the death-traps in the Ancient ruins and Spires are still fully active.
- Enemy Civil War: Different types of enemies will fight each other on sight, though they'll drop everything to attack the player. With a pair of late-game perks that render the Vukah and wildlife non-hostile, the player can just sit back and let them pick of enemies for them; you even get xp from it!
- Exploding Barrels: Red barrels, scattered around the world, explode upon taking damage. Later on, players can craft these barrels as well.
- Evil Is Not a Toy: Based off the journals one can find, some faction weaponized the Shroud. This, predictably, only made it spread faster, and hastened the collapse of civilization.
- Festering Fungus: The Shroud. Full stop. It blankets whole regions of the map in a thick cloud of spores that cause mushrooms to take root on everything. Buildings, furniture... Even people.
- Fireballs: The player can cast balls of fire with a staff. A large slow fireballs also appear in spires and some dungeons as an environmental hazard.
- Fog of Doom: The Shroud appears like this from a distance, blanketing huge swaths of the map with a deadly miasma that corrupts the landscape with mushrooms, slowly kills or corrupts anybody who spends to long within, and prevents teleportation. Given the fungal nature of the Shroud's corruption, its probably a massive cloud of spores.
- Friend to All Living Things: A late game perk makes animals (apart from those corrupted by the shroud) docile towards the player unless attacked first. An upgraded version even makes them defend the player from other enemies.
- Frequently Full Moon: The Moon always appears at night and it's always full.
- Fungus Humongous: The Shroud causes various types of these to sprout within it, forming entire forests of mushrooms in some regions.
- Giant Spider: Very large spiders make an appearance in some of the areas, sometimes accompanied by even larger, acid-spitting versions.
- Healing Potion: Consuming red potions instantly restores health.
- Improbable Power Discrepancy: Bugs in later areas are stronger than the bosses near the starting zone.
- Indy Escape: Some of the ancient Spires and ruins have traps that spit out rolling boulders. For added fun, the boulders are also on fire.
- Inexplicable Treasure Chests: Some treasure chests are stored in very unnatural locations. It's up to player to unlock them.
- Language Barrier: Given that the perk that renders the Vukah (mostly) neutral towards the player is explicitly described as learning their language, this seems to be a large part of the reason they are hostile by default.
- Notice This: Unread important journals glow red, making them easier to spot.
- Our Zombies Are Different: The Shroud turns anyone who spends too long within it into walking corpses with mushrooms growing out of them.
- Pamphlet Shelf: Entire books only have a few readable pages at most.
- Patchwork Map: Desert, plains and forest biomes are just a few kilometers apart at most. In places, especially near the border between two biomes, there are literally patchwork segments of dirt. This also applies to plants from the starting zone that grow in late-game areas, which always grow in plain old dirt regardless of what the soil around them looks like.
- Pit Trap: Vukah dig pits covered with leaves that have spiked on the bottom. Though very shallow and easy to escape, they stun the player, making them easy pickings for the nearby Vukah.
- Pressure Plate: There are a few temples and dungeons where standing on a plate causes a door to stay open.
- Rewarding Vandalism: Smashing containers and objects of various kinds rewards the player from anything to basic resources to potions.
- Scary Scorpions: Scorpions in enshrouded are much larger than in real life and attack the player by default.
- Spikes of Doom: Spikes that regularly jut out from a floor are common inside ancient spires.
- Story Breadcrumbs: Pieces of lore are scattered all around Embervale, often in form of journals. As of the current state of the game (3/1/2024), not all of the lore collections are complete.
- Tactical Door Use: Sometimes encounters can be avoided by shutting doors, which enemies cannot open.
- Temple of Doom: The Sun Temples in the Kindlewastes are like this, forcing the player to navigate puzzles and booby traps if they want to get to the treasure at the end.
- Terror-dactyl: The Draconian Vultures are massive, bat-winged creatures that haunt the Kindlewastes, Swooping down to attack the player and other enemies alike.
- The Atoner: The recruitable craftng NPC, Athalan Skree, has dialogue that suggests she did some dark deeds in her past. After meeting her, the player can discover that she was once part of the Guard of the North, who betrayed the kingdom and sacked the capital city.
