Basic Trope: The very first dungeon in the game. Typically very easy and may include a tutorial.
- Straight: In Tales of Troperia XVI, the very first mission of the game is a Rat Stomp in the cave outside of the First Town. All enemies are level one Rats who can only deal Scratch Damage. It includes a tutorial on the basics of combat and dungeon exploration.
- Exaggerated: The rats cannot damage your characters and are all killed in one hit. You literally cannot lose inside.
- Downplayed: The enemies are a bit challenging and can overwhelm the party without proper strategy.
- Justified: The cave is a training area maintained by the local City Guards for new recruits and the rats are bred to be very weak so no one gets hurt.
- Inverted: Despite its proximity to the First Town, the cave is actually the entrance to the Very Definitely Final Dungeon and will wipe your party out instantly if you try to enter before the proper point in the story.
- Subverted: The cave is very close to the First Town and played up as easy pickings for new adventurers, but is actually full of very challenging enemies.
- Double Subverted:
- The cave is full of very challenging enemies...but you are joined just past the entrance by a Guest-Star Party Member whose ability powers up the party and makes the enemies easy.
- While the enemies are challenging to combat, that's just the justification for the stealth tutorial.
- Parodied:
- Zig-Zagged: The outer part of the cave is indeed full of easy low-level enemies the party makes short work of, but one room has higher level enemies that will wipe the party out easily. If you rush through that room, it returns to being very easy.
- Averted: The first dungeon is standard without any hand-holding by the game.
- Enforced: Having a Noob Cave is a Once per Episode series tradition, so it is included.
- Lampshaded:
- Exploited:
- Defied: The cave is only available on Easier Than Easy difficulty. At higher difficulty levels, it is blocked off with sign that reads "for Noobs only".
- Discussed:
- Conversed: The person giving the mission knows your party is brand new to adventuring, so he sends you to the area's easiest dungeon to "get your feet wet".
- Deconstructed: The rats in the cave are actually sentient beings and you are basically slaughtering a city. A major theme of the story is actually learning about who you are fighting against and your party is horrified when they find out later.
- Reconstructed: The rats are sentient, but are victims of a curse that put them into this form. The story is heavy with Reincarnation and killing them allowed them to escape the curse, being reborn as humans once again.
- Played for Laughs:
- Played for Drama:
