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The online Flash game AdventureQuest by Artix Entertainment is a lunch break sized RPG that takes place in the land of Lore. The game, though online, is single player, and uses online functions for updating the game easily and for wars. For a one-time fee, the player can become a Guardian to buy more weapons, more quests, more places, etc. The player can also separately buy Z-Tokens for strong weapons, spells, pets and other things.

The game has various storylines that run parallel or interconnect with each other, presented through a series of quests with the player character's interaction. Some of the storylines have deep plots and impressive characters, such as the long-spanning Devourer Saga, the journey of the Devourer and Uncreator The'Galin to uncreate Lore and the player character's attempt to stop him, and some storylines are short, silly spoofs, such as Mogbusters. Either way, the game's writing covers a wide gamut. Even more so on the forums, where there is plenty of backstory.

The game doesn't have only its simple fighting system to keep players enticed. Wars are special events used to move plots, where the player character enters a series of battles and each monster the player and other players kill works toward a certain number to fight the boss for rare event items. The player can find mini-games in quests. Housing is a big feature, too, where the player clears space of land, start building a house, and even get monsters to protect it.

It is joined with the following sequels afterward: DragonFable (set 5 years prior to AQ in a parallel timeline), MechQuest (5000 years prior to AQ) and AdventureQuest Worlds (which is a multi-player version set ten years after AQ and in a parallel universe), and WarpForce (set at the same time as AdventureQuest but IN SPACE, just expanding on the Space Opera that was going on in the background).


This game provides examples of:

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  • Abnormal Ammo: Many '100% proc' weapons tend to be this.
    • Frozen Dinner is a weapon that launches frozen cat food at the enemy..
    • The rewards from the "Lively Hallows" quest are fruit which you throw from fruit baskets.
    • The Apple Launcher, Corn-Missile Launcher, and Pumpkin Chucker from the Harvest Festival shoot produce from a cornucopia.
    • The rare Carrot Gun allows the player to shoot carrots.
    • The Gold-Shooting Gatling Gun and Blingshot use gold as ammo.
    • The Bac-Gun fires bacon at the enemy, giving the player character the chance to paralyze it.
    • The Homework Cannon shoots, well, sheets of homework. What else works against unruly schoolchildren?
    • The Zard Salvo series of weapons shoots live Frogzards at the enemy.
  • Acronym and Abbreviation Overload: The forums had a guide to the shorthand people use while talking about equipment, before it was updated to be less intimidating.
  • Adam Smith Hates Your Guts: The cost of equipment is directly proportional to how far they will get the player in the game, even when the player character should have received the item as a free reward or something. The only exceptions are promotional items, but those usually require payment of another sort.
  • Adaptive Armor:
    • Protean armor, V.I.X.E.N., and Shield of Awe give the player character increased blocking against the enemy's last attack type.
    • The Cyclops' Eye item increases the player character's resistance against the element enemy's next attack and keeps that damage modifier throughout the battle. The item is useful against enemies that switch between elements for their attacks, as it allows the player to focus on just one element to defend against.
  • Added Alliterative Appeal: Everything the Bun-Bits name start with the letter B. That's not a chef, that's a broiler! That's not a hankerchief, that's a bandana! That's not a wand, that's a baton! So on and so on.
  • Addressing the Player: At the start of character creation, the player is asked for a name, and in Death's Domain, the player character can randomly time travel back to change it.
  • Advanced Ancient Acropolis: Talados seems to be the go-to dead, ancient civilization, that was rich in magic, monsters, and delicious tarts.
  • Aerith and Bob: Most of the game consists of Aeriths, but you get the occasional Bob in the form of Aria or Smith.
  • After-Combat Recovery: In most quests, the player character is fully healed after every two encounters. This is sometimes justified by having Twilly being around to heal the player character, but he's not always around, and the player character recovers anyway. According to In Media Res, it's a Ninja Cleric who gives the player character stealth healing.
  • All There in the Manual: The forums contains guides to the gameplay and its story, and is the source of the developers' Word of God.
    • Most of the backstory for the Devourer Saga is this, with several 'demicanonical' stories written by Falerin (which are somewhat retroactively applied to the game content). They're available in the aforementioned forums.
    • Not to mention the IRC sessions and logs that also play an interesting role in the story.
  • Allegedly Free Game: Becoming a Guardian, which costs $20, is necessary to max out the player character's level, use every skill for classes, get the best equipment, and access a number of quests.
  • All-Powerful Bystander: Many gods who visit Lore cannot directly assist in Lorian affairs due to the Celestial Bureaucracy. The'Galin does not use his power of frequently because of the ripples in time it causes—especially if such uncreation would cause a Temporal Paradox related to his own ascension to godhood.
  • Alternate Dimension/Alternate Universe: During the Bizarre Flecks Saga, we got a glimpse of some Transdimensional Realities (or TDRs), which are in essence, "like parallel worlds but where some very fundamental change happened."
  • Always a Bigger Fish: During the "Big Trouble in Little Granemor" quest, the player character is attacked by a Giant Hungry Zombie after fighting off some vampires with Vampire Slayer E. The zombie makes about one attack before a scary Ribber randomly comes up and drags it away (with its mouth).
  • Always Accurate Attack: The Undead Archer's rare attack will never miss, and the Divine Kusanagi Sword pays a hefty damage tradeoff for the ability to always land its strikes.
  • Always Chaotic Evil: The Drakel more or less started out like this, but it became increasingly subverted as the series progressed and humanity started to get to know them better.
  • Ambidextrous Sprite: Due to the animation style and the amount of Fashionable Asymmetry.
  • Amplifier Artifact: Miscellaneous items like the Weapon Master Emblems or Elemental Orbs boost damage done by a type of weapon or against a certain enemy's element, respectively.
  • Amusing Injuries: Anything that happens to Twig, since he is widely considered to be a) cute and b) really annoying.
  • Anchors Away: Of course, one of the weapons available from Talk Like a Pirate Day is an anchor the player hold over his hand.
  • And Now for Someone Completely Different: Several quests replace the chosen with other playable characters, which changes the character profile and equipment to suit.
    • Zorbak in "Death's Domain"
    • Galanoth in "The Matchmaker"
    • In some Hall of Memories quests, the player character must act as other characters to fulfill the Pensieve Flashback.
      • Darin/Darren in "The Past Unraveled II: Some Think it's Funny but it's Knot"
      • Grimveil in "Past Unraveled V: Rutan's Reckoned Rule of Semi-Classical Organics"
  • Animesque: Not huge, but is very noticeable by now. Even more so as part of its Art Evolution.
  • Animal Mecha:
    • The Drakelon Steam Dragon is an enemy that is a mecha dragon.
    • Transformer Armor has three forms which resemble a horse-and-chariot, hawk, and cobra, where all of them deal different attacks.
  • Animorphism: Downplayed. The Nekos are humans that slowly transformed into Cat Folk by magical cat ears.
  • Anti-Frustration Features:
    • Bribing Your Way to Victory at Gnuvain's Abode is only required until the player succeeds at the quest; dying won't make Gnuvain ask for a second payment.
    • The Item Upgrade System allows Guardians to upgrade their equipment tiers without having to retake the quest, which may prove lengthy. This also applies to items which come from inaccessible (permanently rare) quests. The only exception is upgrading Mastercraft sets; the player can only get better loot the longer they stay in the quest, so he/she can't skip the difficulty by purchasing the first tier item and upgrading it outside of the game.
  • Anti-Grinding: Most quest and war monsters are level scaled.
  • Anti Poop-Socking: There are daily caps for experience and gold.
  • Arc Welding: Carnax got attached to the Epic Quests got attached to the Nightbane storyline, and the result got really, really confusing in places. There is a guide to AdventureQuest lore, and we see that every plot except the Seekrat stories either leads up to or is a direct consequence of The Devourer Saga.
  • Art Evolution: Since the game has expanded so much from the time it's existed, there's been an enormous change in the art when it stealthily shifts from western-styled to Animesque. The forum-based "encyclopedia" even has a catalogue of old monster pictures, which are still being updated.
    • Deliberately played with when fighting the Iron Golem monster: the battle starts with the old version getting CRUSHED underfoot the updated version, possibly overlapping with Always a Bigger Fish.
    • When Warlic is fading from the effects of a time ripple, his sprite reverts to older versions.
    • The Tenth Anniversary Special event showcases the art evolution by having the hero go back in time to face past threats. We even get to see both of Twilly's earlier forms. The first form, "Retro Twilly", is available as a reward in the event. He's a fairly powerful healing pet too.
  • Artifact Domination:
    • The Mana Dragon has cursed the Dragon Knight armor set to brainwash its wearers into its draconic minions. The player character, in the "Maze of the Mana Dragon" quest, encounters fellow adventurers who suffered the same fate and frees them.
    • Doom Knight armor bonds to its wearer and permanently warps them into a Generic Doomsday Villain (apparently). It works on the dragon Essrith in "Doom Dragon: The Fall of Draschemus??", but the player character suffers no ill effects when donning Doom Knight armor. Maybe Warlic knows how to purify its corrupting effect?
  • Attractive Bent-Gender: All of the Genderbent NPCs from the 2010 April Fools quest are at least somewhat good-looking, and Galana (Galanoth) says that female Warlic looks cute.
  • Auto-Revive: The IceFall armor has a 15% chance to revive the player character on what would be death, and the Angel Guard guest sacrifices its own life to restore an attack that would have been fatal.
  • Author Avatar: A lot, and maybe even the majority, of major NPCs are based on staff members.
  • Awesome, but Temporary: While most temporary equipment is balanced to have around the same stats as other permanent equipment, the Dragon Blade is notorious for being potent on almost all dragons. Given that Dragon Wars occur every so often and dragons drop plenty of gold, many players go through the Dragon Blade quest to get the weapon and cut through dragons like butter.
  • Awesome Anachronistic Apparel: Inverted. Falerin, Galrick, the Order, Agent Smith, Ryuusei Cartwright, his analogue, Gaiden, Lkeas, all of them look out of place by wearing suits (and Galrick and Lkeas's casual outfits) in a medieval-inspired Lore.
  • Back from the Dead:
    • Riona claims Death offered her a chance to life if she helped collect his hourglasses, but he sics Carnax's ghost on Riona to make sure she can never fulfill her task. The player character has to enter Death's domain and slay Carnax's ghost so she can return to the living.
    • In the Devourer Saga, Galrick and Balius don't stay dead for long. Falerin explains that risked Lorian godwar to revive Galrick as his agent for Terra instead of for The'Galin. However, the event is still portrayed as Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence, given that he and Balius can't return to Lore.
    • The player character, as the Chosen, essentially gets a free pass from Death, so long as he/she returns the favor...
  • Badass in a Nice Suit: Falerin and Ryuusei have a dapper ensemble, and they are storyline heavyweights. The player character can get a similar suit at the end of "The Journey Home!".
  • Badass Santa: Kringle the Barbarian is Lore's version of Santa Claus. In the 2008 Frostval quest, Visia warps him, his elves (now Helves), and reindeer (now PainDeer) into bloodthirsty monsters, requiring the player character to save Frostval from them.
  • Bad with the Bone:
    • The Skull Club series of weapons are necromantic totems fashioned out of bones that can drain the enemy's hit points on its special attack.
    • The Dragonfang Scimitar is made by the bones of a dragon.
  • Bare-Fisted Monk:
    • The Martial Artist class allows the player character to use fists in place of weapons. The animation for the Gi armors also show the player character kicking the enemy.
    • Fist- and claw- type weapons tend to be more accurate at the cost of lower damage. The Cat Scratch Fever item boosts the damage these weapons, encouraging a player to keep an inventory for this playstyle.
  • Barrier Change Boss: Certain monsters, such as the Chaos Knight, HapHaZard, or Drako, change their damage resistances each turn, forcing the player to switch equipment to match.
  • The Beastmaster:
    • A character with a high Charisma stat gets increased damage and effects from pets and can use animal-themed weapons such as Twig's Swordfish or a War Hawk more effectively.
    • There is a Beastmaster class that allows the player character to increase pet/guest damage, summon animals as guests to attack, and absorb enemy attacks to use against them.
  • Behind the Black: In "Dinozard Island", the player character claims he has the power of '4th-Wall Sight', allowing him/her to see what's just off-screen.
  • The Berserker: Eselgee is the trainer for the Berserker class, which encourages reckless abandon in battle, as Berserker-class skills deal increased damage the lower the character's health is.
  • Better than a Bare Bulb: While there are consistent plots in the game, quests are mired with lampshades and lampshades about lampshades.
  • BFG: Several guns in the game tend to be gigantic. The Six-Ton Gun is a Hand Cannon, the Gold-Shooting Gatling gun looks like a one-handed machine gun, and there is literally a weapon called a BFG.
  • BFS:
    • HOLIDAY. COLOSSUS. It's a huge sword that covers most of the player. On the character page, it covers up some information.
    • The Magnablade from the "War of the Giants" arc is another massive sword that grants an absurd +30% damage bonus, at the cost of taking +17.85% damage. Like the above, it absolutely dwarfs the player character's model. The weapon's special attack involves holding it upright and then letting it tip over and fall on the opponent.
  • Big Creepy-Crawlies: There are quite a few scaled-up insects in Lore.
    • The Sectus/Sectid are remnants of an ancient time where they competed against dragons.
    • Kresh are rather standard Darkness-element Giant Spiders.
    • Brain Spiders are horrific creations of the Drakel and Brilhado. They are giant spiders with bones as limbs and eat brains.
    • Mantiks are giant, humanoid praying mantises that eat the head of their mates—so of course, they're vicious against any adventurers.
    • Buzzers are gigantic bees.
    • Hybees are humanoid bees that are, in fact, the size of humans.
    • BuzZards are half giant bees, half 'zard.
    • Wind Wasps are quite small compared to be 'giant', but they are still giant bugs compared to standard-sized bugs.
    • In Lore, a FlibbityGibbit (or its boss version, a FlibbitiestGibbest) is a cyan-colored bug with gigantic, mammalian eyes.
    • A Skeeter is a gigantic, human-sized mosquito.
    • The Flee is a Proportionately Ponderous Parasites that lives on the back of an even larger canine called the Bingo.
  • Big "NO!": Zorbak's 'no' covers the entire screen when the player character explains to him that he actually helped create Frostval while trying to ruin it.
  • Big Red Devil: The monsters from Heck are Hoof Soldiers—and their Elite Mook versions, Big Reds.
  • Big, Screwed-Up Family: Wolfwing/Erimus's family, due to Erebus/Dhows's manipulations.
    • Nine hundred years ago, Erimus was a normal human who got married to Cara, who had dated Constantin (Erimus' best friend) many years ago. Then, Constantin was turned into a werewolf and began antagonizing Erimus, partly fueled by frustration. Years later, the two friends having grown further apart, Erimus and Cara have had two children, Balius and Katarina. When the children were in their teens, Erimus was tainted by a coerced Constantin, something that someone thoroughly hid from Safiria who turned Erimus thinking he could be of use. Expecting Erimus to die because of both infections, she abandoned him in the forest's edge, where he was found by Katarina. Erimus killed her, while mentally unstable and in the process of becoming the first ever Werepyre, who managed to become Wolfwing thanks to Dewlok. Then, Cara, influenced by Drageth, accepted Dhows' offer and time travelled to the future, to protect Balius from his father, whom they thought was dangerous. Safiria and Constantine kept fighting each other for centuries, while Erimus became a leader on his own and was confined to an outcast's solitude. All grown-up, Balius (who had become the Avatar of Death at some point) got married to Evina, with whom he had two children, Edward (to whom the Annunaki was passed onto) and Cenara. This resulted in Balius becoming a Forsaken and, subsequently, NightBane just to be able to (un-)live on (...and get mad with power, later). Due to his newfound obsession, Evina left him and married another man, a farmer, with whom she had another son, Donovan. Donovan deeply resented his step-siblings for the attention Evina paid to them and grew ever more jealous. And JUST THEN, the Devourer Saga kicks in, with Balius turning against the Devourer because of Cenara's plea (and, indirectly, Wolfwing's request) and, then, realizing he's been an idiot to his children after he fails to kill E to become the Avatar of Death once againnote  due to Cenara's intervention, who reveals she's the Avatar now (yup, E has been Forsaken, too). And then, NightBane gets killed by Omega in The Final Battle, trying to redeem himself. Afterwards, Donovan starts a four-way war between humans, vampires, werewolves and werepyres, during which Cenara is infected with her father's blood and becomes a Dracopyre herself (Gracefang) with Dewlok's help (thankfully, without becoming Forsaken), just as Donovan becomes one himself and takes the name of NightReign. An Action Girl now, Cenara vows to become Darkovia's protector in her brother's stead and fight Donovan, while also learning the messed-up history of her messed-up family and the role an Eldritch Abomination had in it.
  • Bioweapon Beast: The Drakels' warbeasts, formerly harmless herbivores that the Drakels armored and gave energy weapon attacks.
  • Blah, Blah, Blah: The opening scene of "Dragons!" has Cyrus and Galanoth arguing in this manner.
  • Bling-Bling-BANG!: Numerous weapons the player can get are made of gold or encrusted with magical gems. The player can wield a blade forged out of pure gold or wield a gatling gun that shoots gold as ammunition.
  • Bling of War: Uncle Sham, the miserly president of the Central Bank of the Leprechaun nation, loves to deck his battle equipment out in gold. The player can purchase the Communicant set and Leprechaun Power Au-rmour after defeating him for his or her own battles.
  • Boss in Mook Clothing:
    • The Dracovamplantess enemy from the 2014 April Fools quest, for some reason, has a ridiculously strong poison attack and would love to use it on the player. Many players complained about having to struggle to defeat two of them in a row without healing, while the actual 'boss' of the quest was easy enough with its 200% resistances and the weapon the quest gave the player that did extra damage to him.
    • The TerrorZard looks like a standard Zard mook, and it has the power level of a mook. What makes it a Void encounter and not a standard enemy is the fact that it can't take damage from any element, thus requiring players to resort to Non-Elemental sources of damage to defeat it.
  • Boss Rush:
    • The Guardian Arena challenges the player to take on a gauntlet of some of the most difficult enemies in the game, while only having healing every other round (rather than having After Boss Recovery for every round).
    • The Adventurer Arena requires the player character to face through five tough enemies in a row without any After-Combat Recovery.
  • Brats with Slingshots: In "Battleon's Nightmare!", Timmy is coerced by Khandie Khain to fight against the player character with a slingshot.
  • Bribing Your Way to Victory: Guardianship and Z-tokens.
  • Bunnies for Cuteness: Bun-Bits weaponize their cuteness as an enemy encounter; they have a chance of having damage against them cut because the player can't handle attacking such cute critters.
  • Butt-Monkey: Before its renovation, the city of Granemor sure liked to get invaded and destroyed.
  • Call a Smeerp a "Rabbit": "Sunrays" and "Moonrays" originally looked close to manta rays, with a head and two pectoral fins. Their updated art makes them look like... uh, a metal fence bent into a circle with a helmet at one end?
  • CamelCase: Like pretty much all Artix Entertainment games.
  • Canis Major:
    • WolfRiders ride on giant, dire wolves.
    • Heckhounds are essentially Palette Swapped dire wolves, so they share their same size.
    • The Bingo was a dog large enough that it had ticks as large as the player character.
    • Mr. Banjo Stiltsocks is a terrier-like dog as tall as a person.
  • Caps Lock: The mysterious being known ENTROPY always has its name written with all capital letters.
  • Captain Colorbeard: Blackwhisker is a Pie-Rat, with a rodent's whiskers in place of a human's facial hair.
  • Cartoon Creature: Moglins are mammals which resemble anthromorphic mice/rabbits/chihuahuas with overly-large ears.
  • Cast from Hit Points: The Blood Orb item takes a small amount of the player character's hit points to boost the damage and accuracy of spells.
  • Cast from Money: Several pieces of equipment allow the player to burn gold to boost damage.
    • The golden Ebil Scythes takes gold to empower its special attack.
    • The player can feed a Golden Gween gold to transform it into a Golden Hallow, which deals more Earth damage than any other unboosted pet.
    • Mercenary-type guests require the player to pay gold for damage, but they are better than 'standard' guests. Nezujimbo can freeze the enemy and Shogun & Ansatsu can switch between what element they attack with—or attack with both elements at once.
  • Catapult to Glory: The original way to visit Isle d'Oriens was to build a catapult and send the player character flying through the rip in the sky that led to it. An update made it possible to visit the Isle from Battleon with a click.
  • Cave Mouth: The Wolfgate is the entrance to the Werewolf Lair, and it fittingly has the shape of a wolf's head.
  • Celestial Deadline: The Eternal Dragon of Time absorbs the dark energy generated from villains, and it must have magic words spoken to it every ten years to prevent it from becoming evil and destroying reality. Too bad for the player character that the deadline was yesterday.
  • Charged Attack:
    • The gimmick of the Kindred Mastercraft set and the Hourglass Axe is to 'store' multiple turns' worth of damage before unleashing it in one burst.
    • The ShellZard may retreat into its shell, which both boosts its defense stats dramatically and allows it to unleash a high-power attack.
  • Cheap Gold Coins: The player will be paying for equipment with millions of gold coins. A basket of Pearapplos costs 'only' a value between 19 and 2,201 gold depending on what stat boosts they give the player.
  • Chest Monster: The Treasure Chest? and Toy Chest monsters look like chests on the outside but have fangs and tongues instead of loot.
  • Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: Due to the game having a multitude of writers across its history and a very large cast, this is bound to happen.
    • Zhilo the Axemaster was a recurring character from some of the very early quests, and featured prominently in the introduction of the recurring villain Calladus. He inexplicably disappeared sometime prior to the Devourer Saga, and his disappearance was joked about in the description of Zombie Axe Master armor from Frostval 2012. He Returns in 2019's Burning Solstice Saga, having spent an indeterminate amount of time trying to steal the power of War.
  • Christmas in July: There is a quest, "Frostval in July!", released in July of 2008 that shows what the villains of the 2007 Frostval quest are up to. The player gets to see Zorbak's Freudian Excuse why he hates Frostval and Khandie Khain's identity before she was 'adopted' by the Nightmare Queen.
  • Circles of Hell: The dimension of Heck loosely follows The Divine Comedy in structure.
  • Class Change Level Reset: Most classes allow the player to keep their levels, but switching between Martial Artist styles and Dracopyre subraces drops the player's class level to 5 and 0, respectively.
  • Clipped-Wing Angel: Donovan breaks Hybrid-Overkill Avoidance in the 2014 April Fools quest and becomes an amalgamation of a wide variety of monsters... but at the cost of losing his sanity and gaining all of the weaknesses of the creatures whose traits he gained.
  • Clothes Make the Superman: Class abilities are accessed by being equipped with the class armor. Similarly, a lot of armors give the player character multiple attacks or other special powers.
  • Cloud Cuckoo Lander: Radagast, whose grip on reality can frequently be said to be questionable. His justifications for the trouble he causes generally floats between "Ehh... why not?" and "It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time".
  • Combat Hand Fan: The Crane Fan and Razor Fan are weaponized fans, and they fittingly come from Japan-style quests. The Crane Fan in particular deals Wind-element damage and can fold or unfold for different stats.
  • The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: Monsters aren't bound by the same stat restrictions at the player, leading to most high level opponents breaking the player's stat caps and having loads of HP without having to pay for it using Endurance points. Some monsters even have negative stat points in order to further increase their other stats.
  • Cosmic Keystone: The Eight Elemental Orbs and the Orb of Creation.
  • Cowardly Boss: The Vile Love boss from Snugglefest 2015 runs away when it reaches 2/3 and 1/3 hit points. This gives the player the chance to recover hit points between encounters, which makes it a less one-sided in favor of the boss.
  • Critical Hit: Players and monsters alike inflict Lucky Strikes if if they have stats points in Luck, which increases damage by 37.5% of the Luck stat. Several items can make them more common.
  • Critical Status Buff: The player character can have equipment that mimics the Turns Red abilities of monsters.
    • The Transmorpher Shield boosts defense when the player is under half health.
    • The Luminous Wyrm Helm, Ep-Pig armor, and Berserker Hides scale damage inversely proportional to health left.
  • Crossover: There have been a few crossover events between AdventureQuest and other Artix Entertainment games:
    • "The Crystal Cave", a crossover created when DragonFable was young and wasn't determined to be an Alternate Universe yet, starts in DragonFable and shows the results two years later in AdventureQuest.
    • Cysero of DragonFable makes cameo appearances in a few quests.
    • "Fading Warlic!" has characters briefly mention their DragonFable counterparts.
    • Red Skies Crossover:" Operation: Gameocide", "The Curse of the Phantom Pixel", and "Rise of the Shadow Council" are Artix Entertainment-wide events that are tangentially connected.
    • Required Spinoff Crossover: As WarpForce is AdventureQuest's sci-fi spinoff, there is a quest dedicated to showing introducing WarpForce from Lore's perspective.
    • "Corundum Corruption" is an event that starts in MechQuest, continues in DragonFable, and ends in AdventureQuest.
  • Crystal Skull: In a shoutout to Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, one of the rewards from the "The Hoard of Alquemada!" quest is a Crystal Skull Shield, which wards the player against Earth- and Darkness-element attacks as well as having great magic defense.
  • Cognizant Limbs: The player character battles Carnax and Chillax by separately targeting their heads, arms, feet, and tails. There is the option to attempt to battle against them one-on-one, but that battle nearly impossible to survive.
  • Content Warnings: In "Absol-ution III", Lanfiré parodies warning labels:
    Lanfire: Warning: What follows is full of hackneyed puns, melodramatic emotions, overblown dialogue, and more exposition than Antarian Colonist Jordan Robert's Circle of Space series. Or, as a certain young shadowkitten might say, "Lots of talky bits ahead."
  • Costumes Change Your Size: Some armors make the player character look gigantic compared to the standard Guardian Armor. The Armor of Awe once belonged to King Awethur, yet it seems so scale the player up to his size.
  • Cut and Paste Environments: Due to the sheer number of quests compared to the number of art assets, the backgrounds for most quests are reused for other ones. Even for quests with mazes, rooms tend to look indistinguishable.
  • Cute and Psycho: Shii is a hyperactive schoolgirl holding a lollipop. She also enjoys killing people.
  • Cute Witch: Wandy is a talented mage for a child, compared to the older mages. She's eager to help the player character out in battle against the Tyrant King.
  • Cutlass Between the Teeth: Ratliver likes his knives; he holds one in each hand, two stashed in his boots, and holds another in his mouth.

    D to G 
  • Damage-Increasing Debuff: Several pets—Thunder Cats and Nerfbats—make the enemy more vulnerable to the element they attack with. This status influences all damage sources, not just the pet's own attacks.
  • Darker and Edgier:
    • For the most part, AdventureQuest is a light-hearted game— family-friendly at worst. And then the player tries the Assassin Class quest chain...
    • Given the growing age of players, Eukara Vox (the developer) introduces quests with heavier storylines, although they still take a sideways glance at serious topics.
  • Dark Is Not Evil:
    • The player character can choose to become a Werewolf, Vampire or Werepyre (a blend of the two) with the help of each respective species leader's help.
    • The player character can also become one of two types of Dracopyres, though the leader of one seems to be more evil than the other.
    • The'Galin's color motif is red and black, has power over Uncreation, and has followers that seek to purge the world of Lore. He's really just a decent guy whose role had attracted internal corruption from his followers.
  • Dark World: The world of Lore has multiple ones:
    • There is an analogue Lore where characters are their opposites (such as Artix being a Necromancer instead of a Paladin, Galanoth is a Dracomancer instead of Dragonslayer, etc.), and instead of being safe from evils, it has been run to the ground. Several analogue NPCs flee from this realm to call on the help of people from the player's world.
    • The Nightmare Realm consists mostly of its own fauna, but Nightmare versions of Lorian NPCs have manifested there and oppose as a threat to the player.
    • The Shadow Universe consists of 'Shadow' versions of NPCs. While not malevolent in general, the SeekRat plots to use the power of the Shadow Universe for his own needs, and Ultimon comes from the Shadow Universe to conquer and corrupt Lore.
  • Deader than Dead: Uncreation, the process in which something (which can be pretty much anything, really) is returned to the Void. Being uncreated means that you cease to exist, everything you've done in your life is erased and no one will remember you (though there are exceptions), and it's the go-to way to kill someone totally and definitely if, well, you can do that sort of thing.
  • Deadly Doctor: Doc Sawbones and Nurse Botoxia. The former uses a chainsaw, while the latter uses a syringe.
  • Death Is a Slap on the Wrist: It kicks the player out of any quest he or she was on, but that's about it. The player character will also owe Death a favour, but nothing has come out of that yet...
  • Death Is Not Permanent: Death's quota is always full, and will bring the Chosen back to life for a favor.
  • Death's Hourglass: The favor for being revived countless times is finding his lost hourglass in a secret quest. There was originally no resolution or answer to why the hourglasses were stolen. Riona claims it's a Snipe Hunt so the dead stay dead. When the quest was updated, it is discovered that Sneevils from DragonFable were stealing the hourglasses and that with the player character's help, Death could track the stolen hourglasses down.
  • Degraded Boss: The fate of many a war boss, like Elder Vampires, Undead Paladins, Undead Skull Apes, and the Herd Boss is to be stuck on the random encounter list. Lampshaded when, after the player character has to defeat Drakath the dracolich as part of a quest, they wonder, "Who keeps reanimating that dragon?"
  • Dem Bones: Many of the undead enemies.
  • Demon Lords and Archdevils: Ancient Demon Lords and simple Demon Lords from Heck and Stormfallen. The chosen can become a Demon Lord themselves in a Knight class quest.
  • Dialogue Tree: During The Devourer Saga, they affect the player's Karma Meter but not the plot. In most other quests, they affect the plot but not the player's Karma Meter.
  • Did You Actually Believe...?: For the 2014 Blarney War, Uncle Sham, the undisputably wealthiest character in Lore, offers the Chosen 10% of his fortune for the Chosen's help in battle. After the Chosen finishes the deed, however, Uncle Sham gives the Chosen his fortune—the in-universe explanation for special attacks now being able to deal lucky strikes. Sham then derides the player character for thinking he would give up his gold
    Uncle Sham: Are ya daft? Ya know how much I love me gold! I won the "Lore's Greediest Miser" contest ten years in a row! What in the name of all me gold would make me PAY you the gold I love so much?? ESPECIALLY when I can do it in exchange fer a bit o' magic??
  • Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: The player character, being the Chosen, combats enemies that would otherwise be out of his or her league. When the self-proclaimed god of Etherspace claims that the Chosen cannot stand up to him, the Chosen responds:
    Player: So you're a god. So what? I've beaten up gods before. Let's see... War, Falerin, Limkragg, Eldron, to name a few. And two of those are quite a bit more powerful than you are.
  • Difficult, but Awesome: Obtaining and wielding the Blade of Awe or it's variants for non-warriors. Not only it's usable only for Guardians meaning that you have to pay real money, you have to assemble it's five pieces found in Rare Treasure Chests first which only spawn in two modes. Either you do 1) Random Encounter/Battle Monsters (10% chance of spawn) or 2) "Somewhere" mode in the Crossroads (3x[times you've beaten that quest location before]+6%, for example if you beat a location 9 times the chances are 33%, which is the percentage cap). However, it's list of powers and the various Balance Buffs it underwent over the years pretty much makes it one of the biggest examples of Power Creep aversion in the game.
  • Draconic Humanoid:
    • Although Drakels are often believed to be related to dragons or even believed to be that, the Vartai fit the description much better.
    • The Vartai are dragon and human hybrids that can shapeshift into human form with varying degrees of success, some of them able to pass for normal humans easily, while others have horns, wings, tails, very varied skin and hair colors, marks, etc. Some (i.e. Cyrus and siblings) possess, at least, three forms: human (either fully or with draconic traits), humanoid (human-shaped/sized dragon) and dragon (full dragon).
    • The Chosen can, either with a Dracomancer's class armor skills or with the Full Set Bonus of the Dragon Knight set, take a humanoid-dragon form.
    • The dragons themselves are able to take human and humanoid form through magic (allowing them to seemingly avert Hot Skitty-on-Wailord Action).
  • Dragon Knight:
    • Galanoth is a dragonslayer who is clad in armor with a helmet resembling a dragon's head. He and other dragonslayers have abilities that either trigger against dragons or use dragons' abilities for themselves.
    • The Dragon Knight mastercraft set belonged to the Mana Dragon and, before it was uncorrupted, could morph its wearer into a dragon loyal to the Mana Dragon. Even after uncorrupting it, the player character can don the armor, use its Breath Weapon and, if he/she has the Full Set Bonus, transform into a half-dragon.
  • Dragon Rider:
    • The reward for defeating fire dragon Akiroth, an early Big Bad, is to temporarily train one of his offspring for good, giving the player character the opportunity to ride a dragon.
    • During Frostval, the player character doesn't deliver presents with a reindeer—he/she rides on a Reindragon, which happens to be very effective against the Ice-elemental monsters in the way.
  • Dude Looks Like a Lady: Donovan.
  • Dual Wielding: A specialty of the Assassin class.
  • Early-Installment Weirdness: Besides the obvious Art Evolution that comes with being a game released in 2001, many early game mechanics were strange.
    • Equipment wasn't tiered, so players had fewer options as they leveled up, but in return, some items would be useful regardless of level. For instance, the Light Orb gave a flat 20% damage bonus against Darkness-elemental monsters, and the Ironthorn shields gave a flat 50% damage bonus against all monsters but reduced accuracy.
    • Miscellaneous items required mana to activate and took up a player's turn.
    • Weapons that had tiered versions may not attack with the same element, so it was not as easy to balance an inventory when 'upgrading' a weapon meant switching other weapon elements around.
    • The Krieger Blade, the first rare weapon to be added to the game, would do Earth-element damage for the first ten seconds after entering battle before permanently switching between light and darkness.
  • Eldritch Abomination:
    • Subverted with, Carnax who regrets what his master makes him do.
    • A lesser example, but the Grabbi is one, being a tentacled beast that eats the player character's pets.
    • Seth Cay Dhows is a major one. being able to exist in many places at once and can see through time, he even manages to split the mind of Falerin (who is a GOD!) and avoid nasty side effects of such an act. he was also recently reveled to be a man made god known by the name Epsilon who has gone insane and wishes to destroy everything and recreate it all in his own image (What he wishes to do is similar to uncreation which means he is a bigger bad then The'Galin).
  • Elemental Embodiment:
    • The updated Wizard class is able to summon these as guests, one for each of the eight elements.
    • The Elemental Lords of Lore embody the in-game elements. During Seth Cay Dhows's arc, the Lady of Light and Dark Lord are given prominence among other Lorian deities.
    • To hunt for the Dragon Blade, the player can optionally fight the essence of dragons, which are the most powerful embodiments of each elemental dragon.
  • Elemental Powers:
    • The updated Wizard class allows the player to specialize in casting one of the eight elements.
    • Most inventory items specialize in dealing or resisting a particular element.
  • Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors: There are eight primary elements in an Elemental Wheel, where opposing elements are highly-effective against each other, and allied elements tend to resist each other. The other elements of Void, Harm, Heal, and Poison do neutral damage regardless of elemental affinity.
  • Epic Flail: Flail-type weapons tend to inflict melee damage and have high 'random', meaning they can deal much less or more than the average. Some flails the player character can wield are Limkragg's Flail, Energy Flail, Flare Flail, Rat Flail, Death Flail, and Flux Flail.
  • Equippable Ally:
    • A Ramleon is a creature that has the body and head of a lion, the horns of a ram, and the tail of a serpent. The player character can equip one of a Ramleoness's babies as a shield.
    • The player character can also wield a fiery fox as a shield.
  • Even Evil Has Loved Ones:
    • For Frostval 2014, what sends Zorbak over the edge when seeing his projected Bad Future is the vision of his wife, Mu Glen, falling for Kabroz instead.
    • It turns out that Ryuusei Cartwright sent his son, Gaiden, to live with his analogue to be safe. When Gaiden is threatened by Xitra and later Etherseid, Cartwright is quick to react.
  • Everybody Hates Hades: In-universe, The'Galin is seen in a villainous light due to his duties of removing people and concepts from existence. It doesn't help that he is dubbed "The Devourer" and chooses a red and black color motif, which further increase his perception of being evil. The reality, of course, couldn't be farther from the truth.
  • Everyone Hates Fruit Cakes: Facetiously, according to Falerin, fruitcake is an Eldritch Abomination that even the Uncreator fears. The 2015 Frostval quest rewards is a set of fruitcake items, and most items of the set give a paralysis effect, as fruitcake causes the opponent to become disgusted.
  • Everything Trying to Kill You: Some of the enemies from Random Adventure are quite unusual. Well, even more so for a Fantasy Kitchen Sink.
    • One of the random encounters is an animated bush.
    • The player can fight against Killer Ice Cweam, a monster stemming from Cloud Cuckoolander Twig's mind.
    • There is an unusually wide range of zombie vegetables, courtesy of amateur necromancer Seahawk.
    • Unlike other plant-based enemies like Deadwood, Am-Bush, Professor Akamu's mutant flowers, or the above-mentioned zombie vegetables, Razorweed is just a plant without any strange origins, and yet it manages to pose itself as a threat to adventurers.
    • The player character can fight Granny when delivering Frostval presents. She's been upset at being run over by your Reindragon so many times.
    • Due to the various NPCs that terrorize Battleon at times, monsters such as a bird that spits out its skeleton or giant samurai rats are considered typical.
    • The Rock Star enemy is a rock with googly eyes and hair.
    • The player can fight against Seeker White Blood Cells in the "Innard Space" quest.
    • The Cinco de Mayo event pits the player against an animated pinata that fights back.
  • Evil Lawyer Joke:
    Daimyo Daimyo: Hmm, so the Lawyers aren't demons. I guess the Staff must have forgotten to add that tag to them.
    In Media Res: BWAHAHAHA. Done.
    • Yes, this means that any Weapon of X-Slaying for demons will activate against Ninja Lawyer Assassins.
  • Evil Weapon: The rewards from "The Return of Stragath" are cursed weapons that have special attacks that inhibit the player character. Three of the four weapons drains the player's health on their special attacks. The last plain just has a chance of killing the player character outright.
  • Evolving Weapon:
    • The default gear for both Adventurers (Free Players) and Guardians (Paid Players) have their stats scaled to player's level.
    • The Awe and UltraGuardian gears also scale to the player's level. The "!!!" upgrade makes the gear become stronger per level instead of every five levels.
    • The blade of the Banisher Scythe grows in size according to the level of the player.
    • The Zombie Master Axe absorbs souls from monsters the player character defeats, growing to a maximum of 110% strength.
    • The AQxe grows in strength the longer a battle is, also to a maximum of 110% damage.
  • Expospeak Gag: Due to Falerin's verbosity, there are several occasions where he describes a concept in highly technical detail and the Chosen realizes the idea is quite mundane.
  • Fairy Battle: There are several 'battles' that are not battles in the traditional sense.
    • When The Devourer Saga was live, there were several Random Battle encounters with plot-important NPCs that foreshadowed their role in upcoming quests.
    • Treasure Chests can be found in Guardian missions or in Crossroads. The player is just prompted to open the chest and receives a large amount of gold, potions, or pieces of the Blade of Awe for 'winning' the battle.
    • The Moglin Friends encounter has the player either receiving potions (if at full health) or playing Heal or No Heal (if injured).
    • In "Quest for the Dragon Blade!", a Ninja Cleric appears and heals the player character after every battle.
    • The Aerodu Defense Machine is a minigame implemented as an enemy.
    • The Sympathetic Shadow Sprite appears to be this—indeed, it does heal the player character at first. However, if the player character brings its health under 50%, it turns into a tentacled creature and attacks back. Unfortunately, because RPGs Equal Combat, the player must attack the Sympathetic Shadow Sprite (and get it to lash back) to continue whichever Ultimon's Fortress quest he/she was on.
  • Fake Ultimate Mook: In "Zorbak's Evil Mistake!", some Ebil Scythes brings the player character's HP to One. As the player is in Darkovia, finding any place to heal would be unlikely. Then the player encounters a level 130 Soul Banisher... that he or she beats in one hit.
  • Fantastic Flora: There are plenty of strange plants in the game.
    • Floggs are carnivorous plants that eat giant bugs. They also have their Man-Eating Plant cousin, Nepencreeps.
    • Professor Akamu and Kamui accidentally create vicious mutant flowers that serve as opponents in a war.
    • The Razorweed was known for being a Boss in Mook Clothing thanks to its high health and attack bugged to do 150% of the damage of a standard enemy. That is a significant feat for a grass.
    • The Am-Bush has the unique gimmick of being able to strike before the player can prepare—even before the battle formally starts. It's literally an animated bush that casts wind-element magic shaped like bunny ghosts.
  • Fantastic Fruits and Vegetables:
    • The Harvest Festival quest requires the player to hunt down an Orange, Sqrapple, Graplant, Bluestar Flower, and Bread Fruit as an offering for Serenia, the goddess of the harvest.
    • An April Fools reward the player can buy is a CrabApple, which is a literal apple with crab claws.
    • Soraya sells Pearapplos fruit, which pets love. In terms of gameplay, the item gives a small bonus to pets' damage and accuracy.
  • Fantasy Kitchen Sink: The game references many mythologies and works—besides the list of Shout-Outs, there are:
  • Fate Worse than Death: Being Forsaken. The Annunaki, upon leaving a still alive host, rip their hosts' soul, leaving none of it behind, and physically and psychologically changing them in very significant ways. Although they gain enhanced senses, the ability to see the dead, walk in the shadows, and immunity to Uncreation, the Forsaken are, in fact, dying a slow and painful death. They possess no aura, are hunted by the Reaper (as they belong to the realm of Death) and are sent to Nowhere when they meet their end... Some are basically doomed to never find rest, unable to die from mortal wounds (which can be good thing, but most of the time, it's not. Even if they are revived, they won't return to their old pre-Forsaken selves.
  • Feather Flechettes: The Brilhado and Winged Truphma shoot quills from their wings at the player character as an attack. The player character can cast the Brilhado Feathers spell to do the same thing against enemies.
  • Feed It with Fire: If a monster has a negative damage modifier toward an element, it means it gets healed instead of damaged if it is attacked by that element. Sunrays and Moonrays, however, have the "Light/Dark Elemental" attribute. Any damage of the same type gets converted into extra mana, which is used to heal the ray. But... letting mana overfill causes the ray to explode. This is the better of the two ways to win the battle, since defeating a Sunray/Moonray this way grants the player a temporary spell.
  • Fish People: The Mermazons and Vagarans are some water-affiliated enemies the player character may encounter. Mermazons pretty much look like mermaids, while Vagarans are blue, shapeshifting humanoids with a tentacle for one arm and a crustacean claw for the other arm.
  • Fighter, Mage, Thief: The three builds the game provides to characters are the Warrior, Mage, and Rogue. Warriors focus on the Strength stat and use melee weapons to bash enemies. Mages focus on the Intellect stat and use magic weapons and spells for burst damage. Rogues focus on the Dexterity stat and use ranged weapons and focus on dodging enemy attacks.
  • Filler: Users of the forums comment how quests released since 2015 tend to be updates rather than new releases.
  • Fission Mailed: Multiple quests provide no penalty for a death or require them as part of the plot.
    • In one quest that the Chosen has to do as the form of a ninja cat, Death sends him or her back to the quest upon death because the Chosen's cat form is too cute to be taken.
    • There are several quests that require the player to go through a Hopeless Boss Fight (e.g., "The Final Battle!", "Dense Red Fog/The Tower of Xyphos", "It's a Wonderful Life of Crime: Killing Spree Ending").
    • A random quest in Death's Domain allows the player to temporarily control Zorbak. Should he die, the player learns that he and Death have a contract that allows him to avoid a permanent death.
  • Fixed Damage Attack: Weapons that have high 'base' damage tend to be extremely consistent in damage, although the actual value of the damage can by modified by boosts and resistances. The Unlucky Sword and Eyes of Chillax weapons are examples of such weapons, and the Stable Spell skill from the mage class armor doubles the base damage of magic spells.
  • Fluffy Tamer: The player character can collect quite a few beastly creatures as pets. By the description, the player character created his/her baby Sacragon pet. Sacragons are in-game described as crimes against nature and Eldritch Abominations.
  • Fog of Doom: DragonClaw island is surrounded by a mysterious Red Fog that poisons the player. A spell the player can get after completing a quest allows the player to use the Red Fog as a spell that inflicts self-damage in exchange for increased damage.
  • For the Evulz: The SeekRat, his reason for all his plans?
    SeekRat: Silly hero. You have always dealt with villains whose motives were so simple. 'Destroy Battleon' or 'take over the world'. How droll. True villainy needs no such things!
  • Four-Leaf Clover: Leprechauns are associated with four-leaf clovers and a high Luck stat. In addition, the player character can boost his/her luck with the Clover Essence, Four-Leaf Clover, or Seven Leaf Clover items.
  • Fungus Humongous: FunGuy is a giant mushroom on legs that attacks with spores.
  • Fur Against Fang: In Darkovia, the vampires and werewolves naturally battle each other for dominance. However, there are werepyres and dracopyres who embrace both sides but are rejected by both vampire and werewolf clans.
  • Furry Confusion:
    • The gattas, which are anthropomorphic cats... who ride on non-anthropomorphic war cats.
    • Ravil is a werewolf-like creature who rides on a non-anthromorphic DarkWolf. The player character points out that he is a WolfRider in every sense of the word.
  • Funny Bruce Lee Noises: One of the possible names for a Bruce Lee Clone fought in the Martial Artist class quest is literally 'Waaaaaah'.
  • Fun with Acronyms: Regular acronyms show up frequently in and out of the game, as Acronym and Abbreviation Overload shows.
    • The Rodents of Unusual Size that plague each years' harvest are named Big Ugly Rat Pests.
    • There are characters whose names are based on their original abbreviations, but phonetically pronounced, such as ElBhe note , Dhe Ehmn note , and Eselgeenote .
  • Futureshadowing: The Ghosts of Frostval spell from Frostval 2008 shows the ghosts of Frostval past, present, and future as King Frost, Kringle the Barbarian, and a mysterious stranger wrapped in black robes. It's not until the 2012 Frostval quest that the player sees who the 'future' person is.
  • Fuuma Shuriken: The Shivuriken is a giant snowflake shuriken thrown to deal Ice-element damage.
  • Game-Over Man: Death shows up when the player character dies, but tells you he's over his quota and sends you back to town owing him a favor. The player character can fulfill that favor and get an aesthetic Skull for a Head as a reward.
  • Gameplay Ally Immortality: Only the player character will take damage in battle. Pets and guests are essentially immune (bar rare monsters that remove them from combat).
  • Game-Breaking Bug:
    • The updated Darkshifter had the offensive stats of a Lightning Bruiser and the HP of a Tank. its attack power was five times that of the updated version with twice the HP. now add on to this already Boss in Mook Clothing with the power bonus for magic use and you get a monster with 20 times the attack and twice the HP of its updated release of it.
    • The Baby Frogzard pet was released with the updated Frogzard Hunter's shop. In the first few hours of its release, it was scripted to loop its attack before a battle could start, completely bypassing battles.
    • The "Thursday the 12th War" allowed the player to play as Artix, who is very Purposefully Overpowered for story purposes. The developers were not prepared for players completing the war so quickly, allowing players to continue battling as Artix by finishing the war instead of exiting it normally. Some players used him to take out even "Undefeatables" with ease.
  • Gameplay Ally Immortality: Pets and guests are allies that deal extra damage, boost player damage, or inflict some other effects. They can't take damage, but they require the player character to be alive.
  • Gardening-Variety Weapon: VegiSplatic is a pitchfork weapon that deals extra damage against plant-based enemies. Peasant's Nightmare is another pitchfork, twisted by Nightmare magic.
  • Gemini Destruction Law: The Gemini brothers ironically invert the trope. Both have to be defeated within three turns of the other. Otherwise, the living brother will revive the other to full health.
  • Gender Bender:
    • In the 2010 April Fools' event, most of the NPCs got genderswapped. The ones seen were Artix, Galanoth, Warlic, Aquella, Robina, Safiria, and Cenara. The Wereking was mentioned as being swapped as well, and it seems likely that Donovan changed.
    • Robina Hood is a genderbent Robin Hood. During the 2010 April Fools quest, she is genderbent again as Robin Cap.
    • All it takes for the player character to change gender is to pay 20 gold at Warlic's mirror.
  • Gender-Inclusive Writing: The player character is either referred to by name, as the Chosen, or with gender-neutral word like 'friend'. Certain quests imply the player to be male, though—Lucretia and the player character flirt with each other when questing for potion ingredients.
  • Generic Doomsday Villain: Lampshaded, like anything else, in the Osiris Set Mastercraft set. The player character points out that no one really fears Ammon's plans to conquer the world.
  • Genie in a Bottle: The Lucky Lamp weapon can be used by whacking the opponent with it, or by letting the genie inside of it loose to attack the opponent.
  • Genius Loci:
    • Carnax became living from magic animating the mountain Talados was on. It died as the Taladosian civilization did, but then Makkisar, one of the last Taladosians, revived Carnax.
    • The'Galin is represented at times as a dark red moon with glowing eyes.
    • The Shadow Universe is outright stated to be a sentient entity.
  • Giant Foot of Stomping: The player character encounters a Brobdingnagian Ultra Giant in the "Out to Sea/Little Problems" quest, which is represented by this trope. The Shadow Colossus, similarly, is gigantic enough that the player character attacks its feet.
  • Glass Cannon: Goggs pretty much exemplify it. They nearly always go first, and can, in some cases, blast the player character for thousands of hit points worth of damage over the course of one turn, but can be taken out just as fast by a player who knows what they're doing.
  • Global Currency: The player character uses gold to purchase equipment regardless of where the quest takes place, even if that location is an alien planet or Dark World.
  • God Is Evil: Seth Cay Dhows who was recently reveled to be a man-made god known by the name Epsilon.
  • God of Evil: Falerin of Caelestia has the portfolio of Evil, but he isn't evil. He compares himself to an enforcement officer who has to know about crime and malignancy in order to counter it most effectively.
  • Going Through the Motions: Not too common, but egregious during cutscene of the fight between Wolfwing and Nightbane.
  • Grim Reaper:
    • The Chosen sees him every time upon death, so he or she probably owes him a lot of favors.
    • One of the rare Special Attacks a Weapon of Awe can perform is summoning Death. Against monsters that aren't immune or have over 14,000 health, the attack instantly brings the enemies to 0 HP.
  • Groin Attack: Aquella does this to Mako in the final cutscene of "War of the Seas" as part of being a Damsel out of Distress.
  • Guardian Angel: Guardian Angels are used by Guardians to heal the wounded after battle. The player character can pick up a Guardian Angel to join him/her in battle. Similar to Guardian Angels are Angel Guards, which don't heal the player character but instead sacrifice their lives to resurrect him/her from death.
  • The Guards Must Be Crazy: The player character is stopped by a guard at the gate to New Granemor. To enter, all he/she has to do is say that he/she isn't evil.
  • Guide Dang It!: As the game grows older and info submission becomes more inconsistent, there are some items that lack information on getting.
    • The title "Hokuto Shinneko" involved beating a Temporary Online Content boss such that he never proceeded to the next stage of his fight. There was no news that you could stop him, or that beating him this way would unlock this title.

    H to M 
  • Hailfire Peaks: Paxia is a microcosm of all eight Lorian elements, so the player can see, for instance, a volcano next to a frozen lake.
  • Hard Mode Perks:
    • Beating the hardmode dragons of the Eternal Dragon of Time's heads gives the player Mastercraft versions of the Void Vanquisher set of equipment.
    • Fighting dragon essences instead of assorted dragonkind gives the player character a guaranteed chance of finding the Dragon Blade instead of a 25% chance.
    • Defeating certain Void bosses in Hard Mode give more or better rewards.
      • Defeating hardmode Smittens gives a Mastercraft version of the Cabbit pet.
      • Defeating hardmode Chaos Knight gives the player Chaos Armour as a reward.
      • Defeating hardmode Nulgath gives the player Nulgath's armor as a reward.
  • Harmless Freezing: Freezing is a status condition that both the player character and enemy can inflict on each other. All it does is make the inflicted skip a turn and increases vulnerability to Fire-element damage proportional to ice resistance.
  • Harmless Villain: Zorbak, most of the time. According to the 2014 Frostval quest, he is a necessary evil that prevents worse villains from successfully conquering Lore.
  • A Head at Each End: Fundead Dragons move like see-saws and swing around 360 degrees during their attacks.
  • Headless Horseman: The Horseman enemy in the game a satyr rather than a man on a horse. The in-game description lampshades how unoriginal the Visual Pun is.
  • Head Swap:
    • Most elemental dragons share the same body and only differ in head and possibly wing design. Water Dragons and Void Dragons are the exceptions.
    • The Heart Hound, Creptus, and Devilry pets all use the same 'emaciated beast' body, changing in color, head, and tail only.
  • Healing Checkpoint: The "Taladosian Relics!" and "Death's Domain" walkaround quests have healing spots in the form of underwater bubble baths and smoking vents, respectively. Most quests just have After-Combat Recovery as a method of healing.
  • Healing Herb:
    • The quest "A Cure for Cenara!" has the player searching for Darkovian plants to cure a mysterious sickness (which turns out to be dracopyrism), and the player character can use the same herbs for a boost during a battle.
    • The Bora'jee is a bluish root that can be eaten during a player's turn to heal the player character's health.
  • Health/Damage Asymmetry: In most instances, player and monster health and damage are on par with each other, but there are select few monsters—tanks and bosses—that have either higher health or damage than the player. The mechanics of this are explicitly laid out; players can change their equipment and heal while enemies rarely can.
  • Hello, [Insert Name Here]: The player can use any name that uses ASCII symbols (or leave it blank) and NPCs will say the name during cutscenes, leading to instances where x-x-DRAGONMASTER Adam-x-x is being called on for help.
  • Hero with Bad Publicity: Celestra is a Good Is Not Nice Fiery Redhead with relations to the Devourer who just so happened to appear when other NPCs were warned that agents of the Devourer were coming. Epheel intentionally uses this superstition to send Battleon on a witch hunt for Celestra before she starts explaining.
  • High-Class Glass: The SeekRat wears a monocle for that air of scholarly sophistication while still being a giant rat. He also has some animals that similarly wear monocles.
  • Hijacked by Ganon: Except it was old villains being controlled by an even older one.
  • Hilarious Outtakes: Yes, it can be done with a Flash game; it was parodied in the 2009 Frostval Event.
  • Holiday Mode: Seasonal events occur around the same time as real-life holidays of the same theme. Usually, there is a recurring 'main' quest and new side-quests that are added every year.
    • Valentine's Day Episode: The Snugglefest main quest requires the player character to do favors for various NPCs to make him or her their Snugglefest hero. Other quests typically involve NPCs dabbling in romantic relationships and all of the antics that come with those.
    • April Fools' Plot: April Fools does not have a main quest—rather, the quests themselves are sometimes jokes or involve the demigod of mischief being unbound for one day to cause jokes in-universe.
    • Cinco de Mayo: Pinatas spawn in Random Battle and from the Cinco de Mayo Painting. Upon defeat, they drop temporary, themed equipment.
    • Easter Special: The Grenwog Festival main quest is played by having the player character collect werebunny eggs and trading them in for equipment, as well as stopping the Grenwog from eating these eggs. In later years, the new Grenwog quest involves fighting against various rabbit-like creatures.
    • Halloween Episode: The player character goes trick-or-treating around Mogloween in a similar manner as the Grenwog Festival. Mogloween quests typically involve Zorbak's monsters or other undead.
    • Thanksgiving Episode: The Harvest Festival's main quest is a hunt for crops to present to the goddess of the harvest. The side-quests typically involve fighting against BURPs who would otherwise eat that year's harvest.
    • Christmas Episode: The entirety of real-time December is dedicated to Frostval quests, starting by decorating the Frostval tree and later Saving An Ass-Kicking Christmas from some Grinch-like figure. During December, Battleon is covered with snow and the tree in the middle of town is decorated.
  • Hopeless Boss Fight: Several for plot reasons, such as against The'Galin and the Nightmare Queen.
  • Hopeless Suitor:
    • Galrick tries hitting on Celestra frequently during The Devourer Saga. Celestra is more concerned about getting revenge on The'Galin at first.
    • Hans tries to woo Aria in multiple quests. While he is successful at times, the relationship doesn't tend to stay.
  • Hope Spot: The playerbase got one during "Mostly Harmful". Almost two weeks of furious fighting, and it seemed like it was going to come down to the last hour... then the fourth stage arrived and dropped the meter by a full 18% with less than a day to go. Cue Downer Ending.
    • Averted for those on the forums, however. It had been made clear that the war consisted of four waves.
  • Horse of a Different Color:
    • While there are horse 'Rider' armors, most steeds the player character can ride on as an armor tend to be fantastic creatures, such as 'Zards, unicorns, direwolves, chimeras, dragons, salamanders, butterhooves, and literal horseflies.
    • Dewlok the Moglin rides a Koofu, a large bird-like creature, as a mount.
    • Valencia uses Grumbugly, a giant Fiery Salamander, as a pack animal.
    • Wolf Riders ride wolves, of course.
  • Human Alien: Vesperians look completely human, yet a certain NPC hates it when people on Lore call him human. After he goes through some character development, he doesn't draw attention the distinction despite another NPC remarking on it.
  • Humanity on Trial: The'Galin's plan.
  • Hurricane of Puns: The creators know it. They consider it part of the game's campy and fun atmosphere.
    • Now say hello to the event that is called... Drakelcube P.
    • And meet mighty heroes and villains such as Gokar, Bhelma, Panfluti and Gherkina.
  • Hybrid-Overkill Avoidance:
    • Averted. You have your average vampire and werewolf. Then, you have your werepyre (a combination of the two). Then, you have your Dracopyre, a werepyre with dragon blood mix.
    • Donovan tries to add more creatures in the mix in the 2013 April Fools quest, ending up with some Dracopyre Moglins, plants, robots, and, uh, whatever 'Evolved' Nightreign is.
  • Hyperspace Arsenal: Before a quest gave a tongue-in-check explanation, most players wondered how their characters could hold eight suits of armor, weapons, shields, and accessories and be able to switch out their equipment mid-battle.
  • Idiot Hero: The player character can be a spectacular moron, but in "The Bizarre Flecks Part 1: Double Take", the player character comments he/she is a master of playing dumb, as it makes other people underestimate him/her.
  • If You Kill Him, You Will Be Just Like Him!: In the epilogue of the Absol-ution Saga, Gaiden prepares to kill a De Powered Etherseid for causing havoc that indirectly led to his surrogate father's death. Other proximal NPCs ask Gaiden to stop. Lkeas in particular states that Gaiden would be stooping to Etherseid's level. Ultimately, Gaiden respects the others' wishes, and Etherseid is killed anyway by a less morally wholesome protagonist.
  • If You're So Evil, Eat This Kitten!: The enemy Fundead Kitten's description says that Kabroz dared Zorbak to make the monster—which is an undead kitten on fire.
  • I Have Many Names: What makes some plotlines confusing are characters' propensity toward using multiple aliases to be covert, which is often used for The Reveal. Erebus takes on many names over the course of the story because he doesn't become a 'being' until the end of "Dhows' True Form Revealed".
  • I'm Having Soul Pains: The Cold, used by servants of The'Galin, affects the willpower of the soul in a manner akin to brainwashing. On several instances, it has been used for Brainwashing for the Greater Good.
  • Impossibly-Low Neckline: Lucretia, the apothecary in Granemor.
  • Improbable Weapon User: The player can use, shall we say, a wide variety of weapons.
    • The player can use a cupcake as a weapon.
    • Or candy floss.
    • Or a guitar.
    • Or a wrench.
    • Or a toy pinwheel.
    • Or a paintbrush.
    • Or a fishing rod.
    • Or a fruitcake.
    • Or a volleyball.
    • Or a surfboard.
    • Or a thermometer.
    • Or a giant spider leg.
    • Or a bottle of soda.
    • Or a sock.
    • Or a Killer Yoyo.
    • Or a mummy's leg.
    • Or a decorated Christmas tree.
    • Or a candy cane.
    • Or Christmas lights.
    • Or a paperclip.
    • Or a mop.
    • Or a piece of fruit.
    • Or a turkey drumstick.
    • Or a sword made of gum.
    • Or a bow made out of books.
    • Or a live electric eel.
    • Or school supplies fashioned into a crude doll.
    • Or a Grass Blade.
    • Or a MissleToe.
    • Or a supercharged Electric Joybuzzer.
    • Or an Archimedes Death Ray.
    • Or a burrito of DOOM.
    • Or a shovel of DOOM.
    • Or a spoon.
    • The player character get a plunger to help him or her make way through a link between realms. And yes, he or she fights with it.
    • What happens when a Frostval gift is stolen? Pay large amounts of money to use the wrapping paper as a weapon.
    • In order to channel Water-element magic, the player can use a giant feather pen.
  • Indestructible Edible: Any equipment based off of food will never wear out from damage. The 2015 fruitcake items are said to be Water-element because fruitcake takes forever to dry out or rot.
  • Inexplicable Treasure Chests: Lampshaded occasionally.
  • Infernal Retaliation: A kind of wolf-like monster named Razorclaw is particularly weak to fire, but if the player character hits it with fire, it will deal increased damage back while on fire. This occurs even if the fire attack misses.
  • Infinity +1 Sword: The Blade of Awe. Usable only by Guardians, it's list of powers and the various Balance Buffs it underwent over the years pretty much makes it one of the biggest examples of Power Creep aversion in the game. It is a weapon that can 1) drain either HP, MP or SP, 2) blasts Sword Beams with the Awe Blast or hit three times with the Spiral Carve, 3) Summon the Guardian Dragon or his son, who both deal absurd amounts of damage and 4) Summon Death himself to One-Hit Kill your opponent (unless they are the very few beings that can actually be immune to it).
  • Instant Armor: Several non-armor items can give the player character a temporary armor, such as Airenal's Lance, Snide Transformation Formula, and the Shapeshift spell series.
  • Instant Awesome: Just Add Mecha!: At Mt. Thrall, the player character can fight Titan-sized monsters in an appropriately-sized Mecha. And it has no point to the plot.
  • Interspecies Romance: Several sentient species/races can interbreed, although for many cultural and physical differences some are less likely to appear. Humans alone can interbreed with dragons, elves, orcs, demons (ones from Heck, and maybe even Brilhado), Dwarves, Drakel, Moglins, etc. (without even mentioning the compatible species in other AE games). And there has been one case of a half-Moglin, half-Drakel... hybrid thing.
  • It's Up to You: The player is justified in-game as being The Chosen One, hence why he or she can go toe-to-toe with, say, Eldritch Abominations and gods. It also helps that the Chosen also has the support of deities up-close.
  • Item Crafting:
    • Players can make a custom sword, spear, or staff and have control over its damage, element, and accuracy/power offset.
    • To a lesser extent, spellcrafting allows the player to customize the Spellcraft spell with one of nine elements.
  • Karma Meter: AdventureQuest's "Morality Compass" which measures good vs. evil and unity vs. chaos.
  • Kaiju: ZardZilla. Even his description text says so.
  • Katanas Are Just Better: Early on, some of the best weapons in the games were katanas, like the Power Katana and the Ice Katana. Over time, though, other weapons surpassed them in damage.
  • Kaizo Trap: Some enemies, notably Adalons and Thunderbirds, will get a surprise hit in during their death animation. The damage dealt is usually light, but it can still kill the player character if health is that low.
    • Health draining status effects such as poison or bleeding will hit the player character after the player's turn... even after the enemy's HP has been reduced to 0. Considering that these status effects can take off quite a good chunk of HP if they're strong enough, this can result in quite a nasty surprise as the game checks for the player's death before the enemy's.
  • Killer Rabbit: Several versions.
    • Nerfkittens are adorable, but they wear spiked collars and grin maliciously when performing their attacks. Because they can lower the player's stats with impunity, they can be threatening to characters of all levels.
    • The Mondrogor is a small ball of dirt with a flower on its head, but it has a Void-element sonic attack that bypasses normal elemental resistances.
    • This trope is played most literally with the Grenwog 2014 boss Bundorable. It looks like, of course, an adorable bunny, but then the player fights it and it reveals that it can transform into a bunny demon and bunny dragon.
  • Knight Templar:
    • Galanoth does not like dragons. While this is not usually a problem, they're not Always Chaotic Evil, and he occasionally gets rather... overboard.
    • Nemesis just wants to enforce justice. Unfortunately, his definition of justice is "kill everyone who doesn't agree with him".
    • Artix's tendencies come to a boil during the "Edge of Extinction" war, where he whips most of the Paladin Order into a fervor, sparking an all-or-nothing war with the Necromancers with the intent of stopping Necromancy forever. Comes back to bite them HARD when they are not only excommunicated by the Elemental Lady of Light for their actions, but the damage caused to Lore's "ley lines" as a result of the war robs BOTH sides of their signature abilities. Word of God says that Artix will be going through a My God, What Have I Done? phase for a while.
  • Laser Blade: Several WarpForce crossover items are swords made of energy. The Icy Beam Sword, Windy Beam Lance, and Star Sabre take this form, with the latter being a direct shout-out to Star Wars.
  • Leave No Witnesses: Used as an excuse on one occasion in the Assassin class quest chain to justify Violence is the Only Option.
  • Leeroy Jenkins: There is an entire quest about him, in fact, which uses the actual script from the video.
  • Level Grinding: A typical battle is expected to take ten turns, and each turn takes about ten seconds, more or less depending on attack animations. Experience gained from a battle fills a tiny sliver of the player's experience bar, and there are 150 player levels in total. There is a limit to how much experience and gold the player can get in one day, but for most players, they will never reach even half of that cap. It's estimated that it takes at least a month of straight grinding to reach the level cap.
  • Level-Up Fill-Up: The player character restores all of his or her HP and MP upon a level up.
  • Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards: Was a constant problem and the cause of many a nerf.
    • As it stands now, Mages specializes in Spell burst damage and special weapon effects and Warrior specializes in a long, drawn out battle with the high power of their standard attacks with higher stats bonus and MUCH more powerful weapon, in term of quality and quantity. Warriors skill cost are also MUCH more cheaper than their magical counterparts at the cost of being slightly weaker. Mages are much better at farming, especially since the elemental Wizard Robes are available fairly early, while Warriors are better against bulky monsters such as bosses.
    • In a sense, its more of a Linear Wizards Quadratic Warriors right now. Wizards started out strong and is capable of farming easier than Warriors while Warriors dominates late game after getting all of the necessary equipment and stats boosts.
  • Literal-Minded: Eldron, Caelestian God of Good, has this as one of his quirks.
  • Little Green Men: The Cor-Dem are small, psychic, green aliens that try to warn the player character of some mysterious doom despite their inability to speak the language of Lore. They can be taken as pets that make the enemy more susceptible to magic.
  • Living Shadow: The Shadow Universe is populated by beings made of pure shadow. Contact with the Shadow Universe can also turn monsters (and people) into shadows.
  • Living Weapon: Beyond Attack Animals, the Malengua and Protector Rod weapons are alive. The former gets stat bonuses from Charisma, while the latter can shift between melee, ranged, and magic forms.
  • Lizard Folk: The Drakels are (normally) green-skinned dracomammalians against whom Dragonslayer class abilities are effective. Unlike many other words, they're also a Higher-Tech Species, equipped with various Magitek weapons ranging from genetically engineered warbeasts to Mecha and, although depicted in the beginning as a Always Chaotic Evil race, the conception was subverted as they are as varied as humans and other races are.
  • Loading Screen: There are jokes on them; laggy computers can read them while faster computers cannot.
  • Loads and Loads of Sidequests: The game is dominated by a myriad of sidequests, while the main storyline quests are uncommon in comparison. Besides The Devourer Saga, it is difficult to determine where to start looking for plotlines.
  • Love Imbues Life: During Snugglefest 2010, the ambient love energy on lore manifests itself into a being called Amoria.
  • Luck Manipulation Mechanic:
    • The game asks for a stat roll in certain quests. Newer quests allow the player to Defy a failed roll by paying SP proportional to the difference in points needed.
    • The Clover Essence and Blue Server Cap double the frequency of Lucky Strikes but cuts damage in half; the Red Server Cap halves the frequency of Lucky Strikes but doubles damage. Damage done is the same on average either way, however.
  • Luck Stat: Luck is used for Lucky Strikes and stat roll saves, and it gives a small overall bonus to attack damage, attack accuracy, and dodging chance.
  • The Magic Goes Away: The Paladins and Necromancers lose the ability to use their talents as a result of their actions in the "Edge of Extinction" event.
  • Made of Incendium: Werewolves originally had a large weakness to fire. Eventually each update made them even weaker to the point to where they would burn from the weakest fire sources. Even normal wolves aren't spared from the blazing weakness.
  • Magic Knight: Player characters with 'hybrid' builds, as they're called, can deal both physical and magical damage. The player can also meet Undead Spellswords which use similar attacks.
  • Magic Wand: Wands are magic weapons that typically cast spells instead of striking the enemy outright.
  • Magitek: The Drakel specialize in 'magiscience' and are the Higher-Tech Species on Lore.
  • Mana Drain: The Banshee and Braken can do this to the player, and the player can also do this to enemies using certain weapons.
  • Mana Shield:
    • The Gandolphin healing spell provides a mana shield to deflect a small amount of damage.
    • The Shield Generator item uses the player character's SP to reduce incoming damage.
    • The Sea Fiend monsters use their SP as extra, regenerating health; the player has to either deal enough damage to bring their SP to zero to deal 'actual' damage or use a special weapon that specializes in ignoring Sea Fiends' SP shields.
  • Manual Leader, A.I. Party: The player can control the player character directly and choose which pets and guests to use. Pets and guests attack on their own, though they do not have as many battle options as the player character.
  • The Many Deaths of You: Death animations are dependent on the armor the player is wearing. Some are more amusing than others—like the Zard superhero costumes, which are portrayed in a cheesy superhero manner.
  • Marathon Boss:
    • Sine qua non is a non-boss example. It has high hit points, no explicit weaknesses, and deals pitiful damage.
    • The Night of 100 Ninjas, while not particularly powerful, can take a long time to defeat, as, the name might imply, the player character has to fight through 100 ninjas, three at a time.
  • Marked Change:
    • Various armors, shields and weapons have 'triggers' that make them deal extra damage when they are out against certain enemies. Almost all of them are accompanied by some change in design.
    • Ryuusei hunches over, grows Creepy Long Fingers, and sports glowing red eyes when acting as Omega. The'Galin points out that he doesn't necessarily have to look so creepy when acting out his role.
  • Mask of Power: Some of the miscellaneous items a player character can equip are masks and helms. They typically boost an elemental and damage type resistance.
  • Master of None: The player can choose to invest stat points evenly between the six stat attributes. Most people do not build a character like this, however, since the corresponding boosts to damage, accuracy, hit points, and mana are spread too thinly to be of use.
  • Maximum HP Reduction: Any changes to the Endurance stat causes a corresponding change to maximum and current Hit Points. The Decimator armor's special skill allows the player to reduce the Endurance stat of a monster by between 10 and 50 points for a turn.
  • The Maze: "The Maze" quest is played with the arrow keys as a Stealth-Based Mission instead of the typical battle-after-battle style of quests.
  • The Medic: The vast majority of Moglins. The only exceptions are the evil Zorbak and Kabroz and the one and only badass Moglin in the game, Dewlok.
    • Zorbak has healing magic, he just doesn't like to use it. One of the Boatman quests lets the player control him. He can indeed heal himself.
  • Medium Awareness:
    • A Dirty Snowman in "Frostval in July!" asks why the player character wasn't paying attention to a cutscene that had all of the exposition in it.
    • The player character says that he/she can see past the border of the screen during the "Dinozard Island" quest.
  • Mercy Kill: According to the Dull Ramleon's description, this is the only way to free a being converted into Truphma.
  • Mercy Rewarded: Sparing the undead paladin in "Failure to Communicant" allows the player to get the highest-tier versions of the Communicant set.
  • Minion with an F in Evil: Erebus tries to use Ardendor to gain access to Falerin's godly domain, but while Erebus is manipulative enough, Ardendor is... not. His contribution to Erebus's war are 'reversed' monsters—that is, monsters that attack with a certain element and are weak against the same element (in contrast to standard monsters that attack and resist the same element). Gameplay-wise, this allows players to use otherwise rarely-useful Full Set Bonuses to quickly take down Erebus's forces.
  • Mirror Match: A Mogloween quest pits the player to fight against It's You!, a monster has the player character's face, weapon, shield, and stats.
  • Mirror Universe: They are called alternate realities, and the roles of NPCs in them tend to be switched—Artix is a necromancer rather than a paladin, Galanoth is a dracomancer instead of a dragonslayer, and Ryuusei is fixed on the side of good rather than morally ambiguous.
  • Mobile Fishbowl:
    • The Fishguts enemy (and its pet version, Goldyfish) hops and slides around from inside its fishbowl.
    • The Desert Conqueror armor fills the player's head with breathable water, all the better to survive in a xeric desert.
  • The Mole: Erebus takes one of Falerin's fragments—Ardendor—under his wing. Falerin manages to find and recohere with Ardendor, and he and the Chosen decide to bait Erebus by having Falerin act as Ardendor. The ploy works; Erebus, for all of his deceit and manipulation, is manipulated himself when 'Ardendor' lets Atlas free and gives Erebus a coherent identity.
  • Money Spider: Explained, amazingly enough. It's somewhere between a subversion, a parody, and a justification: Robina the Hood steals from the rich and gives to "the cute little cuddly-wuddly forest creatures!" There's even the note that "How did you think level 1 spiders got so much gold on them?"
  • Monster Allies: Some of the quest rewards are pet or guest versions of the enemies fought during the quest.
  • Monster Clown: In AdventureQuest, clowns are powerful demons from the inner circles of Heck that worship the demigod of mischief and induce fear upon their victims. The Truphma convert clowns into Enemy Mimes that inflict Silence instead.
  • Monster Mash: Mogloween thrives with all sorts of spooky creatures; we have Zorbak's MonsterManiacs which consist of a werewolf, vampire, Frankenstein's monster, and fish monster. Other Mogloween quests has the player character fighting against mummies, skeletons, zombies, ghosts, and Moglin monsters.
  • Mook Chivalry: Zig-zagged. If the player character faces multiple of the same monster as a single encounter, they will use multiple attacks in the same turn. However, to keep it fair for the player, they will only do at most double damage. However, there are two monsters—the Green Nasty and Legion—that do not adhere to this rule. These monsters keep dividing until there are eight copies of the original—and they don't deal reduced damage to compensate.
  • More Dakka: The Robodeer pet has a small chance of dealing double damage on its attack. When it does double damage, a message says, "MOAR DAKKA!", as it launches a second round of Gatling-gun fire.
  • Morph Weapon: Numerous weapons can alternate between multiple forms to deal either damage of different elements, attack types, or leans. The Shadowscourge Pyracepter, Z-Blade Scythe, and Shifting Blade are examples of such weapons.
  • Mortality Ensues: In the 2011 April Fools quest, Radagast and Khold summon demigod Loco to Lore stripped of his powers. Bad thing is that now his powers are running amok around Lore without him to control them.
  • Multi-Mook Melee: "Triple Challenge" has the player character fighting three enemies at once in battle. Other quests may have the player character battling multiple enemies as well.
  • Mutually Exclusive Power-Ups: The player character can only activate one miscellaneous item at a time. For the item Beleqwaya's Gift, the description states that humans can't handle all three powers the Gift might be.
  • Mysterious Stranger: AdventureQuest relishes in adding mysterious masterminds to quest chains. At points, some of them meet and essentially compete to see which one of them is the more mysterious and ominous.
  • Myth Arc: The year long Saga's and story lines that form the backbone of the game's plot.
    • At first was the relatively simplistic Fire War saga which dealt with you stopping Fire Dragon Akriloth and his quest to use the Prime Fire Orb tho conquer the world. Following it was also the second Fire War against the fire mage Drakonnan, who had gone mad after having his family slaughtered by Akriloth.
    • Next came the mostly equally as simple Carnax saga which involved the titular beast waking up and you having to stop him from destroying the world with the help of the prophet Riona Shadowgale and her son. Also involving a trip to the future where he also had been resurrected again.
    • Following this was the now legendary Devourer saga (initially simple known as The Epic Quest) in which the titular god of destruction was returning to lore too, well, do his thing. Bringing his network of alien conquest and followers with him. As it would be impossible to summarize the entire thing without cluttering up this entire page, you can read This page instead if you wan't details, but it ended with the Devourer cleansed of his rage and deciding to leave lore alone.
    • After this the main story of the game split in two with booth the next two following Storylines happening simultaneously.
      • The first of these was the No Man's Land saga which dealt with the now rebuilt town of Granemor's war with the mutants of the titular no man's land created when the Devourer 'touched' the area. This in turn led directly into the Absolix Rising saga when the the Devourer's former general Ryuusei Cartwright and his 'son', Absolix became involved in the whole thing.
      • The second was the Dracopyre Legacy saga which involved the Evil Power Vacuum that now existed in Darkovia following Barious/Nightbanes death and the conflict that now existed between his two children. This eventually lead into the Hall of Memories saga where you and Cenera (one of said children of Nightbane) traveled back in time using the titular Hall of memories initially in order to find out how Drakovia became such a screwed up place, but quickly finding out that you weren't the only one messing with Lore's past leading into the next chapter of the game's story line.
    • After this things got kinda complicated: The being in question turns out to be known as 'The Mysterious Stranger' but later revealed to be a strange entity going by many names, no one of being being his true (Seth Cay Dhows is the one he most commonly used) who turned out to have taken over the role of many of Lores historical figures and the rest of Hall Of Memories is mostly spent trying to find out the rest of his involvement. But that kinda had to wait as out in space an entire planet has been uncreated due to events happening in WarpForce, leading to lore being bombarded by mysterious green meteors that's tearing holes in fabric of reality and causing lore to be ripe for invasions from other dimensions, leading to the Bizarre Flecks saga that's mostly damage control from this event. In the midst of all this, a hyperintelligent "Burp" known as Seekrat from an until then unrelated saga also got involved in the whole thing by opening the gate to a hostile dimension known as the shadow realm, and Dhows appeared in the present where he also takes interest in the flecks and 'murders' Falerin, forcing us to also chase after his various pieces in order to reassemble him.
      • And worth noting is that the normal Hall Of Memories and Dracopyre Legacy plus the after match of the "No Mans Land Saga" and a third offshoot from the devour saga (involving a being known as the Chessmaster gathering the prime elemental orbs) was also still going!
      • Anyway, in the end everything got quite nicely wrapped up: most of the flecks effects got naturalized (even if they would still cause trouble in the future), Falerin got reassembled mostly none worse for wear, the seekrat plans got stopped and Dhows (now known under his true name, Erebus) was banished back to the titular shadow realm which he originally came from. Collectible, the entire chapter is refereed to as the Shadow War saga.
    • The following myth arc follows the Shadow War by being a bunch of unrelated arcs that connect via common elements. Notable story-lines so far include the after-mentioned Chessmaster saga, the Ultimon Saga (dealt with the fallout from the shadow realm invasion), the Necromancers vs Paladins saga (put on temporary hiatus due to complications with the former writers), The Past Unraveled saga (sequel to Hall of memories) and the Truphma Saga (another invasion of lore from an alternate universe). Many of these storylines involve the appearance of a mysterious entity known as Entropy who has an strange interest in the player characters life.
    • The next myth arc followed up on several different convergent plot threads, most notable among them being the Burning Solstice saga, the long-awaited return of the Necromancers vs. Paladins storyline, the Dragonlorn Keep saga, and the War Between Shadows saga. The arc focuses primarily on the consequences of AdventureQuest having spun off into an Alternate Timeline from DragonFable, and the calamitous event in the Far West that caused the point of divergence. Complicating matters are the return of both Erebus and the original Mysterious Stranger aka the Shadowscythe, whom Erebus had stolen the identity of, as well as the Chosen's brief Abstract Apotheosis into the new War at the end of the Burning Solstice Saga.
  • Mythical Motifs: Ryuusei has an eastern dragon motif. He has a Fu Manchu mustache, red clothing with filigreed patterns, his weapon is a staff adorned with a dragon's head, and the first name he chooses, translated from Japanese, can be interpreted as 'dragon'. In addition, he has used the alias "Dragon" in IRC logs, and he's The Dragon for The'Gain before The'Galin abandons him.

    N to R 
  • The Napoleon: Despite being the god of Etherspace, Etherseid is mocked by human characters for looking like a tiny pony. Even his own minions laugh at his stature, which only enrages him more.
  • Nerf: This is decided by the staff group the Knights of Order (KoO). They appear in-game in several places: Aelthai in Battleon, Zephyros in the Azamay quest, Khold and Radagast in the '09 and '10 April Fools' events, Shii as an Assassin class trainer, and Kalanyr in several quests.
  • Nerf Arm:
    • In the April Fool's Day 2008 event, a Nerf Wraith turns the player character's sword into a foam covered version of the default warrior weapon. After the quest, the player can purchase nerf pugil sticks, boffers, and guns as 'real' weapons.
    • The Club Bouncer enemy is meant to be lethal, even though he wields the same Nerf Boffer weapon from the April Fools quest.
  • Never Bareheaded: Galanoth never takes off his armor—a fact that is lampshaded in the Snugglefest 2013 quest. His alternate counterpart is a Dracomancer, so his armor lacks a face-obscuring helmet; to prevent the player character from seeing his face, every quest with alternate Galanoth has some prop conveniently blocking his face, except for a split moment in "Us vs. Regeirk!", which shows him with long, blond hair.
  • Never Say "Die":
    • Death is rather commonplace in AdventureQuest, given the abundance of undead, NPCs threatening to kill each other (and sometimes succeeding), and player character deaths. Because Death Is a Slap on the Wrist, there are clever ways to use magic to skirt death, and Death is a pretty nice guy about resurrecting people, mentions of the words 'kill' and 'die' aren't uncommon for a family-friendly game. In contrast, Eukara Vox's "Seeking Silence" tries its darndest to explicitly avoid the topic of suicide. The online AQ encyclopedia entry for Morcef skirts around the words 'die' and 'kill', instead preferring 'terminate' and 'end', while many other entries just use the standard words.
    • The equivalent of Hell in Lore is called Heck. Amusingly, Hellhounds were still called Hellhounds for a while, though they were later changed to "Heckhounds."
  • Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot:
  • No Celebrities Were Harmed: Among the many parodies AdventureQuest includes are ones of real-life figures.
  • No Fourth Wall:
    • The Guardian Dragon is especially prone to this, with quips like "Sorry I'm late, the server was lagging again."
    • In Frostval 2011, Tydlee Wynx mentions that of course he looks good—he was drawn by one of the best artists working on the game!
    • Frostval 2014's giftbox armor is based off of fourth-wall breaker Deadpool, so the armor's special attack uses the game's interface to stun the enemy.
  • No-Gear Level:
    • Being 'nerfed' from either the 2008 April Fools quest or through a Rayfish's Desperation Attack replaces the player character's equipment with Nerfage equipment, essentially reducing their effectiveness to zero.
    • The Dracopyre of Night enemy can disarm the player's weapon, forcing him or her to use bare hands. Yes, the game acknowledges that the player character has to beat a dragon-vampire-werewolf with his/her bare hands.
  • Non-Elemental: The rare Void/Harm element can be used to bypass elemental resistances.
  • Non-Human Undead: It seems that anything that can be made undead will be by some enterprising necromancer. The player can encounter undead versions of Zards, Moglins, dragons, chimeras, gnats, elves, cats, Braken, apes, Goggs, trolls, leprechauns, Ribbers, Frostval bosses, and whatever can be cobbled from bits and pieces of any of the previous.
  • Non-Linear Sequel: DragonFable, MechQuest and AdventureQuest Worlds
  • Non-Mammal Mammaries: Female Drakels and the gecko Pae, though the Drakel has have hair in later renditions. The staff have stated that this was intentional and not an artistic drift.
  • Noodle Incident: Falerin mentions some Uncreated events in "The Restoration" and states that they are better left undiscussed.
  • One Bad Mother: Mother is the primordial creature that created the Shadow Universe and all of its inhabitants. It sends its Shadow creatures to a Fate Worse than Death if it is too disruptive, although it seems it has benevolent intentions in mind.
  • One-Hit Kill: PowerWord Die instantly zeroes any monster's health, as long as it isn't too strong for the player character (so a level 1 player can't fish for PowerWord Die on a level 150 boss to gain a few million experience points).
  • One Stat to Rule Them All: The Dunamis and Poelala pets/guests once provided abnormally large boosts for warriors and mages, respectively; most pets/guests deal direct damage for the player, but Dunamis and Poelala boost the player's damage by the same amount a pet would deal scaled with the Charisma stat. Having Dunamis/Poelala as both the pet and guest multiplies player damage instead of adding, and there was no penalty for their boost being always effective against the enemy, making them much more powerful than any other strategy. When Thernda, the ranger version of Dunamis and Poelala, was released, all three pets/guests were nerfed to be less useful than the average pet.
  • One-Steve Limit:
    • During the "Bizarre Flecks" saga, several characters meet their alternate-universe counterparts. The naming scheme for differentiating alternate counterparts is inconsistent; some pairs of characters have the same name, some have Sdrawkcab Names, and some are just called 'Alternate' or 'Mirror' <name>.
    • When Erebus splits Falerin into Literal Split Personalities, everyone seems to agree on naming all of Falerin's pieces differently depending on their traits.
  • One-Winged Angel: Makkisar starts out as an old wizard, but after he is defeated, absorbs Carnax's essence and becomes a four-armed titan.
  • The Only One Allowed to Defeat You: Zorbak claims in Frostval 2012 that he's the only one that should destroy Frostval—meaning he's willing to save it from being destroyed by new villain Frigidere.
  • Optional Boss:
    • The Void is used for both testing the difficulty of bosses and for adding optional bosses into the game. When it's being used for the latter, the bosses considered beatable give unique rewards, while those that are undefeatable give just bragging rights.
    • Besides boss-only events, quests may offer the player the option to encounter optional bosses.
      • Some, such as the Z.A.R.D.I.S. Baron Darjeeling, or Loco, are strictly optional—in-universe, it's justified as letting the Chosen personally deal with a threat or letting a more capable NPC take care of the opponent.
      • Other bosses, such as Etherseid, are required, and the 'option' is between a standard-power boss fight vs. a challenging one.
      • For Frostval 2007, the player is given the option to battle a weak or strong Nightmare Queen (to get her sword as a temporary weapon) or skip the battle entirely.
  • Our Monsters Are Weird: Boy, howdy. The player character can fight everything from worms to the stat roller to ice cream to giant ticks to tomatoes to Sarah the Nerfkitten to leprechauns to were-seals... the list goes on and on.
  • Our Vampires Are Different/Our Werewolves Are Different: They're generally pretty much standard-issue, but there are also vampire-werewolf hybrids and vampire-werewolf-dragon hybrids.
  • Our Werebeasts Are Different: Beyond the standard werewolf, AdventureQuest is home to Werepyres, WereDragons, Were-Hares, Werehogs (really a man in a pig costume) WereBats, and Selkies.
  • Out of the Inferno: Not only can the player character battle right next to the lip of a volcano, but he/she can survive being directly hit by Ultra Magma Akiroth's dragonfire while his/her armor melts into slag.
  • Oxymoronic Being: The "Mystery! AQ Live" event is spurred on by the sight of paradoxical beings around Lore: a dragon that is half-living and half-dead (but not undead), a fairy-centaur that is half-good and half-evil, a two-headed humanoid beast that's half-molten and half-frozen, a flying animal with a giant hippo's head and tiny hummingbird's body, and a fusion between a Moglin and Gogg (half-healing, half-destruction). For finishing the quest, the player receives contradictory items as rewards.
  • Peninsula of Power Leveling: There are a couple varieties that show up if you know where to look.
    • Mini-bosses such as the Queen Hybee, Drakath the Undead Dragon, and Tyrant King give decent XP amounts early on and are easy enough to not only kill, but also get back to quickly.
    • House Guards such as the Nerfkitten Scion, Mighty Shadow Roc, and Mighty Shadow Gogg give so much XP, you're libel to reach the daily cap after just a few battles.
  • Percent Damage Attack: A few rare attacks scale according to enemies' hit points.
    • The most commonly-recognized example is the Guardian Dragon special attack from the Weapons of Awe, which deals around 33% of the monster's health, adjusted by the level difference between the player and monster.
    • The old version of DragonSlayer class armor had a skill called Call Forth the Fire Dragon that did 33% Fire-element damage on the opponent. This skill was affected by the old Freeze Status Condition, so players could use it to deal 66% damage on any vulnerable enemy (which includes some encounters meant as Hopeless Boss Fights).
    • Bishop Finch, when fought as an enemy, has a Void-damage attack that deals a percentage of the player character's health.
    • The Lycan Slasher and Dualight weapons had a special attack that cut the enemy's Mana in half and healed the player for 60% of the manage lost. Against enemies with a large mana pool, the player could heal himself/herself extremely conveniently.
  • Permanently Missable Content:
    • Early quests (before The Devourer Saga) tended to disappear after they finished being 'live', meaning any of their rewards also disappeared.
    • Promotional items only have a short lifespan when they are acquirable.
    • Frostval event items are only available during December and early January before they're gone for good.
    • Unusually, the Hurricane Blade weapon can only be acquired the first time ever the player character enters the game, as it only appears in the starter shop, which never shows up after completing the tutorial. Now that the tutorial has been revamped, the weapon is now truly lost forever.
    • Subverted with holiday items; they are available only a certain time a year, and each year releases new items, but players can revisit the quests and rewards from previous years when it's the season. In addition, for 1,500 Z-Tokens, players can purchase a Portal Picture that allows them to access that holiday year-round.
  • Physical God: Lorithia was once said to have been a physical god at one point, which led to The'Galin's ascension to godhood. This was only told through forum backstory information. Falerin and Eldron are the gods of Evil and Good for the world of Caelestia.
  • Pirates vs. Ninjas: The Pirage and Ninja class leaders are rivals of one another. There have been wars between the two.
  • Planet Terra: Earth is one of the planets in the AdventureQuest universe, and it is referred to as Terra and natives as Terrans.
  • Pointy Ears: In "Mostly Harmful", the Chosen accuses Falerin of being an imposter due to his pointy ears, given that he is human. Falerin claims that be specifically shaped his appearance to be similar to Eldron, who is an elf with naturally pointy ears. After Falerin starts mulling over the exact circumstances of how his appearance was created, the Chosen relents that it's Something Only They Would Say.
  • Poisoned Weapons: The Poison Arrow Vial gives any bow-type weapons the ability to poison enemies. Other weapons can also naturally give the Poison status effect, or the player character can sic the venomous tail of his/her chimera on the enemy.
  • Pop Quiz: When infiltrating N.O.V.A. in the "Worlds in Peril" quest, the player is asked questions about the organization that are never mentioned in the game. It redirects the player to a link to the forums where the player can ask about it before the quest starts, though.
  • Portal Book: Some of the scrolls in Falerin's library allow the player to re-experience historical quests, but they are more 'museum' locations, given there are no rewards beyond gold given from beating monsters.
  • Portal Picture: House portraits sometimes allow the player to visit events and claim quest rewards from them, even if they are seasonal or permanently rare.
  • Power Creep:
    • An early update to game mechanics gave melee and ranged weapons a damage boost of 4/3. Some older weapons were unaffected by this, so rewards from older quests (for example, the weapons summoned from the Mark of Hope) became obsolete.
    • Mastercraft equipment were once rare and only applied to sets of items acquired from the end of hard quests. Nowadays, nearly every item is Mastercraft, and any items that don't get the Mastercraft boost are quickly dismissed.
  • Power Creep, Power Seep: The Chosen can defeat gods in some quests but be KO'd by wild animals in another, depending on the writer. Usually, though, the writers agree that when the Chosen Gets Dangerous, his/her power can't be denied.
  • Power Crystal: The Corundum/Vizalain are beings created from crystal seeds that were nearly made extinct in DragonFable, and they use their crystals to both amplify light attacks and to shred the opponent. After helping out one of the last Corundum, Malachia gives the player character a crystal shell as a magic weapon. The rewards of "Corundum Corruption" is an arsenal of Corundum weaponry.
  • Power Equals Rarity: Downplayed.
    • It's possible for the player to get an end-game inventory just from shopping around town, but usually items from quests and have an advantage.
    • Items from the common Golden Giftbox shop are not mastercraft, while items from the rare and ultra-rare shops are and tend to fill niches not satisfied by other items.
  • Power Glows: Lauren, being the manifestation of the Lorian God of Creation, has a sprite with a yellow glow around it.
  • The Power of Friendship: The titles for the Dunamis/Thernda pets implies that they help beat the player character's opponents with friendship, swords/arrows, and friendship-empowered swords/arrows.
  • Power of the Void: Void-element monsters skip elemental resistances and inflict 2x damage, making them highly dangerous, considering resistances are critical for most matchups. Void Dragons drain the player character's health for each miss incurred, and dragons tend to have high dexterity, making the match tip further in the Void Dragon's favor. The'Galin's Head from the 10th Anniversary quest takes these traits up a notch; it takes 40% of the damage from a normal monster and has a special attack that allows it to skip the player character's turn.
  • Power-Up: Potion chests can be found as enemy encounters, and the potions inside can be used to restore Health and Mana.
  • Public Domain Artifact:
    • The Celtic Set uses the Four Treasures of Ireland as its items: the Claiomh Solais for the melee sword, Spear of Lugh as the ranged spear, Lia Fa'il as the magic staff, and the Coire Dagdae as the misc. item. Inis Fa'il acts as the name of the shield.
    • The Imperial Regalia act as bonus, high-level items for the Fujin Set quest. The Kusanagi Sword is a sword that never misses, the Yaya Mirror is a shield that inflicts damage if it blocks a hit, and the Yasakani Jewel is a miscellaneous item that boosts wind defense, increases healing, and improves Dexterity and Charisma.
    • The Asgardian Set mixes Norse Mythology its representation in the Marvel Universe. Mjollnir is an Energy-element hammer, and Megingjord is an armor which boosts damage by activating its Power Belt.
  • Pumpkin Person: The player can acquire a seasonal pet during Mogloween called the Pumpkin Golem, which seeks between Fire and Earth damage. There is a Mogloween quest where the player investigates who has been putting pumpkins on the heads of creatures. The player can don the armor of a Pumpkin Lord himself/herself, too, or just change his/her face to that of a pumpkin's.
  • Punny Name: Plenty of NPCs have them.
    • Warlic a mage, and another term for mages are Warlocks.
    • The SeekRat is a rat person who seeks the secrets of the Shadow Universe.
    • Wandy is a water witch that uses a Magic Wand. She says her parents thought they had a sense of humor.
    • Lorithia's/Lauren's name is intentionally similar to Lore, given that she is the Lorian goddess of creation.
    • Makkisar's name plays off of 'massacre', having only two consonant phonemes swapped. He fittingly sends Carnax and Carnax-like monsters into the past to conquer it.
    • Irolustre is the in-game name of an artist who worked on "Mystery! AQ Live" and the Eclipsus Quest Chain. Her name is a short distance away from 'illustrator'.
    • A Leprechaun that has been converted into Truphma has the suitably fitting name O'Press.
    • Wabio is a parody of romance novel trope The Casanova—evidenced by his name punning on Fabio Lazoni's.
    • Loco is a demigod of mischief, much akin to the original prankster god Loki.
    • Uncle Sham is a Scrooge-like leprechaun in a top hat and beard.
    • Khold Staeirgh, an associate of Radagast, appears for a few April Fools quests.
    • Annech Dote is the name of a certain librarian's analogue with a suitably noted name.
    • Louis Zephyr is a messenger of thought-to-be Big Bad The'Galin. He is never seen, instead preferring to organize and work behind the scenes.
    • Val Kyrie is, in fact, a valkyrie. And a Clingy Jealous Girl.
    • D'scvr is a long-lost space probe that had just been discovered.
    • Safiria's Plea has the player character fighting against werewolves as a ninja cat. Two of these werewolves are named Ad-Were and Spy-Were. The Ad-Were's description claims he's trying to sell something, and the Spy-Were's description lampshades that his disguise—an out-of-place mustache—fools no one.
    • The "New Andy Thaws" quest involves defrosting a prehistoric hominid named Andy—a neanderthal.
    • A relic Zephyros has is a gem that causes its bearer to become irate and disagreeable. It's the Jewel of Denial.
    • Many 'zard' variants are designed off of punny names. We have:
    • Throwaway NPCs tend to have punny names.
      • The host of the Wizard Games is Aye'kent Spelle.
      • The Drakel who is Shiela's match in "The Matchmaker" is named Kasn'hova... not that we get to see much of him.
      • In "Germinator: Plantation!", Vince states that a man named Myarkul Grao (Miracle Grow) came to his workshop claiming to be an avatar of the Demigod of Fertility.
    • Frostval characters tend to have the punniest of names:
      • Khandie Khain, the adopted daughter of a Frostval villain. In a gag cutscene, we see her mother having the name Shugga Khain.
      • Sandy Claws, a Christmas-themed Giant Enemy Crab.
      • Tydlee Wynx, a Moglin toymaker.
      • Of course, Tydlee Wynx changes Chilly into a Carnax-like abomination just to be able to call him Chillax.
      • Frigidere, an ice necromancer.
    • The Lightcan, a Light-element lycan pet, has a description that mentions a few rejected puns that might have been its name.
    • The Uvee enemy is deals Light-element damage that can blind the player character. Its name is a pun of UV rays.
    • Mu Glen's name is an easternized version of the Moglin species name.
    • Pet Trobbles (and some enemy Trobbles) have puns based off of various 'troubles'. "The Trouble with Trobbles" introduces the Car Trobble, Legal Trobble, and Big Trobble, and old Snugglefest quests add Girl Trobble to the mix. The "Big Trobble in Little Syna" quest adds Storm Trobble as a mini-boss.
    • The previous wearer of the Armor of Awe is named King Awethur.
    • Dark Madder's name is a parody of the character she is a Shout-Out to and a play on "dark matter".
    • The Horo-Show set of equipment is based off of either "horrorshow" from A Clockwork Orange or its word of origin, "khorosho".
  • Pun-Based Title: Many quest titles are this, if they aren't shout-outs.
    • The "Absol-ution Saga" puns off of Absolix's name.
    • There are a sequence of quests that pun off of the similarity between "Trobble" and "Trouble", such as "Trobble on the High Seas!" and "Big Trobble on Little Syna".
  • Purposely Overpowered: "Mastercrafted" items are much more powerful than other items at their level, by balancing power with expensiveness, with 10% more power for 10% higher cost.
  • Pyrrhic Victory: The Paladins over the Necromancers in The Edge of Extinction war. The war was won, but at the cost of Halenro and all of their magical energies.
  • Rainbow Pimp Gear: Since Clothes Make the Superman, some armors that look silly can be extremely powerful. Bunny Jammies, for example, makes the monster less capable of defending or less likely to hit because it's laughing at the player character.
  • Raising the Steaks: Necromancers of Lore get creative with their undead creations.
    • One of the early quests, "The Farm", involves Seahawk creating mutant zombie vegetables.
    • Zorbak and Kabroz relish in their necromancy—the Fundead Kitten, an undead kitten on fire, was a direct result of If You're So Evil, Eat This Kitten!.
    • The player character can summon a Death Dog using the Necromancer class skill, which can be upgraded into a Doom Wolf.
    • FrogZards, being Underground Monkeys, get a skeletal variant and a zombie variant.
  • Randomized Damage Attack: Some attacks can have high 'random' damage, giving the chance to deal extremely high or extremely low damage per strike.
    • The Kite series of spells has high random damage.
    • The Love Machine pet has high random damage.
    • The Balloon items released in the 2015 April Fools quest are random-heavy.
    • The Shivuriken weapon has no base damage—all of the damage comes from its random stat.
    • The Wild Spell skill from the mage class armor doubles random damage for spells.
    • The Loco Costume armor converts all damage to random, much befitting the demigod of mischief and randomness.
    • Loco, when in the player's party as a guest, plays this trope begrudgingly. Most of the time, he'll slap his ribbons around for 1/10th of the damage of a normal guest, but he has rare attacks that can do almost seven times normal damage to make up for that.
  • Random Number God: The player has to make Tabletop Game-like stat rolls during class training or Mastercraft quests to progress.
  • Random Drop:
    • 'Monster hunt'-type of quests requires the player to find a particular monster out of a pool of encounters for some loot. Thankfully, the drop is guaranteed, even if the encounter chance is random.
    • Most quest rewards are guaranteed, but the ones at "Jagged Peaks", "Mount Thrall: Alien Bounty", and "Transient Immortality" may change every time the quest is completed.
    • Choosing to battle dragonkind has a 25% chance of rewarding the player with the Dragon Blade, rather than 100% against dragon essences.
  • Random Effect Spell: Loco's Gift is a wand that casts a spell with a randomly-chosen element. In addition, it allows the player access to an accessory that randomizes the spell even more.
  • Razor Wings: Razorwings, of course, are metallic birds that slice the enemy with their sharp wings.
  • Red and Black and Evil All Over:
    • More than half of the major antagonists of the game have this motif—it's best exemplified by the heads of the Eternal Dragon of Time. Besides the first head, which is a Dracolich, and the fourth, which is a mountainous titan, the others are primarily red and black in color.
    • Subverted with shadows, which are black Living Shadows with Red Eyes, Take Warning. While there are malevolent shadows that follow Ultimon, the player character sees a fair share of shadows that act normally.
  • Really 700 Years Old: The Huntress explains in "Trouble From Beyond" that she and her father, who became known as The Eternal, survived the coming of The'Galin from 1000 years ago and so were cursed with immortality. The Huntress also shows that she is a very skilled Action Girl adamant on stopping The'Galin's next return.
  • Red Oni, Blue Oni: Galanoth and Cyrus. Galanoth's a Hot-Blooded Dragonslayer with a red cape who deals Earth damage as a guest and tends to command the spirt of a Fire Dragon to attack, while Cyrus is a blue half-Ice dragon stoic Dracomancer that does Wind damage as a party member. They're leaders within their own groups, whose personalities and wits clash, and are usually seen together due to circumstances. Even Vampire Slayer E recognizes them to be like Yin and Yang.
  • Respawning Enemies: In exploratory/maze-like quests, backtracking can make monsters respawn. How frequently depends on the quest—some force the player to re-battle all monsters with each step taken. "Maze of the Mana Dragon" has an unlucky 1/13 chance of fighting an enemy when returning to a previously-cleared room. "Taladosian Relics!" features no respawning enemies at all.
  • Respawn on the Spot: Most quests need to be restarted if the player character dies. Some quests expect the character die as part of the plot—in that case, the quest goes on normally after some in-game explanation for recovery.
  • Retractable Weapon: The Telescoping Sword.
  • Revenue-Enhancing Devices: Z-Tokens can be used to get the best equipment, but they can also be used to purchase a house, which have only minor contributions to gameplay besides being a sink for Z-Tokens. Houses allow the player to pick up a few temporary items, visit out-of-season quests using Portal Pictures, and, with an estate, send an army into an ongoing war, but they are by no means necessary.
  • Riddling Sphinx: Originally, the sphinxes the player character face against forgo riddles for straightforward killing. Since they were revamped with the "Riddle of the Sphinx" quest, though, they will whisper riddles to confuse the enemy, allowing them to get an extra turn in. In the "Riddle of the Sphinx" quest itself, the player character can choose to bypass the battles against the guardian sphinxes by answering their riddles correctly.
  • Ridiculously Cute Critter:
    • In-universe, Bun-Bits are cute enough that that as an enemy encounter, they charm the player character into dealing less damage.
    • One of a Thunderchick's attacks is staring at the enemy with huge Puppy-Dog Eyes, and that inflicts damage.
    • The Rose, Carnation, and Lavender doll pets also use their cuteness as a gameplay mechanic, giving them the chance to burn, control, and blind the enemy, respectively.
    • The Eye of Chillax and Nightsever weapons deal increased damage on 'cute' enemies, which include Moglins, Trobbles, and Bun-Bits.
    • Moglins. However, many of the fans find them annoying, especially Twig and Twilly. This has led to all sorts of... interesting quests, including a minigame where the player character punts Twilly and an April Fool's Day quest that featured Twig as the Devourer.
      • Twig being the Master of Evil was also referencing a forum in-joke.
      • Then, of course, because this is AdventureQuest, they decided to subvert their whole joke: After the Mogbusters spend quite a while abusing him, the myth that "moglins can fly with their ears" turns out to be true. Then Twig lands in a patch of piranha-infested water. For most people this would be a problem, but Twig is a Big Eater when it comes to fish and ice cream. They never stood a chance.
      • The only Moglins who are not ridiculously cute in some way are Zorbak and Kabroz, "ebil" and evil Moglin necromancers, respectively.
  • Right Makes Might: Where the rebuilt Paladin Order gets their powers from, after their previous source of magic, the Leyline of Life and Death, was destroyed in the Edge of Extinction event. By performing good deeds, Paladins can harness the gratitude of the spirits they've aided to perform techniques not unlike their former abilities.
    • Deconstructed later in the revamped Paladin questline. Performing the level of good deeds needed to attain even a fraction of a Paladin's pre-Leyline-bursting might is extremely difficult, and exceptionally few have the talent or experience needed to actually succeed at doing good deeds the way that Artix or the Chosen do. Not helped is the fact that many civilians still hold a grudge against the Paladin Order for the collateral damage caused by the Edge of Extinction war, so earning gratitude is never guaranteed. Which is why some former Paladins have agreed to be experimented on by a rogue Necromancer to obtain Paladin-like abilities.
  • Rule of Fun: The weapons and armor are often ridiculous, the puns numerous, the monsters... surprising... and every quest will involve the player character fighting. Some might say it's a rather popular game.

    S to Z 
  • Sapient Ship: Falerin's 'abode' is actually one of his avatars, capable of communicating with him and projecting memories.
  • Scaled Up:
    • Inverted for the most part. Dragons have transformation magic and may assume human forms. The Platinum Dragon, in his boss fight, starts out in human form and transforms into its true form for the second stage.
    • Played straight with Bundorable, which inexplicably morphs from a cute bunny into a demon and then a buck-toothed, long-eared dragon.
  • Scarab Power: The Scarab mini-set from the Osiris mastercraft quest consists of Light-element equipment that focuses on inflicting Bleeding Damage Over Time.
  • Schmuck Bait: The Ancient Mana Dragon at the end of the "Maze of the Mana Dragon" quest offers the player character the helmet piece of Dragon Knight armor. Every NPC encountered on the quest warns that the dragon will offer a corrupting power. Should the player not read the quest dialogue or decide out of curiosity to take the helmet, then the player character will be corrupted into a half-dragon soldier and brainwashed into serving the Mana Dragon. This is considered an 'ending' by the game, so the player has to restart the entire quest and decline the helmet to get the Dragon Knight rewards.
  • Sdrawkcab Name:
    • Zorbak and Kabroz, two Moglin necromancer brothers.
    • Varax and Xarav. two djinnis—one working for Drakkonan, one as a guide for the Igneus clan.
    • Xitra Regeirk is Artix Krieger's Evil Twin from an alternate universe.
    • Xov Arakue is Eukara Vox's antithesis. Eukara is a teacher and champions creativity, while Xov controls the Truphma, Humanoid Abominations that use boredom to conquer others.
    • In "Mystery! AQ Live", Galanoth claims he slayed Nogard, the Dragon of Paradoxical Conundrums, which is what was causing Oxymoronic Beings to spawn around Lore.
  • Sealed Evil in a Six Pack: Inverted with Carnax. Carnax splits his soul into fragments to prevent other people from summoning him back.
  • Selkies and Wereseals: Were-seals are dubbed Selkies in the game. They pose as Water-element enemies that like to spike the player character with beach balls as an attack.
  • Sequential Boss:
    • The Shadow Colossus/Serpent/Storm is a single boss with three forms, using three different strategies.
    • The Eternal Dragon of Time has six heads that the player tackles one-at-a-time chronologically by what each dragon's head represents.
  • Serrated Blade of Pain: Most weapons that inflict the Bleed status have this.
  • Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness: Falerin's speech, which has become somewhat of a minor meme on the forums.
    • Falerin has lampshaded it:
    Parenthetical note to self. I am slipping. Two uses of the same word in the same sentence. Substitute archaic or something similar. I would use "antediluvian" but I am not sure there ever was a Lorian deluge of some sort. "Old" simply lacks feeling. Hmm. "Archaic implies lack of utility that is a problematic connotation. Of course, given the contents... and I am rambling once again.
    • In "Tangled Web of Fate", Lorithia lampshades that Falerin's face should be example for the word "sesquipedalian".
  • Set Bonus: Mastercraft sets tend to have them in order to compensate for the fact that most of the time, the weapon and armor don't work well together.
  • Sexy Man, Instant Harem: Snugglefest 2008's Quest involves Warlic trying out a Love Potion and becoming a Fabio parody, instantly mesmerizing female NPCs in Battleon.
  • Shamu Fu: The Swordfish and Twig's Swordfish weapons are, in fact, fish.
  • Shapeshifter Mashup: In a poorly-guided attempt to gain more power, Donovan drank the blood of many creatures on Lore, in hopes of getting the best of their powers. What resulted was 'Evolved' Nightreign, an amalgamation of many different monsters without a human to control them.
  • Shop Fodder: In the early days of the game, Robina would sell four gems that did nothing but could be sold back at a higher or lower price, depending on random fluctuations. The 2007 Blarney War also rewarded adventurers with leprechaun loot that could be sold at a higher price after March ended.
  • Shown Their Work: The Star Sabre of ______ follow the same Color Motif as its source material:
    Kamui: For any wondering why I did the colours like I did, check Star Wars lore for what your lightsaber colour meant in Old Republic times, you'll prob find I correlated what gets healed with what type of Jedi got that colour. :p
  • Signature Style: The writers for the quests tend to write their specific storylines, but some patterns are noticeable when they write for holiday events and other plot-irrelevant quests.
    • Falerin likes far-reaching and thick Kudzu Plots that follow the First Law of Tragicomedies. During comedic moments, the characters bat off enough puns that Artix would be proud. The lore in his quests tend to spill into the game's forums, given that his characters would be Mr. Exposition otherwise.
    • Lord Barrius favors quests with non-human characters such as cats, rats, foxes, and ponies. His in-game NPC ElBhe loves to make external references, general punniness, and a healthy dash of internet memes. Even in his more serious quests ElBhe acts as Plucky Comic Relief to take the weight off of things.
    • Eukara Vox has a sort of Gothic Horror and romantic style to her writing, with focus on a discrete, focused storyline with a small cast and fleshed-out characters. Her works tend to lean toward the serious side.
    • In Media Res, while typically a coder, has written for quests after Lord Barrius's departure. Thus far, his style a writing style hearkens back to the old style of AdventureQuest plots—the dialogue is light and funny, mostly meant to carry the gameplay along, but it has enough details and depth to make a substantial story from start to end.
    • Cray, the game's lead writer since Faelerin's departure, tends toward a more serious style that focuses on the political and logistical underpinnings of Lore's conflicts. He also has a knack for taking the game's Early-Installment Weirdness in writing and retroactively fitting it into his stories, such as developing and explaining the motivations of characters who were entirely one-dimensional before. (That said, he's no stranger to sillier questlines, such as holiday events.)
  • Significant Anagram: Seth Cay Dhows/Shadowscythe
  • Sinister Scythe: Zorbak's scythes are too 'ebil' even for him, so the player character has to rally them in. Once the player character has caught them all, the player is permitted to purchase them as weapons. Each scythe requires a tithe to activate its special attack.
  • Situational Damage Attack: The Manasplosion and Drop the MOAP spells deal damage scaled to mana and skill points, respectively. Manasplosion can backfire, however, as having too much mana causes Pent-Up Power Peril.
  • Situational Sword: Several pieces of equipment have been introduced to the game before what enemy they were meant to fight against had been introduced. For the Aegis shield, those enemies were Visia's shifters.
  • Skeletons in the Coat Closet:
    • The Terror Mastercraft set is adorned with bones and skulls on the shoulders and waist. The pet for the set looks like a skull on spider-like legs.
    • Brain Spiders are formed from synthesizing magic and technology. They are giant spiders with visible bones across their backs and spine-like protrusions as their legs.
  • Snowlems: There are three varieties of Snow Golems in Lore: the standard snowman-with-a-carrot-nose kind, a cyclops with limbs made of ice, and a Nightmare Realm creation where the snowman has a Belly Mouth with icicles for teeth.
  • Soul Fragment: At the end of the Carnax Saga, Carnax divides its soul into pieces and sends the pieces into Azru Stones to prevent Makkisar—or anyone else—from controlling it again.
  • Spock Speak: Falerin's Running Gag. When the player character starts speaking in a similarly detailed manner to other NPCs during a quest, they comment that the player has been hanging around Falerin for too long.
  • Spontaneous Generation: It's usually Hand Waved that 'ambient magic' around Lore causes magic-based creatures to recohere after they've been destroyed. The April Fools genderbent NPCs, Kabak, and mana spirit from "Edge of Extinction!" are primary examples of such characters.
  • Stable Time Loop: For the 2015 Frostval event, Zorbak attempts to go back in time to prevent Frostval from ever being created by teaming up with Stollen to assault Frostvale with undead and fruitcake. His actions unwittingly inspire Frost Moglins to create the elements that would later become Frostval.
  • Starfish Language: The language of Predecessors is rendered as green letter-like lines and dots.
  • The Starscream: Ryuusei acts this way to The'Galin. The'Galin has his own intents for Uncreating Lore, but Ryuusei is a little more pushy. This eventually leads to The'Galin abandoning Ryuusei in the Void. He takes him back later and watches his actions more carefully. When Ryuusei goes against The'Galin's orders again at the conclusion of the "Absolution" saga, he's enacting Redemption Equals Death/Villain's Dying Grace, and The'Galin seems content at his change of heart.
  • Status Effects: Subverted; while there are normal ones, like burned, frozen, poisoned, and doom, there are ones like soaked, entangled, and afraid. There's a whole section of the forums encyclopedia that list the status effects.
  • Stealth Pun:
    • In the Mogloween 2015 quest, Zorbak uses a fishing rod to raise moglin ghosts from the grave. He's literally Fishing for Soul.
    • Gizzards are reptiles said to be a missing link between Frogzards and dragons. They eat a lot, as they can't keep their food down very well. A gizzard in real life is actually a digestive organ found in some animals such as reptiles.
  • Storm of Blades: Truphma (and the player character, if his/her armor is the Truphma Suit) have a special attack that rains cleavers on the enemy.
  • Story Difficulty Setting: For a few plot-heavy quests, there is an option to play the quest by only seeing the cutscenes instead of battling through legions of monsters, but this has the drawback of not being able to claim rewards at the end. "The Restoration" and several Mastercraft set quests fall under this category.
  • The Straight and Arrow Path: Despite having a sister Space Opera game, the player character can use both bows and guns as ranged weapons. Neither choice of weapon has significant advantages over the other.
  • Stuck Items: Players start with a basic weapon, shield, and armor. These items can be switched out, but they can't be removed. For this reason, these items are called "no-drops" by the player base. No-drop equipment for Adventurers is mostly ineffective compared to other equipment and takes up precious inventory space, while Guardians get more use out of them with the ability to personalize them.
  • Stylistic Suck: The 2011 April Fools event looks like a kindergartner's attempt at making a quest, where the dialogue bubbles are mired with typos, the monsters are a pushover for anyone past level 5, and the NPC directing the quest is a scribble that is meant to look like a beefed-up Twilly.
  • Summon Magic: Summon and Call spells.
  • Super Not-Drowning Skills: It's lampshaded that everyone can breathe underwater because an accident from "The Fate of Captain Briggs" caused breatheable-water potions to be spilled into the seas.
  • Swiss-Army Weapon: Many weapons can switch damage types between melee and magic or sometimes melee, ranged, and magic, making it useful for almost all builds.
  • The Symbiote: Proteans are alien symbiotes that bond with other organisms—like people—and give them excellent dodging abilities.
  • Taken for Granite:
    • Enemies like Meduso and the Robocockatrice can inflict the Petrify status, which prevents the player from taking his/her turn and increases vulnerability to Wind-element attacks.
    • Carnax was made from a mountain, so it turns back to stone after it is finally defeated.
  • Talk Like a Pirate: An event synchronized with the real-life holiday of the same name.
  • Technicolor Ninjas: Ninjachauns are dressed primarily in white and decorated with rainbows, which make them fit perfectly in the land of Leprechaunia.
  • Third Eye: A trademark of Carnax and Sacragons are the three red eyes on their head. They can shoot Eye Beams from their third eye and set up a psionic link through it.
  • 13 Is Unlucky: "Hostage to Misfortune", one of the first quests involving the antagonist Entropy, was release on Friday, March 13th, 2015. The quest in particular shows luck being drained from the Leprechaun nation as one of Entropy's actions.
  • This Is a Drill: Shogun Akunezu uses a Drill Lance as a weapon. Completing the quest he's in allows the player to use his Drill Lance for himself or herself.
  • Tiered by Name: Many tiered items in the game have adjectives that increasing describe the item's power.
  • Time-Limit Boss: The Circle of Doom kills the player character instantly after ten turns.
  • Throw the Book at Them: An Umazen is implied to have learned magic over the internet. The "sort of" lampshade, turns out that all she knows is throwing a magic book at the player character. Despite the lame-appearing attack however, it does relatively high damage when the player is on par level with her.
  • Throwing Your Sword Always Works: Most weapons include at least one variation where they are thrown, which usually ends up providing more damage.
  • Thunder Hammer: The game has an equipment set themed after Norse Mythology, Mjollnir naturally shows up as one of the weapons in the set. It is an Energy-element hammer that can either be swung or thrown. The Full Set Bonus of the set grants Mjollnir a +20% damage bonus to any opponent that uses Strength.
  • Timed Mission:
    • "Bradakhan: Dracomancer Usurper" was an early war with the consequence that failure penalized all players by reducing their gold rewards to 90%.
    • The "Division by Zero" and "Mostly Harmless" wars.
    • The trope as become moderately popular in recent years, where the second war in the Bradakhan saga, the "Terrible Twelve" war, and "Emerge from Shadow" were timed.
  • Tin Tyrant: War fits his role as a Horsemen of the Apocalypse, being donned in full plate armor and seeking to instigate war to empower himself.
  • Too Many Belts: The Assassin class armor has what appears to be 19 belts altogether on the outfit.
  • Totally Radical: In contrast to Loremaster Falerin's more elegant speech, one of his fragments—dubbed Ardendor—is much more slack about how he talks.
  • Trademark Favorite Food: Twig loves "Fish and ice cweam!"
  • Trade Snark:
    • One of Falerin's fragments is Super-strong Ultra Mega Falerin Man™.
    • In the 2009 Blarney War, the player character asks Lucky O'LepraKhan if he will use his "almagiscichemy(TM)" to enact his revenge.
  • Treacherous Quest Giver: Some of Zorbak's quests stem from him trying out new "ebil" magics on the protagonist, although just as many consist of him asking the protagonist to fix his mistakes.
  • Tube Travel: The player cannot simply 'leave' Isle d'Oriens, since it's in a portal in the sky and there's no way to get back down. The solution? Go down the Lo-Flo, a giant tube whose entrance is a toilet, which takes the player character to the stalls inside Yulgar's inn.
  • Turns Red:
    • A number of enemies become significantly tougher over battle.
      • Deery, Moglin Freak, Transmorphers, and Frankenspine mutate into monstrous forms when under 50% hit points.
      • The Werehog, Luminous Wyrm, and Drakkonan's Head quest bosses increase damage as their health decreases.
      • The Fire Ant and Legion enemies grow more in number, and their damage-per-turn increases similarly.
      • The Shadow Minotaur simply goes berserk when under half health.
    • The player can equip a Transmorpher shield, Ep-Pig armor, and/or Luminous Wyrm Helm to gain effects similar to their corresponding monsters as his/her health diminishes.
    • Berserker Hides linearly increase damage done as the player character's health diminishes, up to a maximum of 300% damage.
  • 20 Bear Asses:
    • A minority of quests consists of collecting parts from monsters to forge some weapon or to create some magical construct.
    • Parodied with the final scene of "Death's Domain". Having gathered twenty five hourglasses, Death asks the player character for a long list of materials to construct a Tracking Device for the hourglasses. He prepares to send the player character out on a long and dangerous quest... only for the player character to return within minutes because there happens to be a box ready with just the materials needed.
  • Ultimate Blacksmith: Yulgar forges the The Frozen Claymore out of the pieces of the Ice Scythe in order to slay Akiroth. Adder implies that Yulgar's teacher is even better than him, but this is only mentioned in passing.
  • Underground Monkey:
    • Frogzards are said to be able to adapt to many conditions, and that holds evident with how many variations the player will encounter. For elemental variants, there's the FireZard, Zardine, CloudZard, IceZard, Lightning Zard, LightZard, and DarkZard. There are other variations such as the ToadZard, DebilZard, OrcaZard, BuzZard, CommunicantZard, and VorpalZard.
    • There are four variants of Shifter enemies, one for each pair of opposites on the elemental wheel.
    • It's common enough that antagonists alter monsters for their own needs. This leads to adventurers fighting 'Undead', 'Zombie', 'Shadow', 'Nightmare', 'Ethereal', 'Reverse', and 'Dulling/Dull' variants of typical enemies.
  • Unexpected Shmup Level: The "Doomquake Caverns!" quest has a minigame where the player attacks monsters by pointing-and-clicking a magic staff at them, in contrast to the turn-based battles of norm.
  • Unfortunate Names: The backstory of Master Terror is that he was teased for his name, Terry Fluffendil, so he found a man—implied to be Ryuusei Cartwright—and traded his conscience to become a truly fearful warrior.
  • Un-person: The act of uncreation wipes out any trace of existence that a person existed—besides those the uncreator left Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory.
  • Unusual Euphemism: "Zard spit" is often used in place of a curse word in quests.
  • Utility Weapon:
    • The Divine Kusanagi Sword deals an Always Accurate Attack that does 65% of a regular weapon's damage. The player is expected to hit 85% of the time, so the weapon is on average 3/4ths as effective as a regular weapon. However, it has its use against enemies that have special effects for dodging an attack, such as a Wyvern's Whirlwind or Captain Rhubarb's Backstab.
    • Mutant Dragonblades can swap elemental resistances against dragons. This, coupled with its low highest tier, makes it a very niche choice as a regular weapon. However, this weapon is often paired with Dracomorgrify to allow the player to swap the resistances of any vulnerable monster.
    • Nerf weapons and pets trade damage in order to lower the enemy's stats for the duration of the battle.
    • The Salad Shooter spell is useful for making Health Potions from Seed Spitters, but it has no longer-term use as an offensive spell.
    • The Scrambler Beam and Randomizing Beam spells are light and darkness elemental spells rearrange an enemy's elemental resistances at random, but deal pitiful damage. Alternate versions deal no damage and buff the monster's other stats, but are considerably more accurate than most other spells in the game.
    • "Tome" weapons (such as the Healing Branch and Tome of Cerberus) are weapons that substitute their normal attack with a choice of three spells, used most often by defensive mages. Usually, this includes a spell with standard power, a a weaker spell with a more efficient mana-to-damage ratio, and a free spell that uses a turn to regenerate MP.
  • Vampire Hunter: An early class the player character could take was the Vampire Slayer, which was renovated into the ShadowSlayer and NightHunter classes. Both classes specialize in skills that deal increased damage against undead, vampires, werewolves, and other night creatures. The class trainers are Cenara and Donovan, respectively, who are dracopyres and hunt each other down.
  • Vampire Vords: Most vampires in Lore can speak just fine. It's when the Grenwog is transformed into the VereWog that the player lampshades how he's speaking.
  • Vancian Magic: Most magic does not need preparation, but Spellcraft spells do. The player must go on a quest to 'charge' casts of the attack to use another time in battle.
  • Viewers Are Geniuses: The entire Devourer plotline was nigh-impossible to follow with reading the pages and pages of explanations given on the forums. The staff swear they learned their lesson from the trouble handling it, and the next Myth Arc will make a lot more sense. Even worse was a good bit of information was released over an IRC chatroom in a chat with the staff or roleplay with one of the staff as its GM, giving the twenty players a distinct advantage. Information on the IRC channel is available on the forums, but it's so overlooked most players don't know it exists. The characters from the roleplay are sometimes referenced in-game establishing the worlds created by the players as part of the Extended Universe.
  • Villain Forgot to Level Grind: Due to the level cap being raised from 100 to 136 to 150, the monsters from older quests don't have top-level versions, so players can plow through them. However, because these older quests weren't meant for high-level players, their rewards are too weak to be of use.
  • Villain Team-Up:
    • In Burp War 2014, almost all of the dangerous BURP leaders and their armies united to rebel against Pestilence and Famine. The King Burp, Pied Burper, BlackWhisker The Pierat and Shogun Akunezu. The only absent BURP leader is the most powerful one, SeekRat, though the mysterious dialogue at the end of the war can be him.
    • During the Devourer Saga, the Sinister Seven, consisting of seven previously beaten antagonists, banded together to prevent the protagonists from uniting the elemental orbs.
    • The Seekrat assembles a similar set of villains called the Terrible Twelve, because "quite frankly, because I couldn't convince any of the talented villains to come."
  • Violence is the Only Option: Lampshaded, of course. The player character tries bluffing his/her way past a werewolf camp in "Light in the Darkness!". If he/she fails, he/she asks if they should just cut to the battle.
  • Waif-Fu: Lady Akai is the class trainer for the Gogg Claw style of Martial Arts. Gogg Claw style specializes in being brutally ruthless and fast before the enemy has a chance to respond. Lady Akai is demure and looks like a Geisha, not the first thing the players would expect.
  • Wallet of Holding: The player can have a maximum of one billion gold coins in his or her possession. How the player's pack mule lugs that much gold around would be a mystery without one of these.
  • Wall of Text: Falerin, he of many words, provides one during a quest in lieu of battling. If the player denies him to tell the account, he will still speak on and on as the player battles on.
  • Wall of Weapons: There is one in the background of Shii's and Wallo's room for Assassin class training.
  • War Has Never Been So Much Fun: Wars are a frequent event in AdventureQuest, and whatever Pretext for War that might have started them doesn't stop them from having the same style and cheesiness as the rest of the game.
  • Weaponized Ball: The Selkie (were-seal) enemy has a special attack where it balances a beach ball on its nose before spiking it at the player character.
  • Weaponized Offspring: The MotherZard enemy spits out baby 'zards at the player character as one of its attacks.
  • Weapon of Peace: The weapon named the Blade of Peace is summoned from shards of the Ice Orb. It would make a decent weapon except that it has an extremely low accuracy stat, which makes it useless for damage, even with other accuracy-boosting equipment.
  • Weapon of X-Slaying: A subset of weapons have 'triggers'; they deal below-average damage on most monsters, but they compensate by dealing more damage against certain enemies.
    • The Dragon Blade (and variants) is the de facto weapon of choice against dragons.
    • Salvation weapons deal increased damage on agents of The Devourer.
    • The player can pick up the BURP Slayer on the "Rats o' War" quest, which seeks against BURPs and hits them for whatever element they're weak against.
    • Tarnished Caliburn is effective against a variety of undead creatures, dealing Void damage and having a chance to poison the enemy.
    • The Shelayleigh and Bladehenge weapons are effective against Leprechauns.
    • The Rat Flail seeks against Shadow monsters' greatest weakness.
    • The Paintball Gun and Paxian Deliverance weapons deal increased damage against Truphma.
    • The Frogzard Hunter armor has an expected trigger against 'zards. It, in reference to Steve Irwin, also has a secret trigger against Moonrays. Attacking a Moonray in the armor deals 10x base damage!
    • The Nightsever exaggerates this trope; it triggers on a wide range of monsters, and the triggers can stack. However, only a few monsters hit enough triggers such that it deals substantially more damage than a normal weapon. According to the official encyclopedia, the weapon triggers on 'Rasputin', 'Reggae', 'Grey's Anatomy', 'Hippy/Hippie', 'Alot', 'Frat/Sorority', 'Canadian/DemiCanadian', é, 'Cheezburger', 'Tom Cruise', and 'Foron'. None of those correspond to actual enemies.
    • An almost fully-comprehensive list of 'trigger' weapons can be seen here.
  • Weapons Kitchen Sink: Because AdventureQuest is a Fantasy Kitchen Sink with a highly humorous side to it, we see any and all items being used as weapons. Sadly, the kitchen sink itself is not available as a weapon.
  • Weather-Control Machine: Hollow's Weather Remote can summon a local windstorm, blizzard, rainstorm, or lightning over the enemy.
  • Weird Moon: In Darkovia, it's always night and there is always a full moon. And when the Devourer's attack was imminent, the moon changed into a weird red-eyed thing. And before the Devourer attack, Dewlok's home had a Zelda-ish moon complete with creepy face.
  • Wham Line: Death (not his servant/avatar The Boatman, the Death) delivers a major one to the Chosen during the Burning Solstice saga. Which doubles as a Shout-Out to Nethack, if you're paying attention.
    Death: Who do you think you are, War?
  • When Trees Attack: Deadwood trees are one possible enemy the game sends at the player; they attack by lashing their roots from under the ground and spitting a barrage of acorns. They can also restore their health with water.
  • Whole-Plot Reference:
  • Who Wants to Live Forever?: Garavin was cursed with eternal life by The'Galin so that he would suffer the loss of his loved ones and see through The'Galin's return, helpless. His daughter, Celestra, was also granted eternal life, but she is set on using it to hunt The'Galin down.
  • Wide-Open Sandbox: While quests are set, the player can still choose to do most of them at any time in any order. With over a decade of quests and more being added regularly, it's not a game you're like to reach 100% Completion on.
  • Winged Humanoid: The Brilhado have purple wings with red-tipped feathers. They are affiliated with the Light element, but they are considered demons rather than angels.
  • Winged Unicorn: Lucius, leader of the Lucian clan.
  • A Winner Is You: After defeating the Legendary Warriors in Fairwind Springs: "You have defeated the Legends! Victory is yours!" It's one of the few quests that don't give the player any rewards in the form of gold or equipment.
  • A Wizard Did It: Used to explain away many plot inconsistencies while fitting the comedic style of the game. "It's MAGIC!"
  • Wolfpack Boss: Unsurprisingly, the Wolf Pack boss from the Void, which was made to test how the updated gameplay formulas for health regeneration worked for multiple enemies. The Alpha Werewolf attacks with Earth damage while its flunkies deal Light damage, making resistance to both elements difficult.
  • Wolves Always Howl at the Moon: The healing animation for a Diretooth (feral werewolf) and Dracoglin (dragon-vampire-werewolf Moglin) shows them howling at the moon.
  • Woodland Creatures: Some of the enemies encountered in quests that take place in forests include Deery, Owl, and Woodland Pack, which consists of a rabbit, beaver, owl, and turtle.
  • Words Can Break My Bones: "Red Fog." *Red Fog rolls past and knocks the Chosen's HP to One* "Okay, that's really annoying."
  • The World Is Always Doomed: The player, in the "Fred On Strike!" quest, lampshades how many villains he or she has had to battle to keep Lore safe.
  • World of Pun: The game is infamous for this, and they tend to be so spectacularly lame that they end up So Bad, It's Good. Or, as Artix described it:
    Arch Knight Style Humor (adj) — A savory blend of caffeinated epic failure served with with a side of cheese. This also probably means Artix wrote it himself... it is sort of like a train wreck. You really want to look away, but for some reason, you just... have to watch.
    • Lampshaded by Falerin in "Mostly Harmful", in the only way possible!
    They (giant rats) really like you (the PC). It must be all of the cheesy puns you have been exposed to.
  • Wounded Gazelle Gambit: Ryuusei goads Amilara into striking him with lightning, and when he's down, calls on The'Galin for help. The'Galin responds by manifesting as Omega.
  • Wrap Around: The Backstab attack from the Assassin class armor has the player go left off the screen to strike the enemy from the right-hand edge.
  • Whatevermancy: Each of the eight elements has a Wizard class 'mancy associated with it, and the player character can choose to specialize in one of those magics. Beyond that, there is necromancy, dracomancy, golemancy, demonmancy, and chronomancy.
  • Xanatos Speed Chess: In the March 3, 2016 Design Note, Falerin explicitly calls the meeting between The Chessmaster and ENTROPY this trope. The quest released on March 11 turns out to be this trope name—perhaps Falerin is a troper?
  • Xtreme Kool Letterz: X-Guardians and Z-tokens.
  • You Can't Thwart Stage One: Devourer/Uncreator/The'Galin
  • Yellow Snow: The Yellow Snow DOOM! spell from Frostval 2007 weaponizes yellow snow against enemies.
  • You Mean "Xmas": Quite a few real-world holidays have AQ equivalents, such as Frostval (Christmas), Hero's Heart Day, (Valentine's Day), the Grenwog Festival (Easter), and Mogloween (Halloween).
  • Your Mind Makes It Real: Riona taught the legacy of Talados to her son, Danail, which included knowledge of the creature known as Carnax. Danail turns out to have some mysterious magic that allows his horror in Carnax to make it real again.

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