YMMV / Dragon Nest

• Alt-itis: The game actively encourages this with the Combined Skill system, which calculates the total number of levels from your characters to provide account wide perks. Said perks borderline on Game-Breaker and elevate a lot of frustration. I would like that discount on repairing my super expensive gear please.
• Abridged Arena Array:
  • The level 40 patch gives us the Dark Overlord Training Camp which had a Good Bad Bug allowing for Sequence Breaking Speed Runs. This became a popular training spot for Super-Speed classes like Warriors and Archers but it made Mighty Glacier Clerics overpowered as a result. Needless to say, it spawned MASSIVE Flame Wars between Clerics and everyone else in the SEA server.
  • Other dungeons are either Nintendo Hard or It's Easy, So It Sucks!, but don't give much EXP per hour than DOTC can. This is not helped by the associated Repeatable Quest having the highest EXP reward of all the Assault quests despite the dungeon being available at a lower level than others. More runs per hour, more profit.
  • In retaliation, Clerics have united against the players (mostly the aforementioned Super-Speed classes) who kicked them from DOTC parties by kicking them from Manticore and Apocalypse parties. The catch? It's nigh-difficult if not impossible to take down These One Bosses without a Cleric! This gave rise to an intense debate about which classes are the most useful against future bosses such as the Sea Dragon and the Green Dragon.
  • It's even earlier than that. The level 32 patch saw a lot of players grinding Sanctuary Core and Dark Tower Magic Institute because the Saint Haven nests give roughly the same EXP per hour as these Calderock nests.
  • Fortunately, after all the examples above, the Awakening patch basically reworks nearly all character's skills to allow any class to be useful in parties.
• Arc Fatigue: The Mistland saga (post level 80) as a whole can qualify for this but the winner is the Chalice of Healing arc (level 93-95) in which acquiring it can restore Rubinart. From around 2017 to 2020, the story drags to a standstill with barely any new content, and when it does, you barely make any plot progress. The punchline? The chalice isn't even in the island the whole time. Instead, you get a relic that helps with the independence of Merca. You then learn that said Chalice is in another place, the Red Lotus Palace. After reaching there, you find yourself having to do the local ruler's dirty work before finally being given access to her treasure vault, which is supposed to have the chalice.
  • When you finally enter the vault, were you able to grab the Chalice of Healing and leave? Nope. It turns out the thing you mistook for the chalice was an incense burner. The only reason you didn't just snap and interrogate the ruler right there and then with your powers is because there are still other stuff you need from her. She nevertheless leads you to her real treasure trove, where you finally obtain something that remotely resembles the thing you spent a long time searching for. And then upon checking what you got with the others, you learn that it is supposed to come with a lid and that the "Chalice of Healing" is just a placeholder name because no one knows what that blasted thing actually looks like!! After a few dungeon runs, a corrupted Rubinart finally reappears as the "Red Child" and kills off one of the allies you were trying to save for the past few chapters. The same person in question being one of the other reasons why you are so compliant in the first place. The only silver lining to this is that it enrages his surviving followers into joining your cause. Come 2022 and you finally put down Grele's sister Hiver who is now a Child and the Frozen Dragon. You learn that while what you took is indeed the Chalice of Healing, it requires a relative huge cost of Child Jewels to work as stated. Which you don't have.
• Awesome Music: Day of Destiny and Song of the Goddess: The Eternal Path from the South Asian version.
• Broken Base:
  • The Abridged Arena Array mentioned above.
  • Elementalists and the Fatigue (FTG) System in the SEA version.
• Demonic Spiders: Has its own page here.
• Fan Nickname:
  • Gladus Tek Ma, for the Cleric's Block spell, as well as the Sorceress' two Anti-Magic spells.
  • "w3ws" for the unrepentant trolls and griefers in the SEA server, usually attributed to Filipino players.
  • Not surprisingly, the North American player base tends to call the Tinkerer a "loli". They seem to be entirely aware of the word's implications.
• Fake Difficulty: A major complaint of the Labyrinth (LB) era introduced in the level 95 cap that has been growing since the early days is that the overall game is difficult for all the wrong reasons. Ridiculous prices without any reasonable source of income that doesn't require paying real money. A gear enhancement system where it drastically lowers the chances of success the higher you go while breaking on failure at needed higher levels without Protection Jelly (a cash item) that can lead your precious gear that took months to make being lost in a minute, forcing you to use them at lower safe levels. Nests having ridiculous minimum LB levels making entry for most players impossible without asking the pros to carry them or pay for service. Massive repair costs. Bosses exploiting their Puzzle Boss mechanics that often result in a Total Party Kill with no option to revive. Being able to be interrupted mid-skill by enemies that are Immune to Flinching while being trapped in a Cycle of Hurting. Adaptability levels for Frozen Nests being set at levels that no casual player can hope to reach while inflicting a massive penalty for failing to reach said requirement. The fact that this game still has a notable player count is astonishing.
• Game-Breaker:
  • The rise of the Paladin class in the SEA server is attributed to the power of Gladus Tek Ma, basically a Counter-Attack buff, and Paladins have THREE of these, enough to practically make them Attack Reflectors. And that's only one of their basic class skills. At level 40, they gain access to Super Mode, practically making already Mighty Glacier Paladins virtually unkillable. No wonder the Chinese and Korean servers soft-banned the Paladin's Super Mode to ensure balance.
    • Hell, the Paladin class itself was so much of a Game-Breaker during the first half of the level 32 patch that nine of them got into the top 10 of the PvP ladder in one of the SEA servers.
    • The Paladin becomes even better as of the current patch, because now they can dash just like the Warrior.
  • Also, the Swordmaster's Cyclone Slash, which can juggle its target for heavy damage. As a Lunar Knight, this melee class gains a variety of Sword Beams, which mostly avert the Short-Range Long-Range Weapon situation endemic to this game. Think about this for a moment.
  • The Elementalist Class has TWO GLADUS TEK MA SHIELDS that can be toggled. The best part? It prevents the caster from flinching when taking a hit, so she can take almost anything that comes her way without getting interrupted while casting her spells. That and you just got for yourself a Squishy Wizard who can tank like a Stone Wall.
    • Dragon Nest China players have a gentleman's agreement to not use this skill along with a few others, but if you are a Jerkass or a foreigner who can't read Chinese and use it anyway, you can defeat players twenty levels higher than you. Needless to say, ELs now enjoy the same PvP dominance Paladins used to have as mentioned above.
    • Not anymore. The skill has been nerfed to the point where it only gives a small amount of super armor, and is no longer a toggle-based skill.
  • The Mercenary is largely resistant to interruption (he can be completely resistant for 8 seconds with one of his buffs), has a large HP pool and does massive damage per hit in an equally massive area on most of his skills. He has a fast sprinting ability as well.
  • The HP and Mana suffixes have a 25% chance to restore a percentage of the player's maximum whenever a hit is taken and with a mere 5 seconds of cooldown they trigger almost all the time. Characters with a large enough point pool and multiple gear pieces with either suffix will often leave an encounter with more points than they had going in even if they don't use potions or collect food. Since these attributes are the result of a recent balance patch they are unlikely to be changed any time soon.
    • Nerfed in that suffixes were removed entirely, being relegated to Dragon Gems/Jades as a watered down version.
  • Elementalists in PvE freeze an opponent as many as 3 times as each freeze increases the damage dealt by 50%, for a total of 338%, then cast Fiery Vortex (~2550% Magic Damage) on it, which can take out almost anything in one shot.
    • Nerfed in that Elementalists lose the ability to freeze, being exclusive to the Ice Witch.
  • Because of how the A.I. works (they target who or what has done the most damage to them), a priest can drop a relic and get the attention of any and every enemy in the immediate area, as long as the priest himself and his party don't attack, and they can sit back and watch as they keep biting at the relic until they die. Because of the relic's fast cooldown, a lonely priest can reduce almost every boss to a silly fool. This did not work against the boss of the former Brutal Bonus Level Minotaur Nest in the early patches. As of now, it doesn't really work on anything whatsoever anymore.
• Goddamned Bats:
  • Bats in this game usually only take one or two hits to go down but appear in swarms, are quick, and fly around erratically making them rather annoying to hit.
  • The tarantulas will avoid you endlessly.
  • The skeletons have an annoyingly small hitbox when downed, making it difficult for some skills to hit.
• Good Bad Bugs:
  • The Harsh suffix (bleeding damage-over-time) used to lack a cooldown despite having a rather long one in its description, allowing fast attackers like crossbow Archers to stack the debuff endlessly and vaporize both Mighty Glaciers and Damage Sponge Bosses in no time flat. This has apparently been fixed in a recent patch along with a general rebalancing of prefixes and suffixes. Fixed even further by outright removing suffixes altogether and putting much weaker versions of them in Dragon Gems.
  • Another Good Bad Bug allowed for Sequence Breaking in dungeons such as the Dried Marissa Spring and the Dark Overlord Training Camp which made it possible to clear them in record time, thus creating the game's Abridged Arena Array.
• High-Tier Scrappy:
  • Some players think that the devs perceive the Mystic / Force User class as a Game-Breaker so they keep hitting it with the Nerfbat HARD. First, they decreased its base damage output, then they increased the casting time of Mystic spells. But what really takes the cake is the nerfing of Time Stop's effect duration in PvP.
  • Clerics in PvE became hated in the level 40 patch with the release of the Dark Overlord Training Camp due to their Mighty Glacier status. Well, fine, except that a lot of players from the level 24 patch have played as Paladins due to their Game-Breaker status in PvP, leaving them wasting hours upon hours of searching for DOTC parties instead of just soloing the nest themselves until some Nice Guy offers them a slot in the party despite being slow as a turtle. Averted as of the Awakening patch in where Clerics are now able to dash like the Warriors, making them a Lightning Bruiser and being on par with the other damaging classes. It is noted that they are still slower than the more faster classes.
• Ho Yay: If you are good friends with Sorceress Stella, she will ask you on your opinion on Warrior Rodingo. One of the answers you can give is "I have a crush on him!" even if you are playing as a Warrior or Cleric.
• Les Yay:
  • If you're playing as a female character, you may/may not want to know what Argenta did to you.
  • Similar to Ho Yay, Stella will ask you on your opinion of Archer Isillien. You can also reply that you have a crush on her, even when playing as a Sorceress or Archer.
• Low-Tier Letdown: Even when the Force User class gets massive buffs in the 4th Class Transformation patch, other classes get buffed to ridiculously higher levels, too. So for some people, the Force User buff is just not good enough, but at least Force User players now don't have to work as hard as before.
• Memetic Loser: The Minotaur Nest has received this treatment over the years, as while it started out as a genuinely challenging Brutal Bonus Level in the early days of the game, future updates and patches gradually made it much easier to do, to the point where as of now, you can only do it alone to emphasize how easy it is now. Taken to its peak conclusion with the World Revamp update, where it was outright deleted from the game.
• Memetic Mutation: GLADUS TEK MA! ^note  It all started here. The Dragon Nest SEA community started this phrase as a meme in their forums. Soon after being accepted as a meme, forum members are starting to put "GLADUS TEK MA" in their signatures, and later, it became a viral hit in the forums. "GLADUS TEK MA!" is probably the mondegreen of "Goddess protect me!" (if you're using the English voicebanks or playing the NA version)
• Nightmare Fuel: The way the Sorceress crawls around after being knocked down is disturbing.
  • In Dark Overlord Keep, you actually get to see Brethren summoners kill captured Saint Haven troops and resurrect them as dark skeletons. It's surprisingly graphic.
  • The fact that the Ancients were able to make a seal stone for the Monolith in such a short amount of time is impressive. That is, until you find out what it's made of... Even Argenta of all people is COMPLETELY horrified by what they did.
  • The fact that simply being born in the Mistlands puts you at risk of becoming a Child.
• Seasonal Rot: The implementation of endgame-style equipment upgrades during the level 95 cap despite the story being nowhere near completion. The constant Power Creep along with the ridiculous cost and low success rate of higher gear upgrades makes the higher tier dungeons/nests unplayable due to the virtual paywall created. It doesn't help that the progression system is tied to the difficulty level instead of the other way round, meaning that the drops and gear you need to advance usually can only be obtained at the very levels you are unable to do. This forces newbies to pay professionals in thousands of gold because of the inflated upgrade costs just to "carry" them in the dungeon/nests. The Sunk Cost Fallacy caused by the game dragging out the story may be the only reason why veterans of the game haven't quit in disgust.
• Shipping: Dragon Nest is quite plot-heavy for an MMORPG. The player classes are not treated as random adventurers who posses a certain set of skills, but as distinct individuals who would occasionally show up as named NPCs in other players' storyline. Several classes are more closely related to each other than other pairs, so naturally this can build a ground for shipping.
  • Warrior (Xian) is usually paired with Archer (Triana), while Sorceress (Angelica) is often shipped with Cleric (Edan).
  • The Assassin (Ren) is paired with Lunaria, or the Lencea (Charlotte).
• That One Boss: Quite a few examples, the massive ones in particular. Most have at least incredibly durable Super Armor (Knock Back immunity) and multi-hit attacks with gigantic hit boxes. Others bring a sizable number of minions despite being far more powerful than the average Flunky Boss. On harder difficulties the smaller bosses are cloned as well.
  • The Minotaur boss (Sleeper's Temple) can sometimes fall into this territory if you're not careful.
  • Chompy of the Black Sovereign Tower is far more difficult than the previous bosses, boasting at least three health bars and dishes out tons of damage over a massive area making it difficult for melee classes to dodge. Don't be surprised if you're forced to use a few lives here.
  • Chubaka the Ogre of Road of No Return may have slow, telegraphed attacks, but thanks to his respectable attack power, his club having much more range than it should and having support in the form of Dark Elves, you might find yourself as a ghost if he gets the opportunity to combo you.
  • Saslavan the Manticore of Prayer's Retreat can become this, due to him deciding to begin spamming an attack where he flies straight up into the air, where your character will have trouble hitting him, then drop straight back down, creating a shock wave. This wave isn't easy to dodge, requiring strict timing to avoid. He also has a huge amount of health compared to other bosses of his level.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: On a game accessibility level. On 1 October 2018, notices have been posted in the NA and SEA Dragon Nest websites stating that their servers are going to implement IP blocks for those not living in the designated areas, like a person from the Middle East or Central Asia playing in the SEA (Southeast Asia) server for example. As of November 2018, the SEA server will be restricted to just Singapore, Malaysia and Philippines while the NA server would just service USA, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. The responses from players in countries not included (especially other Southeast Asian countries like Indonesia) are not pretty and the lack of an official reason for such a supposedly brazen move that would decimate the player base and cripple income from the Gacha made things worse.
• Ugly Cute: Poochums.