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1[[quoteright:300:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/945d28045e658b3a1ba5bc147c3e609a.jpg]]
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3Developed by Neople and published by Nexon (by Neople globally as of April 15, 2014), ''Dungeon Fighter Online''[[note]]Known as ''Dungeon and Fighter'' in Korea[[/note]] is a popular Korean MassivelyMultiplayerOnlineRolePlayingGame BeatEmUp centered around adventurers known as "Dungeon Fighters" as they travel and battle their way across the FantasyKitchenSink realm of Arad. The game appears to borrow heavily from the ''Dungeons and Dragons'' series of arcade games by Creator/{{Capcom}}, as it largely focuses on DungeonCrawling, as Dungeon Fighters encounter a myriad of wild, dangerous areas scattered across the Aradian landscape in order to grow stronger and fulfill the many, many, ''many'' requests given by [=NPCs=] that populate the world, each with their own unique tale to tell.
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5One of the popular aspects of the game is that skills can be activated by using button combinations, much like in a fighting game. Want to punch right through a crowd of enemies? Hold FORWARD + Z. That enemy is only vulnerable to magic damage that only your grenades can provide? FORWARD, UP + Z. Once you memorize all the unique combinations, you won't need to use as many hotkeys to activate skills, freeing up your hotkey slots for more important uses.
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7Players can choose to be one of ten classes:
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9* '''Slayer''': White-haired warrior who has an arm [[DemonicPossession possessed by a demon]] named Kazan. Specializes in close combat with either a blade or a club. A female version also exists, who is similar but possesses many different techniques.
10* '''Fighter''': Close-combat brawler, who uses punches and kicks while sporting a ThongOfShielding. Most likely a LightningBruiser. Has a SpearCounterpart.
11* '''Gunner''': Tall, [[GunsAkimbo gun-wielding]] jerk who loves playing the keep-away style. Most likely a GlassCannon. Has a male and female version, each with slightly different abilities. (The female version makes a guest appearance in ''VideoGame/{{Elsword}}'' as "Rose", with similar classes and skills).
12* '''Mage''': The TokenMiniMoe of the original six; usually prefers casting spells to deal damage rather than melee combat. Originally a purely female class, male mages were added to the game later; they manage to look DarkerAndEdgier while still being cute.
13* '''Priest''': [[ReligiousBruiser Burly]] [[ChurchMilitant devout]] who wields very large religion-themed weaponry and can cast various buffs on the party. Wears heavy armor. Is a MightyGlacier. Also breaks the usual MMO priest mold by being ridiculously powerful rather than simply a cross between the SquishyWizard and TheMedic. A DistaffCounterpart was recently added.
14* '''Thief''': [[OurElvesAreDifferent Dark Elf]] who can either swiftly cut her opponents to ribbons with twin blades, or can hang back and fight with dark magic and ninjutsu.
15* '''Dark Knight''': A young slayer changed by events able to use a mix of various Slayer skills (and chain them), use any Slayer weapon, and wear any armor. Does not have a Subclass. A GlassCannon in skillset as it's all about offense.
16* '''Creator''': A TokenMiniMoe TimeMaster who winds up in Arad via a Time Gate mishap. Prefers fighting from wherever the screen allows with [[MechanicallyUnusualClass mouse-based attacks]]. Specializes in Plate Armor, averting GlassCannon status unlike the Female Mage. Like Dark Knight, she does not get a Subclass.
17* '''Knight''': A young woman sent on a mission to find the god Carloso. Prefers close quarters combat with a Zanbato or Short Sword, and fights with her blade and [[LuckilyMyShieldWillProtectMe trusty shield.]] Wears Heavy Armor. Utilizes a unique Shield Safe system where she can unlock and equip a variety of different Shields, each with their own special buffs.
18* '''Demonic Lancer''': A former slave burdened by the power of the demonic lance and forced to fight those like him. Having gained his freedom, he fights against the empire that enslaved him. Emphasizes range and speed with his lance, having several types of moves that allow him to cancel his skills into other skills.
19* '''Agent''': A mercenary who was previously part of an Empyrean Royal Security Force, known as ''The Company'', until the whole organization were betrayed by the Empyrean Nobility (and then by the Kartel). When news of their supposedly dead leader being alive are circulating, The Company has dispatched its best men to find him. He specializes in both melee and ranged weapons, with the addition of increased agility and mobility.
20* '''Archer''': A young girl from the {{Magitek}} world of Seon who has descended upon Arad with her trusty bow to find a way to save her home.
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22Note the prevalent use of phrases like "most likely" or "usually" in the class descriptions. All the classes get various subclasses to choose from that can dramatically alter their gameplay, such as a Slayer that wears cloth and specializes in summoning demons or a Battle Mage that prefers to melee with spears or polearms instead of casting spells and supplements their leather armor with a powerful mana shield.
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24The original game was hosted by Nexon America, and while niche, it gathered a dedicated fanbase. However, in 2013, Nexon suddenly declared that the game could no longer be supported, and the game was shut down that June. In spite of this, [[NetworkToTheRescue Neople refused to let it simply die,]] and resurrected the game in 2014 as ''Dungeon Fighter Online Global''[[note]]The "Global" meaning that it was targeted towards all regions that did not already have a version of ''Dungeon Fighter'' and regions outside America weren't IP-blocked.[[/note]]. After some beta testing, the game officially re-launched late 2014 with the '''Metastasis''', a gigantic overhaul update written in as a world-rending catastrophe that caused [[CosmicRetcon the reset of Aradian history as we knew it.]] '''Because of the differences between the past version and current version of the game, the following tropes are divided into respective categories.'''
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26The immense popularity of the franchise has lead to a bevy of spinoff material, which includes:
27
28[[foldercontrol]]
29[[folder:''Dungeon Fighter Online'' Spinoffs]]
30* ''Anime/AradSenkiSlapUpParty'' (2009) - An anime loosely based on the GagSeries of the same name, which is [[BroadStrokes (very) loosely based]] on the original game.
31* ''[[http://marketplace.xbox.com/en-US/Product/Dungeon-Fighter-LIVE-Fall-Of-Hendon-Myre/66acd000-77fe-1000-9115-d80258410b7f Dungeon Fighter LIVE: Fall of Hendon Myre]]'' (2012, Xbox 360) - A stripped-down version of the game loosely covering the early segments of the original story released for the Xbox Live Arcade. Features four playable characters (Slayer, Fighter, Gunner, Priest) and is primarily offline with local and online multiplayer features.
32* ''DNF Spirit'' (2016, Mobile) - A short-lived mobile adaptation of the online game that deviates heavily from the original gameplay.
33* ''Dungeon and Fighter: The Fate of Arad'' (2017) - An anime adaptation produced by Tencent Studios.
34* ''Dungeon & Fighter Mobile'' (Mobile) - The second mobile game adaptation of ''DFO'', which adheres more closely to the original game than ''Spirit''. Developed by Nexon in collaboration with Tencent, ''Mobile'' receives distinct content updates separate from main ''Dungeon & Fighter'', such as exclusive subclasses. Gameplay trailer can be seen [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QKh3RuRs1I here]].
35* ''VideoGame/DNFDuel'' - A TwoAndAHalfD fighting game developed in collaboration with Creator/ArcSystemWorks and Creator/EightingRaizing.
36* ''VideoGame/TheFirstBerserkerKhazan'': An upcoming SoulsLikeRPG set in the ''DFO'' universe's past starring Khazan, the man who would become the God of Destruction. The Game Awards reveal trailer can be seen [[https://youtu.be/-gn7u0JlrMg here]].
37* ''Project D'' - Another upcoming 3D game. Some details about the project can be found [[https://mmos.com/news/thingsoft-developing-unreal-engine-powered-sequel-dungeon-fighter-online here]].
38* ''Project Overkill'' - Working title for an upcoming 3D adaptation of the original game by Neople subsidiary Overkill Studios. The game's teaser website can be found [[https://dnf-overkill.com/ here]].
39
40[[/folder]]
41
42----
43!!This game provides examples of:
44
45[[folder:Tropes Applicable to DFO in General]]
46
47* AchievementSystem: The Title Book, available from Level 10 onwards, functions this way: in addition to titles you can get in item form, there's also a large number of titles you can get by either finishing specific quests or by accomplishing certain things ingame. You can then equip those titles for stat bonuses, and completing pages of the Title Book gives either bonuses to your overall stats or {{Emoticon}}s that work as an additional cosmetic effect on your character.
48* AchillesHeel: Skull Kane in Screaming Cavern is [[ThatOneBoss a nightmare]] for Summoners and Chaos. Reason being that whenever a Summon expires, he gains back several bars of HP at once. If you can't burn through his health faster than your Summons' uptime, prepare for an unnecessarily long fight.
49* ActionBomb: The most basic Gunner skill of this type creates a small robot that looks like a wind-up toy, which slowly approaches nearby enemies, falls on its face and detonates. Several types of enemies use similar tactics.
50* AerithAndBob: Plenty of the [=NPCs=] have names ranging from commonly heard names like Michelle, Daphne, Ophelia, Roger, Linus to unusual one like Abello, Woon, Siran, and Mintai. Even the Apostles fall under this, you have Hilder, Bakal, Sirocco, Kasijas, Delezie, and... Anton, Michael, and Luke.
51* AfterTheEnd: Pandemonium is what's left of Terra (Earth) after it was utterly destroyed -- it's the city of New York, moving through time and space.
52* AmazingTechnicolorPopulation:
53** Dark Elves as they come in a rather wide range of shades of brown, purple or in Morgan's case, pink.
54** With skin avatars, all classes can have a vast variety of unnatural skin colors, such as white, blue, grey and yellow.
55* AmazonianBeauty: The Fighter.
56* AmbidextrousSprite: JustForFun/{{Egregious}} in the case of the Slayer, whose ''possessed arm'' changes depending on which way he's facing because he can [[Webcomic/MSPaintAdventures flip it]] [[Webcomic/{{Homestuck}} turn-ways]].
57* AnIcePerson: [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin Glacial Master]] subclass for Male Mages. [[SpontaneousWeaponCreation Creates weapons made out of ice to attack]], [[KillItWithIce shoots forth icy shards in a spray, and more!]]
58* AntiGrinding:
59** Less EXP is earned the higher the level difference between you and your enemy, forcing you to go through the recommended dungeons for optimal experience gain. You also don't gain Mileage, one of the currencies for the cash shop, for dungeons that're out of your level range.
60** Then again, since you can only play each character a limited amount every day, it doesn't really make sense to play dungeons that're out of your level range unless you're doing daily quests.
61* AntiFrustrationFeatures:
62** If you are forced to use a revival token, are alone and your level is under 30, an APC will join you for the rest of the dungeon.
63** In post-Metastasis Season 1, if you were sufficiently overleveled, you could skip the current set of Epic Quests and just progress to the next storyline dungeon and continue as normal. As of Season 2, you are required to progress through Epic Quests in a set order, but you're allowed to skip an entire dungeon's set of Epic Quests. Doing so forces you to give up any associated rewards and EXP, however.
64** Chronicle gear is sold in boxes that allow you to pick what gear you want, so as to mitigate some of the RNG required to complete a set. Unopened boxes can also be refunded in full for the Interdimensional Fragments you paid for them, just in case you happen to get the Chronicle gear you were going to get from the box as a RareRandomDrop instead.
65*** The process of getting Chronicle sets has been greatly simplified with updates: initially the questline to get free set pieces was expanded so that you could get 3 pieces of the set of your choice from completing it (instead of just 2 at most), then another dungeon was added that lets you get 4 pieces (with some overlap with the free pieces) from running it in addition to Otherverse and finally, all of Otherverse was turned into a single dungeon with 5 free runs per day with the dungeon being chosen randomly and the gimmick-heavy Void Rift removed entirely, only pieces that match your subclass drop now, all rooms in the dungeon except the first one now drop Chronicle equipment and at least 1 Interdimensional Fragment, set pieces for sets you don't want can be disassembled into 20 Interdimensional Fragments and overall dungeon difficulty was greatly decreased and almost all [[PuzzleBoss gimmicks]] were removed entirely or made much easier.
66** You are required to enter in the Black Dragon Tournament to obtain items to unlock Second Awakening. The Black Dragon Tournament consists solely of [=APCs=] that also appear in the first 50 floors of the Tower of Despair, but the Tournament is set up so that fighting them is significantly easier; you only have to fight a set number of them per run, which ones appear are randomized, and if you have to revive with a Life Token, the opponent's HP doesn't refill and your own Skill Cooldowns are reset.
67** Post-Metastasis Season 2 added a number of them, such as precise percentage values for HP and MP, and the hyper-simplification of Cube Quests.
68* AntiPoopSocking:
69** The Fatigue Point system, which hard caps the amount of time a character can be played at any given time[[note]]This system exists due to South Korean law, for the record[[/note]]. It typically has a cap of 156 points, but is extended to 176 points on weekends [[RegionalBonus in Global]], and can be extended to 234 and 273 points with [=NeoPremium=] Basic and Plus+ Contracts, respectively. One point is consumed when you enter a new room in a dungeon, and if you run out of Fatigue Points, that character is done for the day. The only exception is if you run out while in a dungeon, in which case you're still allowed to finish.
70** Note that while it has a hard cap, it can be restored in increments with special items, such as a Potion that can be crafted by Alchemists and limited Potions that can be bought from the Mileage Shop. This can help extend your playtime on a single character.
71** Special Dungeons, like those in the Valley of Fallen Souls, instead limit play by requiring special items or just have a hard play limit. They don't use your FP, though, so they can also be played in tandem with regular content.
72* AprilFoolsDay: Various version of the game have had their gags over the years:
73** 2015: The Chinese version introduced StylisticSuck {{Gonk}} [[https://www.reddit.com/r/DFO/comments/312ugc/cdnf_april_fools_ms_paint_1st_awakening_cutins/ 1st Awakening cut-ins]] that eventually made it into other versions as part of their April Fools' Day gags. A year later, the same version introduced equally wonky [[https://www.reddit.com/r/DFO/comments/88xpws/japan_april_fools_cutins_fish_in_wallpaper_form/ fish-themed cut-ins]] as part of an event that took place underwater and turned everybody into fish people.
74** 2016: [=KDnF=] had [[https://www.reddit.com/r/DFO/comments/4co3b2/kdnfs_april_fools_8bit_event/ an 8-bit version of the Watchers of Natram dungeon]] along with a ''Franchise/{{Pokemon}}'' parody.
75** 2018: The Korean verison [[https://www.reddit.com/r/DFO/comments/87rycy/kdnf_season_5_act_41_april_fools_41/ temporarily added a slew of joke gameplay functions]] as part of a supposed "Season 5 Act 41" update. Players could hit damage cap with every attack with a potion, customize the size of their character's head on the character creation screen, and have a rudimentary AI play dungeons for the player, among other things.
76** 2021: The Japanese version announced [[https://www.reddit.com/r/DFO/comments/mhodvo/arad_senki_april_fools_package/ an avatar package]] that swapped the default outfits of each base class with that of their [[SpearCounterpart Spear]] or [[DistaffCounterpart Distaff Counterparts]]. For base classes that didn't have either, Agents and Thieves could cosplay each other, and so could Lancers and Knights.
77* ArtEvolution:
78** The ''Dungeon Fighter Mobile'' trailer [[https://youtu.be/7QKh3RuRs1I?t=139 features]] redrawn male Slayer and female Fighter sprites as one of its selling points. A comparison between the old and new sprites can be found [[https://i.imgur.com/VfxuQ4Y.jpg?1 here.]]
79** There is a drastic difference in art quality and style between the game's original portraits and its current ones, such as the newer portraits featuring more refined shading and being slightly less {{Animesque}}. One noticeable example is during the Black Shrine Act, where Grandis still uses the same portrait that she's been using since the game's launch while everyone else uses current style portraits.
80* ArtisticLicenseMilitary: Anyone who knows anything about portable [=SAMs=] (Surface to Air Missiles) knows that a Stinger is a heat-seeking missile. ''Dungeon Fighter Online'''s Stinger is not a heat-seeking missile. [[NonindicativeName It is a cluster bomb.]] Justified in that tech in the game is different, with wind up robot bombs and laser beams existing side by side.
81* AssistCharacter: The Arad Explorers feature allows any of your characters on the same server to call any of your Level 50+ characters to perform a predetermined attack out of 3 possible choices. There's no minimum level limit on who's allowed to call in the assist character, and the damage, while severely nerfed compared to the actual character, stays constant no matter who calls him/her, allowing you to clear out earlier dungeon rooms and OneHitKill weaker bosses on command.
82* AttackOfThe50FootWhatever: The game has a number of enormous, room-filling bosses to contend with:
83** Gangling Lotus, an Apostle fought in the Behemoth dungeon. Pre-Metastasis he wasn't quite as intimidating due to being sealed in a rock tomb, but post-Metastasis he is now freed and looms unreachable in the background; the only way you can damage this version is to attack his CombatTentacles.
84** Death Dragon Spirazzi in the Dark Elf Kingdom, a giant rotting dragon ensnared by hundreds of equally gigantic chains. He's so enormous and powerful that it takes all four of the Legendary Sword Masters to take him down, although you get to fight him alone later on if you wish.
85** Ice Dragon Skasa, a huge dragon living at the top of Mount Thunderime. Pre-Metastasis, she was one of three bosses players needed to defeat in order to open the path to Empyrean, but afterwards she was reduced to a boss battle in the Time Gate and Mirror Arad zones.
86** Bakal, Lord of Dragons transforms into one of these when he reveals his true appearance. He's capable of destroying even level 85+ characters with his fire breath if you don't kill him or run for safety in time.
87** Giant Dragon Natram and the Fire Golem in Mt. Kulun both tower over the players, with the former being similar to the Spirazzi fight and the latter occupying the top half of the screen.
88** Quattro Manus, the last boss on the King's Library Special Dungeon on the [[TitleOfTheDead Castle of the Dead]]. You fight it on top of a tower a la [[VideoGame/MarvelVsCapcom Onslaught]], complete with [[MegatonPunch attacks from the background]], [[SmashingSurvival a grab that it's lethal if you don't button mash enough]], [[DamageSpongeBoss and a obscene number of life bars]]. If you aren't prepared for this fight, you (or your party) WILL lose many [[OneUp Life Tokens]]. To make matters worse, you fight a second one in Sanctuary of Dispersion (one of the Luke Dungeons) as Quattro Manus MK-2, and it's considerably stronger.
89** Apostle Anton tops them all as the biggest monster in the game; he's so huge that he even houses an entire race of alien beings on his body. In fact players aren't even capable of fighting him head-on--his body is instead considered ''a unique area map'' with its own set of dungeons and bosses. The one time players ''do'' get to damage him directly is when they've finally opened up a path to his cardiac chamber and attack his gigantic heart in order to finally put an end to the beast.
90* AutoRevive:
91** Male Mage has a Passive that allows him to come back to life when he dies. He then proceeds to restore HP gradually, up to his base maximum HP, but does so at a rather slow rate (depending on content) and cannot use restorative items while he's regenerating health. He also takes an extra 50% damage from incoming attacks while healing.
92** Knight gets to use one once she Subclasses into Elven Knight or Chaos. If she dies, she comes back immediately and summons a Guardian (depending on Subclass) that helps defend her while she heals her HP, up to a limit defined by the Skill's Level. It also happens to have a restrictively long cooldown, meaning that if the enemy is sufficiently powered, it can still kill you even after you revive.
93** F. Crusader's Resurrection allows her to revive players killed while the buff is active. As an added bonus, players revived by this Skill get to retain the buffs that were applied to them when they died, as opposed to losing all their buffs as a Life Token would entail.
94** The Sacred Blessings item grants the player a buff that instantly revives them with 1/3rd of their maximum HP and MP if they drop dead while it's active. It too has a long cooldown... but since item cooldowns are reset upon reviving, you can just pop another one once you've used up your first.
95* BadassAdorable: Mages and Creator. D'awww.
96* BadassNormal: Each class has a subclass with this as their motif, which is forgoing advanced magic or tactics for practical attacks.
97** Slayers have the Blade Master, who uses only sword skills and styles to fight.
98** Like Slayers, Female Slayers have the Vagabond, who is stated to purposefully supress the energy of the metastasis within them and uses DualWielding as their main form of offense. Despite this, they still end up being by far the flashiest class out of the 4.
99** Fighters have the Striker, who uses simple but powerful strikes to hit enemies.
100** Priests have the Monk, who forgoes weaponry and magic for powerful strikes and brute force, possibly backed by passive magic but never directly.
101** Thieves have the Rogue, who doesn't use magic but fast movements and acrobatics to attack enemies.
102** Gunners have the Ranger subclass, whose focus is solely on using his guns to the fullest and attacking with melee strikes and not anything else during battle.
103** Mages don't seem to have one that fits this motif, but the Elementalist might be this magic style, not using any advanced magics but rather more simple magic types, or the Battle Mage, who has to use magic but forgoes many spells for a focus on using their weapon.
104* [[{{Bara}} Bara Bait]]:
105** The Priest, [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=byvP4F0YQ6k particularly Jeda from the anime.]]
106** Linus also tends to get some attention as well.
107** The eponymous Bwanga of Bwanga's Camp gets some attention, particularly in non-English communities.
108* BarrierChangeBoss: Guardian Aegis of King's Relic switches between a blue and red aura, absorbing as well as ''reflecting'' magic and physical attacks respectively.
109* TheBattleDidntCount: You will defeat bosses numerous times running through dungeons, but they're only actually dead/defeated as a result if you have a quest that says so -- otherwise, as far as the story is concerned, they're still around for whatever later quests need them.
110** Mostly averted in the Season 2 update: you generally won't meet any bosses until the story demands you to defeat them and if you do, you either don't fight them or they escape when you deplete their HP to 0.
111* TheBeastmaster: Summoners, via SummonMagic. Easily reaching [[TheMinionMaster Minion Master]] levels.
112* BerserkButton: Some enemies do not take kindly to any skill that requires Clear Cube Fragments (which is any skill gained after level 35) and will respond with a reactionary skill, which tends to be a super-powerful attack or defensive move.
113* {{BFG}}: The Gunner can equip this type of weapon. The Launcher specializes in them. ("Subweapons")
114* {{BFS}}: The Slayer can equip this type of weapon, known as the "Zanbato" weapon class.
115* BigApplesauce: New York City is the only part of Earth (Terra) that still exists.
116* BigBadEnsemble: The Apostles. Every disaster in the story can be linked back to one of the Apostles. [[spoiler:However, everything can ultimately be traced back to Apostle Hilder, with Iris Fortunesinger acting as her main proxy.]]
117* BloodyMurder: Pretty much the definition of the Berserker Slayer sub-class. He goes so far as to duel-wield by crafting another sword '''''out of his own blood!''''' It is never explained how he does this.
118* BoltOfDivineRetribution:
119** Crusaders have a buff called "Revenge of Light" that causes lightning to strike anything that deals magic damage to the buffed person.
120** A rare rosary also grants a passive that does something similar, although not nearly as dependable or powerful.
121* BoringButPractical: Gunners will want to use the the shoot-shoot-shoot-backstep-repeat strategy as it is faster than the plain shoot-shoot-shoot-repeat combo. Or, they can follow up the backstep with something like pulling out a flamethrower. Also, there's the strategy of using the gunner's slide to cause enough hitstun for you to turn around and slide again.
122** Also, not matter what class, Gunners may also want to invest skill points into the Gatling gun. It has great range and damage, and even if you're a ranger you'll still find it useful for peppering incoming mobs.
123* BossRush: The Altar Of Ascension is basically this, pitting you against numerous strong individual enemies with their own gimmicks.
124* BottomlessMagazines: The game never shows the gunner reloading, except when he's in his in-town IdleAnimation. Yes, the gunner keeps reloading his own gun without even firing it, as if he's just swapping out the same two clips of bullets.
125* {{Bowdlerization}}:
126** The under-18 Korean version that's the only version that child accounts are allowed to play as well as the Chinese version are both censored: they remove all blood and enemies being reduced to colored chunks when killed, all of Berserker's and Blood Mage's skills are recolored to yellowish orange and Ranger's cigarette is replaced with CoolShades.
127** The Shadow Dancer's 1st Awakening art was redesigned in ''DFO Global'' to cover up her CleavageWindow. Ironically, the art team didn't do the same for the class's Awakened Ones avatar set, which still retains it (although it's hard to notice due to the low native resolution of the game).
128** The Gaia's Awakened Ones [[https://www.reddit.com/r/DFO/comments/dsc1jl/praise_npeople_they_freed_gaias_legs/ avatar set]] was redesigned in the Chinese version to give her forest green leggings that cover her thighs.
129* BribingYourWayToVictory:
130** Nexon's version of the game was ''notorious'' for this. Neople's version relaxes the pay-to-win elements significantly.
131** Most stuff that can be purchased with CERA can also be purchased with in-game Gold via the Auction House, and those that can't have no significant impact on gameplay anyways.
132** [=NeoPremium=] Contracts, which are akin to a "premium" subscription in other [=MMOs=]. For a monthly fee, you get several boons, such as additional Fatigue Points per character, +10% dungeon clear EXP, an extra Reward Card, the ability to ignore Stamina, and Fatigue Express, which lets you consume Fatigue Points twice as fast in exchange for 2x EXP. The Plus+ version also adds a free Unique Weapon you can rent out every day, a free daily gift, an extra Simona's Letter of Recommendation per day, and Neo Premium Tokens added to all drop pools, which let you play Canna's Vending Machine to get rare and exclusive items. Although they typically require payment, you can get Contract items in various ways in-game that let you receive the benefits of [=NeoPremium=] without having to pay up, although typically for much shorter time periods.
133** Somewhat averted with the release of Canna's Vending Machine, a special vendor that allows players to buy randomized cash shop items using special Tokens that drop in dungeons. While much of it is weighted towards the healing items[[note]]Canna's Homemade Bread and Big Hendon Myre Milk[[/note]], other items such as Transcendent Stones[[note]]used for moving untradeable equipment to the Account Vault, allowing an alt to make use of it[[/note]], Golden Candles[[note]]which allow certain types of player-bound equipment to be resealed and either given to an alt, other players or sold on the Auction House[[/note]] and the various Contracts mentioned above are also given out very rarely.
134** On more than one occassion, Neople has introduced powerful limited-time Mileage Shop items that cost hundreds of Mileage, almost always after the scheduled yearly Mileage reset.
135** The Noble Material Pouch, introduced in the level 95 cap update, which drops various types of endgame materials (''including those released in 95 cap'') for a measly 10 Mileage per bag. Surprisingly, it isn't weighted towards the worst outcome like most other container items in the game. Combined with the fact that fireworks give the best CERA to Mileage ratio (10 for 5), one could easily "buy" enough Mileage to get tons of endgame materials, like [[https://www.reddit.com/r/DFO/comments/avfg56/i_have_about_12000_fireworks/ this guy]] did.
136** Much like a number of other [[AllegedlyFreeGame Allegedly Free Games]], the best way to earn in-game gold [[https://dfoarchive.blogspot.com/2020/06/gold-farming-in-level-100-cap.html is with a credit card]], indirectly by buying avatar packages with real money and then selling them off to other players.
137* CallingYourAttacks: Nearly all attacks involve the player calling out the skill name.
138-->'''Gunner:''' ''Burn, baby, burn!''
139-->'''Mage:''' ''Dead Murker! Louise! Ice Wall! Lollipop!''
140-->'''Priest:''' ''Bless! Smasher! Driver!''
141** Non English player character voices often shout skill names in [[GratuitousEnglish English]] rather than in their native language, when this would only make sense for the female Mage.
142* TheCameo: At least two come from [[RequiredSpinoffCrossover fellow]] Creator/{{Nexon}} [[RequiredSpinoffCrossover game]] ''VideoGame/{{Cyphers}}'' - [[http://cyphers.nexon.com/cyphers/pages/character/michelle/1 Michelle Monohan]] (bonus points for retaining her [[MindOverMatter Cypher]] powers) and [[http://cyphers.nexon.com/cyphers/pages/character/ricardo/1 Ricardo the Heartbreaker]]. [[https://cyphers.nexon.com/cyphers/pages/character/mia/1 Mia]] also cameos in ''DFO'' during the Exile Mountains story - although she has a totally different design, some of her attacks as a boss are lifted wholesale from her original game. In the other direction, the female Gunner has made a cameo in ''Cyphers'', going by the [[OneLetterName name]] [[http://cyphers.nexon.com/cyphers/pages/character/j/1 J]], and in ''VideoGame/{{Elsword}}'' as Rose.
143* {{Cap}}: Since the game is an MMO and still in active development, any caps that get in way of things can and will be removed or increased. That being said, it's somewhat safe to say that the maximum default number of any consumable items you can hold is 1000, the visual damage cap maxes out at 999,999,999 per hit since it's shown in a jagged speech bubble if you manage to reach that value (but since it's only a visual cap, actual damage done per hit can be higher than it) , any skill has a maximum default level cap of 50 (which is for the most part impossible to reach) and the maximum amount of levels you can add to a skill via equipment that increases it is 10.
144* CaptainErsatz:
145** Beef him up a little and give him a sword, and the Male Gunner is essentially VideoGame/{{D|evilMayCry}}ante. One of the avatar costume sets for male gunners is even named ''Devil Trigger.''
146** The Male Gunner in the cartoon series more resembles [[Manga/{{Trigun}} Vash the Stampede,]] if he had a complete lack of gun safety and an utter disregard for life. The Spitfire prestige class also bears some resemblance.
147** The Slayer essentially looks like one of [[VideoGame/GuiltyGear Sol Badguy]]'s palette swaps.
148** Yipper is basically [[Franchise/{{Batman}} The Joker]], complete with purple suit, clownish face paint, and a SlasherSmile. He even rips off The Joker's [[MemeticMutation "Why so serious?"]] line with his own knockoff catchphrase, "Why the stern face?". Another example of this is Rake, who also has a portrait that makes his resemblance to Joker even more obvious, he's based on Male Gunner so he has a similar build as well and like him, he uses handguns.
149** The visual design of the Demonic Lancer class is one huge reference to [[VisualNovel/FateStayNight Cu Chulainn]], particularly the blue hair and red eyes. The default skin with its fur-lined vest is even based on his ''Anime/FatePrototype'' appearance.
150** If Yipper is the "classic" Joker, then [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Let_5szGvg Ricardo the Heartbreaker]] is his ''Film/SuicideSquad2016'' counterpart.
151* CarFu: Ghent has biker enemies that love to ram you, including Captain Shred and his tricked out bike with a front wheel that turns into a buzzsaw. If you're a [[RareRandomDrop very lucky]] Exorcist, you can actually use said front wheel as a weapon.
152* {{Catchphrase}}:
153-->'''Danjin:''' You have to spend money to make money.[[note]]Originally [[LargeHam a lot hammier.]][[/note]]\
154'''Canna:''' Excuse me! Where are you going?
155* CherryTapping: Practical given the arcade gameplay in which not getting hurt is primarily based on player skill. Can show up for unusual reasons, such as the game's rating attack accuracy leading to low-level mages using pure staff combat.
156* CircusOfFear: Midnight Assault features the Kartel's hired mercenaries... who happen to dress like clowns. Their leaders themselves happen to be magicians. Justified as they started off as a normal circus troupe, but since they mainly operated where the Kartel [[WretchedHive originated from]], they had to learn how to fight to protect themselves, until they were so good at it that they started employing themselves as part-time mercenaries.
157* ClothesMakeTheSuperman: Equipment aside, you can also wear Avatars, cosmetics that change your character's appearance and can give them stat boosts. Certain Avatars can also slot in Emblems that give additional stats. Rare Avatars can give even more stats, and have Platinum Emblem Slots, which can actually boost Skill Levels as well.
158* CombatPragmatist:
159** Fighters that become Brawlers. As a way of introducing this specialization path, [[AHandfulForAnEye dust kicking]] is one of the starting class' skills.
160** Surprisingly, male brawler is a better pragmatist than the female brawler. Both start out the same, but vary once the subclass is unlocked. Where the female brawler uses all her tricks by hand, the male brawler ''throws'' everything at his enemies, giving him more range but equal function than the female. His Explosive hook (grab that ignites an enemy) skill kicks the enemy away, sometimes into other enemies, setting them ablaze as well.
161** The Knight can use this too, dubbing this technique ''Lion Kick''. But in her defense, its skill description is: ''"Originally, it is a dirty trick among gladiators of the Imperial Coliseum. It's adapted into the Knights' battle training for its impressive efficiency."'', and: ''"...The Knights worship chivalry. But when it comes to protecting their country and leader, they are willing to throw everything behind."''
162* ComboBreaker:
163** Many bosses possess an ability to otherwise harmlessly knock over players in response to being heavily comboed or knocked down. Can be subverted if the player times a Super Armored skill to power through the effect and continue the combo. Some specific bosses use much more dangerous moves, such as Commodore Cannonhand's anti-launch Will Driver variant.
164** Players have their own version of this during [[PlayerVersusPlayer PvP]] called "gravity", which essentially makes it so that if they lose a set amount of life from a juggle combo, they start falling much faster until they finally hit the ground.
165* CompetitiveBalance: Since fighting against a large number of enemies that can easily overpower you is a lot different than fighting against another human opponent, a large number of skills are changed in basic function when used in the Arena, generally to make them less overpowered. This is also why all new classes are banned in [=PvP=] until they're balanced sufficiently to make them usable there, although some of them might be banned permanently if their basic mechanics are so overpowered against a single target that they'd either need to be removed completely or {{nerf}}ed to a degree that they might as well not exist to begin with.
166* TheComputerIsACheatingBastard:
167** Quite a few APCs you encounter over the course of the story are typically of a Level significantly higher than what players are capable of attaining. For example, in the post-Metastasis revised story, Aganzo was Level 90 long before the actual Level 90 cap was implemented. Of course, [[Administrivia/TropesAreTools these overleveled APCs are also typically your allies.]]
168** Several enemy APCs (the ones in the Tower of Death and Black Dragon tournament for example) have cube skills or even ''Awakenings'' that belong to another subclass. The ones you fight in every 10th floor of Tower of Despair are APC versions of random players who've beaten that floor, named "<name>'s Ghost", and while they lack the gimmicks of normal floors in the Tower, they compensate by being able to use all subclass skills at the same time. They also possess any special effects granted by their equipment when they were chosen, which can make them disproportionately hard to take down if they happened to be equiped with gear like [[http://wiki.dfo-world.com/view/Trinity_Eternia Trinity Eternia]], a katana that has the nasty effect of amplifying and then [[AttackReflector reflecting]] the damage its wielder takes. The reflected damage is usually high enough that it [[OneHitKill kills in one hit]], even with trivially weak attacks.
169* {{Cooldown}}: The main limiting factor that prevents you from just spamming your strongest attacks over and over: most basic moves have anywhere from 2 to 10 seconds of cooldown, stronger moves have around 20-30 seconds and strongest normal moves generally cap out at 40-50 seconds, with both Awakening moves generally taking 2-3 minutes until you can use them again, generally limiting their use to once per dungeon without rare Epic items that reset cooldowns regardless of their length.
170* CooldownManipulation: Other than changing move properties and making them stronger, this one of the main properties of Chronicle set equipment, generally making stronger moves usable much more often. Some Epic equipment takes this even further, either by reducing all cooldowns by a set amount or periodically resetting the highest current cooldown with a maximum cooldown under a specific value. One Epic set also has this as its main gimmick: it randomly removes cooldown from a specific move almost completely and reduces its MP consumption to a similar degree so that you can briefly spam it at your heart's content, although with the cost of reduced damage per use.
171* ContinuingIsPainful: ...unless you have enough Life Tokens to continue. You can also beg for someone to spend their life token on you, if they're nice enough.
172* CriticalHit: A large part of most classes' gameplay: as a rule, vast majority of them can reach 97% critical hit rate of their main type of damage one way or another, which is the minimum needed to always get critical hits due to a hidden 3% base critical hit chance, although the amount of enhancements and equipment needed to reach that varies greatly from class to class. A [[CriticalHitClass select few classes]] further specialize in this via buffs that increase the amount of extra damage done by critical hits past the default 50%.
173* CutShort: The Taiwanese version. The English version was this temporarily, until Neople saved it.
174* CuteWitch: The Mage in general. Especially if she chooses to become a [[DepartmentOfRedundancyDepartment Witch]].
175* CycleOfHurting: The main source of difficulty for any fights against more than 1 [=APC=] opponent: they're just as effective at stunlocking you as you are them and due to the lack of a ComboBreaker outside [[PlayerVersusPlayer PvP]], you can lose all your health from a single lucky hit. Thankfully these situations don't come up very often outside the various Towers and Altars.
176* DarkIsNotEvil: Soul Benders, Necromancers, and Avengers.
177* DeathIsASlapOnTheWrist: Zigzagged: in most cases, you can just use a Life Token to come back to life with full HP and MP and reset skill cooldowns, but outside of guild levelups and specific events, it's hard to get a large number of Life Tokens without buying them with real-money currency and most of the difficult dungeons limit the number of times you can use them, with Tower of Despair even restoring enemy HP to full when you use one. However, Sacred Blessings can be used anywhere the game allows item use, have no usage limits and can be readily made by Alchemists and even though they're supposed to be on a 20 minute cooldown when you use one, you can just use another one the second you come back to life.
178* DeathOrGloryAttack: The Asura's Ground Quaker or Agni Pentacle.
179* DegradedBoss: Several, most notably in the early dungeons.
180* DeviousDaggers: The Thief can use daggers, specifically the Shadow Dancer subclass, with the Rogue also having them as an option.
181* DidYouJustPunchOutCthulhu: When the Dungeon Fighter kills an Apostle, which is entirely possible. Notably, Apostles cannot kill each other, [[spoiler:which may result in them trying to invoke LetsYouAndHimFight.]]
182* DieChairDie: Breakable objects can contain items, buff-giving fairies, traps, or enemies. There are even quests later on that require you to break specific objects, and a few others that require you to not break specific objects.
183* DifficultButAwesome: A few Epic weapons increase damage by a percentage based on empty hotkey slots. It's by far the biggest boost of its kind in the game (5% more damage for every empty hotkey slot, which comes out to 60% more damage if all 12 them are empty), but it requires the player to play entirely with manual inputs to gain said power.
184* DifficultyByRegion: Back in pre-Metastasis era, Nexon was ridiculously far behind in updating the grind curves, requiring at least 1.5x the EXP you needed to grind in the Korean version. This was due to NA still being on the 2nd EXP "scaling" by the time it shut down, whereas the Korean version was on the 3rd, which was 2nd scaling, but halved. Neople's ''DFOG'' fixed this by bringing the curve in line with more recent Korean versions.
185** Also in pre-Metastasis, finding a good server, and thus more players to play with, varied wildly depending on where you played from. East Servers had ''far'' less players than West Servers, which made it more difficult to party up with people. This problem was also fixed when Neople merged servers.
186* DigitalAvatar: You can customize your character appearance with a large number of avatar items, quite a rarity in a 2D game. In addition to your character, you can also give your weapon a different shared appearance as well, often making it look like a LethalJokeWeapon.
187* DisabilitySuperPower: Slayers that become Asuras make a [[DealWithTheDevil deal with Kazan]] and become blind in exchange for SwordBeam powers and AuraVision. This does [[GameplayAndStorySegregation not stop]] them from being afflicted with the sight-related conditions in the game, such as the Darkness status effect and missing constantly when the lights turn off.
188** Fixed in later patches, though certain enemies can reduce ailment resist enough to have it still occur.
189* DiscOneNuke:
190** In addition to high-level assist characters, some of the APCs can be massively overpowered for the level you can use them at: the most prominent example of these is probably Girl of Ruins, who is a level 70 female Mech that you can use at level 35 and who proceeds to utterly wreck everything and anything for the next 30 levels or so.
191** Unlike all other creature-summoning assists in the game, Mechanic's Gale Force/Tempester moves between rooms with the character who used the assist, instead of being restricted to the room the assist was used in. Thanks to this, all low-leveled characters can have a permanent robot helper that basically kills everything for them in low-leveled dungeons.
192** Ice Plate. This is a low-level Creator skill that drops a large sheet of ice on an area you right-click on. It does ''ginormous'' damage and comes with a ridiculous area-of-effect, allowing you to wipe a pack of enemies in one swift motion. This skill even remains useful through the end-game, where it becomes a low-cost damage tool.
193** Be proud if you managed to grab a Growing Weapon from an event while still in early-game and made it permanent. While it gives no bonuses to skills or has fancy effects, the stats alone vastly outclass the majority of same-level weapons until the Growing Weapon hits max level, which is around Lv. 65. Another thing that makes them far better than most other weapons early on is that reinforcement costs are calculated based on the weapon's level, meaning that you can reinforce them to +10 the second you reach level 17 and can access the feature, allowing you to do so at a pittance compared to the cost of reinforcing higher-leveled weapons.
194*** However, since growing weapons are now commonly given out in events, getting a +10 reinforce on any weapon is just a single (although usually prohibitively costly) ticket away and they reach their maximum strength comparatively earlier, they've lost their importance a good deal and count as this only for people who're just starting out with the game.
195* DistaffCounterpart:
196** Female Gunners and Male Fighters to Gunners and Fighters, respectively. They share closely similar movesets and growth to their originals, but feature tweaks to their styles to make them more unique; F. Gunners focus more on utility at the expense of damage, while M. Fighters have more kick-based attacks that hit low and ground.
197** Male Mages to Mages. However, the play ''very'' different, the former possessing unique mechanics and new Subclasses. Female Slayers also fall into this archetype of counterpart to Slayers; while they share the same weapons, they are vastly different characters.
198** Officially, female Mages, female Fighters, male Gunners, and male Slayers are just Mages, Fighters, Gunners, and Slayers. Their counterparts are, officially M.[[note]]short for male, and informally expanded to it fairly frequently[[/note]] Mages, M. Fighters. F. Gunners, F. Slayers, and F. Priests.
199* DivergentCharacterEvolution: The Female Gunner and Male Fighter have very similar skills and subclasses to their opposite gender counterparts. While for some classes this may lead to focusing on skills that their counterparts wouldn't use or prioritize, they can play rather similarly. However, their awakenings (and especially their second awakenings) accentuate these differences to the point that they can be called entirely separate classes. Later opposite gender classes avert this, being entirely different from their originals from the start.
200* DualWielding: Thieves, combined with ReverseGrip.
201* DungeonShop: Whenever you clear most dungeons, Deliah will appear at the end of them: she generally only ever sells potions that increase your strength for a set amount of time and most people won't ever bother with them, but her actual purpose is to give you a way to fix up your gear, sell any excessive drops or do some magic seal combining if you want to run the dungeon again without returning to town. Rarely, you'll meet [[SecretShop Gabriel]] instead, who often sells moderately rare items at low prices, Powerful-tier magic-sealed gear and Treasure Hunter/Greedy accessories that can only normally be bought from Iris with much rarer items instead of just gold: in addition to that, he also always sells specific items when you meet him in specific types of dungeons, such as rare quest materials normally only obtained as daily quest rewards.
202* EarlyGameHell: Some classes suffer from this, mostly because they can't produce reasonable amount of damage early on, meaning they take much longer to clear dungeons and waste MP-restoring items the process: either they're more focused on party play and not very suitable to soloing dungeons or they don't gain access to their main sources of damage until later. The classes that suffer the most from this are Paladin, Soul Bender and some of the female Mage subclasses. Downplayed in the Season 2 update, where you can freely change your subclass before level 50 once for free and for a moderate but increasing cost from that point onwards, allowing you to do all your early leveling as one of the more effective subclasses and then switch to another one afterwards.
203* EarthShatteringKaboom:
204** Happens to Earth (Terra) at some point in the timeline, leaving only New York City -- now known as Pandemonium. The nature of Pandemonium makes it difficult to be certain, but signs are that it happened before the game takes place, not after.
205** The Dark Knight and Creator's opening cinematic shows them witnessing TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt at the end of time, with all of Arad going kablooey in an even more catastrophic fashion than Terra.
206* EarthThatWas: Terra, again. It's reached the point of being little more than a legend of a virtual paradise with advanced technology and natural beauty by the time the game starts.
207* ElementalPowers: Effectively present on all of the female mage subclasses, but most prominent on the [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin Elementalist]] and Witch. The majority of the Elementalist and Witch skills are based around water (ice), fire, light (lightning), and shadow elements, and they usually end up specializing in two main elements. The Battle Mage has access to the same elements via her chasers, and the Summoner has a couple sets of summons representing each of the four elements.
208** Meanwhile, the Male Mage has an "equivalent" to the Elementalist called the [[ElementalPowers Elemental]] [[StuffBlowingUp Bomber]]. It can quite happily fill rooms with spells of the four elements without having to specialize as specifically, combined with the ability to augment his own basic attacks with any of the four elements for varying effects.
209** The Sword Master is capable of imbuing her weapon with any of the four elements.
210* EnergyWeapon:
211** Gunners who advance to the Launcher subclass gain a laser rifle as their signature damage-dealing move. It can be charged as well, bringing it into WaveMotionGun territory. The recoil from firing it causes the user to slide back quite a distance.
212** Blade Masters can equip [[LaserBlade Lightsabers]], and a unique spear for Battle Mages is a Beam Spear.
213** Brawlers now have Laser Claws available, and Priests have a Beam Scythe.
214* EquipmentUpgrade: In addition to reinforcing, refining and amplification described below, you can also use cards rarely dropped by enemies and bosses to enhance them with additional stats, properties and skill levels.
215* EvilLaugh:
216** The Berserker gives one out when he activates the Frenzy buff.
217** The Priest of all people gets one when he casts the Furious Grab spell. Makes more sense when you consider that this is technically an Avenger skill.
218** Flaming Binoche has one when encountered in Blazing Grakqarak.
219* EvolvingAttack: On a general level, [[LimitBreak Awakening skills]] level up automatically for every 5 levels you gain and can't be leveled up manually: in addition to increased damage, length and status increase that all skills get when they're leveled, they also gain a number of unique properties when they reach level 3, 6 and 9, such as increased critical hit rate, invincibility during skill startup, HP and MP recovery upon skill completion, a chance to instantly reset the skill's cooldown so that you can use it again right away and so on. Blademaster gets a more general version of this with his skills as his weapon mastery skill for each type of weapon increases, giving his skills additional followups and new properties.
220* EvolvingWeapon: Various events give you a weapon of your choice that increases in power with your level up to a point: these weapons are generally given out to make new characters easier to level but they must be made permanent by collecting items that drop from enemies during the event. The weapons might also have other unique properties during the event, such as the Phoenix weapon being protected from being completely destroyed if you fail an upgrade past +10 up to +12, although they still lose all their upgrades and you need to restart the process from scratch if you fail such an upgrade.
221** Transcendent Weapons are more literal examples of this: you can get one when you complete your second Awakening and their strength is increased by killing named, champion or boss monsters. This levels them up in 7 stages, with each one giving additional stat increases and higher levels enhancing your second Awakening skills in unique ways. However, anything past stage 3 takes 5+ kills to even gain a single % towards the next level (the highest number of these monsters per dungeon is around 20 at most), levels 4 and beyond require you to buy a number of costly items to actually level up the weapon and if you don't spend at least 30 FP every day, you lose 20% of your progress towards the next level, although thankfully the weapon can't actually lose levels. In general, the only Transcendent Weapon that still sees any use in the endgame is the one used by Elementalist, since it makes for an effective weapon to switch to when you're casting your buffs.
222* ExclusiveEnemyEquipment: In the most literal sense, bosses have a [[RareRandomDrop very low chance]] to drop a Boss Unique based on the boss's gear or traits. All bosses usually come with several different Boss Uniques, making it a challenge to get them all. However, most can be bought with different types of Meteors, and thanks to the Season 2 update making them much easier to get via boxes found in dungeons that can contain up to 3 of them and all of their prices being greatly lowered, you can now actually use them when you're in the level range where they're the best gear you can get.
223* ExperienceBooster: Numerous varieties: by default, doing specific storyline quests rewards you with potions that double the amount of dungeon clear experience for 30 minutes. There's also weaker and stronger versions of this potion that're usually given out as event rewards and Burning Events that also double dungeon clear experience at specific hours and unlike the potions, also effect dungeons with a limited number of entries per day that scale their experience based on your current level. There's also weaker boosters in form of Mentorship that gives up to 15% extra overall experience if both characters are online at the same time, guild skill that gives 5%+ universal experience and the Arad Explorers feature that gives 10% clear experience to all but the highest-leveled character. Finally, specific special dungeons also have their own innate experience boosts that can be triggered when you fulfill the conditions for them: in short, under optimal circumstances, you can gain up to 6 times the default amount of dungeon clear experience.
224* {{Expy}}: The Slayer class looks noticeably similar to [[VideoGame/GuiltyGear Sol Badguy]].
225* FantasyCounterpartCulture
226** The Bantu tribes loosely resemble Eskimo tribes.
227** Suju appears to be based off of the Joseon Dynasty of Korea with hints of Feudal Japan thrown in.
228** On Empyrean, Ghent's architecture and designs take heavy inspiration from ImperialChina. The Kartels, on the other hand, resemble TheWildWest cowboys and bandits, and some grunt soldiers. Ghent's armed forces are a mixed bag with some wearing japanese styled armor while many wear western miltary officer uniforms. Of the PC classes from Empyrean, the Gunner has ImpossiblyCoolClothes, while the F. Gunner has a stylized women's hanbok.
229** A [[SubvertedTrope subversion]] with Pandemonium. Places in Pandemonium are named after places in [[BigApplesauce New York]] such as Bronx, Brooklyn, etc. However Pandemonium lacks any cultural parallel to [[BigApplesauce New York]], names aside.
230*** Also subverted in that, according to the backstory, it '''actually is New York''' -- it's all that's left of Earth after humanity destroyed themselves and the planet, having been knocked loose in space and time by the war that destroyed Earth.
231* FantasyKitchenSink: At first it just looks like typical fantasy - elves, goblins, minotaurs, dragons, and so on. Then you enter into levels with [[ZeppelinsFromAnotherWorld machine gun toting enemy blimps]], self-powered moving cannons, and the Mafia who are assisted by a goblin with a revolver, missile-launching turrets, and a crazy old man with a jet pack. At level 55, you enter the world of Empyrean, where technology is more prevalent than magic. You get to face gun-toting soldiers, cyborgs, evil clowns, genetic monstrosities, and HumongousMecha.
232* FlashStep: Practiced by Rogues, Monks and Male Fighters.
233* ForcedTransformation: The Witch's Devolution Flyswatter can turn defeated enemies into Goblins, giant Tau Beasts, or the ever-annoying Hunters. However, these transformed creatures will fight for you, except for the Hunter, who immediately targets you. Later on, she gains the ability to transform enemies into Homonculi with their own elemental powers and special attacks, instead of the default Taus and Goblins.
234%%* FragileSpeedster: Generally, any class or sub-class that uses leather armor or light (made of bone) armor to varying degrees. This includes Battle Mages, Rogues, [[MasterSwordsman Weapon Masters]], [[BareFistedMonk Monks]], general Fighters, as well as others.
235* FreemiumTimer: The game uses a "Fatigue Points" system, which starts at 156 points and goes down by 1 for every uncleared dungeon room traversed, although the game will let players finish a dungeon if the FP bar hits 0 during a run. The sole exception is with special dungeons, which simply subtract a fixed amount of FP at the start of a run. The only free-to-play options for restoring FP are waiting until 9 AM UTC the next day, buying/crafting a "Fatigue Recovery Potion", or handouts from events. Otherwise, FP potions of varying recovery amounts can be bought with real money, or players can subscribe for "Neo Premium", which raises the daily FP limit to 273.
236* FunPersonified: Female Mages.
237* GameplayAndStorySegregation: Women who are Slayers like the male variant (with the Ghost Arm, rather than the Metastatic powers) are featured as [=NPCs=], such as Roxy and Robato, but playable Slayers with Ghost Arms only come in male.
238* GatlingGood: The Launcher's Gatling gun.
239* GimmickLevel: The various towers in the Valley of the Dead have various changes to normal gameplay.
240** Tower of Illusion alters stats, so players and [=APCs=] (enemies based off of the player characters) do much more damage.
241** Alter of Infinity pits you against legions of enemies, and as you rack up kills, you earn points that can be used to buff one of your stats or refill your health.
242** Tower of the Dead is like Tower of Illusion, but also bans all items, forcing you to use the potions and clear cubes dropped by enemies to heal yourself and use your stronger attacks.
243** Tower of Despair is something else. It has 100 floors, only one floor can be attempted each day, and you fight against (usually) a single [=APC=] with various impossibilities. For example, the 49th floor has a witch that calls herself the best driver, and she constantly uses the witch's megadrill without having to wait for the skill to cool down. The 74th floor, "Sure Fire Six" Raina, has a female ranger who has so much health regeneration and defense that originally she could only be beaten by dodging six of her shots that have a possibility to kill in one hit, after which she drops dead.
244** Otherverse is an entire area of gimmicks, except for maybe a single room in each dungeon.
245** Almost every room in the Raid dungeons is a Gimmick Room, and has enemies who can't be defeated by normal means (unless the player and his/her party are sufficently overpowered AND knows how to deal with the gimmicks), the player(s) must learn how to deactivate the gimmick to deprive the enemies of their invincibility (or to make them visible) before attacking.
246* GlassCannon:
247** The Elementalist is the most extreme example, though other classes like Soul Benders and Mechanics may qualify. In short, any class that uses cloth armor is likely to be an example.
248** Kunoichi is a major case of this trope; it doesn't take much to drop her, but it doesn't take her much to do likewise.
249** Creator. In short, do ''not'' let her get caught in a firefight, it can only lead to death.
250* GlobalCurrencyException: It's easier to list [=NPCs=] that sell universally useful things for gold instead of some other form of currency. Having large amounts of gold is still useful since it's the only form of currency used at the auction house.
251* GoodColorsEvilColors: All major characters from TheEmpire wear black and are almost invariably up to no good. Even [[spoiler:Vaughn]], who is otherwise friendly and is heralded as a hero, tends to act fishy and [[spoiler:personally assassinates Apostle Luke for currently unrevealed reasons]]. It's telling that the most "good" character from the De Los Empire is Princess Isabella, who wears bright, Eastern-style wear and prefers adventuring over the TakeOverTheWorld shenanigans that her family is up to.
252* GoshDarnitToHeck: One of the Hell Parties you can encounter consists of 3 female Launchers that spend the entire fight shouting nonsensical TV-edited swearwords at you, including but not limited to "monkey fluffer", "mother schnucker" and "dipstick".
253* GrievousHarmWithABody: From the Grappler description: "The Grappler is adept at grabbing and throwing her opponents, oftentimes into other opponents." The Priest also gets a skill that amounts to "Grab enemy, throw enemy forwards, hopefully into more enemies."
254* GunFu: Rangers.
255* HandCannon: Gunners can equip this kind of weapon, though it it's more of an ArmCannon rather than a large handgun. It also behaves more like a shotgun than anything else. Played straight in the fact that there are several very large handguns available for higher-leveled gunners.
256* HardModePerks:
257** The harder the difficulty level you play the levels on, the more experience you get per enemy killed, although before the Season 2 update, the extra amount gotten from playing on Ultimate was not worth the trouble of dealing with enemies with massively inflated HP and attack and after the update, all scennario dungeons are locked to the easiest difficulty and most of the experience comes from completing quests. The effect of the different difficulty levels is the most prominent in Otherverse, where the Chronicle set equipment doesn't drop on the easiest difficulty level and the highest difficulty has enough of an increase to set piece drop rates that it's worth playing over the medium one if you and your party are strong enough to do it.
258** Fighting Hell Parties or Guide of Wisdom on harder difficulty levels increases the number of materials they drop and slightly increases the droprate of Hell Orbs and Demon Eyes, although the actual Epic droprate is still fixed to 10%.
259** The seasonal server described below is much harder than the normal game, but in addition to the rewards gotten from completing it, the amount of Ancient Dungeon materials you get from beating them on the seasonal server is massively boosted to the degree that you can complete a Quest Legendary equipment set in about 2 weeks of gameplay, something which normally takes several months by default.
260** Dungeons that have a Challenge Mode generally have account bound versions of whatever they normally reward and/or a slightly higher drop rate on valuable items, such as legendary enchantment cards.
261* HighlyVisibleNinja: At first glance the Dark Elf Kunoichi fits the bill, being clearly inspired by ''{{Manga/Naruto}}'' and focusing on enormous, spectacular fire jutsu and [[FlechetteStorm chakra-multiplied throwing weapons]]. Explained [[AllThereInTheManual in game lore]]: the title's an artifact from the days their clan spent in exile using their newly developed skills to pay the bills. Now that they're once more a part of "respectable" Dark Elf society, they'd rather be known as covert ''bodyguards'' than spies or assassins, and focus more on appearing to be decorative court fluff than not being seen to begin with.
262* HolyHandGrenade: A staple of the Priest classes, naturally.
263* HomeRunHitter: The Exorcist's Star in the Sky. He even yells out "HOME RUN!" with a full charge.
264* IdleAnimation: In addition to Gunner's constant reloading, most subclasses have brief animations that grow more elaborate after their 2nd Awakening that generally involve showing off their powers in some non-destructive way. There is also a special avatar aura that displays a more elaborate idle animation when equiped which was gotten as a [[PlayerVersusPlayer PvP]] reward in the Korean version of the game but turned into a Lost Treasure monthly item in the Global version.
265** All pets also have their own idle animations, most of the ones that represent a subclass usually try to use one of their skills but screw it up in some comical manner and some of them might also talk in speech bubble form.
266* ImmuneToFlinching: Since blocking is something that only a select few classes can do, most characters rely on this instead in both regular gameplay and [[PlayerVersusPlayer PvP]]: all characters have a LauncherMove that has Super Armor by default and there's a general buff that prevents you from being interrupted when casting skills if maxed out. Some characters specialize further in this, with physical Exorcist having Super Armor on most of his moves and both Strikers having a buff that gives them permanent Super Armor for its duration.
267* ImprobableAccessoryEffect:
268** Titles have been a part of ''DFO'' for a long time as a type of "accessory", going back to at least the debut of the [[AchievementSystem Title Book]] during the Nexon era. However, it's never really explained just ''what'' type of accessory it is, or how its effects are applied. Save for a few exceptions, like the sheriff badge in the [[https://wiki.dfo-world.com/view/Titles#Wild_West_Sheriff Wild West Sheriff package]], titles rarely look like actual accessories, having a still frame from the title's animation or a thematically approrpiate icon instead, and yet somehow they still bestow stat bonuses to the player.
269** The rather generically-named [[https://wiki.dfo.world/view/Sub_Equipment Sub Equipment slot]] comes a close second. Although its in-game drop sprite is that of the Rios Armband, the very first Sub Equipment players are likely to see, the equipment icons for this slot are thematically all over the place. Among other things, a Sub Equipment can be a book, gloves, random electronics, a cowboy hat, a badge, and in at least one event's case, a shooting star. Every single one has effects just as varied as their appearances, with some bordering on the nonsensical. For instance, the event-exclusive [[Music/{{Vocaloid}} "Mikuful"]] Sub Equipment is [[https://static.dfoneople.com/img/event/2018/0807_miku_event/img_con12_NPOk5IfQhkk9qX.jpg literally the "Ievan Polkka" Miku's head]] and it [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvihbVpIA-g casts pixelated explosions on enemies]] when its owner hits things.
270* ImprobableWeaponUser / ImprobableUseOfAWeapon: Due to vast number of different weapons that still end up conforming to preset weapon types, both sides of this are in full display on a regular basis: to list a few, weapons dropped by Lotus are invariably tentacles that take the form of the type of weapon in question, one of the short swords that you can use is actually a [[ChainsawGood chainsaw]] attachment from a MiniMecha, another short sword is actually a flamethrower that's wielded like a fire-elemental lightsabre, 2 of the high-tier elemental short swords don't have a visible edge of any description and resemble dragon spine segments more than anything, most high-tier normal brooms are actually different sorts of cleaning implements such as a mechanized circular mop, and one of the top 3 best Epic bludgeons in the game is...a twig. Yes, an extremely powerful twig with a famous named owner that you fight in the highest floor of Tower Of Despair and which pulsates with energy, but a twig nonetheless. Another example of this is the Bamboo Spear, which is another Epic weapon that has massive stats, yet it looks even more plain that the twig mentioned above and can be thought to be even more powerful in comparision because it's an APC-exclusive Epic that are even rarer than normal Epics, although at least it's intended to be a weapon if a very basic one at that.
271** If you don't think your chosen weapon is silly enough, there are weapon avatars that change your weapon to something that's invariably something funny, weird or just confusing, such as 8-bit weapons that make 8-bit noises and drop oversized pixes all over the place when attacked with, the informercial kitchen knife described below, a giant cob of corn for priests to plant on the ground instead of their totems and a set of powertools, including but not limited to a cordless drill, a screwdriver and a pair of tablesaws.
272* InconsistentDub:
273** Common with English translations of Korean [=MMOs=], but a particularly nasty case is the disaster that hit Arad partway through the game's run -- during the first part of open beta testing, it was referred to seemingly at random as The Great Metastasis or The Great Devolution -- things directly affected by it are very consistently called "devolved", though. Understandable as this is a result of Neople trying their hand at localizing and DFOG is in a beta state.
274** Amusingly, during the introduction video for Underfoot added in through Open Beta Part II, the English subtitles mistranslate it as the "Great '''Devotion'''", among other mistakes.
275** It should be noted that The Great Devolution was the source of disaster prior to the [[CosmicRetcon Metastasis]] update.
276** In general, any awkward translations for the initial rerelease version of the game are largely due to it being outsourced to a different company: most of it has been cleaned up in Season 2.
277** Flavor text in the male Priest's Neo: Awakening skills changed the Priest Order's patron diety's name to Lemidios, after years of being known as Remy Dios thanks to Nexon-era recovery items like Remy's Touch. The Mountain of Exiles update later cemented this spelling in its scenario questline.
278** About a year after the level 110 cap launched, the game's lore introduced a new {{Magitek}}-themed world separate from Arad, Empyrean and Pandemonium. This world was initially called Celesti both in- and out-of-game, starting with the release of Hall of Dimensions and going up to the release of the Archer subclass, who's a native resident of said world. However, for reasons unknown, the developers announced in a 2023-2024 roadmap that they planned on changing Celesti's name to Seon, [[KeepItForeign a transliteration of its Korean name]].
279* InfinityPlusOneSword: Or any other weapon or piece of equipment, really: you can keep reinforcing any equipable item to give it increasing amounts of defense-piercing damage or overall percentage-based damage reduction, which is shown with a numeric modifier that potentially goes up to +32. However, the more you reinforce, the lower the reinforcement's success rate drops: from +4 to +9, the item will lose 1-3 levels of reinforcements upon failure, and any reinforcement failure above +10 will instantly destroy the item, although there are expensive single-use tickets that prevent the item from being destroyed, causing it to just lose all reinforcement levels instead. This process is made all the more devious by the fact that reinforcements above +10 will massively increase the item's damage piercing/damage reduction to a point where it'll easily overshadow the item's default attack/defense value (for comparision's sake, strongest Epic weapons will have around 1000+ in their best stat by default, while a +15 weapon of any grade or level will have over double that in piercing damage, although it's not a straight comparision since piercing damage is added on top of normal damage and isn't multiplied by your damage stat like the weapon's attack value is) and both reinforcement successes AND failures from +10 onwards are broadcasted to everyone on the channel you're playing on: in practice, the highest reinforcement people will generally want to subject any high-end weapon to is +12, as the success chance from that point onwards is far too low (25% chance of success to go from +10 to +11, 12% for +11 to +12 and anything past that is essentially single digits) to risk for any additional increase of power.
280** For classes with Fixed Damage, however, Reinforcement is not an option. Their attack damage is determined by the Independent Attack of the class, with does not increase with Reinforcement. To increase the damage for the Fixed Class, the player must upgrade the weapon by using the Refinement system (which requires reaching Shonan), which increases the Independent Attack. This requires finding Powerful Energies (found in the Shonan tournaments or weekly on a Golden Road dungeon) instead of Gold and Clear Cubes, but it can only reach as high as +8 Refinement (roughly equivalent to a +12 Reinforcement). The good news are that the weapon does not break and does not lose levels in case of failure (although you still lose your Powerful Energies), even with a high level refinement attempt.
281** There's also Amplification, which works like reinforcing but it tends to be much more expensive to do materialwise, failing an amplification at +7 resets it to 0 in addition to breaking the item at failing it at +10 and it can only be performed on cursed items by default and cursing non-cursed items requires extremely expensive scrolls or tomes rarely given out in events. In exchange, amplified items also give you a stat bonus to one of the 4 main stats which can be significant at higher amplification levels.
282* InstantWinCondition: In Kore Power Plant, Avenging Pit's room has a motor and a generator in the back. If you attack the motor, the fire wall guarding the generator will drop. If you destroy the generator, Avenging Pit will immediately drop dead, regardless of how much health he had remaining.
283* ItemCrafting:
284** It exists, but suffers severe design flaws. Although crafting materials drop by the truckload and will quickly fill up your storage, the actual recipes are so vanishingly rare that many players never even see one, let alone one for a piece of equipment they can actually use. As a result, crafting recipes and the resultant items tend be vastly overpriced on the player market.
285** This has far more use with Chronicle items, some types of which only drop in recipe form instead of the actual item.
286** The Season 2 update added another form of item crafting, Compounding: you can essentially take an item of specific tier of equipment and turn it into a randomized piece of equipment of the same tier. Depending on the item's level and tier, it can be a good way to turn less popular items into much more wanted ones to either use or sell for profit if you manage to get lucky with it.
287** This is the main gimmick of Aeterna. Rather than getting equipment from random drops, you get materials from enemies that you can use to synthesize new armor and items. The ultimate end goal of Aeterna is synthesizing boxes that randomly generate Synergy Legendary/Epic set pieces, materials to upgrade Synergy Legendaries to Synergy Epics, and Dark Dragontongue's Essence, which requires an Immaterial Essence from Sirocco Raid to synthesize and can be fused to add Synergy effects to your weapon instead of normal Sirocco options.
288* KickChick: Inverted. Female Fighters are mainly punchers, while Male Fighters hail from Suju, where the main martial arts style uses kicking.
289* KickThemWhileTheyAreDown: Combos can be continued on downed opponents if the move hits low enough. The Brawler has a special move for downed opponents, as Faris will show you.
290* KillItWithFire: "Burn, baby, burn!" The Launcher has access to '''two''' different flamethrowers: One that he gets early on, has a short range but unlike most of his weapons is counted as a ''magical'' attack but can't be moved, and another one that's much longer ranged (to the point where the camera '''actually shifts to fit it all in the same screen'''), is based on the Launcher's strength, ''and'' can be moved. And then there's the Stinger missile which erupts into four fire geysers.
291-->'''Elementalist:''' ''"Fire...PILLAR!"''
292** The Thief subclass Kunoichi LIVES for this trope as the vast majority of her skills are fire element.
293** Creator's starting magic style, [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin "Fire"]], is this.
294** The F. Priest subclass Inquisitor can imbue her weapon with fire, increasing her attack. [[KnightTemplar Perfectly appropiate for an adventurer like her]].
295* KingMook: Lightning Kinoll for the goblins, and Tau King Shauta for the taus. In fact, there are several bosses throughout the game that tend to be an upgraded form of some normal enemy.
296* KudzuPlot: ''Dungeon Fighter Online'' has a ''lot'' of plot threads and scenarios that all add their own little piece to the overall story and mythos surrounding the game's background to the point where by the time you get off of Empyrean for the first time and enter Sirocco it starts to get difficult to keep track of what exactly is going on and for what purpose. The bottom line for much of it is that all of the game's events revolve around a metaphorical chess game between Apostle Hilder (who is using the player as her "pawn" for currently unexplained purposes) and all of the other Apostles who are working to subvert her will by any means necessary, even if it means the destruction of Arad, parallel universes, or even time itself.
297* LeeroyJenkins: The personality given to the generic [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8fzRjp2_vc male fighter.]]
298* LevelGrinding: Originally extremely grindy from the outset, years of updates have managed to make level grinding essentially non-existent. In most cases the only thing you need to do to level up is FollowThePlottedLine, and various facilities available to the player serve to speed up any potential stopping points, such as EXP capsules available through the Explorer's Club and Level Up Tickets available through the same service as well as a myriad of events. Given the game heavily encourages {{Altitis}}, getting new characters up to speed seems to be more of a priority than having players slog it out every time they make an alt.
299* LevelLockedLoot: Most equipment requires you to be at a high enough of a level to be able to equip it and each tier is generally 5 levels apart. Interestingly enough, some equipment also has a maximum level: once you pass that level, the gear stops giving you stats and you won't be able to re-equip it once you unequip it.
300* LevelUpFillUp: Attaining the next level in a dungeon instantly restores all of your HP and MP. The resulting burst of light that generally accompanies Level Ups also happens to work as a screen-wide attack that deals minor damage to anything in sight and knocks down enemies.
301* LightIsGood: Nen Masters and Crusaders.
302* LightningBruiser: A Priest subclass, the Monk, mostly forgoes the parent class's weaponry (in the form of driving it into the ground for a buff aura) in favor of [[GoodOldFisticuffs holy boxing.]] The loss of the big heavy weapon makes them SIGNIFICANTLY faster.
303** The Striker subclass for Fighters is also this, with more emphasis on the "Bruiser" part, Punching and kicking for massive amounts of damage. They have powerful self-buffs that turn them into a MightyGlacier, sacrificing movement and attack speed for massively increased power and defense, and the ability to ignore attacks and ''shake the screen with each hit''.
304** Literally with the Female Striker's Lightning Dance skill. Landing the first hit will cause her to TeleportSpam around the area, kicking everything she can in the face.
305* LightIsNotGood: Light Castellan Sieghart is most certainly ''not'' a good guy.
306* LightningBruiser: All subclasses that use light armor.
307* LikeCannotCutLike: Apostles are forbidden from killing each other. Although they are essentially the closest thing to a higher power in the story, they're still very much mortal and are very killable. Many Apostles in the story attempt to LoopholeAbuse this issue by [[LetsYouAndHimFight getting a proxy to fight other Apostles]], usually the Adventurer.
308* LinearWarriorsQuadraticWizards: If you try to select a female Mage when creating a character, you will see the warning: "Mages exchange fragility early on for great power later in the game. This class may not be suitable for beginners."
309** Male Mage becomes, surprisingly, the opposite. His listed difficulty is "Easy"[[note]]Each difficulty refers to how simple it is to use said class[[/note]] while the the Female Mage is the only "Hard" class, and unlike the Female Mage his options are rather tight and you most likely won't have trouble getting all the skills. The two classes he has either have less variety in available moves (Elemental Bombers), or change his dynamic completely (Glacial Masters), as opposed to their (possible) female counterparts: Elementalist for Elemental Bomber, and Battle Mage for Glacial Master.
310** Flat-out inverted for the Creator, which utterly dominates the early game -- easily capable of soloing even medium or hard difficulty -- but becomes much weaker and more party-dependent later on.
311* LimitBreak: Each class has access to special skills called Awakenings, which are unlocked at Level 50, Level 85, and Level 100 upon reaching 1st Awakening, 2nd Awakening, and Neo: Awakening, respectively. They are distinguished by having much longer cooldowns compared to normal skills, are {{Super Move Portrait Attack}}s, and are typically much more powerful than other skills, either in raw strength, utility, or both. Neo: Awakening additionally requires it to share the cooldown of either your 1st Awakening or 2nd Awakening skiill, with effects varying based on which skill you decide to give up.
312* LordBritishPostulate: A minor, accidental version: thanks to an Epic item that randomly confuses you and some other unknown factors, someone managed to accidentally kill an event-specific female bear cub that works like a pet, even though pets are supposed to be invincible to all forms of damage, as seen [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVG-NUq6Y_4 here.]]
313* LootBoxes: Lost Treasures are these in all but name.
314* LuckBasedMission:
315** A rather aggravating Epic Quest from the original ''DFO'' involves giving up a large amount of disassemble by-products, and several drops in exchange for a MacGuffin. You then run this MacGuffin over to another NPC who you pay a ridiculous amount of money for a 1/4 chance of getting the required object.
316*** A related mission has you doing the ''exact same thing'', except now you have to get 5 items that have either a 1/2 of 1/4 chance of dropping. These items are disconcertingly similar in appearance to burning piles of refuse.
317*** Post-Metastasis, the above two quests are moved up to a higher level dungeon, only now it's even more annoying because one of the drops required was replaced with an even rarer drop that only drops from bosses and is also required for Awakening.
318** Later on in the game, there is a quest that requires you to turn in some gold and a few pricey materials for a capsule. You then have about a 23% chance of getting the correct doll. People have reported getting the doll from after one try to '''upwards of twenty'''. What made this quest more frustrating than the examples above is the fact that it was required for you to get your [[LimitBreak Awakening]] skills. Thankfully, the Revolution update made Awakening much easier. (And yet, more expensive in gold/material costs.)
319* LudicrousGibs: Most enemies explode into chunks when killed. [[Manga/FistOfTheNorthStar Even when punched to death.]]
320* MagicKnight: The Priest class, but also the Soul Bender, Asura, Nen Master, and Battle Mage subclasses (and possibly the Spitfire).
321* MarketBasedTitle: ''Dungeon Fighter Online''. Nexon America converted the title ''Dungeon and Fighter'' to this because they thought ''Dungeon and Fighter'' would sound too awkward to someone who knows how to speak English.
322* MechanicallyUnusualClass: Creator. She looks similar to and shares movement animations with Mages, but that's it for similarities. Unlike every other fighter in the game, the Creator fights primarily with the mouse and moves with WASD, with a different set of hotkeys centered around her alternative movement keys. She wields Broomsticks, but her playstyle takes StatStick to the logical extreme, as she can't even ''attack with it'', instead opting for a point-and-click burst attack that can be aimed anywhere onscreen and rapid-fired [[ButtonMashing as fast as the player can click the mouse.]] Her skills have no "cooldown", but rather a usage gauge that depletes whenever she activates one of her skills and uses the associated attacks. This gauge replenishes when that skill isn't activated, allowing her to switch attack styles on the fly and always have a few tricks charging in reserve. [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking She's also the only Mage-type character that wields Plate Armor.]]
323** Dark Knight, to a lesser extent. While still combo focused, none of his skills have a fighting game-like input at all and need to be bound to one of six hotkey combos. This includes the basic LauncherMove that's normally bound to the Z button on every other class (the Dark Knight's Z button does nothing by default).
324* MenAreStrongWomenArePretty: [[PlayingWithATrope Played with.]] For the most part, any class with a gender counterpart will have difference between genders, but the main difference for most of the classes is this: Men will have more damage behind their skills, females will have more skill or utility behind theirs. The female classes are by no means weaker. The easiest to look at is the spitfire. The male spitfire will have less charges for their bullets and less grenades, but they will do more damage with each one, females have more bullets and grenades that are weaker, so while the male will burn their their arsenal quickly they will also go through enemies faster, while females will have more shots to use on different enemies.
325* MightyGlacier: Any subclass that uses heavy or plate armor will be this.
326** The Priests are slow moving, but are hard to kill. They can also dole out as well as they receive. The Crusader subclass' Plate Armor Mastery makes the already strong Plate Armor grant an even greater defense bonus, and their buffs can take up most of the slack in magic defense. They also have a skill which makes them completely invulnerable to physical type damage for a short period. Finally, they can heal themselves on a short cast time.
327*** The Exorcist subclass is even better/worse, if they go with a melee build. Almost ALL of their attacks have huge range, hit like a bladed locomotive, and grant super armor. They are also the best counter for [[HitAndRunTactics evasive]] witches, as their axe can hit incredibly high.
328** The Monk is an inversion of this, tossing away their weapon and instead beating their opponents to death the old-fashioned way; with FlashStep and RapidFireFisticuffs.
329** The Grappler also qualifies, but is not nearly as slow as the Priest.
330* MiniGame:
331** The pre-Metastasis version had a slot machine, played with tokens that were a RandomDrop from enemies that could potentially get you enhancement beads, reinforcement tickets and avatar tokens, but in practice, the chance to get anything but various potions was near zero. The post-Metastasis version has a crane game as a permanent fixture in one of the final areas of the game with pots that have an increased chance to create Legacy-tier equipment as the most common price, but it also has random Boss Unique items, various healing items, meteors and even items that create a random (low) number of Demon Eyes as a price: successfully grabbing one of the items with the crane is easy with a little practice, but anything that's actually valuable will slip off the crane and fall back in 90% of the time.
332** There are also a number of other minigames available during specific events including a simplistic boardgame, a card matching minigame and a bingo minigame.
333** Monster Colosseum is an auto-battler strategy subgame featured in certain events where the player creates a team of up to five monsters and pits them against enemy teams. Winning fights awards Monster Coins that they can use to upgrade monsters using cards that they either draw from a gacha or with Tickets. Players can also fight other players in the Arena for the chance to get more coins or climb the leaderboards. Clearing achievements rewards a special currency that can be used to buy items for the main game.
334* MsFanservice: Knight as she's designed to play this up even more than the non-mage female classes.
335* MoreDakka: Gunners can equip crossbows and semiautomatics, which have the fastest firing rate out of all the guns. However, Rangers have passive skills that increase the firing rate and decrease the cooldown of revolvers. Finally, there's the gatling gun skill.
336* MyRulesAreNotYourRules: Do a quick run of the Tower Of The Dead: it won't take you long to notice [=APCs=] spamming their skills at a rate that far exceeds their minimum possible cooldowns.
337** Pretty much how the Tower of Despair works. Some opponents love to spam "cube" attacks[[note]]any high-level skill that requires Clear Cube Fragments to use[[/note]] while the player's best attacks start on cooldown. Exaggerated by the floor 53 Summoner, who will summon Conqueror Kasijas right in your face ''during the countdown''. That being said, Indras' Thunder God Energy also doesn't follow the rules and will cause the current opponent to be zapped by a lightning bolt during the countdown, doing extra damage and briefly putting them in hitstun when the battle starts.
338*** The Tower of Anguish is even '''worse''', not only the enemies (including new APC's based on the Knight and Demonic Lancer) are a lot harder and tougher than the ones at the Tower of Despair, but now they can use '''Awakening Skills'''.
339** Unstoppable Kon is unique among friendly [=APCs=] in that [[CripplingOverspecialization he only knows Gaebolg Fist.]] He will use no other skill, and due to how proficient he is with it, he can use it every couple seconds, whereas the average Mechanic usually has to wait a few minutes between charges.
340* MythologyGag: The [=APCs=] Awakened Baron, Sea Dragon King Carpentise, Angry Buyong, Deranged Ixia, and G King Rocksper found in the Tower of Despair are based on the main characters of the anime ''Arad Senki: Slap-Up Party'' Baron, Capenesis, Ryunmei, Ixia, and Jeda appropriately. They are the only [=APCs=] in the Tower to use default class sprites, except for Rocksper, who is the only character still using the pre-revision Priest sprite.
341* NinjaLog: The Female Mage's Phase Shift. Triggering it will leave behind a straw dummy in the Mage's place as she teleports, and picking up the dummy grants a speed boost.
342** Kunoichi has a similar skill fittingly enough.
343* ThereIsNoKillLikeOverkill: The Mechanic, Berserker, and Grappler subclasses have some insanely powerful moves that seem just plain cheap or painful, and that's not counting the Awakenings.
344** If the damage dealt is especially excessive (as would be the case should you play early dungeons with even a mid-game character), the enemy immediately [[LudicrousGibs disintegrates into chunks]] (rather than exploding) which fly away from your character at a rather high speed, and the announcer will note it quite enthusiastically.
345* NoNameGiven: All of the player characters, justified as this is an MMO and you're supposed to name them upon creation, in fanart they're referred by their subclass names.
346* NonstandardCharacterDesign: Creator and Knight have a remarkably different design than the rest of the cast, looking more {{Animesque}} in contrast to the game's mangwa-ish style.
347* NotTheFallThatKillsYou: Both Gunner stories involve the Gunner plummeting out of the sky and landing safely in some bushes in the forest with nary a scratch. The slightly revised backstory post-Metastasis downplays it, as the Gunner now lands in a tree and nearly breaks his/her back from the impact.
348* NotTheIntendedUse: Despite the seemingly simple gameplay, there's numerous ways to abuse various mechanics to do things you weren't meant to do or [[ScriptBreaking skipping lenghty parts of various largely scripted bossfights]]. These tricks are extremely prevalent in Otherverse, which consists mostly of time-consuming {{Puzzle Boss}}es:
349** In general, even most normally invincible enemies that only take damage as a result of specific actions can be damaged briefly by your attacks with extremely good timing during this time, but unless your party is ridiculously overpowered, you can't usually make use of it to kill them quicker.
350** In the first room of Castle Nebulous, it's intended that players get caught in sequence, because getting caught places a Curse debuff on characters and the stab causes a OneHitKill on Cursed characters. If the party contains a Gunner, they can simply place a Landrunner and let it be caught to trigger the decoys.
351** Crusader's Hammer Of Repentance has a chance to temporarily convert an enemy to your side, meaning they take damage from other enemies, do damage to them and can't damage you. This can be used to quickly take out 2 of the enemies who'd normally be time consuming to fight: the ridiculous HealingFactor of the four Puppetmasters in Castle Nebulous is nullified when it is in effect, meaning you can attack them normally (instead of having to kill them one by one since hitting one of them massively heals the other 3) and Iron Swaycle in Void Rift can be lured into attacking one of the inactive cubes that need to be pushed onto a platform to defeat him, which instantly kills him the same way it kills you if he's under [=HoR's=] effect.
352*** Likewise, Crusader's Healing Wind not only heals other party members, but it also creates a strong shield that protects you from all damage for as long as you are in its area of effect: this can be used to quickly kill off the 3 Lizard Souls in Castle Nebulous with your strongest moves without the risk of being subjected to a TotalPartyKill as a result of killing their decoys at the same time.
353** The second to last room in Goblin Kingdom has you protecting a weird machine in the center of the room that goblins shot out of a cannon will run towards, killing themselves and damaging the machine: if the machine is damaged enough, it fires out bombs that do severe damage and if it takes even more damage, it blows up, causing a TotalPartyKill. However, you can skip this lengthy room by using various attack items, which are subject to FriendlyFire and can be used not only to kill other players, but also in other, more creative manners: by using them on the machine to blow it up early while simultaneously knocking down your party members AND using another move that grants you invincibility frames, the party can use their Quick Recovery to remain invincible while the bomber makes use of the goblins to make them invincible to the explosion.
354*** This method is so widely used that there's an ingame title that references it and even shows it in action.
355** Female Brawler's Junk Spin can be used to bypass many scripted attacks from bosses or making them vulnerable for extended perioids of time, thanks to its guaranteed long-lasting Stun effect: this is especially useful against Ozma, whose first major attack enables FriendlyFire for all your party members, meaning you'll easily kill each other by accident. The only cure for this besides waiting it to wear off is to use the transformed player's special attack, but it rarely works and even when it does, the transformed player will still be under the FriendlyFire effect afterwards: using Junk Spin or another disabling attack on Ozma skips this phase of the fight, allowing them to turn a potentially 10-minute slogfest into a 30 second one.
356** To prevent Ash Core's TotalPartyKill attack, one of the players is required to stand on a glyph at the other end of the room so they're surrounded by an aura of ice and then traverse the length of the room within a time limit to touch Ash Core with the aura while the said aura constantly stuns them and enemies drop impassable pillars of magma in their way. What usually winds up happening (if possible) is that players will use "vacuum" attacks such as Deadly Enticer or Mega Drill to drag Ash Core (who doesn't even have an actual hitbox during this attack) to the aura carrier, making the attack trivial.
357* OralFixation: Male Rangers never go anywhere without their smokes.
358* OurElvesAreDifferent: Dark elves to be exact, as they're not chaotic evil, and are generally reasonable. Though some do go about practice dark magic.
359* OurTimeTravelIsDifferent: The Time Gate works by creating rifts that transport users of the Time Gate to different periods in time; however, because of where the Time Gate exists, whatever happens in the Time Gate has no bearing on present or future events. People within the Time Gate can even transport inanimate objects in and out of the Time Gate at will, although living creatures are a huge no-no. Also, the Time Gate is only accessible to a select few; Dark Knight and Creator were transported there unwillingly via the Vilmark experiments, and Siran gained the ability to open and witness the Time Gate after shielding himself with Nen the moment Apostle Sirocco was killed.
360* PaletteSwap: Monsters get many colors to choose from.
361* ParentalAbandonment:
362** The Fighter's parents were killed by monsters.
363** The Slayer killed his own as a result of possession by Kazan, poor kid.
364* PistolWhipping: The drawing animation of the Gunners basic attack. Launchers get a skill early on that allows them to pistol whip [[GatlingGood with a gatling gun,]] [[KillItWithFire a flamethrower,]] [[EnergyWeapon a laser rifle...]]
365* PlanetTerra: Taken to almost parodic levels -- although Terra is all but outright stated to be Earth as we know it or a very similar parallel world (down to New York City being all that's left of it and one high-level alchemy item having flavor text referring to a legendary medicine of Terra capable of granting superhuman stamina for a single night called "biagra"), it's ''never'' referred to in-game '''or''' in-lore as anything but Terra. "Earth" isn't even mentioned as an older name or to confirm outright it's the same place.
366* PlayEveryDay: Since you only get a set number of FP every day, not using them up means you're missing out on some potential experience or drops. That being said, depending on how many days you skip playing a character and how high their level is, [[RewardingInactivity you can get up to a full day's worth of boosted EXP the next time you play them]]. You can also send any level 70 and higher character to explore for a predetermined period of time, from 2 hours to 2 weeks, with better rewards the longer they explore.
367* PowerCopying: A minor example: each subclass out of the ones available to Slayer, M. Fighter, F. Fighter and M. Gunner has a specific skill that any other subclass can use upon completing a quest, although the said skill usually costs a lot more SP to level up than it would for the class that the skill actually belongs to and you can't level it as high, limiting its usefulness: that being said, the skill you can learn this way can be exceptionally useful to some of the subclasses, such as giving Asura's Spirit Crescent to a Blade Master to compensate their lack of range early on or as an actual damaging move if used by a Soul Bender, who also focuses on magic damage.
368* PowerCreep: While the game has a good record about this, things like more recent 2nd awakenings and recent subclasses invoke this trope due to how strong they are compared to some older classes, but things are usually handled well with some of the worst offenders being unable to [[PlayerVersusPlayer PvP]] until properly tuned. There are rumors that in the korean version in the course of adjusting classes for the Raid content, are invoking this big time as they supposedly aren't adjusting other content.
369* PowerGlows: Some of the subclass cosmetic features consist of glows. Weapons too, when upgraded through the reinforcement machines: Reinforcement gives them a pulsating glow that grows in intensity the more times the weapon is reinforced, while Refinement gives them a colored outline. Finally, if a Hell Party drops an Epic piece of equipment or a Legendary item drops from any enemy that can drop one, there's a bright glowing effect to ensure that you don't neglect to pick it up: unique equipment likewise has a glow around them when they're lying on the ground if a boss drops one, but there's no special effect when they drop and it's a lot more subdued.
370* PurposefullyOverpowered: Due to the extreme difficulty in attaining them, most Epic weapons and armor sets are by far the best equipment of their kind for the vast majority of the classes. The same also applies to reinforcement values past +10 and the combination of both of those things can allow you to solo content that's meant for full parties and isn't downscaled with less people playing it.
371* PrestigeClass:
372** Once you get a character to Level 50, they can go through a process known as "Awakening" for their Subclass. In addition to a class name change and a cosmetic upgrade to their idle stance, Awakenings come with powerful Awakening Skills, one of which is a powerful and beneficial Passive and one of which is an extremely destructive attack with a unique SuperMovePortraitAttack and a long cooldown.
373** Level 75 characters can advance further to a 2nd Awakening, which comes with another name change, another cosmetic upgrade, and even more powerful 2nd Awakening Skills with an even cooler and flashier SuperMovePortraitAttack.
374** Finally, there are Neo Awakenings (unofficially called "3rd Awakening"), accessible at Level 100. Neo Awakenings revert the class name to the base variant with the word "Neo:" at the front, come with an even flashier idle animation upgrade, and some earlier skills get SP cost reduction and occasionally a bonus animation. They also unlock Neo Awakening Skills, including two incredibly potent passives and an even more destructive Neo Awakening Active Skill that requires you to give up your 1st or 2nd Awakening active on use but is by far the most powerful attack a character can possess.
375** The Creator and Dark Knight are somewhat like this, since they can only be unlocked once you have another character on the account that is Lv. 70 or higher. Weirdly enough, this change was implemented because Neople more or less considers them "a mistake" as they deviate too much from the standard gameplay, and were thus segregated from the main cast as a result.
376** Otherwise downplayed with the Creator and Dark Knight themselves beyond the unlock requirements; while they still have Awakenings like every other character, they don't get a class name change upon any Awakening and they don't get any Awakening Actives at all until 2nd Awakening.
377* RandomEvent: Events that occur every so often when you're Disassembling items. Scoring a Cube Jackpot means that instead of dispensing a handful of colored Cube Fragments upon Disassembly, you will instead get '''''a ton''''' of that Cube Fragment. Not only that, but when you're Disassembling pink items, there's a chance that the end result will be rare trading items usually only dropped by bosses and you can get a Jackpot of those as well, meaning you can get several hundred of them all at once: before the Season 2 update, this allowed you to easily buy one of the rare items that'd normally take several weeks' worth of concentrated effort to get an equal amount of said rare trading items, but they're currently not nearly as significant for reasons listed above.
378* RandomNumberGod: ''Everything'' you pick up while in a party goes to a random team mate, unless all of your teammates are dead. This tends to cause LootDrama when Uniques show up.
379** Averted in ''DFO Global'', where everyone gets their own drops, although this discourages party play when hunting for items since you don't have to share the drops. Otherverse drops are also thankfully given to everyone, which is basically mandatory since you can't do any of the worthwhile difficulty levels solo.
380** On a more general level, the chances of succeeding in anything that'd give you a massive power boost (getting high-level Unique equipment, successful high-level reinforcements, etc.) are all massively weighted towards failure. The most obvious example of this are any items that either have a chance of giving you a powerful piece of equipment or a large number of normally rare items: the chance to get any Unique or Legacy items from pots is usually extremely small, and any item that gives you a random number of rare items is heavily weighted towards the lower end to the degree that the listed number of items you can get at maximum might as well be cut in half. In other words, if you're making use of the said items to get more of the rare items, you might as well always assume that you get the lowest listed amount.
381* RankInflation: Ranks for completing dungeons go all the way up to SSS. The most [[DepartmentOfRedundancyDepartment difficult difficulty]] for each dungeon requires at least an S rank on the difficulty below it.
382* RareCandy: When a character reaches maximum level, a new gauge appears next to their health globe: every time you fill it up by gaining experience that'd normally go to waste, you'll receive a Growth Capsule which can be used on any of your other characters to give them an instant 1 million experience. However, since each Growth Capsule expires in 2 days and you can only use them on characters that're already level 50 to begin with, this diminishes their usefulness somewhat. Then again, with the increased level cap and multiple events that encourage creating new characters, it's unlikely that you don't have at least 1 lv50 character along with a max level character who can receive the said capsules to begin with.
383* RareRandomDrop: The "Unique" (Pink) and above tier of item rarity. They exist, but are much "easier" to get from the Auction House. To see a unique drop, bad or not, is a surprise.
384** The "Epic" (Orange) tier of equipment. It only drops from "Hell Mode" [[EarnYourFun The drop chance is very low, not to mention without any player interaction,]] ''[[EarnYourFun Hell Modes themselves are randomly encountered by default!]]'' [[PowerEqualsRarity The reward is usually worth it if you get one]], [[InfinityPlusOneSword particularly if you are of higher level for the drop.]]
385*** You can also force Hell Modes on command once you hit high enough of a level and do the respective quest to enable them, but each one takes at least 20 Demon Invitations, which are a semi-rare drop themselves unless you know how to farm them[[note]]such as grinding Raids and Ancient Dungeons, getting a character to level 85 for a free 500 DI box, disassembling unwanted Epic items, events, etc.[[/note]].
386*** Another thing that heavily figures into the rarity of Epic items is the fact that most Epic armor and accessories have a massively overpowered SetBonus that greatly overshadows most other non-set gear setups: this means that while you might get lucky enough and get a piece or two of an Epic armor set, they will be vastly less powerful on their own. The main difficulty from that point onward is actually ''completing'' the set to reap the benefits, which can be incredibly frustrating due to the RandomNumberGod hampering one's efforts every step of the way. This was toned down slightly with the release of the Metro Center area, as the level 90 Epic armors have partial {{Set Bonus}}es in addition to the full set bonus, and each armor type also has non-set pieces which have slightly stronger individual bonuses to compensate.
387*** In addition to the above, the level 90 cap also toned down the randomness of Hell Modes to some degree: the Hardcore and Insane hells were combined into a single difficulty that functions like the old Insane difficulty, the Epic droprates were increased slightly, the Demon Eyes were changed into Epic Souls that drop only 20% as often but are essentially worth 5 times as much which ultimately makes them more valuable, the drop pool for level 90 Hells is much smaller than the level 85 Hell drop pool [[note]]mostly because it doesn't contain massive amounts of largely useless class-specific sub equipment, which is a huge problem when farming 80-86 Hell Modes[[/note]], the drop rate for different types of Epics was weighted more equally so that weapons, armor, accessories and special equipment drops roughly as often and the Epic Fragment weighting was removed completely. A new dungeon, Pandemonium Rift, was also added to the game with its own entrance material that can be entered up to 3 times per day and if both minibosses are defeated, the Epic droprate from the boss is higher than normal Hells.
388*** Inverted with Chronicle items: it's almost inevitable that you'll see at least 2 or 3 of them for each Otherverse dungeon you play through, but there's a massive number of them, the most powerful ones come in sets and they are dropped only by the hardest bosses. Thankfully every single one of them can be bought with Interdimensional Fragments even if the RandomNumberGod isn't co-operating with you and 2 pieces of the tier 2 set and a single piece of the tier 3 set can be gotten as a quest reward, but it's still going to take a good while to get the remaining 8 pieces of the set you're after, especially since each Otherverse dungeon can only be entered twice per day by default. The later updates have further made obtaining them much easier, with the questline now giving you 3 pieces of any set of your choice and the new dungeon, Dark Elf Ruins, further allowing you to get some of the pieces much easier.
389** Skeleton Keys were notorious for this in the pre-Metastasis era. You need a Skeleton Key to open one Lost Treasure, which usually contain powerful consumables or rare items that can only otherwise be acquired from the Cash Shop, with the main draw being monthly items that are often extremely sought after and can include items that either can't be acquired any other way or are infinitely harder and/or more time-consuming to get; and even if you have no use for said items, you can still sell them to [=NPCs=] for ''15 or 30 million gold'', depending on the item. However, Skeleton Keys could only be obtained one of two ways: picking up Skeleton Key Fragments in dungeons or [[BribingYourWayToVictory buying them from the Cash Shop.]] If you didn't want to shell out cash, you were forced to grab Fragments, which were not only ''absurdly'' rare, but required one to collect ''four'' Fragments for ''one'' Key, which was a gigantic pain because of how rare they were. Even worse, despite being useless on their own the Fragments were Unique-tier items and could thus replace an ''actual'' Unique item drop. To add even more insult to injury, in case you DID manage to ever get a complete Key and use it to open a Lost Treasure, [[ShaggyDogStory you could get ANOTHER Key Fragment instead of a usable item]]. The post-Metastasis era fixed this by discarding Fragments altogether in favor of whole Keys, reducing the number needed to open a Lost Treasure from 4 to 3, and boosting their drop rates considerably--even giving them out as event rewards. [[BribingYourWayToVictory It's still faster to buy Keys from the Cash Shop, though]].
390*** On July 2022 the Skeleton Keys were retired and revamped into the Danji Pot System, which is functionally the same. The only differences being that you can open the Pot immediately without collecting three of them, and that you can multi open it in bulk of 10-30 pots at a time, opening those pots this way increases the chance of getting a monthly exclusive item. The drop rate in dungeons are more or less the same, however.
391* RedEyesTakeWarning: Slayers in general have red eyes, but the Berserkers' are GlowingEyesOfDoom.
392* RedRightHand: The Slayer's left arm, which is possessed by the demon Kazan.
393* RevenueEnhancingDevices: The Lost Treasures are essentially a form of this: they work similarily to crates in free-to-play shooters in that getting the treasures themselves is easy, but finding keys to open them is noticeably more difficult. You need 3 keys to open one and you can expect to see roughly that many per FP bar spent on average, but you can buy them in large amounts in the ingame cash shop. Their contents usually consist of a number of items that're hard or impossible to get in other ways without spending cash on it, with several much more valuable items being offered for a limited time, although all of them can be obtained in a more direct manner in some form. That being said, in the Nexon version the keys were dropped as fragments that needed to be put together before they could be used and they were much more rare to begin with.
394* ReverseGrip: Theives, combined with dual wielding.
395* RevolversAreJustBetter: The Ranger subclass subscribes to this train of thought.
396* RewardingInactivity: There's a title you can get for idling 5 hours in a row. Two of the professions are also somewhat based around this: they involve setting up shop in town and letting other players make use of your skills in the said profession while you're not actively playing the game over the NPC providers of the said service. There's also a recurring event that gives you accountbound pots every 15, 30, 60, and 120 minutes you spend online that contain various relatively common but still useful items and rare items for staying online for 100, 200 or 400 hours total for the duration of the event.
397* ScunthorpeProblem: When the North American version first came out, you couldn't even say "Blazing Grakqarak" without part of it being censored, even though ''the game uses that actual name for a dungeon.'' The game's censor filter system was pretty stupid all around. Over time, Nexon ended up adding in more filters that just made things worse, but finally got things together and revamped the filter system to something decent.
398** ''DFO Global'' used to have this issue to some mindboggling extent and it kept getting slightly worse over updates with more and more words being added to the filter list for seemingly no reason until the censor was finally removed completely several years after they first announced its planned removal.
399* SelfDeprecation: On the Tower of Anguish's 38th floor, the boss is a fake player complaining about the lack of epic equipment drops. There's also a hell gate in the middle of the arena, except instead of spawning mobs upon destroying it, it [[LightEmUp shoots out light beams]] commonly associated with epic drops, which instantly stuns the boss. Depending on who you ask, this floor is either this trope, [[BitingTheHandHumor a jab against]] Creator/{{Nexon}}, or a jab against [[TakeThatAudience players in megaphone chat complaining about the lack of epic drops]].
400* SelfMadeOrphan: The Slayer, though unwillingly.
401* SetBonus:
402** The game is notorious for how heavy-handed it is with making set bonuses the main focal point of gearing. Legendary, Epic, and some Unique equipment you find generally comes in sets that, when equipped together, exponentially improve the effectiveness of the gear you're wearing through additional bonuses such as Skill level boosts, percent modifiers to stats/damage/etc., miscellaneous gimmicks, and more. This simultaneously makes endgame gearing a massive headache because to squeeze out the best possible usage out of your gear you need at least ''five'' parts of the same set depending on the set in question, and the RandomNumberGod ''does not'' play nice.
403** Sirocco Raid Epics play with the formula a bit: they don't explicitly have set bonuses ''per se'', but a good chunk of a single piece's equipment options are only activated if a specific piece from the same set is equipped. Sirocco Epic bottoms improve sub equipments, which improve rings, which improve bottoms, forming a triangular relationship. This creates a unique situation where a two-piece "set bonus" varies wildly depending on which two specific pieces are equipped (although players are still encouraged to wear all three if possible).
404* ShoutOut: [[ShoutOut/DungeonFighterOnline So much it got its own page.]]
405* ShotoClone: Fighters can learn [[KamehameHadoken Nen Shot]] and [[HurricaneKick Tornado Kick]]. Nen Masters can learn Nen Cannon (Denjin Hadouken) and Strikers can learn [[{{Shoryuken}} Rising Fist]].
406* SinisterScythe: The Priest can equip this type of weapon.
407** The Avenger has a special bonus for using it; it gives them a bonus to Darkness damage. One of the very first spells you unlock also involves manifesting a scythe of darkness and pulling off a rapid combo, regardless of whatever weapon you were holding before. Yeah, Avenger is all over it.
408* SkillPointReset: You can reset your skills at any point or level them down individually at your preference, and resetting them at least five times nets you an useful title.
409* SlasherSmile: The Slayer can don this, as [[http://images.wikia.com/dfobuilds/images/0/0f/Soul_bender.png these]] [[http://wiki.dfo-world.com/images/3/38/Slayer_berserker.png examples]] [[http://browse.deviantart.com/?qh=§ion=&q=dfo+slayer+story#/d2y7c9s speak]] [[http://browse.deviantart.com/?qh=§ion=&q=dfo+slayer+story#/d2y7cc0 for]] [[http://browse.deviantart.com/?qh=§ion=&q=dfo+slayer+story#/d2y7cpj themselves]], not just Baron of [[http://asset3.torrentino.com/pictures/000/664/903/original.jpg?1267152047 Slap Up]] [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KGuvfhcq44 Party]].
410* SocializationBonus: As can be largely expected from an {{MMORPG}}, playing levels in parties makes them a good deal easier. There's also guilds that provide stat and experience boosts and free Life Tokens to all their members when sufficiently leveled up via member activity.
411** This is emphasized even further in the Season 2 update: while the leveling process is made much more streamlined, there are still some segments towards the end of the leveling curve where you need to need to grind like normal if you play solo, but if you join someone else's scennario dungeon run, you gain the same experience reward after each one as you did earlier when running them yourself.
412** Another update added in a Guild Hideout, which can be used as an easy way to share items between guild members via a shared storage chest. It also serves as an access point to 6 guild-exclusive dungeons which are the only location where you can obtain insignia to boost your stats and gems to give it additional properties. Since the completion percentage of these dungeons is shared between all guild members, they need to be beaten repeatedly to increase their purification percentage, which unlocks additional dungeons and ultimately causes another NPC to spawn who sells the best insignia in the game when the final dungeon is completely purified.
413* SomeDexterityRequired: Averted for the most part, as stated in the intro paragraph: even the strongest attacks have commands that're 4 directions at their longest by default, and you can always switch them to simpler commands. You can also map up to 12 of them to hotkeys to use them instantly, and in some cases, this is the only way to activate the skill to begin with.
414** YMMV on this one, as new players who have more experience with other Korean [=MMORPGs=] rather than fighting games will quickly learn two things long before reaching the level cap on their first character: 1.) No, you don't get more than twelve hotkeys. 2.) Yes, you have to manually input your skills to get around that limitation. That being said, input windows are large enough that players can take almost a second between button presses and still execute a skill correctly, and if that isn't enough, the input itself can be changed to something easier if needed (as mentioned above).
415* SpinAttack: Plenty of these to go around on both sides.
416* SpiritualSuccessor: This game is what happens if someone took Capcom's [[VideoGame/DungeonsAndDragons Dungeons & Dragons beat em ups]] and fully expanded the RPGElements. You could also compare it as [[JustForFun/XMeetsY Streets of Rage meets Diablo]].
417* SquishyWizard: All subclasses that use cloth armor.
418* StatStick: A large number of equipment is only sought after due to large boosts they give to specific skills. While their otherwise low stats would normally make these boosts useless, a significant number buffs in the game only take your current skill levels into account when you cast them, allowing you to equip a weaker piece of equipment, cast the buff it affects and then replace it with a stronger piece of equipment, repeating the process when the buff runs out. However, this doesn't usually work with stackable buffs like Asura's Wave Manifestation Brand since each stack rewrites the initially higher value with a lower current one, and some specific pieces of gear with extremely strong buff-like effects have some sort of an extra mechanic that prevents you from making temporary use of them, such as only applying their effect only after they've been equiped for at least 10 seconds. An update made snapshotting even easier thanks to the fact that any buff that has a longer duration than its cooldown becomes infinite in its duration, eliminating the need to switch back to the weaker equipment, recast the buff(s) and switch back to the main equipment in the middle of the dungeon unless you die or an enemy dispels your buff. A later update finally automated this process, giving most classes a predetermined buff that they can register under the Buff Enhancement system to be automatically augmented by any equipment you register with it that gives extra skill levels to the buff in question.
419* StatusEffects: A large variety of them, some with more redundant and thematic effects befitting the enemies and classes that cause them:
420** Shock: Each hit deals extra damage depending on Shock's level.
421** Burn, Bleed, Poison: Damage over time. Burn also deals damage to other targets near it and Bleed deals 50% more damage if the target is moving.
422** Blind: [[InterfaceScrew Blacks out a large portion of the screen depending on Blind's level]] and greatly reduces hitrate.
423** Stun, Stone, Frozen, Sleep: Make the target unable to move or attack, but you can [[SmashingSurvival press buttons rapidly to recover from them quicker]]. Stunned targets also recover instantly if thrown and Frozen targets recover if hit with a fire attack, but Sleeping targets can't be mashed out of quicker.
424** Confusion: [[InterfaceScrew Reverses controls]] and also enables FriendlyFire for its duration.
425** Bind: Makes the target unable to move, but they can still attack.
426** Slow: Slow's down the target's movement and attack speed.
427** Curse: Lowers all stats by a set amount.
428** Mind Control: Makes the target move around randomly.
429** Repentance: Makes the target unable to damage its enemies and hurt its allies instead.
430* StoneWall: Crusaders. Possibly exaggerated if a crusader dumps their money to upgrade their armors, and compromising their damage for survivability skills like their heals. You'll probably run out of mana trying to kill such a crusader in [[PlayerVersusPlayer PvP]].
431* SummonBiggerFish: Soul Benders have, as their awakening, the ability to summon Blache, the god of violence, to consume their enemies. However, doing so also consumes the ghosts that they have summoned, leaving them defenseless (the ghosts act as Buffs, [=AoE=] damage, Debuffs, etc) while their ghosts cool down.
432** Summoners can summon an Aposole's shadow to fight for them.
433** Soul Benders can summon in their 2nd awakening Zieg the original soul bender, now the mightest of ghosts.
434* SuperMovePortraitAttack: Awakening Actives feature a cut-in of the character's portrait flashing on-screen. The quality and flair of the cut-in depends on the specific move being activated:
435** 1st Awakening Skills feature a still portrait of the class's artwork poppimg into the corner of the screen.
436** 2nd Awakening Skills feature an animated portrait of the class's artwork popping into the corner of the screen.
437** Neo Awakening Skills feature fully-animated anime cutscenes taking over the entire screen.
438* SuplexFinisher: The Fighter's Grappler subclass has two of them. One of them is the Spiral skill at Level 35, which involves the Grappler reaching out and grabbing '''''every enemy''''' in the immediate radius area around her, then jumping up and spinning in the air, then slamming them into the ground a la [[Franchise/StreetFighter Zangief's Atomic Pile Driver]]. At Level 40, the Grappler gets the Cyclone Suplex skill. The grappler grabs an enemy, then proceeds to suplex them numerous times by spinning around them like a wheel, [[http://img24.imageshack.us/img24/3392/endlesscanadiandestroye.gif (as shown here with a Japanese wrestler using a... blow up doll...]] before jumping into the air and kicking them into the ground.
439* SwordBeam: Slayers, particularly Asuras; they start small, but work up to a [[KillItWithFire wave of lava]] and a Wave Motion Sword.
440* ThemeNaming: Present in the game, for both weapons and [=NPCs=].
441** The Boxing Glove line of weapons for Strikers are named after famous American and British boxers.
442** The Hell Party APCs that players fight against are named after demons from the ''Literature/ArsGoetia''.
443** Many of the [[InfinityPlusOneSword Epic-level]] swords for Slayers and Knights are named after {{Public Domain Artifact}}s such as Masamune, Muramasa, Ganjiang and Makya[[note]]otherwise known as Kanshou and Bakuya to ''[[Franchise/{{Nasuverse}} Type-Moon]]'' fans[[/note]], Mistletainn, Excalibur, Balmung and the Seven-Branched Sword.
444* TheUnpronounceable: In Empyrean, mermaid (or is it Mermaidea?) names are long and hard to pronounce, which is why one cute little mermaid on Lufthafen is nicknamed Coral, who has a friend named Quong'qng.
445* TheWarSequence: Altar Of Infinity is focused around this, as the name implies: it's broken up into rounds and each enemy you kill gives you BP, which you can spend on temporary powerups that last until the end of the level.
446* ThisIsGonnaSuck: The theme for the lower levels NintendoHard Tower Of Despair is a rock remix of [[Music/FryderykChopin Chopin]]'s Funeral March.
447* TierSystem: Each piece of equipment not only has a level requirement, but there's also a number of tiers for all of them:
448** Common: Equipment that's damaged and dirty, white name. Disassembles into a small number of Clear Cube Fragments and Common Souls.
449** Uncommon: Same equipment but in normal condition, light blue name. Disassembles into a larger number of Clear Cube Fragments, random-colored Cube Fragments and Uncommon Souls.
450** Rare (Magic-sealed Equipment): Same as Uncommon, but with a random bonus effect which can be changed. Two pieces of magic-sealed equipment could be combined into another random piece of equipment of the specified category, dark purple name. Disassembles into a single Clear Cube Fragment, a Low Grade Elemental Crystal, Rare Souls and rarely produces Gold Cube Fragments if disassembled at player disassemblers. The combination feature was changed to Compounding in Season 2 update and now extends to almost all tiers of equipment.
451*** "Powerful": Same equipment, but much higher stats and exclusive, stronger bonus effects. It was the strongest type of equipment that could be combined and the number of times you can reroll the bonus effect is limited by default, pink name. Disassembles into a single Clear Cube Fragment, a High Grade Elemental Crystal and Unique Souls. No longer obtainable after the Season 2 update.
452*** Legacy: Equipment that can have additional increased stats and a SetBonus (includes a more powerful bonus when all pieces of the set are equipped at the same time), dark blue name. Replaced by Halidom equipment (see below).
453** Unique: Stronger type of equipment with a number of unique effects, pink name. Disassembles into a large number of Clear Cube Fragments, a High Grade Elemental Crystal and Unique Souls.
454*** Boss Unique: Generally stronger that normal Unique equipment with the same properties but couldn't be traded, pink name. Disassembles into a large number of Clear Cube Fragments, a High Grade Elemental Crystal, and Unique Souls. For level 50+ Boss Uniques, rarely disassembles into large amounts of corresponding type of Meteors that could be used for buying other pieces of the set. Removed (both Equipment and the Meteors used to buy it) in the Origins (Season 4) Update.
455*** Halidom: A replacement for "powerful" and Legacy-tier equipment, it's essentially Legacy equipment with higher stats, better bonuses and easier and more reliable ways to obtain it.
456*** Dark Fragmented Abyss: A special kind of equipment introduced in the Level 110 Cap. It only drops from Advanced Dungeons at Expert Difficulty or Higher. And is in essence, a Buff Enhancement Set on steroids, by having better stats than the Abyss Legendary Swap Set in addition to bonus effects. However, their drops are extremely low and there's no way to upgrade the weapon item, unlike its Abyss counterparts.
457** Chronicle: Equipment that specializes in greatly increasing the effectiveness and changing the functionality different skills: they can either increase the effectiveness of predetermined skils, can be customized to increase the damage, cooldown/MP consumption or other skill-depending properties or they can have a SetBonus that massively increases the effectiveness of a small pool of skills. They also increase your Exorcism stat, which is used in the areas they are obtained from. Red name. Highly variable disassembly results: NPC disassemblers procude cube fragments and Chaos Stone Fragments, player disassemblers produce cube fragments and Nihilistic Stone Fragments and other profession-specific disassemblers produce cube fragments and Gold Cube Fragments. These are divided in, from weakest to strongest: Tainted/Cracked, 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Tiers. The 1st Tier was removed in the Origins Update. Chronicle was removed as a whole in the Season 6 update.
458** Legendary: The strongest type of equipment that can be traded, dark orange name, has various unique effects similar to the ones Epic equipment gives. Requiem and Liberation weapons are this type of equipment and are considered to be one of the best replacements for Epic weapons if the RandomNumberGod doesn't feel like giving you one you can use since they have some of the highest overall stats and have a sought-after bonus effect of doing 11/16% extra damage for every hit you land. Disassembles into a large number of Clear Cube Fragments and Legendary Souls.
459*** Quest Legendary: Much like normal Legendary equipment, but can be bought directly with items you can get from completing daily quests or as a relatively common drop from a special enemy that only appears two times a week. Unlike most other Legendary equipment, has a set bonus, with one of them considered to be vastly superior to most Chronicle sets for a large number of classes and unlike normal Legendary equipment, only disassembles into a single Legendary Soul.
460*** Valor Legendary: Exclusive to the Echon Dungeon, its power is roughly equivalent to a Level 85 Epic Armor. The drop rate for them is higher than the other Ancient dungeons and they come in four tiers of power, with more stat bonuses the higher tier it is. This kind of equipment initially did have set options, because you could create your own set by finding the materials in the dungeon to change your stats, upgrading to a higher tier and creating the set. Nowadays, it only gives some of the bonuses in three types of sets. Unlike other Legendary equipment, Valor equipment is untradeable and dissasembles into Clear Cube Fragments, Endless Eternity, and Darma's Symbols (buying material for the sets), but no Legendary Souls.
461*** Harlem Legendary: Obtainable from the Harlem Dungeons and introduced in the Lv.95 Cap. Obtainable from Sleepy Hollow and Assault Mode Dungeons, this equipment increases the stats by a set percentage and a balance of multiple bonuses for all characters. They disassemble into Clear Cube Fragments, Legendary Souls, and Gold Cube Fragments. These sets can be upgraded to the more powerful Harlem Epics (see below).
462*** Abyss Legendary: Only obtainable from the Operation:Hope dungeons, these pieces are used to improve the main buff of a character, but you can only run this dungeon two times a day, six times a week per character. Disassembles into Clear Cube Fragments, Legendary Souls, and Abyss Fragments. The latter being a material for buying the pieces. Just like the Requiem/Liberation weapons, the Abyss Weapons can be crafted/upgraded to improve even more the main buff, with the same penalties for failing (you keep the weapon, minus all the materials in the event of a failure).
463*** Sacrosanct Legendary: Introduced in the Level 110 Cap, these pieces only drop from Advanced Dungeons at Expert Difficulty or Higher. Still tradeable, those pieces have better options than its Level 105 Fixed Epic counterparts, and its options can also be transferred to Level 105 Custom Epics, making those Legendary pieces another option for gearing (although being almost prohibitely costly, due to the abyssmal drop rates).
464** Epic: As stated above, the strongest overall equipment with various powerful unique effects that encourage a specific playstyle, has [[SetBonus set bonuses]] but Epic weapons aren't a part of them, light orange name. Disassembles into a single Epic Soul and large number of Clear Cube Fragments.
465*** Anton Epic: Only obtainable from completing Anton raids, either directly from the completion rewards or items you get from them. Has no armor pieces and generally outclasses or is equal to other Epic equipment at equal level, but takes extremely long to get since Anton Dungeons can only be run once a day and twice a week per character. All the weapons of this type have their own shared mechanic involving gathering energy by attacking enemies and then unleashing it as a SuperMode that ends in an explosion that deals extra damage relative to the amount dealt during it: this SuperMode and other properties of the weapon can be further enhanced with specific Anton accessories. Other accessories of this type can also be further upgraded to enhance their effects even further.
466*** Luke Epic: Unlike Anton's, these pieces can only be found by buying/upgrading existing Epic armor pieces and Anton Weapons with materials found only in Luke Raid Dungeons. It does have Armor pieces and a powerful Set for each type, also includes the first Special Equipment Set called Heblon's Monarch, which is both acceptable for Crusaders/Enchantress and Damage Dealers.
467*** Beast Epic: These can only be found in the Beast Dungeon, and it only includes Accessories in two sets: one for Crusaders/Enchantress and the other for Damage Dealers. These are the most powerful accesories from the Lv.90 Cap...if you can clear ''that'' dungeon.
468*** Harlem Epic: These are more powerful versions of the Harlem Legendaries, and can be upgraded from them by using materials found in various middle-level Endgame dungeons. A particular trait of this equipment (and the Lv.95 Legendaries), is that you will ''not'' lose your Set Bonus in the process of upgrading to the next level: the previous Set Bonus will still apply when you find/buy other piece of the matching set until the new set replaces the old one.
469*** Tayberrs Epic: These Weapons and Sets can only be found in the Tayberrs Dungeon, and these are even more powerful than the Harlem Sets, greatly outclassing them. However, the Dungeon is considered one of the hardest in the game so far, even for 4-player parties, and you can only enter two times a day, six times a week with each character. The armor can be upgraded further in the Fiend War Raid Dungeons and the Weapons/Accesories/Special Equipments can be upgraded in the Prey-Isys dungeons.
470*** Product of Wisdom: A new type of Epic equipment introduced in the Level 100 cap. The first tradeable Epic equipment, and it can't be reinforced. Instead, the equipment can be modified through Kiri by using new materials from the Guide of Wisdom (Level 100 Hell Mode) called Ancient Wisdom Remains, up to 5 levels. However, upgrading from one level to the next can still fail and downgrade the weapon by one level (or all levels), and from Level 4 to 5 a failure will destroy the item. Some Product of Wisdom Epics can improve many Level 85 Epic sets, making them viable in the Level 100 cap dungeons. Others, like the Products of Wisdom from the Dark Miscreation dungeon, improve level 100 Legendary sets. Lastly, there are Product of Wisdom weapons obtainable from Sirocco Raid, which are designed to be on par with their equivalent level 100 +12 Epic weapons when upgraded to +5 modification.
471** Mythic: Introduced in the Level 100 cap, this equipment is equal or better than even the Level 100 Epic equipment, and every piece shares options with a predefined Level 100 Epic Set. There are only 3 types of Mythics: Tops, Bracelets, and Earrings. Every character can equip one (and only one) of these pieces, but the players can transfer options of the full associated set of Epics to the respective Mythic. The level 110 cap update downplayed the importance of them as their respective {{Set Bonus}}es were done away with, although they were upgraded to level 105 gear by default and can hold their own against level 105 Epics for quite a while before needing to be replaced with better equipment.
472* TooAwesomeToUse: Events generally give out various items that have effects that're hard or impossible to duplicate with more readily-available items, meaning most people would prefer to hang on to the event items forever: however, this is ultimately subverted because [[AntiHoarding almost all event items have an expiry date and if you don't use it by then, they disappear from your inventory.]]
473* TooDumbToLive: [[spoiler:Rabble Rouser Rake]] in the Ghent storyline ends up betraying you to the Kartels. The problem being that he does this at a point where the Kartels have gone from handily winning to demoralized, panicked, and beyond any real hope of recovery, and ''you'' are almost single-handedly responsible for this change.
474* TrappedInAnotherWorld: The backstories for several playable classes involves them being stranded in Arad for one reason or another. Luckily this is never permanent, as all of them find their way back home when the plot requires them to return.
475** The Female Mage comes from Pandemonium, which has been taken over and pretty much destroyed by The Apostles. After meeting a Pandemonian named Kate, who tells her own story, the Mage voluntarily transports herself to Arad in order to destroy the evil that is oppressing both worlds.
476** The Male Gunner comes from Empyrean, a world where SteamPunk and other modernized technology is prevalent over magic. After stirring up some trouble, the gunner finds himself backed up against a cliff. He figures he's gonna die either way, so instead of being gunned down, he decides to jump into the ocean. Ever sinking further and further, he eventually finds himself sinking through the entire ocean, and then FALLING through the sky in Arad, when he eventually [[SoftWater lands safely in some bushes in a forest.]]
477** The [[DistaffCounterpart Female Gunner]], however, was an Imperial Guard member trapped in a Makeshift Camp with a princess, so she used the strategy of pretending she was about to kick the bucket (via throwing up). When she did, she took down the enemy and made a hasty escape on a Motorcycle to get the aid from somewhere else. Much like her [[SpearCounterpart Male Counterpart]], she ''drives'' off a similar cliff [[SoftWater and lands in some bushes in a forest.]]
478** The Male Mage was once a criminal who preyed on those weaker than him in Pandemonium. Upon his death he was resurrected by a reaper [[spoiler:actually Hilder in disguise]] and after having his heart replaced by the abyss, he was sent to Arad to atone.
479** The Agent is part of a former Empyrean PraetorianGuard known as "The Company". The group found themselves exiled from Empyrean when its nobles framed all of The Company as traitors, in fear of them exposing their corruption to the world. When they run out of options for a place they could call home anywhere on Empyrean, O'Connell, the leader of The Company, makes a last-ditch effort to escape to Arad via a special submersible designed by exiled scientist Dr. Gizel. The plan worked, with the Agent and the rest of The Company making a living as guns for hire to various Aradian governments.
480** The Archer hails from a world beyond the stars known as Seon, which is under threat of total destruction by the advent of a mysterious evil known as Malefic Beasts. Having heard of a legendary aspect called Anti Enbi that has the power to drive back the Malefic Beasts, the Archer goes on a quest to find Arad, where the fabled Anti Enbi is supposedly located, in the process destroying her airship during the attempt to cross Middle Ocean.
481* TwentyBearAsses: There are a fair few quests like this. The drop rates are pretty good, so soloing them isn't usually a problem. However, it becomes complicated when adventuring in a party, as each item picked up is randomly given to a party member, regardless of who actually grabbed it. This can get very annoying when you have multiple party members attempting to complete the same collection quest.
482** With the drop system changed, that issue has been fixed.
483** There are other quests that avoid this problem. For example, the quest where you have to acquire medpacks from defeated medics will simply add one medpack to your inventory every time your party defeats one, with it stopping once you've hit the number you needed for the quest.
484** The Scenario Dungeon Update has largely done away with this for the main storyline quests, as requirements for a given quests can usually be fulfilled at the end of a single dungeon run.
485* UnstoppableRage: The Berserkers.
486* UselessUsefulSpell
487** Many of the pre-Rebirth Awakening passives, the worst ones being the male ranger's, male mechanic's, and crusader's passive.
488*** The male ranger's passive, 'Sudden Death' had a chance to automatically kills monsters that have a certain amount of HP left but the chances of triggering are undependable (around 2% at the most), and any monster that is within the HP requirement are already close to being dead. It's been changed now to a MUCH better passive which increases physical critical rate on enemies, a vital stat needed for rangers.
489*** The male mechanic's passive, 'Final Will' summoned a robot when the mechanic was at 25% life or less and gave a buff to all robots on the field. However, the buff stats were pitifully small and the robot itself could be killed very easily. Post-rebirth, the robot now gives more than double the stats, activates at higher life, and most importantly, shields the mechanic from a certain amount of damage. In the Season 2 Reborn update it now boosts the Mechanic's skill attack power whenever he lands a crit.
490*** The Crusader's passive provides an aura which raise stats. The higher the Crusader's health, the stronger the aura, it giving the most when the Crusader was at full health obviously. While the Crusader's passive has not directly been changed, the reworks to the stats have made this passive far more useful. Pre-rebirth, the Crusader was not always at maximum health because he would shield damage others would take with Sign of Protection. Now, vitality gives health regeneration and maximum health so Crusaders naturally will almost always be max health. Also, post-rebirth, the aura gives double the amount it used to.
491*** The Exorcist's passive was nigh-useless for magical Exorcists at first due to only being charged by being in the "super armor" state, something found on nearly every physical Exorcist move but almost no magic Exorcist move. This was fixed simply by allowing casting to charge the meter as well.
492** Pretty much all of the skills obtainable from the NPC Albert fall under this. Being able to learn one low-level skill from each of a class's remaining three subclasses sounds like an awesome idea on paper, but they have a myriad of restrictions that make it not worth it for most people:
493*** These skills are only obtainable by reaching Bronze 2 in PVP. Despite the low rank requirement, it's still a hurdle for players who only want to play the PVE portion of DFO, and the minuscule PVP population (at least in DFO Global) makes obtaining this rank hard even for people who might otherwise have the skill to get there.
494*** The available skills are mostly only useful in PVP itself as grabs, juggles, or fast attacks. There are a few exceptions where Albert's skills are actually useful in end game PVE content, like the male Slayer's Bloodlust (a grab that's useful for crowd control), but these are few and far between.
495*** All of the Albert skills have an inflated skill point requirement of 50 SP per level, something that's reserved only for higher level skills. Couple that with the fact that they also only cap at level 5, and you'll see most players only invest in one level in any of these skills at best, solely for utility purposes.
496*** Only [[http://wiki.dfo-world.com/view/Category:Albert_Quest_Skills five base classes in the game]] have the ability to learn Albert's skills. Neople eventually figured out that not a whole lot of people put in the effort to learn these skills anyway, so base classes introduced later in the game's lifespan don't have any Albert skills at all.
497* ViolationOfCommonSense: Some Titles require the player to pull off odd stunts that they would avoid under most normal circumstances, such as the Nightna's Nightmare Title, which requires getting hit by Nightna's Full Swing, which can randomly be a OneHitKill.
498* VirtualPaperDoll: Avatar items and weapons change the appearance of your character, and give a small bonus to stats and/or skills. Before the Second Impact update, there was a random component to avatar purchases, which often led to a case of RainbowPimpGear. With the advent of the Second Impact update, avatar items can now be purchased directly and allow you to choose what stat bonuses each piece of clothing has. This makes it easier to avoid [[RainbowPimpGear mismatching outfits]] for the sake of stats.
499* VirtualYouTuber: The ''Arad Senki'' [=YouTube=] channel [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xL5mcVUGQEI&t=179s occasionally makes use of the trope]] for promotions and/or announcements.
500* WeaponSpecialization: Each class in Dungeon Fighter Online generally has a preferred weapon choice. They don't have to adhere to them, but certain classes encourage a certain weapon type to be used. [[note]](Exception being the [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin Weapon Master]] class for Slayers, who can use any slayer-class weapon PLUS the inclusion of "Lightsabres" exclusive to them, rather effectively.)[[/note]]
501** Slayer:
502*** Blade Master: They can use any of the five sword types available, and because they aren't limited by a specific weapon mastery, they can switch between them at will. However, the [[LaserBlade Lightsabre]] is exclusive to them.
503*** Soul Bender: Katanas for speed and magic attack.
504*** Berserker: Zanbatos for power, katanas for speed.
505*** Asura: Short swords for magic power, katanas for a balance between magic attack power and speed.
506*** Sword Master: They can use any Slayer weapon with the exception of [[LaserBlade Lightsabres]]
507*** Demon Slayer: Zanbatos for their raw damage, but they transform into a WhipSword in their hands.
508*** Dark Templar: Short Swords for magic attack.
509*** Vagabond: They can wield 2 types of weapons at the same time, but their offhand weapon is restricted to a [[LaserBlade Lightsabre]]. People generally prefer to use a Zanbato as their main weapon, since their naturally slow attack speed is nullified both by their main buff and the game averaging the attack speed between their 2 weapons, with the Lightsabre being the fastest weapon type. They're also unique in that they can actually change the type of their secondary weapon to another type of beam weapon on the fly , although this only changes the secondary effect of their main attack string.
510** Fighter:
511*** Striker: Boxing gloves, a balance of attack power and speed. Also, strikers are the only fighter subclass that are allowed to wield these.
512*** Grappler: Gauntlets for power, tonfas for speed and defense bonuses.
513*** Nen Master: Knucklers for magic attack power, tonfas for defense to balance out their [[SquishyWizard cloth armor]].
514*** Brawler: Claws, which are a balance of physical and magical attack power and can inflict bleeding.
515** Gunner:
516*** Ranger: Revolvers
517*** Launcher: Hand cannons, for high physical attack power. [[StatStick They don't use them much, anyways.]]
518*** Mechanic: Autoguns for high magic attack power.
519*** Spitfire: Bowsguns for magic attack power. Muskets for physical attack power.
520** Mages:
521*** Elementalist, Summoner, Elemental Bomber, and Glacial Master: Staves for raw power, rods for casting speed, attack speed (more important for Glacial Masters than other classes), and saving mana.
522*** Witch: Broomsticks so they can fly and use aerial attacks, but they can use staves or rods if they want.
523*** Battlemage: Spears for physical attack power, poles for speed and/or magical attack power.
524** Priest:
525*** Crusader: Crosses to boost their ability to buff and heal their teammates, rosaries for magical attack power.
526*** Monk: Totem poles for attack power and speed, but battle axes and scythes would also work.
527*** Exorcist: Battle axe for physical attack power, rosaries for magical attack power, or scythes for speed and a balance between physical and magical power.
528*** Avenger: Scythes for magical attack power and speed.
529** Thief:
530*** Rogue: Daggers for speed, Twin Swords for power.
531*** Necromancer: Dual Wands for magical attack power.
532*** Kunoichi: Kunai (called Chakra Weapons ingame).
533*** Shadow Dancer: Daggers.
534** Creator: Broomsticks, [[StatStick but they can't even]] ''[[MechanicallyUnusualClass attack]]'' [[StatStick with them.]]
535** Dark Knight: Swords. Unique in that he can use any Slayer weapon without a problem, and can choose which weapon type he wants to be good with.
536** Knight:
537*** Elven Knight: Zanbatos for physical attack and range.
538*** Chaos: Short Swords for magical attack.
539*** Lightbringer: Bludgeons for base strength.
540*** Dragon Knight: Katanas for magical attack and attack speed.
541** Demonic Lancer:
542*** Duelist: Lances for speed.
543*** Vanguard: Halberds for attack power.
544* WhipOfDominance: Summoners carry magic whips to denote their status as TheMinionMaster. Their Lasher ability allows them to whip their allies and minions to buff them. The skill "Reinforce Control" increases the whip's range.
545* WhipSword: The Demon Slayer subclass of Female Slayer can change her sword into a sword whip.
546* WolverineClaws: [[OverlyLongGag The Fighter can equip this type of weapon.]]
547* WorldOfBadass: Arad's so badass that groups of superpowered adventurers sweeping through armies of evil minions is considered a part of the daily routine.
548* YinYangBomb: The battle mage has an attack called fusion chaser. When using the [[ElementalRockPaperScissors opposite element chasers]] in the attack, it will, rather than exploding, create a wheel of both elements that will damage the enemy constantly.
549* YouHaveResearchedBreathing: The ability to wear a piece of sub equipment (which includes things like armlets, medals and any random accessories that isn't a necklace, a bracelet or a ring), a magic stone or a pair of earrings isn't available until you reach level 60, 65 and 90 (ie. the level cap) and each of them requires you to complete a quest before you can do so. Somewhat justified by the fact that all of them are stated to be magical in nature and the person giving said quest to you wants to make sure that you're powerful enough to handle then without being overwhelmed.
550* YouWillNotEvadeMe:
551** Brawlers can snare enemies with a net, pulling them into brick range while immobilizing and weakening them.
552** Witches do the same with their Black Manteau, but it has less range and knocks enemies down. This is a great setup for the [[ForcedTransformation Devolution Flyswatter]].
553** Berserkers can do this as well with their Bloody Twister, which constantly damages and stuns enemies as they are slowly pulled in for a big, hearty cleave.
554** Asuras can do this with Deadly Enticer, but this does not stun enemies, leaving them open to counterattacks if held for too long.
555** The Female Striker's Awakening skill knocks all nearby enemies down with a mighty stomp & battlecry, then pulls them in with the [[SuckingInLines sheer force]] of charging up [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin The World's Strongest Low Kick]].
556** Male Strikers can do this to a certain extent with their Lightning Dance. If they manage to hit one of your allies, expect him to teleport in front of you and kick you towards your stunned comrades.
557** Creators can play this both ways with the Draw skill, which lets them drag and drop enemies with the mouse. This allows them to either toss pesky enemies away, or bring them closer to keep them on the screen.
558[[/folder]]
559
560[[folder:Tropes Exclusive to Pre-Metastasis (Nexon Era) DFO]]
561
562* AlmightyJanitor: G.S.D. is an old man who sits in an alleyway at the back of Hendon Myre. He also happens to be the single most powerful Slayer in existence. See EscortMission below.
563* AntiPoopSocking: While Fatigue Points used to exist, Nexon America's Dungeon Fighter Online eventually replaced this system with Blitz Points, to downplay the AntiPoopSocking aspect that the Fatigue Point system had. With Blitz Points, you use one Blitz Point per room traversed, and when you consumed enough to hit the next Blitz Stage, the amount of EXP earned in dungeons increased, but increased the rate at which equipment durability decreased. Once a character ran out of Blitz Points, they could still continue running dungeons, but could not earn any loot, and Gold drops were severely decreased to discourage further playing. Unfortunately, this had the side effect of making dedicated players level ludicrously fast, as well as breaking the economy even further.
564* ArtisticLicenseGeography: The town West Coast is, well, [[http://wiki.dfo-world.com/images/9/94/West_Coast_Map.png not exactly in the west.]] Granted the ingame map doesn't have a compass indicating North = Up.
565* BodyHorror:
566** Goliath, Atlas, and Titan, bosses of the Scoria Core dungeon. Look at all of them [[http://wiki.dfo-world.com/index.php?title=Giants here]] [[SarcasmMode for your convenience.]]
567** The mobs of first three rooms of Noire Ferra, an Ancient Dungeon in Aphelia Post.
568** And then here are the cursed melting knights in the first room of Reshpon, an Ancient Dungeon that makes Noire Ferra sound pretty easy to decontaminate (maybe).
569* BrainlessBeauty: Lorianne. "I have everything, except things I don't!" [[BunnyEarsLawyer She's also one of the highest ranking mages in the academy.]]
570* BribingYourWayToVictory:
571** Even for a game published by Creator/{{Nexon}}, this goes beyond the pale - credits spent often have a random component to the rewards earned.
572** As of Rebirth there is no longer a random component in buying avatars. Everything else with random components on the other hand...
573** It's a subtle one, but it's there. with the title system you can earn titles to use at any time, they are no longer inventory items. One of the titles available, you can view all in the title book even if you haven't earned it yet, is granted for owning 30 pieces of avatar items. As of right now it's impossible to naturally get an avatar item. That's not the problem, the problem is it probably has one of the most practical effects of the titles. For each hit you get inflicted with, you have 1% chance to get 200 (rounded down) HP; it's low enough to not be game shattering, and 5% chance to get 600 (rounded down) mp. If a character attacks fast enough, such as the gunner's mini-gun, you can potentially get, not a game breaking amount, but decent amount of health and MP back. Remember that, aside from items, it's hard to break more than 50 HP recovered a minute.
574*** Until the release of the Quest Shop, that is.
575* DualBoss:
576** GBL High Priest and GBL Archbishop at the Outer Temple Walls.
577** Ice Pick Shavante and Beast Master Luger at The Ridge.
578** The Martel Bros - Silky Martel and Felty Martel of Midnight Assault.
579** Scoria Core is a Triple Boss.
580*** Southern Dale has a Triple Boss as well.
581* EscortMission: A few quests had this.
582** The first NPC you escort (old arad) turns out to be a total badass capable of wrecking everyone's shit without any assistance from you, while a later quest involves a lost mage/girl in a dungeon filled with octopus monsters though. She doesn't attack, but does teleport randomly around the area. It's understandable that she keeps both hands over her lower region until you kill all the enemies.
583** The first old escort isn't really an escort. It's watching the [[DefeatMeansFriendship mini-boss you defeated in the last dungeon]] completely destroy everything in her path. She lets you come with her because she says it's boring training alone. Not present in the Current version doesn't have this.
584** The second old quest involves you finding a Slayer and escorting him through a dungeon with literal DemonicSpiders.[[invoked]] By the way, the Slayer's very low leveled (Lv. 20) and will always try to fight. The game notes the [[NeverBeAHero inexperience]] of the Slayer when you get the quest.
585* FloatingContinent: The Behemoth area, courtesy of a [[GiantFlyer flying]] [[TurtleIsland whale]].
586* GameBreakingBug: These apply to the original Nexon NA version.
587** The 3525: series is particularly aggravating on the principle it kills your dungeon run without actually killing you, which makes you auto-fail quests that require you to beat the boss under certain criteria. To date, Nexon America has not found a fix, even though there is a topic dedicated to it on the boards.
588** One has popped up since the Rebirth patch: Some call it the no-drop bug, others refer to it as simply "The Curse". The afflicted player will not see any items or gold drop ever, aside from the occasional quest collectable or Ryan Cokes. This will affect the entire party if one of them happens to experience this bug. Many fans suspect something from Nexon as they have not acknowledged this bug as even existing yet after a couple of patches, even though the forums always have a thread about it.
589*** And now there is another one when fighting the boss of Second Spine at Behemoth. When you fight the boss, it may put you to sleep and then attempt to grab you with its tentacle. However, it can't, since you are lying down. The space between the tentacle will be empty, showing where your sprite SHOULD be. The bad part? The boss becomes invincible, so this bug forces you to quit the dungeon.
590* HeroicSacrifice: Bakal the Apostle of all people! How? [[spoiler:He saw his own death at the character's hands, but didn't know when it would happen. He arranged for an invasion of Empyrean and the use of Sky Castle to push the people of Arad into becoming stronger.]] When the characters encounter him in Otherverse [[spoiler:He correctly guesses that you're from the future, and wonders if you're strong enough to do him in after all his work]]
591* InterfaceSpoiler: Later in the game, Ophelia, the sole survivor of her religious organization, discovers that there are more Grand Blue Lore members in Arad, and asks you to inspect them and see if they are brainwashed by Lotus, the one who hijacked the [=GBL=]. When you enter the dungeon, all the enemies behave like friendly entities and don't attack you, but looking at the dungeon menu, [[http://wiki.dfo-world.com/view/Category:Coastal_Jct._dungeons you will quickly notice]] that the thumbnails for the dungeons, which usually have an image of the dungeon's boss, depict two [=GBL=] members and a sky blue He'etako. When you re-enter the dungeon for the next quest, [[spoiler:[[BodyHorror the enemy GBL members have tentacles coming out from under their robes.]]]]
592* TheLostWoods: Grand Flores.
593* NiceJobBreakingItHero: [[spoiler:Defeating Lotus causes the previously friendly Marcellus to go murderously insane due to [[TheOnlyOneAllowedToDefeatYou being denied his vengeance]], and the player is forced to put him down too.]]
594* StalkerWithACrush: Lorianne repeatedly refers to your character as this.
595* TheManBehindTheMan: It turns out that the reason Bakal conquered Empyrean and outlawed magic? [[spoiler:One of the other Apostles, Hilder, is plotting to destroy Arad to help remake Terra. Bakal's invasion and subsequent war was the result of a centuries old plan to strengthen the people of Arad so they would be powerful enough to stop her]]
596** [[spoiler:It's to the point where fans' first guess as to why something happened in the plot being "Hilder's behind it"]]
597* TheOnlyOneAllowedToDefeatYou: Marcellus considers himself this to Lotus. [[spoiler:He does ''[[AxCrazy not]]'' take it well when the player beats him to the punch.]]
598* WakeUpCallBoss: Lakius, the first boss in Sky Tower. While he doesn't have much health and is fairly easy compared to some of the other Sky Tower bosses, he is capable of gradually regenerating it, and he can create a clone to assist himself in battle as well. Also, every time you knock Lakius down, he will surround himself with an electric barrier that ''hurts'', but players with ranged attacks can take advantage of this.
599* WasOnceAMan: The slimy Phantasmal Shamblers were once humans of North Myre before they fell prey to Blooderflies. [[FridgeHorror It's scary to imagine]].
600* WaterIsAir: A subtle one, but if you look, when you get high in the sky tower, you do enter the ocean (of the world above), indicated by bubbles rising up when you run. Nothing at all is affected by this, but you are undoubtedly underwater.
601[[/folder]]
602
603[[folder:Tropes Exclusive to Post-Metastasis (Neople Era) DFO]]
604
605* AWizardDidIt: The plot has a particular fondness for using interdimensional rifts to explain the main character's troubles, especially after the Origin update.
606* AfterTheEnd: Zigzagged. As of the current version, Arad has been devastated by an event known as the Great Metastasis, which the opening cutscene shows as entire chunks of the world being torn apart by the sheer energy produced by the catastrophe. However, life for the average Arad citizen and Dungeon Fighter is largely the same, the main difference being that [[spoiler:the world's monsters are now capable of having nightmares. Nightmares that make them ''much'' more powerful when they wake up.]]
607* AllThereInTheManual: The Season 2 update added storybooks as a RareRandomDrop from bosses, which you can read to get additional background information on various characters and events in the game. However, due to their rarity and the fact that only a select few of them can be bought from the auction house, the only real way to read most of them is via message boards where their contents are posted.
608* AlternateUniverse:
609** Pandemonium is located in one, existing in a parallel dimension where Terra and the Apostle Luke reside.
610** Various alternate dimensions are brought up as part of the Knight's backstory, including a dimension where the Fairies went to war with the Empire after the Great Blaze and won, a dimension where Bakal ruled Arad in addition to Empyrean and was killed by the Dark Elves, and a dimension where all of the Apostles were sealed away and purified by the Order.
611** During the early 2010's, the game underwent a SoftReboot called the "Great Metastasis", which is canonized in-universe as a [[ApocalypseHow catastrophic event]] that inflicted numerous {{Cosmic Retcon}}s on the game's plot. After Season 4, the plot changed back to original Arad, with one major distinction: in the "normal" Arad, the Metastasis, but not the ''Great'' Metastasis, occurred, which was much less destructive in nature and still created the Female Slayers. The alternate universe where the Great Metastasis happened reoccurs as a plot point when the player is accidentally sent there after defeating Apostle Delezie, forcing the player, Michelle, and Azalea to work together with Mirror Michelle and Mirror Aganzo to go to "mirror" Arad and stop the Black Nightmare from leaking out into the main universe, culminating in the player having to defeat a mirror version of Apostle Lotus.
612* AlwaysChaoticEvil:
613** The Dwarves introduced post-Metastasis. They're greedy, violent, corrupt, and in this setting are actually directly responsible for the Dark Elves' fall -- manipulating them into revealing the location of the goddess Venus' secret gold vein, then abandoning them to the anger of their goddess once it was revealed -- Venus also cursed the dwarves for their trouble, making it so that gold could only bring them misery... but they're too greedy to stop seeking it despite that.
614** The Season 4 update merged the Dwarves into the pre-Metastasis story. In this incarnation they're only slightly less shitty, still obsessed with gold but they at least have a proper excuse for being aggressive this time around; apparently they forged a fragile peace treaty with the Dark Elves and are ''not'' happy about the Dark Elves intruding on their turf, even if the "invaders" are mindless undead zombies.
615* AmazonBrigade:
616** As Inquisitors are gender-locked to Female Priests, this is reflected in-universe by the Inquisition, a legion of Inquisitors employed by the Church for more... ''extreme'' action. Female Priest protagonists who aren't of the Inquisitor subclass will comment on how scary the Inquisition is, especially in regards to their ruthless KnightTemplar leader.
617** The Knights of Usir are a group of Female Slayers who pledge fealty to a god of death named Usir, becoming a subclass of Female Slayers called Dark Templars. They typically operate on the outskirts of the Principality and the Empire, where the heroes wind up running into them while pursuing the Cult of Darkness's plot to resurrect Ozma of Chaos.
618* AnAdventurerIsYou: To help differentiate the classes from beyond "does damage" and "is a Crusader", the game introduced "roles" for all of the classes.
619** '''Pure Dealers''', also known as '''DPS''', are categorized by their focus on exclusively making things die faster. They are just as capable in a party as they are on their own.
620** '''Synergy Dealers''', also known as '''Syn''', are classes categorized by having abilities that help other characters do their jobs better while also still being damage-focused. Synergy Dealers grant all party members a massive buff by merely existing in the same party as them. Characters wearing Aeterna equipment sets can also function as "pseudo-Synergy" characters, trading their ability to deal meaningful damage for massively buffing every other player in the party. This archetype was eventually depreciated out of the game in an update, with all former Synergy Dealer characters being reclassed to Pure Dealers and the Synergy Dealer role becoming exclusive to Aeterna-equipped characters.
621** '''Buffers''', also known as '''Saders''' by the community, are a special role held by Male and Female Crusaders (hence the nickname), the Enchantress subclass, and the Muse subclass. They wield powerful buff effects designed to boost other party members, but are also capable of holding their own in combat. Buffers enjoy access to a variety of Buffer-exclusive effects from their equipment and enchants in addition to the normal benefits to boost their buff effects to better support parties.
622* AnimationBump: 1st Awakening [[SuperMovePortraitAttack cut-ins]] were still images. 2nd Awakening cut-ins were [=Live2D=]-esque. 3rd Awakening cut-ins [[https://imgur.com/a/iTqTXfk are full-fledged animations]] that look like something the ''Franchise/{{Disgaea}}'' series would do.
623* AntiFrustrationFeatures:
624** As of the Metastasis, the ever-hated Cube Fragment quests are no longer an issue, as Seria Kirmin will directly sell you any color Cube Fragment for 5 Clear Cube Fragments each, so if you keep up on Disassembling items you don't need, Cubes and Cube Fragments generally won't be a hassle. Also, earlier quests that ask for Cubes or Cube Fragments will generally be offered alongside a different quest of similar level whose reward includes the Cube or Cube Fragment you need.
625** The Season 2 update made Cube Fragments even easier to manage by excising Cubes altogether and separating Cube Fragments from the Materials inventory into their own subsection, as well as making them account-wide, allowing every character on the account to share Cube Fragments.
626** The Valor equipment set, obtainable from Echon: Ruined Sanctuary, has the unique feature of customizeable stats and set bonuses, so one can tailor the set to their character's specific needs: when fully upgraded, it's roughly equal in power to a level 85 Epic equipment set.
627** There are popup reminders when you're approaching your inventory weight limit and when your equipment has low durability: for the latter, clicking on the icon also allows you to repair your equipment on the fly mid-dungeon in case you misjudge their remaining durability and they end up breaking to prevent you from losing a dungeon run by not being able to do any damage to the enemies, but fixing your gear this way costs around 3-5 times as much as repairing them the normal way.
628** The [[https://www.dfoneople.com/news/updates/967/Epic-Weapon-Crafting-System Epic Weapon Crafting System]] was introduced to help players get a head start on their Epic gearing with a special Epic weapon that's mostly gated only by time and money rather than luck, as it is with Hell Mode Epics. Some of these crafted Epics are even better than their Hell Mode counterparts in base stats alone, and to top it all off, players can imbue them with a special elemental area-of-effect attack that [[ArmorPiercingAttack ignores enemy defense]] - very handy to have when one is just starting on the road to endgame gearing.
629** Raid rewards were drastically reworked in the "Act 6: The Beast" patch. Both Anton and Luke Raids (and their solo versions) reward players with an account-bound material called "Fated Determination" that allows them to buy Demon Invitations (required for chances to get Epic equipment) on characters of their choosing. Prior to the rework, Demon Invitations mostly came only from Anton Raid in either random amounts of 100 to 200 per raid, or a mixture of invites and Epic Souls, which can be converted to invites on other characters. The result was usually piles of invites sitting on characters one might not even care for gearing, except for the sole purpose of farming more invites.
630** The level 95 cap patch in all regions brought with it a heavily reworked Epic gearing process. Newer players can get Harlem area Epic equipment by farming materials for Harlem area Legendary equipment in one dungeon, then upgrading them using materials from another dungeon (or outright purchasing Epics at a higher price), both expressly designed just for this set of equipment. The time frame for having Epics in every slot is only a few months at worst, rather than battling with the RandomNumberGod for a couple of years. The same concept applies to Tayberrs area Epics, making it only a matter of time to get equipment about on par with level 90 raid-exclusive gear. Of course, Hell Mode is still present, but instead of dropping a dozen fragments of random Epics at best, every run drops Harlem Epic materials, accelerating the gearing process a little bit.
631** The Character Reboot update on October 2019 introduced many of these: the drop materials from the farming dungeons in Harlem (Assault Mode, Dawning Crevice and Operation:Hope) were roughtly doubled (maybe ''tripled'') compared to before. However, the times you can enter each Dungeon were greatly reduced (i.e.: before the update you could enter Operation:Hope 2 times/day and 6 times/week, now you can only enter 3 times/day ''and'' week). In addition to that, now you can craft the more powerful Tayberrs equipment from the Harlem Epic equipment (just like the Legendary Harlem to the Epic Harlem one), costing less materials and transferring all your invested Reinforcement/Amplification/Enchantments without any additional cost.
632** Specifically for ''Global'', farming for uniques and legendaries in the level 100 cap update was significantly sped up in response to Korean feedback saying it was "unrewarding" and "took too long". There are also a variety of equipment upgrade systems introduced in 100 cap. Engraving allows players to transfer any and all upgrades on a piece of gear (reinforce, amplify, refine, and enchant) on any level 100 Epic equipment looted from Hell Mode. In a similar fashion, players can Inherit these same upgrades between level 100 Epics, should anything better drop. Lastly, for players whose last experience with endgame was way back in level 85, their Epic armor sets are still relevant in the form of Wisdom equipment, a specific type of Epic that can take on the properties of said armor sets all in one equipment slot (although upgrades like reinforcement, etc. unfortunately cannot be transferred over).
633** The Male Gunner Neo Awakening patch added a new dungeon, Dark Miscreation, which offers new Dimension Legendary equipment to improve the level 100 Legendary set. These Dimension Legendaries can also be upgraded to Neo: Legendary Product of Wisdom Epics for further (albeit not risk-free) improvements. As for the Legendary sets themselves, the number of runs required for the Legendary farming dungeons was reduced from 20 to 10 while doubling their material gain, addressing player feedback regarding burnout farming this tier of equipment and the lack of Fatigue Points left over after the daily was finished.
634** Guide of Wisdom is essentially designed to be a more accessible version of Hell Mode for the purposes of gambling for Epics. The entry fee for Guide of Wisdom is much smaller than endgame Hell Mode at 18 Time's Guide Stones as opposed to 20~40 for Harlem Hell Mode, and each round of Guide is a simple two waves of enemies before you fight the Guide of Wisdom. Furthermore, Guide also comes with an "Epic Wish" feature that allows you to pick up to five Epics of your choice to increase the drop rate of those specific Epics.
635** Getting around the world is now easier than ever; a portal to your Room can be found in practically every single major hub area, and your Room now has a portal in it that allows you to teleport to various major locations in Arad. This also includes the West Coast Dock, which can take you to every other major locale in the game, including Ghent, Suju, Central Park, Harlem, and more. [[spoiler:After completing the second Ghent arc, you are also gifted your own personal airship, the Philasia, that can be called anywhere in town, functions as an upgraded Room, also doubles as a Dock for getting around the world, and is able to teleport you to every major Raid dungeon.]]
636** Creator and Dark Knight are still barred from participating in proper PlayerVersusPlayer, but they are still allowed to go into the Arena lobby and complete the TP Quests there (with their Skills still being adjusted accordingly) so they aren't locked out of free TP just for not being able to play a certain game mode.
637** The Aeterna ItemCrafting system normally generates Synergy equipment at random, with 8 possible sets and 11 slots for each split into three types of boxes. If you roll equipment you don't want, you can disassemble them and get 100 Essence Residue. 600 Essence Residue is used as a material to craft a Legendary Equipment Selection Box, meaning that it ''is'' eventually possible to get every item you want without relying solely on RNG.
638** Previously, endgame equipment featured a stat called "Exorcism", which was used to gate certain content; depending on your total Exorcism rating relative to that of the dungeon's, the game will modify your stats accordingly, which can make it near-impossible to clear some dungeons if your Exorcism is too low. One problem with the stat was that due to its age, several pieces of equipment had increasingly arbitrary Exorcism values despite not being all that useful. This was eventually reworked in 2021 to the "Adventurer Fame" stat, which is meant to more accurately represent how your equipment affects your overall strength; equipment that's too low level won't give any Adventurer Fame at all, but the stat no longer modifies your other stats in dungeons, instead simply acting as a guideline. Adventurer Fame is still used to hard gate access to most endgame dungeons, but this is more for the player's benefit since not being sufficiently geared is already enough of a punishment in endgame content like raids.
639** Ozma Raid introduced the concept of Raid Auctions. When Ozma raids are completed at a [[DynamicDifficulty difficulty level of Chaos 1 or higher]], additional loot is generated that players can bid on. The winning bid gets the item, while the gold spent on the item is distributed to the remaining players. Players with lots of gold can get progression-related materials and card enchants slightly faster, and players with little gold earn it simply by participating in raid. The system was eventually expanded to other endgame content, like Sirocco Hard Raid.
640** The December 7th, 2021 update introduced a massive rework to the endgame gearing loop to alleviate concerns from players that it was too time-consuming and luck-dependent. Among these changes, half of all gear-related currency that drops from dungeons is now dispensed in an Account-bound variant, allowing you to gear alts faster, most endgame dungeons have had their max daily/weekly entry counts reduced while retaining the reward level, Mythics now drop 5x as often from certain dungeons like Guide of Wisdom, and a Mythic desynth/transfer service is now available just like for Epic gear. Some adjustments to the pre-Mythic gearing curve were also made, such as making Ghent Unique and Roschest Legendary gear easier to farm for[[note]]In the Korean version, at least; the RegionalBonus that made Ghent farm easier in the Global version was removed and equalized with the Korean version for economy balancing purposes, essentially nerfing Ghent in Global[[/note]] and allowing Roschest Legendaries to be upgraded to Lv. 100 Epics. Lastly, the update introduced a new dungeon, Watcher in the Rift, which is a more expensive counterpart to Guide of Wisdom but boasts higher drop rates; playing enough Watcher gives you access to the Guide of Extinction dungeon as a form of pity, which is guaranteed to drop a Lv. 100 Epic and has a low chance to randomly drop Sirocco Raid equipment outside of the raid, making this option enticing for BornUnlucky players.
641** The February 22, 2022 patch removed the "Synergy Dealer" role altogether from the roster and relegated it to Aeterna gear, alleviating one half of the problem described in CharacterSelectForcing. To make up for this, all of the classes that formerly had the role had their damaged buffed all around, and enemy health was reduced by roughly 25% as well. The effectiveness of Aeterna equipment was also buffed for players that wish to remain in a synergy role.
642** The launch of 110 cap addressed several long-standing issues with the game:
643*** The process of obtaining Epics and their effects were significantly streamlined. All normal dungeons drop a selected subset of Epics and there's no longer a dedicated material required to get them to drop, much like how Epic farming worked in the Spectre's release event. Noblesse Code, the dedicated Squad Mode dungeon, also allows players to distribute any looted Epics to a character of their choosing, as long as they participated in the squad (albeit limited to receiving one or two per character, depending on RNG). The Epics themselves ditched the concept of {{Set Bonus}}es, meaning any Epic can be slotted in and it'll function without much effort, unlike prior level caps where wearing random Epics usually resulted in doing less damage than simply having sets of a lower rarity. There are also a few "Custom Option Epics" that come with four random stats. As the name implies, the stats are customizable and can be altered by using other Custom Option Epics as upgrade fodder. Lastly, anything Epic gear aside from Custom Option Epics has their own easily farmable Selective Epic Box, so anyone can get a build of their choosing relatively quickly (roughly a month per character at worst), even for the BornUnlucky players.
644*** Advanced dungeons went from being strictly twice a week to running on a ticket system. Players can earn up to 100 "Play Points" just for logging in once per week (30 PP) and doing a daily to clear four specific dungeons on any difficulty (10 PP), which are then spent on entry tickets for advanced dungeons. They're no longer limited to one clear per day and two clears per week like in previous level caps, so players can repeat them as often or as little as they want, Play Point and Fatigue Points permitting. This also has the convenient side effect of parties for these dungeons no longer drying up two days after a weekly reset, as the new system ensures a small, but steady pool of players are available even off of peak hours.
645** Since the release of the level 110 dungeon "Meisters' Laboratory", the devs have slowly but surely been addressing the other half of the CharacterSelectForcing problem by making Buffers largely optional for dungeons that show up earlier in the gear treadmill. The damage buffs they normally would've provided instead come in the form of a "regional buff", giving Buffer-like stats to parties full of only DPS characters. The only reasons to take a Buffer for these dungeons is either to have heals on hand and/or get a Buffer who powers up the party more than the regional buff does. This often doesn't apply to whatever dungeon is considered the latest endgame content, but it still went a long way in reducing the game's notorious "LF Sader" wait times for a good portion of the game.
646** The release of the "Machine Revolution: Total War" dungeon upped the damage Buffers do when they solo content, to the point where they're roughly equivalent to actual damage dealers. This ended up fixing an issue brought about the by the Meisters' Laboratory change above, where Buffers had a hard time finding parties due to most DPS players preferring to solo older content.
647* ArbitraryEquipmentRestriction: Downplayed in Aeterna dungeons. While players can bring whatever gear they want to the continent of Aeterna, even heavily upgraded Sirocco raid gear becomes increasingly useless the deeper players travel into Aeterna, to the point where normal enemies are taking ScratchDamage about 2/3rds of the way in, thanks to a curse placed by the resident dragon, Geldrager. Only crafted Aeterna-exclusive gear can counteract this curse, and everyone has to farm it eventually, no matter how geared they were beforehand.
648* ArtificialStupidity: In Elite Member-enabled dungeons, players can have up to three of their other characters join their party as [=APCs=]. However, their AI isn't particularly smart; they often use all of their skills on {{Mooks}}, putting everything on cooldown during a boss or midboss room. Ranged classes also often have the problem of walking right up to enemies and casting skills with hitboxes that aren't the most effective at point blank ranges. Lastly, for dungeons that involve gimmicks, the AI will make zero effort to deal with any of them unless the player expicitly orders them to.
649* AsYouKnow: In a particularly silly example, [[spoiler:Hilder]] will tell the Creator, who's originally from Pandemonium, about the Apostles as if they have no knowledge of them. There ''is'' alternate dialogue for characters from Pandemonium, but they're not properly flagged for it.
650* AscendedExtra:
651** The Season 2 script revision made the PlayerCharacter's participation in the story significantly more prominent, with far more dialogue with other characters and personal thoughts on matters. The Season 4 script revision mostly undid these changes, but the player character still talks more than they did in Season 1 and Subclasses have context-specific dialogue in many cases.
652** The four great Sword Masters became more plot relevant after the Season 2 update, but the one worth mentioning is Vaughn Walshuted, the short sword master, as he only previously appeared in a flashback cutscene at the beginning of the Time Break quests and once more in Confidential Area during an Epic Quest. After Season 2, he makes an appearance in nearly every epic quest lore prior to the Time Break dungeons, often conversing with the player character and assisting them in many dungeons, making him the closest thing to a {{Deuteragonist}}. [[spoiler: However, he is also [[FriendlyEnemy heavily implied]] to have been either working with--or is being manipulated by--Hilder to slay the remaining Apostles all along, as told in supplemental material and shown at the end of the Luke Raid.]]
653** Before the release of the Fiend War raid, Hell Mode was nothing but a farming dungeon for Epic equipment, and the only thing that really sold the name were a group of four demons that served as minibosses. After Fiend War, it's revealed that there's ''an entire dimension'' of them, collectively called the Cosmo Fiends, and their BloodKnight tendencies are such that they ''seek out entire worlds'' to destroy simply because their inhabitants are powerful (like Arad, for instance), making [[CrapsackWorld Echon]], a world defined by perpetual battle, look relatively tame in comparison.
654** The Season 4 script revision greatly expanded Seria's overall contribution to the story, with her now participating in the entire Elvenguard section of the plot rather than simply being a DamselInDistress and eventually tagging along with the player to Hendon Myre and exploring Sky Tower to investigate the Great Pentacle.
655** The Abysmal Sky Tower arc reveals that some of the [=APCs=] you fight in the last ten floors of the Tower of Despair are members of the Grim Seekers allied with Azalea. They are eventually encountered as part of the story prior to the final showdown with [[spoiler:Sirocco]], who proceed to [[TheWorfEffect worf]] the protagonist and reveal to them the secret of Neo: Awakening.
656* AscendedMeme:
657** Ice Tiger Capsules were commonly given out in the Nexon version as a compensation for service problems: they create a friendly Ice Tiger monster to help you, but their use was questionable at best, since they have a tendency to grab enemies and are low-leveled, causing the grabbed enemy to be immune to damage from other, far more damaging sources. Fastforward to Neople's version, and Ice Tiger Capsule Machine became a piece of subequipment that you could get from a leveling challenge that randomly summoned an Ice Tiger when attacking, with the description "this machine seems to be well-maintained...". This was also referenced in another item package given out as a compensation for service problems with the description "Hmmm...Ice Tiger? No...", and another event had a daily blind box you could buy for 50000 gold with one of them containing 100 Ice Tiger capsules.
658** The weapon avatar available to the Female Slayer as an event reward is an oversized flower-decorated informercial kitchen knife: this is a reference to a specific Korean informercial with near-identical knives and even had its own video made for it in the informercial's style for the ingame version: as an additonal bonus, it creates random household objects that end up being cut in half with every swing when you attack with it equiped, much like the alleged demonstrations of the actual knife's cutting ability seen in the said and basically any other similar informercial.
659** Due to the massive amount of power that can be attained from high-level reinforcing, many people are willing to subject their extremely rare weapons to the mercy of Kiri to do so, even though in 99% of the cases they'll just end up with a destroyed weapon. If you do the quest to obtain your Transcendent Weapon and then remove it from your inventory (ie. just put it in your storage chest), you'll unlock another quest that allows you to get another one at a hefty price. Accept it and the blacksmith Jun who forged the weapon for you asks how you managed to lose it, immediately assumes that you let Kiri have her way with it and agrees to make another one for you but this time you won't get it for free.
660** [[https://www.dfoneople.com/news/events/view/Zombie-Crisis-Great-Escape The Zombie Crisis event]], introduced [[https://i.redd.it/gigiq5czkq3z.png a reward item]] which happens to have "Better Than Last Year" as the FlavorText, something that was oft-repeated in the [[{{Understatement}} less-than-stellar]] DFOG 2nd Anniversary events (see the YMMV page).
661** The [[https://www.dfoneople.com/news/events/view/12-Days-of-Epic-Christmas 12 Days of Epic Christmas]] event had everyone's [[BlatantLies fan favorite]] show up again on day 5, and the DFO-themed Christmas carol was fully aware of that fact.
662--> '''MJ:''' On the fifth day of Christmas, DFO sent to me...
663--> '''MJ and DK:''' [[LargeHam Five Ice Tiger Capsules!]]
664** [[https://www.dfoneople.com/news/events/1024/MJ-Blind-Deal-2018 MJ's Blind Deal 2018]] had, for its first hint, [[https://www.reddit.com/r/DFO/comments/8otoyq/spoiler_all_hints_for_the_blind_deal_event/ a picture]] of MJ crossing his arms with a comical frown, [[http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/deal-with-it "Deal With It" sunglasses]] edited on his face, and "BETTER THAN LAST YEAR" plastered on the center of the image. The rest of the hint images in and of itself are probably a nod to the wacky expressions MJ is prone to making while on [=DFO's=] official stream.
665** The [[https://www.dfoneople.com/news/events/1170/Pig-Pig-And-Pig?page=1 Pig Pig and Pig event]] is probably a nod to "[[invoked]][[MemeticMutation pig luckers]]", as the event revolves around collecting gold coins with pig faces on them from a [[MetalSlime rarely-appearing boss]] and the event-exclusive damage font has a gold piggy bank with coins and moneybags raining in the background as its damage cap image (things a BornLucky player likely possesses).
666** Fiend War's only "human" midboss in the entire raid is a Lancer named [[FaceHeelTurn Human Betrayer Pinwheel]] who uses [[AllYourPowersCombined a few powerful attacks from every Lancer subclass]]. To drive the point home further, one of his quotes seems to be LeaningOnTheFourthWall.
667--->'''Pinwheel:''' In the end, humanity couldn’t accept me for who I am! But this power does and suits me well! [[EvilLaugh Bhahahahahaha!]]
668** The May~June 2019 Honey Weekend event featured a trio of emoticon packs that made nods at several different memes:
669*** One of the emotes features a female Crusader wearing "Deal with it"-style sunglasses, with a cigar in her mouth for added humor.
670*** Another female Crusader emoticon has her holding up a milk carton reading "BIG MILK" on it.
671*** A female Mage emoticon "speaking" with a PictorialSpeechBubble showing a pig, which is another nod to "pig luckers" (see above).
672*** A Life Token counter displaying 0/20 tokens remaining with a huge, bold-faced letter F on the right side, [[YMMV/CallOfDutyAdvancedWarfare which isn't even a DFO meme]].
673** [[https://twitter.com/GoodSmile_US/status/1471317936119947271 Good Smile Company produced an official Nendoroid of the Female Mage wearing the "Snowman" Avatar body]], a meme outfit combo popularized by the Chinese ''[=DnF=]'' community.
674* BackFromTheDead:
675** Morgan, who was killed in the backstory of the pre-Metastasis timeline, was CosmicRetcon'd back to life by the Great Metastasis. As of Season 4 he is now dead again, but his post-Metastasis counterpart can still be found in Mirror Arad.
676** In Season 4, Marcellus is revealed to be using forbidden spells to revive dead GBL followers to mount a counterattack against Lotus. Unfortunately, there's a fairly good reason these spells are forbidden, with both Marcellus and his undead subjects acting fairly unhinged.
677* BadLuckMitigationMechanic: Season 7 introduced Safe Reinforcement/Amplification, a service that allows Kiri and Klonter to use materials dropped in Level 105 dungeons (Ryan Cores and Harmonious Crystals respectively) to upgrade your equipment. Unlike normal Reinforce/Amplify, you cannot lose Reinforcement/Amplification levels by failing Safe Reinforcement/Amplification and if you fail an upgrade it will boost the success rate of your next attempt by a stacking 5% or 10% until you succeed. However, Safe Reinforcement/Amplification can only go up to +12 Reinforce/+10 Amplify, after which you must use standard Reinforcement/Amplification if you want to go further.
678* BadassInDistress: Much of the Iced Wall story revolves around finding Bwanga and Aganzo, who decided to enter the realm of the Nightmare to do some work and haven't returned since. [[spoiler:It's actually subverted in the former case. Bwanga just got disillusioned due to the Nightmare and got lost. Aganzo, however, needs to be [[GetAHoldOfYourselfMan roughed up a little]] to knock some sense into him.]] Subverted post-revision, where their absences are explained away by both of them pursuing their own agendas within the Nightmare.
679* BalanceBuff: The Assault update removed the Synergy Dealer role from every class that had it and rolled them into the Pure Dealer role. To compensate, every class that had the Synergy role was given a roughly 8.5% damage buff and skill tweaks, and all multiplayer raids and "advanced" dungeons had their enemy HP slashed by 25%. Aeterna Synergy gear effects were also greatly improved and equipping them now gives the Synergy Dealer role as if you were an actual Synergy class.
680* BattleAura: Auras are a type of Avatar that can be equipped to every character. In addition to having Multicolored Emblem Slots like Skin Avatars, Auras can have their own unique fixed stats instead of Avatar Stats. You can also transmog over an active Aura with another Aura to retain the appearance of one Aura while having the benefits of another, which requires a one-time 1,000,000 Gold payment for an Aura Skin Slot.
681* BattleshipRaid: Apostle Anton is so huge, the battle against him takes the form of travelling to different parts of his body with a raid party of up to 20 players (five teams of four) and repeatedly wail on him until you can get to his core. Each section of his body takes the form of an individual dungeon replete with their own monster spawns and boss battles, the entire raid has 2 phases and each one is under a strict time limit.
682* BigDamnHeroes:
683** [[spoiler:The spirit of Roxy]] returns to save Aganzo from [[spoiler:Sirocco's]] wrath at the climax of the Abyssal Sky Tower act.
684** [[spoiler:Just as Astalos stops time and is about to land the killing blow on Grandis, the Dark Knight and the Creator burst out of a temporal rift and attack her to counter her powers, disrupting her long enough for Nilvas to intervene and destroy her once and for all.]]
685* BlingOfWar: One of the Epic equipment sets is essentially an overly ornate commander's outfit which gives massive status buffs to all party members. The descriptions of each piece lampshade how it isn't what actual military men wear and how ridiculously many medals it has hanging off it.
686* BreakMeter:
687** Certain bosses and named enemies in the level 110 cap have a Neutralization Gauge, a small, purple meter underneath their main health bar. It's emptied by hitting them with either Super Hold attacks or exploiting their elemental and/or status effect weaknesses. Emptying it causes the enemy to stop being ImmuneToFlinching for a few seconds (or, in some cases, the boss keels over and remains stationary), and they also lose their ContractualBossImmunity to all status effects. However, the upper limit of the Neutralize Gauge [[DiminishingReturnsForBalance increases every time it's emptied]].
688** Bakal Raid introduced bosses with a Hold Gauge, which is this trope but [[InvertedTrope in reverse]]. The Hold Gauge indicates how long a given boss can be affected by Hold or Super Hold skills, typically up to 7 seconds. When it empties, the boss will get their usual immunity to holds, typically up to 40 seconds. Emptying the Neutralization Gauge, as per above, renders the Hold Gauge a moot point until the boss returns to normal.
689* BribingYourWayToVictory:
690** Almost all paid packages in the game (namely, the ones that cost around 3,000 CERA, or US$30) can be sold in whole or piecemeal for a hefty chunk of gold. Whenever a "How do I make money?" thread shows up on the game's official [[Website/{{Reddit}} subreddit, /r/dfo]], there's always going to be a few people that will recommend to sell avatar packages, because [[https://dfoarchive.blogspot.com/2020/06/gold-farming-in-level-100-cap.html the second best thing]] is a ''level 85 dungeon'' (note: the level cap is 100) which still manages to fall a few million gold per hour short of flipping burgers in real life. That being said, there aren't any hard paywalls, so free-to-play players with enough persistence can do all endgame content with enough farming and/or [[ScrewTheRulesIHaveConnections personally knowing enough low-standards raid groups]].
691** Two pieces of Level 105 Epics, the Jade Ghost Tassets and the Restrained Spirit Bead, take this to its logical conclusion by scaling directly off of how many Avatars and Creatures you own, respectively. The Jade Ghost Tassets grant a damage buff if you own at least 21 Avatar pieces (not counting the ones you are wearing), which increases even further if you own at least 50 Avatar pieces, and once you hit 120 Avatar pieces you get permanent Super Armor and 8% global cooldown reduction. The Restrained Spirit Bead grants a damage buff if you own at least 3 Creatures (counting the one you are wearing), which increases even further if you own at least 10 Creatures, and once you hit 20 Creatures you get the permanent Spectrum buff, which grants Speed +15%, Skill Atk. +7%, and 8% global cooldown reduction. Both of the maximum requirements are possible to hit for a free player but require such an immense amount of farming and/or hoarding event items that realistically the equipment is only practical on players who have already blown enough money on the game to have this much stuff in the first place.
692* ButNotTooGay: Likability cannot be increased past the Intimate stage for [=NPCs=] that are the same gender as the character you are playing as.
693* CallBack: With the updated story, a lot has changed including enemies and locations, but there are many references to the original DFO, such as fighting in the ruined streets of Arad, a couple of references to dungeons, such as sky tower being ruined as well as a character asking about it, and a couple of old enemies showing up in non-antagonist roles, such as a puppeter floating in the dojo, taking control of practice targets for you to fight against.
694** The Ice Wall of Resignation area is basically designed for this, since it takes you through many areas that were destroyed or are gone after the Great Metastasis via a DreamLand. [[spoiler:It's later revealed that it ''is'' pre-Metastasis Arad, stuffed into an AlternateUniverse. The portal leading you into it is a dimensional rift.]]
695* CallForward: During the penultimate Scenario expedition into Confidential Area, you can find [[spoiler:a young version of the Female Slayer in the penultimate room.]]
696* CaptainErsatz: Two of the first bosses you fight are thinly-veiled copies of the [[WesternAnimation/AdventureTime Flame Princess and Ice King]].
697* CharacterSelectForcing: Up until the February 22, 2022 patch, almost every endgame dungeon was balanced with the assumption that parties have a Buffer and a Synergy Dealer, which give party members immense amounts of Strength and Intelligence through buffs and boosts the party's damage by 34% solely by their mere existence, respectively. Not having at least one of either per party is either tactical suicide by more ignorant players or a boast on [[BribingYourWayToVictory how much money]] a player has spent on their Pure Dealer character.
698* ChekhovsGun: The Male Mechanic's 1st Awakening Skill is a move called "Gaebolg Punch", where the Mechanic opens a portal to subspace and summons a gigantic mechanical fist to punch enemies across the screen. The Past Empyrean storylines introduced in 2022 finally reveal that this is in fact the arm of the ancient superweapon Gaebolg, a HumongousMecha designed by the Seven Meisters in an attempt to defeat Bakal. [[spoiler:Unfortunately, because Hilder meddled in its creation, Tenebe and the Seven Meisters were forced to sabotage the project, destroying the original, but Meister Curio created a backup copy hidden away in subspace that can only be fully accessed by Tenebe's bloodline. When the heroes finally confront Bakal in a later time rift, Michelle Curio is able to weaponize this knowledge to unlock Gaebolg with the help of Juvenil, Tenebe's descendent, allowing the Eternal Flames to finally duke it out with Bakal in a full-on BehemothBattle.]]
699* ChekhovsGunman: Seria Kirmin, despite essentially being the face of the game besides the player characters themselves, only seems to exist to be saved in the tutorial then stand in your room and look pretty. [[spoiler:The Time Gate arc eventually reveals that she was once a Fairy and sacrificed her Fairy powers, memories, and the lives of her own kind to restore the Great Pentacle in the aftermath of the Great Blaze, a feat impossible to reproduce with modern understanding of magic. Act 12 goes on to explain that Seria is essentially a BarrierMaiden and the fate of the entire planet and possibly the entire ''DFO'' multiverse hinges on her survival.]]
700* CivilWar: The Empyrean War Chronicle II arc. Almost immediately after the Empyrean forces and the protagonist defeat the Kartel and end the seemingly-unending war, the Empyrean Nobility, tired of the imperial government and wanting to change how Empyrean is run, suddenly rouses the public and launches a coup, forcing Princess Erje and a few of her loyal subjects to flee on the Noblesky. By the time the protagonist returns from the Pandemonium War arc, Empyrean is embroiled in yet another devastating war, forcing them to step in and help Erje reclaim the throne and put an end to the Nobility's schemes.
701* ClockRoaches: The Time Lords seek out distortions in time and remove them. Unfortunately, time travel, such as the use of the Time Gate, causes these distortions, causing the Time Lords to attack the Dungeon Fighters traveling through the Time Gate. Last Memet is the only Time Lord that's explicitly on Dark Knight's and Creator's side and is also the one who helps other Dungeon Fighters gain access to Ancient Dungeons. When Dark Knight and Creator meet Baston, another Time Lord, in the Time Gate and have to fight him, Memet states that they can't kill him and he's only doing his job after they defeat him.
702* ColorCodedForYourConvenience: The Guide of Wisdom crystal upon being hit emits a colored aura based on what kind of drop you'll get out of it: purple for basic drops, gold for an Epic, and rainbow if it's an Epic selected as an Epic Wish item at the start of the dungeon. If you encounter (and defeat) the Parasitic Sponger Boss when the crystal is rainbow, it will be a Mythic drop.
703* ComboBreaker: 110 cap added a skill available to all classes called Improved Backstep, a version of Backstep on a seperate 40 second cooldown that can be either used as a LagCancel for almost any skill or break out of hitstun.
704* CosmicRetcon: The Metastasis didn't simply devastate a good portion of Arad; it completely rewrote its history, including the backstories and fates of several [=NPCs=], bosses, locations, and even certain [[PlotCoupon Plot Coupons]]. [[spoiler:That doesn't necessarily mean Old Arad went away, however...]]
705* CrapsackWorld: While pre-Metastasis Arad wasn't exactly sunshine and rainbows, post-Metastasis Arad is very much this. More than half the world is in ruins and monsters are running rampant [[spoiler:and are being empowered by strange "Nightmares"]], the Elves are practically extinct. The destruction of most of the world's Pentacles has put nature itself out of wack, causing previously benevolent nature spirits and fairies to go insane and attack people. Dwarves are causing trouble, waking things that shouldn't be. The ruins of Hendon Myre are overrun with strange spores, ant-people among other things. However, a few ''good'' things came out of the Metastasis: [[spoiler:Gangling Lotus's mind control over the GBL isn't ''quite'' as potent meaning many GBL bosses are now allies who help you fight him, Michelle using her powers to help out when it hit the fan meant she was much more accepted and is now the main quest-giver at Iced Wall, and there is also a more peaceful state between Dark Elves and humans]].
706** The nigh-extinction of elves was something in old Arad as well, and the Dark Elf/Human war was a thing in old Arad but post-Metastasis things aren't so bad.
707* CreatorCameo:
708** Exclusive to the ''Global'' version's open beta test, you can talk to an NPC version of Neople's CEO, In Lee, everyday in Underfoot to get a package of goodies.
709** Everyone in Part II of the open beta test received a Creature of a SuperDeformed version of the AuthorAvatar of Neople employee "[[OnlyKnownByHisNickname Danjun]]".
710** Neople employee Nyangko was once available as a pet in chibi form.
711** One of the official DFO streamers, Gerri, also got the pet treatment. Her idle animation has fellow streamer and employee MJ rising from the ground with a stack of (presumably work-related) papers and Gerri reacting in shock.
712** As mentioned under AscendedMeme, MJ got a whole event to himself with [[https://www.dfoneople.com/news/events/1024/MJ-Blind-Deal-2018 MJ's Blind Deal 2018]], and one of the featured items transformed the player into [[BlatantLies "the most fearsome creature in Arad"]]... which is the same chibi MJ in Gerri's idle animation, but this time [[https://i.imgur.com/3QrbAsV.jpg wearing a headband with heart-tipped antennae]]. The name of the item, "[[Franchise/LyricalNanoha Magical Lyrical]] Circle", also references MJ's [[ComedicLolicon comedic love]] of the [[TokenMiniMoe female]] [[MagicalGirl Mage]] class.
713** Duni and Tigger, the two community managers that host the game's bi-weekly Website/{{Twitch}} developer stream, have their characters show up as two out of the four free starter Squad Mode allies as "GM Duni" and "GM Tigger" respectively.
714* {{Crossover}}:
715** The Korean version (and later in ''Arad Senki'') had one with ''Literature/SwordArtOnline'', adding an exclusive dungeon, enemies modeled after one of the floors and a set of avatars inspired by the characters. [[NoExportForYou It wasn't available outside of Asia, though.]]
716** They also had one with Music/HatsuneMiku, even adding new songs to be played in town. This event became the first crossover event to be featured in ''Global'' (although a bit late compared to Asia), [[AvertedTrope averting]] NoExportForYou for once.
717** More recently, with ''Literature/ReZero'', in the form of an avatar package with which players can cosplay various characters from the series. This was also released in ''Global'' on September 2019.
718* DarkIsNotEvil: Vetala notes that spirits fueled by dark power aren't inherently evil. Darklex, on the other hand, is evil, but he isn't inherently ''hostile'', which is another thing altogether.
719* DarkerAndEdgier: The new story is a LOT darker now, with most of the world being destroyed and nature is out of control in most places because of it, making it a struggle to survive for certain people.
720* DatingSim: Not anywhere within the main game itself, but the [[https://www.dfoneople.com/news/events/997/A-Dream-of-Romantic-Adventures?page=1 Dream of Romantic Adventures]] event is a simplified version of one of these. Complete with a FeaturelessProtagonist, MultipleEndings, special CG for [[LevelUpAtIntimacyFive special events]], and even a GayOption.
721* DegradedBoss: Examples can be found here and there of enemies that were bosses pre-Metastasis but are now just mini-bosses. Viper's Nest is the biggest offender, as it features Lakius, Master Dogrie, and Heaven Expeller as mini-bosses.
722* DemotedToExtra:
723** Some other pre-Metastasis bosses are now town [=NPCs=] as well. Examples include [[spoiler:Isadora and Vangelis of the [=GBL=] and Michelle]]. Some of these still have their boss forms present in the game.
724** With Subclass Advancement and Awakening procedures now standardized for all classes, Annis, the class instructor for the Knight, no longer serves a purpose unless the player uses the Clear Quest function to skip the "Unending Foreboding" Act Quest required for 1st Awakening.
725* DevelopersForesight:
726** Whenever Melvin tries to explain his inventions to the player, it will appear as random symbols. Only Mechanics of both genders will actually get to see his TechnoBabble.
727** The Dark Knight and Creator classes cut short Siran's explanation of how the Time Gate works, seeing as they start their adventure by getting expelled from the Time Gate - they already know how it works.
728** The first story dungeon of the Time Gate area features a familiar-looking elf girl, who is surprised by the sudden appearance of an outsider. If the player is an Elven Knight, she instead gets surprised at the fact that there are other elves living outside of her home forest.
729** The Black Crusade dungeon takes place during the time the Priests were fighting Ozma and his army of demons. Naturally, all of the Priest subclasses get acknowledged during this particular scenario. Special mention goes to the dungeon's final boss, Nilvas Gracia, who shares in his demonization-induced plight with the Avenger and Mistress classes.
730** Going to the Confidential Area and seeing the injured girl while playing as a female slayer [[MyFutureSelfAndMe will result in extra dialogue of her realizing the young girl is her]]. Dark Knights and Creators also get a similar treatment while in this dungeon.
731** At one point during the Zelva scenario, the player is given [[http://wiki.dfo.world/view/Castle_of_the_Dead_(Epic_Quests)#Decision a quest]] to join one of three factions residing in the area. One of these factions is comprised primarily of Imperial soldiers, and the Female Slayer will staunchly refuse to join them due to being her sworn enemies. Also, the Lancer class briefly ponders his past life as an Imperial gladiator if he chooses to join them.
732** The Dragon Knight's Second Awakening skill shows her dragon familiar [[DeathFromAbove flying to space to fire its lightning breath at its foes]]. Normally, the view from space would show Arad, but if the Dragon Knight is in a dungeon that takes place on a different planet, [[https://youtu.be/WWHmtRfqg-8?t=64 it will be reflected in the attack]].
733** Near the beginning of the Harlem scenario quest line, the player is directed to go across the desert on a mount. Players can actually dismount in the next room, which is normally a RailShooter-esque segment where the mount is moving quite fast. There's no indication nor incentive to do so, other than [[https://www.reddit.com/r/DFO/comments/axhspu/so_if_you_keep_jumping_off_of_your_valgurmobile/ a few lines of dialogue]] where the PlayerCharacter [[LampshadeHanging lampshades]] their [[WhatTheHellPlayer sudden bout of repeated stupidity]].
734** The Ghostblade's ghost has his own voice lines for when the skills used to summon him are on cooldown.
735** The level 96 through 100 scenarios adds boatloads of conditional dialogue, with [[https://www.reddit.com/r/DFO/comments/g9zrp5/what_are_some_of_the_characterspecific_dialogues/ this thread]] probably only scratching the surface. As a general rule of thumb, subclasses will generally have extra dialogue with [=NPCs=] who are of the same class or with [=NPCs=] from their home world.
736** Several class-based dialogue changes occur during the Ozma scenario questline. Pretty much every Priest subclass has something extra to say (especially the Inquisitor, Avenger and Redeemer) given that Ozma's awakening is basically the second coming of the Black Crusade, the male Slayers note the irony of defeating Kazan with their Kazan Syndrome-based powers, and the Dark Knight and Creator are the only characters to acknowledge Astaros's time warping powers, since they are both {{Time Master}}s themselves.
737** If a Blitz equips any level 105 epics that forcibly inflict a Bleed status on him (which he's normally immune to, due to being a {{Cyborg}}), he gets a [[https://www.reddit.com/r/DFO/comments/w1n5kw/blitz_can_bleed/ unique bleeding animation]] where he bleeds oil and discharges green electricity as if he's breaking down.
738** One of the 110 cap scenario questlines involves a civil war within The Company between the Agents led by Rupert Dostar, the organization's current leader, and loyalists to [=O'Connell=], the previous leader who went missing during a mission in Arad, as seen in the Agent's opening cutscene. The former faction is wanted for attempting a coup against Empress Erje, who previously rose to power in the level 100 scenarios and banished all the corrupt nobles from Ghent, while the [=O'Connell=] loyalists are trying to thwart Rupert's plans. If the player is playing any of the Agent subclasses (who's a part of The Company himself), the allied [=NPCs=] are replaced with Unit Leader Schmitt, a senior Specialist, and [=O'Connell=] himself is found alive and well while infiltrating an enemy stronghold. The quest dialogue is also appropriately changed to shed more light on The Company's infighting.
739** The finale of Act 12 involves the Adventurer discovering that they must travel to the First World known as Seon to find a way to stop Hilder. As the Archer originates from Seon, playing as either a Muse or Traveler will enable a large amount of extended dialogue concerning their familiarity with their home and how it's currently impossible to go back the way they came. Likewise, the "Poppin' Poppin' Arcade Archer!" event has unique dialogue if you interact with Arcade Archer as an Archer subclass.
740* DifficultButAwesome:
741** Some Epic weapons gain power for each unused hotkey slot. For maximum damage, you will need to memorize ''every single button combo for every Skill you use.'' To compensate, the buff granted by the weapon is fairly substantial.
742** Certain level 100 Epic sets are meant to be played around a particular gimmick to make the most use of them. The Arid Desert Traveler set in particular offers skill damage increases for each empty hotkey like the aforementioned weapons. It also has another damage bonus for not getting hit for lengthy periods of time, with larger set bonuses alleviating the difficulty of maintaining this buff.
743* DifficultyByAcceleration: One of the new features added after the Season 2 patch is gradually increasing enemy attack and movement speed in some of the early areas with every Scenario quest you complete in that dungeon.
744* DreamLand: The Nightmare, the resident dungeon locale of the Ice Wall of Resignation, a locale in post-Metastasis Arad where monsters sealed away by Ice Dragon's Breaths are stored inside, well, [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin a giant wall of ice blocks.]] The nightmares you encounter largely take the form of [[NostalgiaLevel composites of dungeons from pre-Metastasis Arad,]] with many of the enemies from that era intact within the realm of the Nightmare. [[spoiler:Subverted later on; a revision to the script reveals that the Nightmare is actually an AlternateUniverse, and the Foundation of the Nightmare had transferred the world of pre-Metastasis Arad into it, causing it to co-exist with the current Arad. The fact that there is a portal open to it creates the threat of the Nightmare [[MergedReality transferring Old Arad into New Arad]], making a bad situation even worse]].
745* DynamicEntry: Prey-Isys does this to Isys-Prey in the finale cutscene of the Isys-Prey Subjugation Raid, divekicking him from the sky while he's distracted by the Dungeon Fighters to pin him to the ground and absorb his power.
746* EasyExp:
747** The exp-sharing feature available during the second awakening event was a major source of this: instead of being able to just create Growth Capsules that give 1 million exp for every 11.6 million exp you gain that can only be used from level 50 onwards when you get a character to a maximum level, this event lets you store up to 30 million exp per day when you play as a specific class and then use it on ANY character the following day with no restrictions: if you dump it all on a freshly made character, it bumps them to nearly level 43, allowing them to skip 3 areas worth of dungeons instantly.
748** The "Altimate Power Leveling" events are this but on mega-steroids. It is only available for new characters created during the event period, but if you choose to activate the event, the new character will get a heavily streamlined and railroaded progress curve that skips the entire main story and gives special event-specific dungeons that reward set amounts of EXP when cleared, allowing the character to level up several times faster than a normal character. The character will also get gift boxes every few levels to replenish Fatigue, obtain better equipment, and auto-clear certain Quests such as Awakenings and equipment slot unlocks. Reaching maximum level (doable within three days) also awards a set of InfinityMinusOneSword equipment designed to help the new character immediately jump into endgame content so they can start farming for Epics.
749* EasterEgg: In Chessboard of Despair, it's possible to find [[spoiler:Lorianne's discarded hair ribbon and the remnants of her pet]].
750* EldritchLocation: The Nightmare, again. The characters' initial assumption (that it's just a shared DreamLand inhabited by all the creatures sealed in the Ice Wall) is swiftly proven false, and even the revised understanding that it's conjuring images from the minds of those within still doesn't end up explaining everything, implying that it's ''still'' something different and stranger than that.
751** The revised storyline later clarifies what The Nightmare is. [[spoiler:It's a parallel universe. The "Dream Gate" is actually an interdimensional rift, and the Foundation of the Nightmare is trying to bring the parallel universe to the main one.]]
752* EnemyCivilWar: By the time players get to the Harlem area, the epic questline reveals that the Kashipa criminal organization is already embroiled in one of these.
753* EnemyMine:
754** Due to the effects of the Great Metastasis, [[spoiler:Death Dragon Spirazzi wakes up from the depths of Underfoot and tries to recover his full strength.]] The scenario is so bad that the Dwarves are willing to team up with the Dark Elves to stop him. Most of them, anyway.
755** Most of the Harlem questline involves the player aiding several Kashipa top brass in killing each other for control of the organization.
756* EscortMission: Rule of thumb for "escort" missions in ''Dungeon Fighter'' is that 90% of the time, everyone accompanying you will either be invincible support or [[TheComputerIsACheatingBastard overleveled]] and capable of decimating entire rooms with a flick of the wrist.
757** A quest that'll be in a more up to date build is escorting some famed sword masters to fight Lotus. Of course, like the majority of [[EscortMission Escort Missions]] in the game, your "escorts" are also stupidly overpowered, and you're just tagging along for the ride.
758** Each area of Iced Wall contains at least one quest where you must escort Michelle through the dungeon. Thankfully, she's completely invincible and occasionally buffs the player.
759** Post-revision, the final Quest of the Death Dragon arc involves escorting Aganzo, Siran, Bwanga, and Vaughn to Death Dragon Spirazzi. In practice, it'll feel more like they're escorting ''you'', since their combined efforts stomp rooms in seconds and kill the boss no later.
760** One mission involves Sandstorm Varracht, a former Kartel member, asking you to take him along to a dungeon. While he may be retired and lacks a working eye, he can hold his own very well as a Level 80 Ranger.
761** The dungeon segment of Pursue the Express Train has you accompanied by a Female Brawler. If she survives until the boss room, then you face two bosses instead of one, but the rewards are greater.
762** A more proper (but optional) EscortMission is the Furtz Power Plant. The shortest path to the boss requires protecting an APC while he destroys barriers for you, and him dying forces you to spend more Fatigue taking the longer north route. Season 2 greatly increased his HP, making it much less likely for him to die as well as changing the default layout of the dungeon so that once you complete the scennario quests for the dungeon, you don't even have to enter the room where you meet him in order to reach the boss room.
763** Trombe Power Plant has friendly APCs located in three different rooms. Taking the quickest path to the boss means skipping them, but if you bring the three APCs to the boss room, they'll either weaken the boss or kill one of the minibosses in the room, making the fight easier.
764** The most frustrating one of these used to be in Black Crusade, where you needed to find 4 priests located around the dungeon and bring them to the room before the boss room, where they'd combine their powers and summon Sharpiro Gracia who'd make short work of the miniboss in the room: the problem was that the black spirits located around the dungeon would OneHitKill them if they got in contact with them and while weak, you usually encountered them en masse. Thankfully the reward for successfully bringing all 4 of them to the room before the boss room was only the completion of a daily quest.
765** The escort mission with by far the most overpowered APC is the first part of the scenario version of Anton: you begin the assault with Woon, who's wearing an Epic set of armor (as can be seen from the fact that you get massive stat boosts identical to the set described above when you're with him) and makes short work of any enemy he comes across, while you yourself can easily be killed by specific enemy attacks: while you could probably beat the dungeon without him, it'd no doubt take much longer than it would without his assistance, especially if you pay attention to how much damage he's doing with every hit compared to you.
766** An interesting variant occurs in the Pandemonium area, where you get a few epic scenario dungeons in which [[InnocentlyInsensitive Princess]] [[TheOjou Isabella]] of the De Los Empire accompanies you. One would be forgiven for thinking she's going to be [[TheLoad a burden]] [[spoiler: except she turns out to be a [[HiddenBadass very competent Striker]] in her own regard. She does get injured and poisoned after the ordeal for being too reckless, however, and needs to be taken to Summoner Kate for medical attention.]]
767* FantasticNuke: The Great Metastasis, a disaster that reportedly occurred when the Pentacles supporting Old Arad in Myre collapsed, allowing a Dimensional Rift to form that obliterated practically all of the original Arad. [[spoiler:Well, that's the official story. It actually happened as a result of Carloso managing to reunite with one of the fragments of his power.]]
768* FantasticRacism: Elder Saffron doesn't much like the Elven Knight, as Klonter warns you about beforehand.
769** In general, while relations between Humans and Dark Elves aren't ''nearly'' as bad as they were pre-Metastasis, there's still a fair amount of friction between them. Notably, the Thief, who was one of the most vocal and open of the Dark Elven racists, is now much more friendly.
770* FightingYourFriend:
771** In Season 4 Behemoth, the protagonist and Vaughn are forced to duel with Aganzo, who is being partially mind-controlled by Apostle Lotus.
772** During the events of The Oculus, [[spoiler:Farris is forced to kill Louise, one of the Seven Shards of the Grim Seekers, to put her out of her misery and stop her from hurting more people]].
773* FloatingContinent: After the Great Metastasis, the formerly underground cities of Underfoot and Noire Ferra are this, as well as the Inverted Waterfall, which is made up of fragments of what used to be Sky Tower.
774* GameBreakingBug: DFO's client has always had memory management problems, but the 64 bit version of the game brought them to the forefront as it was no longer limited to using 4 GB of memory. This can result in moments where DFO [[https://www.reddit.com/r/DFO/comments/jfh6ic/lowkey_glad_we_have_64bit_client_but_the_garbage/ uses 16 GB of memory on a machine that has 32 GB]], amongst other absurdities. The lack of memory management is more of a problem in Sirocco Raid, where the final dungeon loads three dungeons' worth of enemy-related sprites because of its raid gimmick, making it highly likely that one's computer will simply stop responding if it has less than 8 GB available.
775* GameWithinAGame:
776** The Sirocco Raid patch [[https://www.dfoneople.com/news/updates/1910/Arad-Adventure reworked]] the old FreemiumTimer Explorer Club expeditions into a slightly more fleshed-out version of the [[https://www.dfoneople.com/pg/Tower-of-Despair-Challenge Tower of Despair Challenge]] IdleGame event.
777** The patch that introduced Ispins, an endgame dungeon, also introduced [[https://www.dfoneople.com/news/updates/3129/Dungeon-Life-Online/System Dungeon Life Online]], a little village the player can manage that has minor FarmLifeSim aspects as well as a FishingMinigame. The village [[GlobalCurrencyException uses its own currency, Sil]], which is slowly gained through these activities and can eventually reward the player with crafting recipies for various consumables, such as healing potions, {{Trick Bomb}}s that exploit enemy weaknesses, and utility consumables like portable disassemblers and enchanters.
778* GimmickLevel:
779** A large number of dungeons have some sort of a minor or a major gimmick, such as imprisoned [=APCs=] you can break free in order to gain their help, overpowered [=APCs=] you can either get as allies or fight as enemies depending on if you select the right DialogueTree choices, a boss whose form changes depending on which miniboss out of 3 you kill first, a cave where you can get extra money at the end if you [[NoDamageRun avoid getting hit too much]], levels where you can find and pilot a small airship and two types MiniMecha, both with their own sets of attacks, a level where you dress up as ninja turtle to fool other turtle pirates and a level that starts with a brief chase sequence with a speedboat and if you avoid crashing, you gain numerous powerups, including doubled experience.
780** When doing the Iced Wall story, every dungeon will have at least one run where you have to tag alongside Michelle and defeat the Foundation of the Nightmare. Michelle emits a special aura whose effect changes depending on what dungeon you're doing, such as stunning invisible monsters or revealing the contents of nearby pots so you don't break the wrong one. Naturally, said levels are full of these gimmicks that only Michelle can help you get past.
781** The Tower of Despair consists almost exclusively of gimmick fights with [[TheComputerIsACheatingBastard rule-breaking APCs]]. Ditto for its successor, the Tower of Anguish.
782* GlassCannon: Notably, ''any'' character throughout the duration of Abnova, partly due to the lack of differences between characters in terms of defense (since all you can get is weak Leather Armor for the time being), partly because almost everything there does relatively absurd damage, including bosses that can eat 1/3 of your HP with a single hit.
783* GravityScrew:
784** One of the effects of the Great Metastasis caused Arad's gravity to invert itself. This caused the underground cities of Underfoot and Noire Ferra to emerge from the ground and become flying islands, as well as creating the Inverted Waterfall, named as such because the water there flows upward instead of down.
785** Moros the Primordial Fear, a boss in the Archmage's Hall of Dimensions, has the ability to manipulate the gravity of the arena you fight him in. Various attacks can tilt the stage, causing you to slide towards the sides where there's a hazard zone inflicting damage over time. You can undo this effect by jumping towards the side tilted upward, which will correct the stage's orientation. Moros additionally has an alternate phase where he flips the stage such that you now fight him on the ceiling, where he will pull out a new moveset.
786* GrievousHarmWithABody: In the White Land dungeon, the miniboss Specio will turn into an interactable object upon defeat that magnetizes to a player when they approach it. Using a basic attack or basic Z skill will cause the player to shoot Specio in the direction they're facing, which will bounce off enemies and inflict damage to them.
787* GuideDangIt:
788** Players get ''zero'' help when it comes to learning gimmicks for endgame content. The closest DFO has ever gotten to having endgame tutorials as a permanent feature was pre-Metastasis Otherverse, which had cutscenes and on-screen messages players could view. The [[https://www.dfoneople.com/pg/fantastic-jumping-server jump server event]] had an Anton Raid tutorial that covered the basics, but it never stuck around after said event finished. Learning gimmicks otherwise entails TrialAndErrorGameplay, [[ReadTheFreakingManual reading and/or watching fan-made guides]], or [[ScrewTheRulesIHaveConnections partying with fellow guild members who are more than willing to carry undergeared players]].
789** The game provides very little help with actually breaking into endgame content, especially on the "actually getting the gear needed to do the content" end. Further complicating matters is that gearing in ''DFO'' is substantially more mechanically complex than your average MMO, and there is an overwhelming amount of routes to go and not all of them are viable. Newer players oftentimes wind up resorting to looking for guides on how to actually get good gear for their subclass just to be able to play the game outside the main story and easy side content.
790** The game never states that a character's Arad Adventure power rating is based on the total Exorcism of their equipped gear and the number of Avatars they have equipped.
791** While 100 cap Epics have largely been praised as a step in the right direction, thanks to more flexible 2/3/5-piece [[SetBonus set bonuses]] instead of strictly being all-or-nothing, the [[ExponentialPotential sheer number of gear options]] at players' disposal confuses even the most hardened veterans. A fan-made [[https://dfoarchive.blogspot.com/p/epic-calculator.html Epic calculator]] helped dispel some of the confusion, but even then, its results are treated as more of a guideline than absolute fact, since 100 Epic damage bonuses often have [[NecessaryDrawback certain conditions for activation]] attached.
792* HaveYouSeenMyGod: Carloso hasn't been seen in any capacity since he re-emerged and reunited with one of his fragments at the end of the pre-Metastasis storyline.[[note]]This was primarily tied to the F. Slayer's pre-Metastasis storyline, which [[NoExportForYou was never featured in the English version.]][[/note]] The Knight class is composed of different incarnations of the same entity dedicated to finding him.
793* HeelFaceTurn: Several characters underwent this via CosmicRetcon, including [[spoiler:Alchemist Morgan, formerly Malicious Morgan of Shallow Keep, as well as Vangelis and Isadora, who used to be bosses from the Temple of Apostacy.]] In a location sense, Behemoth could count as well, since it is now a town as opposed to a dungeon.
794* HeroicSacrifice: [[spoiler:Nilvas stays behind in the Dark Side to hold the Chaos Gate open, allowing most of the allied forces to escape at the cost of being trapped in the Dark Side forever. However, the end of the questline reveals there may be hope for him yet, as Niu breaks into the Dark Side while looking for Pai and meets Nilvas.]]
795* HopelessBossFight: The Imperial Captain in the Knight's first Glassfey quest, [[spoiler:at least until Annis [[TasteOfPower gives you a portion of her power.]]]]
796* IDontLikeTheSoundOfThatPlace: Post-revision, the PlayerCharacter has this reaction to hearing the name "Murky Glassfey".
797* IKnowMaddenKombat: One of the Epic equipment sets is strongly implied to be a set of football equipment that gives massive bonuses to your stats and damage when you dash and perform dash attacks.
798* IWasJustPassingThrough: According to his in-game profile, this is literally how Aganzo got involved in the Screaming Cavern Incident: he was passing through the area when he came across Vaughn and an Imperial squadron investigating the cave and he decided to intervene.
799* IdleGame: Arad Adventures is a sub-game part of the Explorer Club system where you can build a team of characters and send them out to fight enemies. As your team clears levels, you can get Adventure Tokens used to purchase special items, and clearing Subjugations additionally rewards special prizes such as Adventure Rubies and currencies for in-game shops. You can earn characters used in the mode via a gacha, but you can also use Lv. 95 or higher characters on your account as part of your roster.
800* InternalReveal: The fact that the mysterious purple Imposter is Nilvas Gracia is revealed to the player almost immediately; he's a boss, after all, and his name is outright plastered on his health bar. The heroes don't find out that he's Nilvas until the climax of the Ozma questline when he saves his sister Grandis during a BigDamnHeroes moment.
801* JourneyToTheCenterOfTheMind: The last few parts of the Abysmal Sky Tower take place in [[spoiler:a manifestation of Sirocco's mind and memories, where the player and their party are forced to fight multiple incarnations of Sirocco before Aganzo and the player confront and destroy her true form, vanquishing her for good]].
802* KilledOffForReal: [[spoiler:Lenny gets brainwashed by Lotus and eventually dies after being fought as a boss]].
803* LastOfHisKind: The Great Metastasis basically drove the Goblins to near extinction. By the time of the plot, only Grubeck and his buddy [=McGee=] are the last Goblins left. Then [=McGee=] dies, leaving Grubeck as the last surviving Goblin.
804* LawfulStupid: With the exception of Vaughn, most Empire agents essentially exist to obstruct the goodwill of the player and his/her allies. There's a reason so many characters have a vendetta against the Empire.
805* LetsYouAndHimFight:
806** [[spoiler:Prior to the Scenario Dungeon update, Hilder reveals that she is trying to invoke this through crafting the Hyper Jammer in order to get the Dungeon Fighter to kill Lotus for her. When asked why [[WhyDontYouJustShootHim she can't just kill Lotus herself,]] she [[JustifiedTrope explains]] that the power Apostles radiate prevent them from killing one another.]]
807** Various times in the Season 4 Behemoth arc.
808*** At one point, Aganzo gives the protagonist a perfume designed to ward off Lotus' mind control and goes off on his own. When he doesn't return, the protagonist and Vaughn chase after him and find him addled by Lotus' effects, resulting in a fight where the protagonist and Vaughn attempt to subdue him long enough to use the perfume on him.
809*** Immediately after this, the protagonist themselves becomes influenced by Lotus and rushes off on their own. They wind up running into Lenny, a recurring Imperial officer who is also being mind-controlled, and the two fight until [[spoiler:the protagonist fatally wounds Lenny, just before the Hyper Jammer's effects kick in]].
810* LevelCap: Currently Level 110. Although the item level cap goes up to Level 105.
811* LonelyPianoPiece: The BGM for the Awakening dungeon slowly turns into this, for [[spoiler:Iris Fortunesinger]].
812* LuckBasedMission: Some of the storyline quests in Heisz are a major offender of these: while earlier storyline missions also required you to collect various dropped items, most of them were all but guaranteed and the quest description told you or strongly hinted at the enemy that dropped the item: compare this with the Heisz missions, which start off by telling you to find a Princess' Trace with no other clues...which ends up being rarely dropped by a sniper miniboss in the middle of the stage. Once you do get the item and go through the plot, you're eventually tasked to get 3 different pieces of data from the actual boss...all of which are random and since there's only 1 boss, you need to kill him at least 3 times and that's if you're extremely lucky.
813** A more minor but still annoying version is a quest which requires a specific untradeable item, but you can only get it by using a Magic Capsule that has a chance of creating the said untradeable item. Said capsule requires a number of items which are hard to get early on to create, and if the said untradeable item doesn't pop out of the capsule, you need to make another one. Thankfully the number of materals required for another capsule are halved after it's been created once and the other items the capsule creates can either be used to complete the quest in a different way or either used in a later quest or sold in the auction at a high price.
814** The quests to unlock the use of Magic Stone equipment and forced Hell Modes in Power Station both veer into this: the former, while simple in concept (kill a boss 10 times) has the issue of the boss in question randomly being replaced with another one, needlessly dragging out the number of times you need to beat the dungeon, and the latter requires you to get a 4 quest item drops from 4 different bosses, all of which have an annoyingly low droprate even when using a potion that greatly boosts them. While there's plenty of other quests that suffer from low droprates, none of them are as important to complete as the above 2. Thankfully the magic stone quest was made significantly easier in Season 2 update, reducing the amount of boss kills needed to just 1.
815* MakeWrongWhatOnceWentRight: The Past Empyrean storyline has the heroes chasing Sirocco's spiritual residue to a heavily distorted rift in time, where they find themselves in a distant past version of Empyrean during the war against Apostle Bakal. They soon discover that this is around the time that the superweapon Gaebolg was being built to defeat Bakal, and that Tenebe, one of the Seven Meisters who helped create Gaebolg, sabotaged the project and destroyed it, causing him to go down in history as a traitor to all of Empyrean. In order to ensure that the warped rift doesn't heavily affect the present, the heroes team up with Tenebe to ensure that he destroys Gaebolg even if it means Empyrean loses its best chance at beating Bakal. [[spoiler:The heroes eventually discover that Gizel had stolen dimensional warp technology from the abandoned Castle of the Dead and used it to gain access to the rift, which he is now attempting to exploit to complete Gaebolg and gain ultimate power to kill the player, whom he views as his ultimate enemy. Furthermore, they learn from Tenebe that Apostle Hilder had disguised herself as a scientist in this era and joined the Meisters to complete Gaebolg, jeopardizing Bakal's plan to strengthen Empyrean without outside interference. To ensure that Empyrean would be able to kill him on their own, Bakal had convinced Tenebe to destroy the weapon in exchange for insurance that the Meisters' knowledge and research would be passed down to future generations.]]
816* MarathonLevel:
817** The Forgotten Land is an extensive dungeon with 5 distinct areas, where your goal is to find and kill the 5 main bosses to gain access to a 6th random one: you have 30 minutes of real time to explore it, and even in gameplay, a single visit is stated to take 8 days.
818** As can be expected from the nature of its content, the Anton raid takes this up to eleven: it consists of up to 5 4-man parties finishing dungeons as quickly as possible, which some of them resulting in a TotalPartyKill and/or all progress being reset if they fail to do so fast enough. There's 2 phases with a 40 minute time limit for each phase with a single 5-minute time limit extension that can be used during either phase with a 10 minute planning phase between them, meaning that unless there's several overpowered parties completely geared out in InfinityPlusOneSword -tier equipment, the average time to complete is usually close to an hour. Finally, even if those said parties are present, each party still needs to finish at least 2 dungeons per phase or they'll be denied of their rewards upon successful completion, meaning the strong parties need to wait for them to do so before they steamroll through their own dungeons.
819** The Beast dungeon has a pair of [[DamageSpongeBoss damage sponge bosses]] that [[GiantSpaceFleaFromNowhere largely have no relevance to the plot]] (well, [[AllThereInTheManual aside from]] [[https://www.dfoneople.com/news/updates/1120/The-Beast-Dungeon the official website]]) and take an absurdly long time to defeat. A party that knows what they're doing and meets the ridiculously high minimum gear requirements for their preferred difficulty might see upwards of 15 to 30 minute clear times per run. Combine that with the rewards being obtainable twice, and the days the Beast dungeon are open are bound to feel a lot longer than they really should be.
820* MechanicallyUnusualFighter:
821** There are an insane number of Epic items in the game that offer unique, game-altering functions, so much so that it would be difficult to fit them all on this page.
822** Among Level 105 Epics, the Stalwart Loyal Guard series is distinctly unique for functioning more like older Epics rather than the customizable Epics common to this level cap. They have Option Levels but cannot be powered up via Option Growth and have a SetBonus that gives them great buffs for equipping 4, 8 or 11 pieces of the set.
823** The Level 105 Epic series Jade Ghost is expliclity built around various gimmicks. The Jade Ghost Chestplate allows you to summon a twister while jumping that pulls in enemies, the Jade Ghost Spaulders allow you to teleport behind the strongest enemy in the room by using your Backstep, the Jade Ghost Tassets weaponize BribingYourWayToVictory, the Jade Ghost Chausses gives you a buff that goes away when attacking Named/Boss monsters 80 times, and the Jade Ghost Belt summons a MiniMecha that you can ride when typing in any chat message that has "Wa" in it.
824* MediumBlending: Animated cutscenes often alternate between the simple animations done in the game's artstyle and fully-animated {{Animesque}} cutscenes. In a few cases both styles are used in sequence within the same cutscene.
825* MercyKill: Post-revision, the player's defeat of Phillius is this, as his spirit is too far gone to purify him from his insanity. However, his core is retrieved so that a new ruler can be born to the Fairy World in his place.
826* MergedReality: It is stated that one power Apostles universally share is the ability to combine different dimensions. [[spoiler:The Foundation of the Nightmare is also capable of this due to being created by the Apostles, and in the Iced Wall arc, it is attempting to merge the world of pre-Metastasis Arad with the current Arad, which would be nigh-disastrous. The final stretch of the arc is spent mostly on preventing its plans from coming to fruition.]]
827* MonsterCompendium: The Level 110 cap has the Monster Collection, a guide to all monsters appearing in Level 110 content, including Normal Dungeons, Advanced Dungeons, Legion Dungeons, and Raid Dungeons. The guide starts empty at first, but can be filled out by collecting Fragments that are randomly dropped from slain enemies. Fragments that drop from a monster can be expended to upgrade that monster's Collection entry, revealing various details such as their strengths/weaknesses, potential drops, and backstory. Each monster's entry can be upgraded up to 5 times, with each upgrade requiring higher rarity Fragments. As a bonus, upgrading Collection entries a certain number of times for each dungeon will reward you with a small prize, such as a handful of materials or a unique cosmetic.
828* MultipleLifeBars: The Isys-Prey raid introduced the concept of certain gimmick attacks having their own life bars separate from the boss's -- emptying said life bar either ends the attack early (Isys-Prey's slide attack) or prevents it from happening in the first place (certain Pandemonium Meeting and Pandemonium War bosses).
829* TheMultiverse: The existence of multiple coinciding timelines and dimensions became a major plot point after the Great Metastasis. The Apostle Carloso (essentially the ''DFO'' version of God) is credited with creating the multiverse, and the Knights created to find him also have a direct link to the entire multiverse and her alternate dimension counterparts. The Pandemonium dimension and Mirror Arad (a world where the Great Metastasis destroyed and reshaped the continent) are two of the dimensions visited, and various dungeons also take place in rifts in space-time. ''VideoGame/DNFDuel'' is also set in a very distant universe from any of the current ones, where the Great Metastasis originated from.
830* NecessaryDrawback: Almost all level 100 Epic sets have some sort of detrimental passive or gimmick to balance out their damage numbers. The most popular armor, accessory and special equipment sets alone have the following as examples:
831** The Ruination: The Path to Hell armor set increases the level of a wide range of skills by 1 (including all of the player's [[LimitBreak Awakening skills]]) alongside a slew of damage buffs, but the catch is that its user's health is constantly decreasing.
832** The Lucky Triangle accessory set revolves around a slot machine-like gimmick, with one to three golden [=7s=] showing above the user's head periodically. [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin True to the set's name]], its usefulness varies greatly depending on how lucky the player is.
833** The War God's Hidden Legacy special equipment set has strength and intelligence buffs that scale off of the user's movement speed, which is generally considered a DumpStat by most players. Fortunately, movement speed buffs from other equipped gear applies to the scaling as well.
834* NoEnding: The Iced Wall arc seemingly has zero concrete conclusion at all, seeing as how it stops at [[spoiler:Aganzo being rescued by the Dungeon Fighter, then [[DancePartyEnding everyone throws a celebratory banquet.]]]] Aside from one last quest from Bwanga tying up loose ends before you head to Emperyan, nothing about [[spoiler:the truth behind the Foundation of the Nightmare or what exactly the Nightmare is]] is ever explored. Averted post-revision, which gives the Ice Wall arc a conclusive ending that also ties up most of the loose ends and further expands the Nightmare's role in the story, [[spoiler:tying it in as the main reason why the Kartel became so ambitious to begin with. Ultimately, the main goal of the Nightmare is revealed to be gathering "light" for Apostle Luke, who plans to use it to shatter dimensional barriers.]]
835* NostalgiaLevel: The Iced Wall of Resignation area has dungeons based on each of the dungeons areas of Arad from pre-Metastasis. Though some of the Monsters get mixed up (ex. dark elves in the Grand Flores dungeon, Zombies in the Mt. Thunderime dungeon, etc.) The only area missing is the Citadel area, [[spoiler:but an epic quest takes you to an altered version of Verderia, a dungeon from that area with Michelle as the boss.]]
836** A more thorough example of this is Mirror Arad, which essentially contains every single pre-Metastasis dungeon in a randomized order and can be run 10 times per day for an easy consistent source of experience capsules and items you need to refine your equipment and run Ancient dungeons.
837* NotTheIntendedUse: Real life version. Neople got a booth at Anime Expo 2016[[note]]For the uninitiated, an anime-themed convention based in Los Angeles, California during the summer[[/note]], during which a semi-famous cosplayer appeared, and codes were given out for Avatar sets designed by her. Predictably, fans returned to the booth repeatedly to gather tons of codes... to sell to other players for ludicrous prices.
838* ObviousRulePatch:
839** Several pieces of equipment over the years got slapped with a stipulation saying that their effects don't work if the dungeon's enemy level is 35 levels or higher than the equipment in question, basically rendering them useless in all endgame dungeons. This usually pertains to older equipment that either [[NoSell grants invincibility on command/by fulfilling an easy condition]] or has some sort of CooldownManipulation mechanic. This also applies to old MoneyMultiplier gear like Grave Robber King's Journal, preventing people from grinding money hand over fist from dungeons that already drop a lot of gold, such as Stormy Route.
840** The boss mechanics of the Oculus dungeon discourage SequenceBreaking via skipping optional bosses, a tactic that is commonly used to get raid clear times in the ballpark of 5 to 15 minutes. The Oculus's last midboss, Red Ghost Soryun, completely changes her attack patterns if one of the two midbosses before her are skipped, absorbing the skipped boss's powers off-screen and incorporating it into her battle (e.g. if Lone Rosberry is skipped, Soryun will start using Asura skills and TeleportSpam like he does). Most guides written about the dungeon advise parties not to skip any midbosses even if they are clearly overgeared, as nobody really wants to put in the effort to learn what's essentially a completely new boss.
841** The release of female Slayer's Spectre subclass included a quality of life change where [[https://dfoarchive.blogspot.com/2021/06/kdnf-june-24-update.html#character_change new characters immediately start with a subclass]] instead of having no subclass until level 15. This was ostensibly for the sake of new players, who might find it unsatisfying that they can't immediately play the subclass they chose. However, the change also conveniently stopped the somewhat common practice of deliberately leveling and gearing a character with no subclass months or even years in advance of a new subclass's release. Neople anticipated this in advance and held a Spectre-exclusive event that dramatically increased the Epic and Mythic drop rate for new Spectres created during a certain time frame, also offering exclusive Mythic rerolling services for said event characters.
842** Aeterna Synergy gear has a condition on it stating that its Synergy effects don't apply when equipped by a Buffer, just in case any Crusader/Enchantress got the idea to pull the weight of two support classes in one. A later patch added buffer-only options to Aeterna gear, but it still requires quite a bit of funding to make them comparable to even poorly-upgraded regular Epics.
843** The SanityMeter in Ozma Raid acts as something of a [[MultipleLifeBars second life bar]] for players, with very limited options to recover sanity in the middle of battle - no doubt a response to players healing through what should've been {{Total Party Kill}}s in older endgame content, especially with certain damage mitigation gear.
844* OnceMoreWithClarity: During the Epic Quests within the Iced Wall, you see a scene of Siran trying to get Aganzo to move on from Roxy's death at the Screaming Cave. Latter, you see the same scene again during the Time Gate Epics, only now you know that Siran is from the future trying to figure out the identity of the mage who caused all the disasters.
845* OneManArmy:
846** The player is commonly the single most powerful entity in a 50 mile radius in any location, short of any Apostles. Many characters in the story are keenly aware of this and attempt to use the player's presence in their favor, either as a SpannerInTheWorks or just as an overwhelming force leading their offense.
847** Animated cutscenes avert this by representing the player as a group of Dungeon Fighters rather than a singular character.
848* OneStatToRuleThemAll: For the Female Crusader: Valor Blessing Skill Levels. Being an offensive type buff, it's naturally one of the single-most vital skills in her kit (especially since the game gives it a unique casting animation after Neo: Awakening) as it becomes exponentially more effective in party play. Thus, boosting its level and potency through equipment makes for more effective buffs, which makes for better parties and better dungeon runs.
849* OrchestralBombing: The Abysmal Sky Tower Act, one of the darkest story arcs in the game to date, notably forgoes the usual hard rock/metal soundtrack iconic to the rest of the game in favor of dark and foreboding orchestral music throughout all of the dungeons and fights. It really serves to highlight how dire the situation is.
850* OurDwarvesAreAllTheSame: The Dwarves featured in post-Metastasis Arad's Gold Tunnels are basically ''the'' stock Dwarves: stout, fat humanoids with long beards who fight with hammers and pickaxes, have a sort of accent, and have a fatalistic love for gold. They're even enemies of the Dark Elves. However, it's subverted in how absolutely jerkass they are compared to normal dwarves and how their love of gold has basically overriden all other typical dwarf traits. It's so bad that [[spoiler:some of them are willing to side with what is essentially ''death incarnate'' under the promise that they'll get Gold Tunnel back.]]
851* OurTimeTravelIsDifferent: Time travel in the ''DFO'' universe works by creating rifts in time upon traveling to the past, which are essentially a PocketDimension where the past can be altered. Rifts created by time travel have no immediate impact on the current timeline and will cease to exist if closed properly, thus erasing any alterations, but if events of the past are drastically altered to a point where the past becomes irreparable, the rift will override the current timeline and destroy the current present, replacing it with an altered timeline. This doesn't necessarily mean that events can't be changed while inside of a rift, but to successfully close a time rift without damage, events must conclude in such a way that the consequences remain the same.
852* PalsWithJesus: [[spoiler:The mysterious woman Nyx turns out to be the human form of Enix, the mythical deity of Aeterna. The investigation team is surprised to be in the company of a god, but they treat her as an equal nonetheless.]]
853* PeninsulaOfPowerLeveling: A minor version: Prior to the scenario dungeon update, special dungeons generally gave more overall experience than higher-leveled normal dungeons. This is particularly blatant with Mt. Hardt and Pursuit! The Express Train, both of which were the best source of experience for 5-6 levels until AntiGrinding catches up to them and/or dungeons with better experience become available. In fact, if you don't want to do epic quests for the Oceanic area, Pursuit becomes available just when the experience gained from Hardt falls too low to be worthwhile.
854** Currently, if you have good enough experience potions, the Forgotten Land experience potion and someone to carry you through it, you can do a full clear of the Black Crusade dungeon on Slayer difficulty to gain massive amounts of experience: before the scaling kicks in as you gain more levels, you can actually hit the clear experience cap of 9999999 exp per run.
855* PowerCreepPowerSeep: You can fight most of the main characters in Slap-Up Party inside Tower Of Despair, but despite their overall status in their own story and the floors you fight them in, most of them don't pose that much of a challenge when compared to other characters you fight there. Awakened Baron is probably the worst example of this: despite the fact that he's fought in floor 92 and is level 90, he can be killed extremely quickly since he's a Soul Bender, all of which have weak defense.
856** The one exception of this is Deranged Ixia, who's fought in floor 51: she spends the entire fight spamming hard-to-avoid spells at you, is invincible for most of the battle and has by far the most health of any enemy in the tower.
857* TheProphecy: There is a prophecy stating that when all Apostles are dead, life will be restored to Pandemonium, but in turn Arad will experience TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt. This isn't brought up much, but serves as Hilder's big motivation since her ultimate goal is to save Pandemonium and she needs the player to execute her plans.
858* PutOnABus: Many of the pre-Metastasis [=NPCs=] have disappeared without a trace after the Great Metastasis, and no one bothers to mention where they are or what happened to them. [[spoiler:Although if their situation is like Orca's, they're [[KilledOffForReal most likely dead.]]]]
859** TheBusCameBack: Post revision, as some [=NPCs=] like Breeze and Gale show up during Epic Quest dialogue. They're still not seen at any town map though. [[spoiler: Also, as denoted under the WasOnceAMan entry, it was once assumed that Lorianne had been corrupted by the Black Nightmare and had her soul trapped within the boss Queen Clara. However, a [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75hGRlOegPY preview video]] released by Neople revealed that she--or at least an AlternateUniverse counterpart--had actually been warped into Pandemonium by Hilder's portal and rescued by Summoner Kate, whereafter she became known as the Red Witch, the guardian of Central Park and an allied [=NPC=]. For additional evidence, she can summon a [[TookALevelInBadass fully-grown version of Denkas as an attack]].]]
860* PuzzleBoss: Tower Of Despair and Altar Of Ascension are both filled with these: in addition to the ones described above in Tower of Despair, the Altar has bosses that only take damage if you kill off their puppets, ones whose only weakpoint is a cocoon in the middle of the room and who attack you for major inescapeable damage if you do anything when the screen tints red, a pair of bosses that only take damage from attacks that fall within specific damage range, another pair with tons of HP that take massive amounts of extra damage from the element they're weak against and do tons of unavoidable damage and recover most of their HP if you attack them with the element they're strong against and who revive infinitely if you don't finish them off with the said element and several bosses who force you to use your [[MercyInvincibility Quick Recovery]] to avoid taking massive damage from their otherwise unavoidable attacks.
861** Almost the entirety of Otherverse dungeons consists of a party variant of these, to a degree that there's an optional ingame tutorial that tells you what you need to do in each room to beat it and that the only difficulty level you can do solo is the easiest one until a later update, although even then the APC provided for you on harder difficulty levels is far from optimal in skill.
862*** Special mention goes to Riftmaster Gaunis, the boss of Void Rift. The first two stages of the boss are little minigames revolving around changing the color of the floor (keep every tile in your section of the arena lit up and jump, Quick Recover and stand still on marked squares for the first one, memorize and follow the path of tiles shown for the second one) and the third one involves destroying formations of blocks by hitting them right as the light inside them flashes. Succeeding reduces the boss's HP, while failing damages the players. The fourth phase is a regular boss fight, and if you don't kill him quickly enough (which would require a severely underpowered party), the minigame cycle repeats.
863* RealMoneyTrade: ''Global'' supports an indirect version of this by allowing players to sell avatar packages bought with real money on the Auction House for gold. The Chinese version cuts the middleman and allows players to directly itemize CERA (the premium currency) after validating a gift card code, making it tradeable to other players.
864* RegionalBonus:
865** Thanks to the Chinese version's astronomically high budget, that particular version of DFO is often used as a testbed for new features, some of which eventually make their way to other regions. Changes include:
866*** Having The Awakened Ones as a default costume for every class.
867*** The ability to itemize CERA (the premium currency) and sell it on the Auction House[[note]]The closest thing Global comes to doing this is indirectly through selling paid packages, and in fact outright banned selling of real items that give CERA such as Karma Koin sometime in 2017[[/note]].
868*** Rerolling talisman socket colors, which are a perennial sore point in other versions (eventually ported over to the Korean version).
869*** As of August 2020, a [[https://www.reddit.com/r/DFO/comments/ifelaq/china_64_bit_dfo_gameplay_ft_the_lag_musketeers/ 64-bit client]] which vastly improves game performance[[note]]The video demonstrates this by partying with a Summoner, one of a few classes that are notoriously hard to party with due to the performance drops they induce[[/note]].
870** Prior to the December 9th, 2021 update, the Global version had a vastly easier early-game gearing route compared to the other versions of the game, since the daily entry cap on the Ghent dungeon was raised from 6 to ''20'' and every run dispensed several times the number of Northpeace Tokens compared to KR; the daily entry limit on Legendary farming dungeons was also bumped up to 5 runs each, making getting Roschest Legendaries somewhat faster. This was all removed in said update and replaced by its Korean equivalent, which was actually a buff in KR but in Global lengthened the time to complete a full Ghent set from 2 days to ''roughly 14''.
871* RelationshipValues: An update introduced a system called "NPC Relationships", which allowed you to give gifts to [=NPCs=] to get rewards and buffs. This was for some reason needlessly complicated (each character's preferred gifts were GuideDangIt and you could only max up to 3 Relationships, among other problems), so it was removed and later replaced in the Aeterna update with "NPC Friendships". With Friendships, you can gift Cube Fragments or special items to [=NPCs=] to raise a Likeability meter. Higher Likeability levels unlock exclusive dialogue and portraits, and when the Philasia is unlocked you can have friendly [=NPCs=] appear there and give you presents. If you get a (opposite gender) NPC to the final Likeability level, "Affectionate", you can unlock bonus cosmetic features for them, such as the ability to change the color of their sprite and a 25% chance for them to replace Dellah at the end of the dungeon. A selection of "Affectionate" [=NPCs=] will also reward "farewell letters" to the player if the plot forces them to no longer appear in town.
872* RequiredSpinoffCrossover: A two-week ''VideoGame/DNFDuel'' event was held in-game, giving away free consumables with art from the game for their item icons in celebration of its release. People who preordered a physical copy of ''DNF Duel'' on either Platform/PlayStation4 or Platform/PlayStation5 also got coupon codes to redeem in ''DFO'' for a cosmetic title and a SuperDeformed version of the Lost Warrior as a creature.
873* {{Retcon}}:
874** To date, the story has been rewritten no less than three times: first as an in-universe CosmicRetcon when Neople re-launched the game, then at the start of Season 2 to give the player more involvement and close some glaring plot holes, then again in Season 4 when pre-Metastasis content was overhauled and added back in while the Metastasis content was shunted into a mid-game arc.
875** Otherverse, a series of endgame dungeons where the player fought various Apostles, was eventually removed from the game in Season 6 and its characters and locales were re-integrated into the game as proper storylines.
876* RevengeBeforeReason: The Trombe Power Plant workers thought it was a good idea to avenge their fallen comrades. While they're skilled, they aren't seasoned fighters and [[IdiotBall split themselves up because they thought it would be a good idea]], leading to all of them going missing and needing to be rescued by the Dungeon Fighter.
877* RewardsPass: The Korean version has [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yT_TrMhZhVg a fairly rudimentary one]] called the "Arad Pass", which offers a small assortment of in-game currencies and cash shop items from both the free and paid rewards tracks.
878* RightForTheWrongReasons: Prior to the Scenario Dungeon Update, the Knight is correct when she tells Ilia that there are Apostles who aren't evil... but the reason she thinks this is because [[spoiler:she'd just gotten help from Hilder, who is only pretending to be one of them]].
879* RocketTagGameplay: The seasonal server turns the basic gameplay into this: regardless of your stats, most enemies will kill you in 2-5 hits and you barely do any damage to them normally, but if you counterattack them at the right time, you'll deal an OneHitKill on most normal enemies and do a large chunk of damage on most {{Elite Mook}}s and bosses. To make avoiding taking damage easier, all classes gain access to an upgraded dodge move and a SuperMode that allows them to fight enemies normally for a short amount of time.
880* SanityMeter: Ozma Raid's main gimmick is one of these. However, despite explicitly being called a "sanity meter" in-game, it's more of a measure of how close Ozma and his minions are to [[ForcedTransformation turning a particular player into a demonic Impostor]] rather than anything sanity-related. It starts at 100% by default and gets drained in response to most boss attacks (aside from the handful that are unavoidable by design) and can only be refilled by resting in the raid waiting room, clearing a dungeon that increases its max limit by 30%, or by using expensive, limited-use, high-cooldown potions that restore 10%. Hitting 0% sanity turns the player into an Impostor and forces them into a timed minigame where they must [[MatchThreeGame match colored orbs repeatedly]] to dispel the sanity effect or die trying, with [[BattleInTheCenterOfTheMind their Impostor self occasionally taking potshots at them]]. If a player hits 0% sanity again on the same life even after completing this gimmick, they simply [[OneHitKill die instantly]].
881* ShopFodder:
882** While the only thing worth selling to the ingame vendors in general are weak and common versions of equipment, this mainly exists in form of various types of Protein Oils which the Alchemist profession can easily produce but has no use for and which the Animator profession can't produce on their own in sufficient quantities but needs for all their [=APC=]s, which means that even Inferior Protein Oils will be sold in the ingame auction at a noticeably high price despite the relative easiness of making them. The game lampshades this with the item's description, stating that they're the main byproduct of [[TakeThatAudience failed alchemists']] attempts of creating gold, sold en masse at the auction as a means to avert poverty.
883** Noblesse Code: Dusk can drop Northpiece Sculptures from the card flip at the end of the dungeon. They serve no purpose but have a going value of 100,000 Gold at NPC vendors. Likewise, you can acquire Carbon-14 Metalloid from Meister's Laboratory card flips, which vendor for 200,000 Gold apiece.
884* ShowDontTell: In a truly bizarre example, Queen Maya tells you that [[spoiler:Death Dragon Spirazzi has to be sealed away.]] You, the Dungeon Fighter, just tell her that [[WhyDontYouJustShootHim that you could just kill him instead.]] Instead of outright telling you that [[spoiler:Death Dragon Spirazzi is effectively immortal, as his body regenerates after every defeat,]] she simply tells you to ''go try it anyway'' and see why. She doesn't tell you the [[spoiler:"effectively immortal"]] bit until ''after'' you beat the boss.
885* SirSwearsALot: Post-revision, the PlayerCharacter is somewhat more foul-mouthed than the majority of [=NPCs=], short of characters of normally-foul temperament anyways, such as Faris. This is especially more easily noticed when he/she is pissed off.
886* SoLastSeason: The game has a way of doing this when certain endgame content becomes sufficiently old, often demoting them into weaker forms designed for solo play that still allows access to their rewards but is nowhere near as challenging or useful compared to current rewards. A notable case of this was the Anton Raid, formerly considered the pinnacle of endgame, but since the advent of higher level content it's been downgraded to an easy solo raid that you can essentially just mash through for 80% of the bosses.
887* SomeDexterityRequired: Four [[InfinityPlusOneSword epic weapons]] have an attribute that boosts the player's damage output for each hotkey left unused - [[http://wiki.dfo.world/view/Balmung Balmung]], [[http://wiki.dfo.world/view/Resplendent_Goddess_Silver_Knife Resplendent Goddess Silver Knife]], [[http://wiki.dfo.world/view/Lord_of_Ranger Lord of Ranger]], and [[http://wiki.dfo.world/view/Serpent_Spike Serpent Spike]]. To reach their full potential, the player using one would have to unequip all of their skill hotkeys and rely solely on directional inputs. The level 100 update introduced an Epic armor set called "Arid Desert Traveler" whoses two piece set effect offers something similar.
888* SomethingOnlyTheyWouldSay: When the PlayerCharacter finds Bwanga in the Nightmare, he decides to check whether or not its the Bwanga they're looking for using this method, using Michelle's ability to read memories from items to ask him [[spoiler:where his dead brother's necklace came from.]]
889* SpannerInTheWorks: Almost everything in Calling Jade's plan to resurrect Ozma goes without a hitch. Except for the part where [[spoiler:Midnight's Darkness betrays her in a bid to become more powerful than Ozma, forcing her and K to withdraw from the rest of the story arc]].
890* SpringtimeForHitler: A strange mechanics-based example: normally, Tainted/Cracked Chronicle equipment is useful as long as you have the items to enhance them, which allows you to choose yourself what move(s) they boost. You can enhance each such piece of equipment twice, with the first one being guaranteed, but the second one having a measily 10% chance of success: failure breaks the item and nets you some Clear Cube and Chaos Stone Fragments, and a varying number of Interdimensional Fragments determined by how many levels of reinforcement the item has, which are used as a currency to directly buy parts of massively powerful item sets instead of having to rely on RandomNumberGod being merciful. This trope comes in effect when you already have a piece of Tainted equipment you don't wish to replace and choose to instead purposefully first reinforce the item and then attempt to add a second enhancement on it, which will usually break it and net you a large number of Interdimensional Fragments: actually succeeding in adding the second enhancement will more than likely end up giving you an item you have no use for, plus you're now out of however much cash and Clear Cube Fragments you spent to reinforce the item and naturally you need to get another Tainted item that matches your class to do it again, which you might not even get for several days if you're unlucky.
891* StalkerWithACrush: Queen Clara, the boss of Chessboard of Despair, is this towards Albert.
892* StanceSystem: The "Taiji Emperor's Sword" Epic Katana has a Yin and Yang ability as its gimmick. The player starts in Yin, which gives them heightened speed and 10% damage resistance with +21% Atk. Pressing the Equipment Option button swaps to Yang, which turns them into a MightyGlacier, gaining +21% Skill Atk (a vastly superior buff to All Atk.) in exchange for halving speed.
893* StupidEvil: In the post-revision storyline, the Dwarves [[spoiler:break the weakened seal on Death Dragon Spirazzi]], a gigantic, world-threatening disaster-waiting-to-happen, because they were promised they'd get Gold Tunnel back. Even Vaughn is appalled at their greed.
894* TakesOneToKillOne: Only Espers can interfere with the abilities of other Espers. This becomes important when [[spoiler:Michelle discovers that she was being mislead with false energy signatures throughout the Nightmare, but concludes that it could not have been the Foundation of the Nightmare's work due to this trope. The player and Michelle eventually seek out the cause of the discrepancies, which is [[EvilMeScaresMe pre-Metastasis Michelle.]]]]
895* TakingYouWithMe: [[spoiler:With his dying breath, Ozma attempts to trap the heroes in the Dark Side by sealing the Chaos Gate. It very nearly succeeds too, if it weren't for Nilvas [[HeroicSacrifice sacrificing himself]] to hold the Chaos Gate open long enough to allow the surviving allied forces to escape.]]
896* TheComputerIsALyingBastard: Get caught in one of Luminous Anodron's attacks and the game tells you that you need to [[SmashingSurvival mash X]] to keep the gauge in the blue area or you die. Nope, you need to [[PressXToNotDie hold X]], as if the boss wasn't hard enough as it is. That being said, the amount the gauge moves as a result of pressing and releasing the button is randomized and when it's the most sensitive, you need to tap the button so often to keep the gauge in the safe zone that it's closer to mashing it than holding it.
897* TheOnlyOneAllowedToDefeatYou:
898** ''[[AvertedTrope Not]]'' Marcellus' motivation this time around, but [[spoiler:he still meets with misfortune, thanks to the curse of the Forbidden Shrine.]]
899** In Season 4, Marcellus has hidden within Behemoth's stomach and protected himself from Lotus' influence, but the forbidden spells he cast to protect himself and revive dead followers eroded his sanity. He quickly turns on the heroes by proclaiming that only he should be the one to defeat Lotus, forcing the heroes to kill him.
900* TacticalSuicideBoss: Gold King Widir will TurnRed after taking enough damage, and will gain an incredibly deadly rush combo that will eat away at a victim's HP at a surprising speed. However, if he does this too long, the exertion makes him tired, which allows players to close in on him to score free hits.
901* TasteOfPower: Prior to the Knight's first venture into Glassfey, Annis appears and asks you to check out one of the two Subclasses, Elven Knight or Chaos. After you take your pick, you head into the dungeon and encounter the Imperial Captain, a [[HopelessBossFight practically invincible midboss]] who will take you down in one or two hits. [[spoiler:However, upon death, Annis sends you that power packet she asked you to pick out earlier, and you get resurrected with all of that Subclass's best pre-Awakening skills overriding your Hotkey Bar, alongside a limitless MP pool and full invulnerability. You can then proceed to steamroll your way through the rest of the dungeon without breaking a sweat.]]
902* TechPoints: Two varieties, SP and TP: SP is gained normally by leveling up and used to level up your skills, while TP becomes available from Level 51 onwards and can be used to enhance the skills in more ways than just increasing their damage or how much they boost your status when used, such as giving them more hits, increasing their area of effect or greatly increasing one of their properties at the cost of another one.
903* TeethClenchedTeamwork:
904** For story purposes the Female Slayer allies herself with TheEmpire throughout the Ghent and Black Shrine arcs despite being her sworn enemies, but she makes it clear that she'll take her revenge against all of them when the time comes.
905** In a more general sense, most entities in the story aside from Empryean hate the De Los Empire and usually don't want anything to do with them, but in some cases the heroes are willing to join forces with the Empire for a common goal, even if the Empire is obviously being suspicious and untrustworthy. The Empire also usually treats the protagonist as an arm's-length ally for much the same reason, if only because they are personally acquainted with its royal family and usually aren't immediately hostile to them (except for the Female Slayer).
906* TheresNoKillLikeOverkill: [[spoiler:The moment Sirocco breaks through the Great Pentacle's barrier separating Arad from Empyrean, she is immediately greeted by an army of Empyrean MiniMecha who promptly proceed to MacrossMissileMassacre her into oblivion, then finished off by Commander Woon leading the Noblesky to fire a WaveMotionGun into her until she shatters into pieces.]]
907* TookALevelInBadass: Aganzo, from a gameplay standpoint. Pre-Metastasis, he was a boss in Moonlight Tavern who wanted to drown away his sorrows. Post-Metastasis, he's a friendly Slayer who travels the world sealing up monsters possessed by Nightmares in the Ice Wall of Resignation. This is reflected in his true Level seen post-Metastasis, which is '''''[[ReadingsAreOffTheScale Level 90]]''''', the highest level attainable.
908* TurnsRed: Gold King Widir will shed his golden armor once he accumulates enough damage. This makes him [[LightningBruiser incredibly fast and powerful]] and gives him several new and dangerous moves. This can easily make him exponentially more difficult to take down.
909* TwoLinesNoWaiting: Although the Ghent arc "concludes" with the Kartel's defeat and the end of the war, the Ghent story continues in the background while the player goes to fight Anton, clean up Luke's mess, and resolve the chaos occurring in Pandemonium. Most of it is compiled in the Episode Quests that detail [[spoiler:the Nobility's coup against the Empress and the resulting counterattack preparations]]. After clearing the Pandemonium arc, the player is given a short cutscene summarizing the background events before being thrown into the second Ghent arc.
910* UngratefulBastard: In Gold King's Secret Cave, if you lose all your gold before you get to Widir's room, Greedy Jor will [[FaceHeelRevolvingDoor instantly turn on you]] and attack.
911-->'''Jor:''' I lost all my gold. I have no business with you! [[PrepareToDie DIE!]]
912* UnseenNoMore:
913** Although they are integral elements of both the Slayer's and the Priest's backstories, Kazan and Ozma are never heard of at all until the Ozma story arc introduced in 2021, which involves Ozma and Kazan's resurrection and more explicitly details the nature of their relationship.
914** Shannon Myre, a minor backstory character mentioned by Pungjin and the namesake of the "Seal of Lady Shannon Myre" item, is finally seen for the first time in the Spectre's unique scenario, where she (unknowingly) convinces the Spectre to disguise herself as an adventurer to hide from the Empire while training to get her revenge.
915** Various backstory elements mention the great Archmage Myre, one of the most powerful mages that once lived who created the Great Pentacle that protects Arad. His whereabouts have long since been lost to time, until [[spoiler:the Adventurer, Siran, and Iris are called to the Memory Library and discover that Myre is hiding in the mythical world of Seon in wait for the Adventurer. Through the Memory Library, Myre imparts the knowledge he had gained throughout his quest to repel Hilder's schemes to the Adventurer in hopes that he will be able to guide them on their desired path]].
916* VideoGameCrueltyPotential: For all the missions involving escorting her, [[spoiler:Michelle]] is completely immune to damage but is otherwise NOT FriendlyFireproof. Some players choose to get the "Daredevil" title [[note]]get an 888 hit combo[[/note]] by simply comboing her after clearing a room or completing the dungeon.
917* WhamEpisode: The Luke Raid Epic quests. [[spoiler: Luke is killed by Vaughn, who then goes off to parts unknown, and Gizel picks up something from the remains. That's just the immediate aftermath. With Hilder's prophecy drawing nearer to completion, a group of Grim Seekers kills Azalea, and with no more immediate threats, the Empyrean Nobles, backed by both the Coast Guard and the Empire, overthrow Princess Erje. Princess Erje is evacuated, but Jakter gets captured and the military is forced to surrender for the time being. And to top it all off, Kasijas warns the player that as soon as they become useless to Hilder's plans, that she'll try to dispose of them just like she just did with Luke, and with her plans drawing nearer to completion, that day might come sooner rather than later.]]
918* WorthlessYellowRocks: While money is still important as ever, various normally valuable gemstones such as diamonds generally suffer from this: they're only ever used in crafting which few people bother to do since equipment recipes only let you craft items you can easily get in other means, they're not worth much in ingame stores and they take up valuable item slot space: cue everyone dashing in to grab any iron scraps and raw hardeners the enemies might drop but leaving gems behind.
919* WakeUpCallBoss:
920** Treasure Hunter Jakarta can definitely be one; up until that point, the player's been used to fighting bosses that were just {{Palette Swap}}s, but Jakarta is basically a fighter whom is quick in her attacks and is capable of taking down an inexperienced player if they aren't careful, especially since she rapidly throws out projectiles.
921** The last few bosses of Abnova can qualify as this due to being so early and while your characters are a tad frail.
922* WasOnceAMan: A common trend in the Meltdown dungeons where people that lived in the area became mushroom people, wolf creatures, ghosts, or living chess pieces. In the Scenario Dungeon update, [[spoiler:in the new version of the Chessboard of Despair storyline, Empress Skardi suggests that the puppet Queen Clara must have been possessed by a victim of the Metastasis. Given their relative appearances, personalities, and abilities, alongside an EasterEgg mentioned elsewhere, players assumed that she's what's left of Lorianne after the Metastasis.]]
923* WaterIsAir: Applies to the Shark Habitat dungeon where sharks swim in the air.
924* WeAreStrugglingTogether: Lemidia Basilica and Lemidia Capella have very different views of how agents of Chaos should be handled, with the former preferring to exercise tolerance whenever possible and refuses to rush to judgment while the latter insists on eradicating the darkness regardless of circumstance. Despite their opposing views, they manage to [[TeethClenchedTeamwork (begrudgingly)]] stand each other enough to handle [[spoiler:the reemergence of Ozma of Chaos]], but when [[spoiler:Michael suddenly manifests Lemedios' Sanctum after being corrupted by the remnants of Sirocco's power]], the two sects are unable to see eye to eye on how to handle a former ally and come to blows. The player has the option of siding with one of the two sects for the questline, with the opposing sect appearing as enemies and minibosses throughout the scenario.
925* WorldHalfFull: Post-Metastasis Arad is by no means a pleasant place, but civilization is still able to moderately thrive with the help of the Dungeon Fighters, the evil De Los Empire is slowly but surely losing its power, and due to the fact that [[spoiler:there's no ZombieApocalypse plague causing them to go at eachother's throats]], relations between Humans and Dark Elves are ''much'' more cordial, and are steadily improving by the day.
926* YouCantThwartStageOne: Almost every single evil plot ever reaches the final stage of completion before the player arrives and puts a stop to it to save the world. Even when the player is defeating lesser evils, TheBattleDidntCount and AllAccordingToPlan are invariably in effect until the last minute. Granted, many of these plots involve the resurrection or interference of an Apostle, and [[spoiler:Hilder's grand scheme hinges on the player killing all of the Apostles for her]].
927* YouDontLookLikeYou: When initially encountered as an enemy in the original game, Mia the Druid was depicted as a Female Fighter with Avatars equipped, making her well-built and light brown-skinned. In her later reappearance as a major character in The Exile Mountains, she now has a unique character sprite and portrait that depicts her as slender and fair-skinned, just with a shadow cast over her image.
928* YouHaveResearchedBreathing: There are three equipment slots that can be unlocked through quests, under the premise that Iris Fortunesinger is teaching you how to use them. While Sub Equipment and Magic Stones at least make plausible sense for you to need to know how to wear, for some reason you need to be taught how to wear ''earrings.''
929* YourMagicsNoGoodHere: Aradian equipment has little to no effect on the continent of Aeterna due to the curse placed upon the continent by the local dragon Geldrager. Aradians need to wear special Aeternian equipment designed to ward against the curse (or use equipment enchanted with a special equipment option) to fight in Aeterna.
930* ZombieApocalypse: An event dungeon based around this involves 2 out of 6 players being randomly turned into giant zombies and being tasked to hunt down the human players and turn them into more zombies, assisted by the ability to lock down a room to prevent the humans from escaping and humans being permanently blinded and thus having trouble evading their attacks, one of them being an OneHitKill with a long windup.
931
932[[/folder]]
933

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