Dragon Nest

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The four starting classes. From left to right: The Cleric, the Warrior, The Sorceress, and the Archer.

Dragon Nest is a free-to-play MMORPG by Eyedentity Games and published by Nexon. In Dragon Nest, players pick one of four classes (which can all specialize in a subclass at level 15 and another at level 45... in the Korean version) and fight through hordes of goblins, undead, poochums, and minotaurs 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 WoW - 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 are huge, devastating and gorgeously animated especially for the spellcasting 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. Check out the wiki here!

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This game contains examples of:

• Absolute Cleavage: Every single Sorceress, as well as all Dark Elves.
  • Also Lindsay.
• AI 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.
• 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). It 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 can choose between hammers for better disabling or axes for more criticals.
  • The Archer is a ranged DPSer who plays like a Third-Person-Shooter and uses longbows, shortbows and crossbows. It can advance into a Sharp Shooter or an Acrobat. Sharp Shooters focus on their long-ranged attacks to destroy enemies from afar, and Acrobats stay in close range, mixing up kicks and other physical attacks into their 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.) Which of these aspects are expanded on depends on the job advancement that a player chooses. The Priest places an even greater focus on support with the ability to summon totems that can heal/buff allies while damaging/debuffing enemies; they also get access to light-element magic spells. Paladins become the ultimate tanks, with buffs to improve their own survivability, numerous defensive abilities that revolve around blocking or otherwise mitigating damage, and additional skills to improve their melee combat.
  • 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. They have an extremely high mana pool that lets them 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 are more damage-based and use fire and ice magic, while Mystics use lasers, miniature black holes, and some time-control abilities on the side that let them be the Mezzer as well as the Nuker.
  • 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, (which is only about the size of an Orc or so) 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 and also the ability to summon up to 3 Mechaducks and a bunch of cool towers; one that calls for More Dakka, one that launches bombs, a literally cool tower, and one that shoots CHAINSAWS! (Though the latter is only available to the Korean and Chinese servers as of now, as it is exclusive to the Gear Master class, an advancement of the Engineer). Of course, she does gain more spells to be used with her cannon, too! One of the abilities (the final one in that tree, to be exact) turns her BFG Up to Eleven into an even larger BFG which is the very epitome of More Dakka. The Alchemist on the other hand, uses a rather unique gameplay style that uses something called 'phantoms' in her spells; some generating them while some consuming them to increase their effectiveness. 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• Asskicking Pose: The Sword Master's Hacking Stance. Murderous in PVE. In PVP everyone just keeps their distance.
  • It's still murderous in PvP if you're dumb or unlucky enough to get caught in it.
  • Parry Stance (100% parry chance — read: invincibility) also qualifies especially when paired with Counter Slash or Counter Wave. The Lunar Knight's Flash Stance is even better, allowing him to barrage enemies with Sword Beams.
• 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 Force User 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 and takes it Up to Eleven.
• 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 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. Argenta considers Elena little more than a nuisance. To put things in perspective, the (presumably) true Big Bad has administered several Curb Stomp Battles to both Argenta and the player character, while Elena goes down ridiculously fast once you actually fight her.
• Big Eater: Argenta is always hungry and she is always angry about being hungry. the majority of the quests she gives until you get to Saint's Haven are to fetch her numerous edibles and remedies for her to snarf down in one fistful while your character watches in horror at how fast she can eat it. She guzzles ten bottles of booze in one sitting and then complains that you took too long to get so little.
• Big Screwed-Up Family: The player Cleric has this, which is the reason why he left the family to attain clerichood.
• Bishonen: The Cleric in looks, voice and mannerisms. NPC Clerics as well, except for the faction leader who is a tad more rugged.
• Bling of War: The NX shop costumes can certainly fit this.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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 deal out heavy damage.
• Combo Breaker: The Priest and Mercenary both have an attack that allow them to Knockback anyone near them if they're flinching from an attack.
• Cool Airship: The Albatross.
• Cooldown: 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, then there are sharpshooter skills that give either double the critical chance.... or give a 100% chance of critical hits for 13 seconds... and also juggles the target(s) with each shot. And then there's the sharpshooter skill that increases the whole party's critical by 600 percent. Oh Crap indeed...
• 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, 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. 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, but watching a weak Sorceress or Archer 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.
• 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.
  • The Priest is also capable of this, but drops smaller relics that can either heal, fire lightning at nearby enemies, immobilize the opponent (As of the level 32 update) or cure debuffs. The drop damage of the priest's relics is far lower, though. The Sharpshooter also has a skill named Rain of Arrows. The Paladin also has the skill Electric Smite, where he leaps up, then smashes into the ground, creating lightning bolts. 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.
• 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's 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.
• Disappeared Dad: The Warrior PC's father, Lambert.
• 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.
• Drop the Hammer: The warriors can use hammers. The Paladin's Sacred Hammering also counts as well, as it appeared and deal extra damage when using normal attack.
  • Up to Eleven for the level 40 update, The Paladin now have Thor's Hammer which smashes the enemies in front of him 3 times as his Ultimate skill.
• 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 new 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.
  • Inverted during the main attack on Velskud. Gerrant makes whole groups of monsters (including the dungeon boss!) disappear with his massive attacks.
• 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.
• Fake Ultimate Hero: David is a self-proclaimed example.
• Flash Step: The Sorceress Class's Blink spell, but the Force User Class takes this Up to Eleven with her Teleport spell which is reminiscent of the Doraemon Anywhere Door.
• Form-Fitting Wardrobe: The Sorceress. Dark Elves, too.
• Friendly Fireproof: 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 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.
• Game Mod: There's a site called Dragon Nest Mods where you can find a variety of mods, from targeting reticle mods to appearance changing mods.
• Gold-Silver-Copper Standard: 100:1 ratio, so 1 gold is 10000 copper coins.
• Guys Smash Girls Shoot: Mostly played straight. The Warrior and Cleric are the male melee fighters, and the Archer and Sorceress are the female ranged attackers. Later on, though, specialized classes allow this to be averted somewhat.
• 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 MiniBosses at regular intervals, as well as sometimes 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.
• Heal Thyself: The cleric's healing spell and relic.
• Hey, It's That Voice!: An impressive gathering of well-known anime voice talent was obtained for a lot of the NPCs. For example, May can't be anyone but Sakura unless that VA is a damn good impressionist.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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 continuously stomps on the target until they get back up again, and the Academic whips out an oversized magnifying glass to burn the monster.
• Kill It with Fire: The Sorceress.
• Kill It with Ice: The Sorceress, again.
• Lady in Red: Argenta. Amusingly, one of the GMs in the NA version was dared to go through a day at work dressed up as her.
• Les Yay: If you're playing as an Archer or a Sorceress, you 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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 a 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 behind. 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.
• Our Dragons Are Different: The Dragons described in the backstory are pretty much Physical Gods. Also, Argenta, Gerrant, and Velskud AKA the Black Knight are actually the Silver, Gold and Black Dragons in humanoid forms.
• 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.
• Master of None: When it comes to Player Versus Environment, Warriors are far and away the most versatile class choice in the game when it comes to filling specific roles in a party. Unfortunately for them, this isn't always something to write home about.
• Make Me Wanna Shout: The Mercenary class has a large variety of 'Howl' skills which do exactly that. One of the strongest creates a vacuum when he inhales to pull more enemies into its blast radius.
• 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.
• 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 Vendor Trash 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 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.
• Multi Mook Melee: Gobarta has you fighting, well, 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!
• 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.
• Noblewoman's Laugh: Sorceresses' laugh gesture.
• 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.
• Panty Shot: Rose, in the opening cutscene, twice. Three if you look closely enough. And also every other cutscene with her having her powers drained. Also able to do so on female NPC's.
  • Events Planner NPC Irine/Irene if you stare at her back with the right camera angle.
• 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.
• Nice Hat: The PVP team captain's hat, which is golden with wings and a sweeping red crest. Players often wear it despite its complete lack of stats.
• 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 Better: Played straight with the archer trainers whose dialogue indicates that they are Really Seven Hundred 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.
• Redshirt 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. Jacob Hints that there is more to it, however.
• Repeatable Quest: They're called commissions, but still have the same function.
• Reverse Grip: The Cleric does this during his turn animation with his mace in the character creation screen.
• Rocket Jump: The Academic has such a skill. However, it can only launch her back and it does damage to monsters instead of herself.
• Shield-Bash: One the the cleric's first skills is this, with the Mace and Wand having a Shield-Bash in their normal attacks. The Paladin can also perform this as a Counter Attack after blocking an attack.
• Shockwave Stomp: The Stomp skill.
• 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.
• Shock and Awe: The cleric has a few skills that do this.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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, which is inferior to those of other classes. The Paladin somewhat offsets this with a skill where he charges straight forward with his shield. However, Priests' get nothing, relying on relics to fortify positions to hold back opponents. Their damage tends to be inferior to that of other classes as well.
• Sword Beam: Sword Master's Magic Skill tree has these.
• Sword Plant: The Warrior has this pose during the character creation screen.
• 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 Cooldown 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.
• Toxic Phlebotinum: the Dragon Lustres, which are crystalline fragments of the Tempest Dragon's flesh that landed across the world after it was defeated.
• The Dev Team Thinks of Everything: If you try to pick something up as a ghost, you'll be given an animation of your ghost attempting to pick it up, with his/her arms' going through the object in question. This continues until you move or revive.
• 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.
• White-Haired Pretty Boy: Mostly Clerics. Warriors can also have white hair but Clerics have access to stereotypical 'pretty-boy' hairstyles and faces while the Warriors' selections tend to be more rough and rugged. The Clerics' Idle Animations are also more effeminate despite their original voice bank being a husky baritone.
• White-Haired Pretty Girl: Argenta.
• 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.
• Time Travel: The Academic Class came from the future.
• The Wiki Rule: As with most video games. It's pretty small at this point, feel free to help out!
• Tournament Play: The Korean version was included in the 2011 WCG. The class performances were rather surprising considering the Metagame — 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.
• 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 Recover 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.
• Zettai Ryouiki: Most of the Archer's and Sorceress' costumes then the Academic.
• Zombie Apocalypse: The Ghoul Mode in PVP.