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Elsword is a free-to-play, online, 3D side-scrolling MMOG created by KOGStudios and published by Nexon. It was first released on December 27, 2007 in Korea, and is currently available in Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan, Germany, and North America. It is the spiritual successor to Grand Chase. Elsword has improved on systems Grand Chase had, along with more Animesque graphics and improved gameplay. Instead of making rooms like in Grand Chase, you get to explore the whole world of Elsword (which is still a side-scroller Elimination Platformer).

Like Grand Chase, this game subverts the norm by giving players a roster of preset characters instead of having a character creator:

  • The first set of available characters (expies to their respective counterparts from Grand Chase, Elesis, Lire and Arme) includes:
    • Elsword, a hot-headed swordsman looking for his older sister Elesis;
    • Rena, the cool and calm elven archer wanting to restore the power of El;
    • and Aisha, an arrogant magician out a quest to restore her powers.
  • Raven, a war-veteran Cyborg;
  • Eve, the reawakened Queen of the Nasods;
  • Chung, a young prince of a fallen kingdom with an oversized cannon;
  • Ara, a spear-wielding martial artist looking for her older brother;
  • Elesis, returning from Grand Chase as Elsword's sister, who went missing on a quest to stop the incoming demon invasion;
  • Add, a time traveler hellbent on capturing Eve;
  • Lu and Ciel, an Action Duo respectively made up of a small but powerful demon and her bodyguard (who gets often mistaken as a butler);
  • Rose, a female gunner from a collaboration with Dungeon Fighter Online;
  • Ain, a being created by the goddess Ishmael and tasked with restoring the El;
  • Laby, a mysterious girl who emerged from darkness to explore the world;
  • Noah, a boy reliving his past in an endless loop to find the truth behind his brother's murder;
  • and Lithia, a wandering treasure hunter beset by a mysterious curse.

In this game players do Dungeon Crawling, though they're not so much "dungeons" as they are "stages". The basic objective for these stages is to beat up everything in sight, move to the next screen, and lather, rinse, and repeat until you reach the boss. Players are awarded the in-game currency of ED and some EXP points for finishing a mission. This game also features a PVP room for the more experienced players.

In November 2015, an Elsword anime was confirmed, animated by Satelight and Dr Movie. On December 10, 2016, the first episode was aired in a live private screening, before the anime was subsequently hosted on Youtube. English subs are being produced by 2nafish on their channel.

A character page is under construction.


This game provides examples of:

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    #-H 
  • 1-Up: The Resurrection Stones can be used to revive your characters after you died in a dungeon. They can only be obtained by opening rare boxes, or by buying them in the item mall.
  • 2½D: Specifically, the graphics are 3D, the gameplay is 2D with the occasional branching/z-axis shift.
  • Acronym and Abbreviation Overload: Expect to see a lot of acronyms referring to the job paths around the game, like LK, DW, WS, BM etc.
  • Action Bomb:
    • The corrupt version of Nasod mooks in Altera will attempt to self destruct when their HP is low enough.
    • The fairy enemies in Velder and Hamel will explode with different effects when they die.
    • Fogta Trock in Sander will try to get close to you and then detonate itself; you have to kill it before its own explosion kills it - and hurts you. Interestingly, there's also a King Mook version of them, who can release explosions without harming himself, and when you deplete his health, he'll release a strong explosion as a Last Ditch Move.
    • In the last two Sander dungeons, the Bomberlords release small Bomber enemies that latch onto you and detonate if you don't shake them off. Both enemies will also explode on death.
    • Furthermore, both Fogta Trocks and Bombers can be randomly summoned if you equip the proper title, obtained from killing enough of each enemy.
    • To a lesser extent, the Jubigee plant in Feita has a gland on its "head" that expands as it is attacked and then pops, releasing poisonous spores at its attackers.
  • Advanced Ancient Humans: Some time after the El Stone came down from the heavens, the people had become technologically advanced and built the self-sustaining robot race, the Nasods. Then the civilization got all but wiped up because of the Robot War below.
  • Advanced Ancient Acropolis: The Elrianode City. It is where the El Tower located and is already around before the El Explosion incident that occured hundreds of years before the events of the story. It also contains the Debrian Laboratory, which is a highly-technological place that predates the Nasods. Elrianode re-emerges after the Elysion arc and is the setting of the next eponymous arc.
  • Advancing Boss of Doom: Dark Nephilim from Velder keeps advancing you from the right, trying to attack you with its claws and laser beams. You can use the traps laid in the boss stage to momentarily stop it, allowing you to attack it freely.
    • Perkisas, the field raid boss has two; the first phase is where you race to the top while he is chasing you, and the second phase is similar to Dark Nephilim. Do note that you'll fight Perkisas twice in the first phase and in second phase where you fight him only once after the half minute.
  • Adventure Towns: In general, the story follows Elsword and co. travelling to a town and clearing dungeons in said town before moving to another.
  • After Boss Recovery: After each mini-boss and boss fight, you can find a "life essence" dropped from the boss that will heal you for half your health.
  • After the End: Three ends, in fact:
    • The first was after the Robot War below, where the continued greed of humans caused the power of the El Stone to wade, causing havoc on the world, until a mysterious lady somehow revived the power of the El Stone and slowly restored the life of the world. This lady was then called the Lady of El and worshiped by the rest of the populace.
    • The second occurs in the Total Eclipse of the Plot below; in the aftermath of the reforming world, the El Stones' shards have scattered across the world, and the rest of the populace gathers around the larger ones. The remaining five aides of the El Lady sacrificed themselves to restore said biggest El shards and restore the land to the way it used to be.
    • The third one happens in current timeline in which the summoning of the Demon God Sult, though failed still caused major chaos in the entire Elrios, which caused the heroes to personally find the El Lady.
  • Airborne Mook: Gargoyles in Feita region, Wyverns in Velder region, Succubi and Bomberlords in Sander, Fire Birds in Lanox, and Decepter Nasods in Atlas portion of Elysion.
  • Alliterative Family: Elsword and Elesis.
  • All Swords Are the Same: they're pretty much only defined by classifications "two-handed sword" (for Elsword and Elesis) and "one-handed sword" (for Raven).
  • All There in the Manual: The game itself does very, very little to explain the game's backstory, and for players in the Korean Server, it's really hard to know what exactly the "Festival of Harmony" (Or Together Fest) is supposed to be commemorating. Pretty much every piece of backstory was given in supplementary material, however, even if you are a long time player, it's hard to piece the story together as most of it are just random pieces of lore, with no real timeline to explain what happened. Fortunately, there's a very handy video that explains most of the things.
  • Alternate Identity Amnesia: Ara's backstory has this. After she gained the mystical hairpin with a Gumiho's spirit sealed within and almost get killed by her brainwashed brother, she gets unconscious. The next thing she knew after she "woke up" is that she had battled her brother and the demon army unconsciously - it's the fox spirit that did it for her.
  • Always Night:
    • The Shadow Forest is completely shrouded in darkness because of the stolen El Stone.
    • The entirety of Feita is set at night.
  • An Adventurer Is You
    • The Tanker: Chung is the most obvious and effective, especially as Iron Paladin and Tactical Trooper. Blade Master and Lord Knight are meat shield tanks (with the former also having a Life Drain move) while Rune Slayer and to a smaller extent Elemental Master are magic tanks. Subverted with Veteran Commander; while he has many passives that lets him resist damage and status ailments, his HP will often get burned by his frequent overheating so he isn't good as a tank.
    • The Healer: Only a few classes can heal others: Wind Sneaker with her Airellina skill, Diabla with her/their Phantom Circle, Erbluhen Emotion with the Rein version of Blatt Blume and Radiant Soul with her Sunshower.
    • The DPS: Almost all characters have at least one specialized class for melee comboing (and they'll frequently be tanks, as well); some of them slow but strong, some others weak but fast. Meanwhile, there are only 4 ranged DPS characters: Grand Archer, Deadly Chaser, Royal Guard/Noblesse, Add (especially as Mastermind) and Rose.
    • The Nuker: Like the above, almost all characters have at least one specialized class for wide range attacks that deal high damage. Reckless Fist would be a literal example.
    • The Status Effects specialist: Void Princess, Grand Archer and Veteran Commander deliver the most Status Effects on enemies, but pretty much most characters can deal status effects. Meanwhile Aisha, Rena, Eve, Chung and Lu/Ciel can buff allies, and Elemental Master and Code Nemesis can increase the buff's effectiveness.
    • The Resource Master: Rune Slayer and Void Princess can deny their enemies their MP. Meanwhile, Tactical Trooper and Grand Master have ways to give their allies MP.
    • The Petmaster: Eve, with her Nasod minions. Code Empress focuses on this further, as does Mastermind and Optimus.
    • Jack of All Trades: Code Nemesis and Night Watcher can do a lot of things above, and then some. They don't shine much compared to others because of this, however.
  • Anti-Debuff:
    • Veteran Commander, Sakra Devanam and Diabolic Esper have passives that can reduce the duration of any debuff inflicted on them.
    • Enchanting your armor with elemental El Shards will let you resist the debuff effects of the specific elements by reducing the chance of affliction, duration and effect of them. I.e resistance against fire element will make you get burned less often, less long and less painful. Some random effects from Unknown Item Identification for equipments and accessories may give you additional resistances as well.
      • Iron Paladin has passives (Elemental Training) that automatically give him the resistance points against the elements without the need of enchanting equipments (although the two can be stacked for further effectiveness). Blazing Heart's passive Body of Fire can do it as well, but only for fire element.
      • The buff skill "Blessed Aura" owned by Rena and Chung buffs elemental resistance as well.
      • Wind Sneaker and Elemental Master have passives that apply temporary elemental resistances to themselves.
    • Lord Knight's passive skill Pain Suppression lets him have a chance of negating a status effect on him by using a skill.
    • Blazing Heart's passive Blooming Flame lets her negate a status effect inflicted on her and turns it into a pick-up item that can buff either her or her ally. The downside is that there's a cooldown after each negation effect.
    • Noblesse's passive Tribute gives Lu/Ciel a chance to cancel a debuff by using one of the souls they've collected, while Dread Lord's passive Lord of Terror gives them relative resistance to several kinds of debuffs.
    • Among the Set Bonus effects of the Hamel Secret Dungeon equipment set is negating all status ailments you may have when you enter Awakening Mode.
  • Antidote Effect: The few antidote items in the game hardly sees any use because the debuffs that they cure rarely have a significant effect on players. And even if they do, using a Healing Potion or eating food is often the more favorable option.
  • Anti-Hoarding: Many items have different caps in your item storage. Like how you can only hold 100 Emergency Energy Tank in one slot or 300 a certain crafting item in a slot. If you don't expand your item slots, managing your items will be harder.
    • There are also the "temporary" items (most notably the promotional costumes) that you can only hold for a certain amount of time, ranging from a day to a month.
  • Anti-Grinding/Anti Poop-Socking:
    • There's a stamina gauge which slowly decreases after every dungeon play, pretty much placing a limiting on how much experience you can gain a day. However, events which give you unlimited stamina are fairly common, and happen every weekend on the North American server.
    • Also the level cap put for the characters are actually pretty low when compared to most RPGs, and that late-game dungeons will tend to be more than a match for the characters even when they're on their max level.
    • The Hot Springs areas encourage taking breaks by providing a buff for standing in them for a while and letting the character gain EXP for how much they've accrued in a day.
  • The Apocalypse Brings Out the Best in People: During the game's backstory, each apocalyptic event that occured made people realize their mistakes and work with each other for the better.
  • April Fools' Day:
    • The game did some April Fool's Day joke by changing skill cut-ins into from childish drawings, Gender Flip versions of characters to the game NPCs.
    • The 2017 April Fool's joke has the characters works as maid and butlers for Edel. The twist is the characters are Crossdressers.
    • The 2018 joke is temporarily changing the game UI into dating sim-like theme.
  • "Arabian Nights" Days: The Sander region has a distinct Arabian imagery on it.
  • Arbitrary Headcount Limit: You can only play with 4 people at maximum in a dungeon.
  • Arc Villain: One for each region.
    • The Ruben region has Banthus, the bandit who steals the town's El Stone and is the Starter Villain who kicks off the plot. He is the main focus of the story until he is dispatched for good halfway through Elder.
    • The Elder region has Wally, a Corrupt Politician who is also a Mad Scientist experimenting on Nasod technology and was given the El Stone by Banthus. He is the Big Bad until the second-half of the Bethma arc where he and his airship were shot down by the Black Crow (Raven's airship) led by the Nasods.
    • The Bethma region (primarily the first-half) has Kayak the Shaman, an Evil Sorcerer who brainwashes the lizard folk into starting a civil war against the region's inhabitants.
    • The Altera region has King Nasod, the leader of the Nasods who is also in possession of the stolen El Stone. He is ultimately the Big Bad and Disc-One Final Boss for the first part of the story.
    • The Feita region has Berthe, a demon guarding the gate at the top of the spire which is where all the demons in the region are coming from.
    • The Velder region has Chloe, a dark elf who is in command of the demon army attacking the city and summons Dark Nephilim to attack the El Party.
    • The Hamel region has Dark Earl Ran, who is the true leader of the demons invading Velder and Hamel. Like with King Nasod, Ran serves as the Big Bad and Disc-One Final Boss for the second part of the story.
    • The Sander region has Karis the Succubus Queen, a demon who revives the Eldritch Abomination Behemoth and was the one responsible for hypnotizing the Trocks.
    • The Lanox region has Demon General Scar, who aims to revive the Demon God Sult.
    • The Elysion region has Solace, one of the original six El Masters before the El Explosion occurred, who only protects the El Lady.
    • The Elrianode region has the Henir fanatic Hennon and his One-Winged Angel form, the Interdimensional Colossus.
    • The Varnimyr region has the El Master of Fire Rosso who went berserk in Demon World.
  • Arm Cannon: Raven can shoot fireballs from his Nasod arm and the Weapon Taker job path enables Gatling Good as one of his special active.
  • Armor and Magic Don't Mix: Averted with the PVP NPC Noah, an Elemental Master who wears full-body armor. If we're talking about the playable characters, it'd be zig-zagged.
  • Artistic License – Biology: In Altera, there is a group of Mooks (and Bosses) under the category "Alterasia" - plant-like parasites that can take over powered-down machines through their spores. Not just that, but a collectable drop item from the dungeons is Alterasia Seeds. Seeds and spores cannot be used by the same plant.
  • Ascended Glitch: Due to client/server delays, it was possible for a Raven to deal damage to a target using his core's attack without using up the charge on the core itself. With the socket revamp in KR, the ability to recycle Raven's and Eve's cores is a socketable stat that is fully supported by the system.
  • Ascended Meme: The Icy Hedgehog pet's baby form has become something of a Breakout Character within the community, in part thanks to a "Breadlord" meme due to its resemblance to Ciel's Dreadlord job. The baby hedgehog is now something of an unofficial mascot for the game, alongside phorus, and hosts in-game events (there's even in-game costumes featuring the pet).
  • Attack Its Weak Point: The Nasod King's Core. Ditto with Ignis and Leviathan's shield generators. And there's True Karis who can be only damaged when her "core" is exposed.
    • Downplayed with the Plant Overlords - attacking their roots still do damage, but attacking their "heads" will do full damage.
  • Awesome, but Impractical: Most of the 300 MPnote  special moves, since you charge MP much slower than Grand Chase, and unless you are Rena or Aisha, you have to attack monsters to gain MP, or drink MP potions.
    • After an update for the PVP system, the 200 and 300 MP-tiered skills for the PVP (see above) have their damage reduced, making them this trope (except for a few, especially the Super Mode ones).
  • Awesome, but Temporary: Upon advancing to a new job you'll be rewarded with said job's special costumes that will give you high stats and a number of beneficial effects, but they only last for 15 days. You'll also get a free B-Slot for 15 and 30 days, for the first and second job change respectively.
    • Same goes for the Experience Booster and the additional skill points you can purchase from Item Mall (or, for the latter, exchanging rare items from an NPC). As well as the Mana Necklace (which gives you more mana from attacks) if you get it from Camilla's quest (they last for 30 days), but in the Item Mall you can purchase a permanent version of it.
  • Background Boss: King Nasod and Enraged Karis only attack you from the background.
  • Backstory: Every character gets one once you begin the game, showing why they're on their quest.
  • Badass Cape: A few accessories come in the form of capes.
  • Bandit Mook: Blood/Mana Eater mooks can steal your HP or MP and then running away; you have to chase and kill them quickly to get your HP/MP back before they jump out to the background.
  • Barrier Change Boss: The boss of Elder's secret dungeon, Nasod Inspector, can put up a barrier of either physical or magical defense. Attacks of the associated Damage Typing will have its power reduced significantly, forcing you to either be versatile with your attack types or, if available, use Anti-Armor or Armor-Piercing Attack.
  • Barrier Maiden:
    • The Lady of El was this, to secure the power of the giant El Stone. There are also the six El Masters that acts as her aides.
    • Much later on, in the present day, the El Priestesses are also this for the respective elemental El Stones.
  • Battle Amongst the Flames: The Ancient Bone Dragon boss battle has the surroundings of the arena covered in flames. Later, the arena itself can be covered in flames when the dragon flies and breathes a carpet of fire on it.
  • Battle Butler:
    • Oberon and Ophelia, for Eve's Code Architecture and Code Empress class.
    • Eve's Hyper Active, Code: Thunderbolt adds Ferdinand to the list.
    • Ciel, though he has a distaste for being called Lu's "butler" (this changes in his Royal Guard job path).
  • Battleship Raid: The Cargo Airship stage and Black Crow stage (the latter of which was Raven's airship).
  • Beat the Curse Out of Him: Some bosses are under mind control which you have to dispel by beating them. Few examples: Helputt (in Hamel) and Chief Karu (in Sander). Subverted with Ran who instead runs away after being defeated.
  • Bee Afraid: There's the rare bee enemies in Elder and their robotic variant in Bethma.
  • Beneath the Earth: The Ponggo race dwells beneath the soils of Altera. Some stages of said region also take place underground.
  • Beware the Nice Ones: Rena is shown to be very calm, kind, and understanding, but if you make her angry she really gets angry. Chung, too, once he gets in his "Berserk" mode.
  • BFG: Chung's cannon, the Destroyer, is as big as himself.
  • BFS: Chung's cannon also applies as he uses it as a meleé weapon too. However, the Sword Knight's aptly named Armageddon Blade skill and Saber Knight's Sword of Victory are the utter EMBODIMENTS of this trope.
  • Big Head Mode: Sometimes when you picked up a special potion in the dungeons and PVP, you'll get this instead. It makes you run slower and jump less high.
  • Bishounen Line: The third raid boss (excluding the event-exclusive Ted), Perkisas, hits this hard in the third phase, transforming from a hulking red dragon to a handsome man with horns, wings and a very short jacket.
  • Bitch Slap: The first thing Eve does upon being reactivated is slap Elsword in the face. It's also used as a move in one of Eve's combos - said slap turns the enemy's back against her, which makes it useful for shield-wielding enemies.
  • Black Magic: One of Aisha's possible job change - Dark Mage - practices this.
  • Blatant Lies: In the English version, Raven introduces himself by saying "I'm the quickest of them all." This from a character who has no advanced movement options, and in the same game as Ara, who's attack speed is naturally very high. His Blade Master path works towards this with an attack speed boosting passive, but still has to compete with all of Ara's classes and Wind Sneaker.
  • Bling of War: Some of the costumes will make you look very bling-y.
  • Bonus Dungeon: The secret dungeons, as above. Entering them would require drop-only items, and inside, the mooks are all souped-up versions of the ones in the normal dungeons, many dangerous obstacles, and finally the bosses that will really test your skills.
    • Also the Heroic Dungeons, which is basically a beefed-up version of regular dungeons.
  • Bonus Stage: the Gate of Darkness stage, only accessible randomly after you beat a dungeon boss.
  • Boss Banter: A few boss are pretty talkative when they fight, such as Victor and Giant Waldo.
  • Boss in Mook Clothing: The Secret Revamp after the release of Hamel's Secret Dungeon, Temple of Trials, adds two "tiers" of enemies to Secret Dungeons. Normal enemies, which are basically slightly stronger versions of enemies from the normal dungeons of the city, and "Commander" enemies, which, as the developers themselves described, "were designed to be minibosses in their own right". Stupidly enough, Commanders are actually more dangerous than a few minibosses, due to ridiculously high damage, almost infinite Super Armor and a ridiculously large health pool. Some enemies - like the Commander Shadow Master - can instantly kill even the tankiest players.
    • Also coupled with Fake Difficulty because after the revamp, what enemies are what is completely random, and even what enemies spawn is completely random, so you might either end up with an almost harmless enemy becoming a Commander, which is easy enough to deal with, or you can turn a projectile-immune, ranged-damage, or even a multi-hit enemy into a Commander. Multi-hitters are the most dangerous: Pretty much every enemy attack that is multi-hit also deals damage in an area, combine that with the insane damage boost Commanders have...note 
    • There's also special randomly chosen monsters appearing in Heroic Dungeon which can teleport near players and has elixir auras that can easily kill players when not killed quickly, especially if the player has low elemental resistance. Killing the monster will guarantee the dungeon drop and will transfer its elixir aura to the players.
  • Boss Rush: The special dungeon "Henir's Time and Space" is essentially this.
  • Boss Warning Siren: Every boss have one before the boss fight starts.
  • Bottomless Pits: Feita dungeons onward have these.
    • Nonlethal Bottomless Pits: When you fall in there, you'll merely lose a bit of HP, and it'll never outright kill you (merely bringing your HP to One). However, when a Mook falls in there, they'll die instantly.
  • Bow and Sword in Accord: Rena in her Trapping Ranger/Night Watcher job path.
  • Bragging Rights Reward: Some titles, namely Henir's Absolute Power and Henir's Transcender (especially the latter), are usually gotten when your character is at its maximum power.
  • Brainwashed and Crazy: Some of the bosses are actually under influence to fight you and you have to beat them to submission to cure it. Examples include Berauk, Raven, Chief Karu, and Sdeing.
  • Breakable Power-Up: Elesis's Strong Iron Body skill buffs her damage output, which lasts until she's hit. However, if she's hit, she'll become Immune to Flinching instead.
  • Breakable Weapons: All equipment has a durability percentage that decreases the more you get whooped on. You can get it repaired at equipment shops.
  • Break Meter: Inverted - when you attack some of the bosses (or sometimes, certain mooks) enough times, they will become Immune to Flinching and start attacking back. Sometimes they may also force you to get knocked down when it happens (without doing any damage).
  • Bribing Your Way to Victory: To gain extra slot stats which improves your character's performance, you have to buy avatar sets, which cost a hefty amount of cash. Or, if you prefer to be even better, buy Ice Burners, which is like gambling, to get special avatar sets that are even better than cash avatar sets.
    • This also applies to unlocking the second skill slot, where you have to complete a certain quest to gain it.
    • Also the consumable item slots, and inventory slots.
    • There are skill notes that can enhance certain skills exclusively in the cash shop, but are quite inexpensive for some of the effects they have.
      • Despite this, the game has very little difference between paying users and free users, thanks to the Player Market.
      • The Transcendence, 3rd Job quests and their respective skill quests are sadly grindy and resource-consuming and the most practical approach to them to buy them using real money. Although in certain events, free Transcendence unlock items are given away to players. Later updates makes it easier by giving one free run in Elrianode City daily and removing ticket entry requirement in El Tower Defense Story mode.
  • Building of Adventure: Feita and the dungeons within are actually just one giant shrine.
  • Bust-Contrast Duo: The first two female playable characters are Aisha the petite, abrasive magician and Rena, the motherly busty elf. The former is always jealous of the latter's breasts.
  • Call-Back: Elrianode dungeon 11-4, Debrian Laboratory, serves as a large one to 4-6, Altera Core. Both levels are structured around descending though a Nasod facility to fight a giant boss in a curved room that largely attacks from the background. The mobs also provide a parallel, with the Nasod Cannon and Soldier being direct references to Altera’s Nasod Scouts and Bladers (and Wally No.9 before that.)
  • Calling Your Attacks: With a few exceptions, Special Active attacks all begin with the character calling their attack.
  • Cards of Power: Some monsters may drop Monster Cards that you can use to summon said monster as your ally for 3 minutes.
  • Cast from Experience Points: Lu was once a powerful demon, but she got sealed by other demons. In order to escape, she used most of her energy - and succeeded - but she turned into a little girl as a result.
  • Challenge Run: A "no consumables run" mixed with No Death Run as part of the Challenge Mode of Henir's Time and Space dungeon. Though you can get recovery items from the stages themselves, and if you die, you'll be revived at its every checkpoint (which will heal you as well) - but if all of your party members are dead before reaching the checkpoint, it means you fail the challenge.
  • Changing Gameplay Priorities: The early part is about allocating skill points, practicing your play style and leveling up. However, the game gets less forgiving as you go, and you eventually need to focus on crafting powerful equipment and socketing them with the correct stats.
  • Character Title: Except in Japan where Elsword is renamed "Els".
  • Chest Monster: Some treasure chests in dungeons may reveal itself as a monster and lunge at you if you try to attack it. However, if you manage to beat it, it'll drop some good items.
  • Clarke's Third Law: The Nasods are a huge abuser of this Law. Raven's Nasod arm can use "magic," particularly fire, in a number of combos and special attacks. Ignis and Leviathan, two high class Nasod guards, specialize in fire and water "magic" respectively, yet are 100% machine.
  • Class and Level System: Like in Grand Chase, it's not really "Classes" so much as "different characters"; unlike in Grand Chase, they can partake in one of the three forms of specialty after gaining level 15 and perfected themselves at level 35, and their skill trees will also stack and continue on their own ways. Later updates introduced the Trancendence at level 70 which unlocks more skills, and finally the Third Jobs at level 99.
    • There also exist the "Profession System" which lets you become one of these as your side job: Treasure Hunter (focusing on getting money, treasures and rare items from dungeons), Blacksmith (focusing on crafting good gears) and Alchemist (focusing on creating useful consumables and better equipment socketing).
  • Climax Boss: The battle with the Nasod King marks the end of the Nasod-filled story arc that had been building up since midway through chapter 3 - and, on a larger scale, the search for the Ruben Village's Elstone also ends with him.
    • Same goes with Berthe of Feita and Ran of Hamel, both leaders of their respective invasions in each place.
    • Demon General Scar, the leader of the Demon Army, and the reason Elesis left home to become a knight, is this on multiple accounts. He marks the end of the El Priestess search arc, the overall demon invasion arc, and the Elrios continent.
  • Collapsing Ceiling Boss: A few bosses can make debris fall from above to harm you, to name a few: Wally No. 7 (a miniboss) and Magmanta (a boss).
  • The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard:
    • While attaching an element to your weapon only gives it a 15% chance to activate it, if a monster has one, expect it to activate tenfold at least 90% of the time.
    • The Sinister Intent dungeon has a series of NPC fighters who's difficulty ramps up the further in you go. The most notable cases of Cheating Bastardry occur in the later third of the dungeon's challengers, with the Non Player Characters commonly using One-Hit Kill attacks in the middle of player combos. The 29th opponent, A-Ruth, is particularly awful about this, using Chung's Back Blast active in the middle of getting comboed and following it up with Lunatic Fury, which can't be mana broken, and which will almost certainly kill any target without a full bar of HP. His Shooting Star, too, which can only be broken near the beginning, deals lethal damage and tracks for a long enough time that the missiles will home back in on a player after the Mercy Invincibility wears off.
  • Color-Coded Item Tiers: The colors that indicate item tiers isn't shown in the equipment model itself, but rather, the letters are colored differently. The tiers go as thus: Normal (white letters), Rare (yellow letters), Elite (purple letters) and Unique (beige letters). There's also one extra tier, Old (black letters) that is reserved for unusable, junk equipments. The ultra-powerful third-stage Perkisas weapons reside in their own tier, Legendary (orange letters)
  • Constructed World: Elrios, the world of Elsword.
  • Contractual Boss Immunity: As of a patch, all bosses and minibosses are immune to the "time-stop" effect of the Special Active skills. Mooks and opponents in PVP are still affected as normal. Later bosses starting from Elysion are immune to debuffs.
  • Convenient Questing: As you progress through your quest you'll also progress through towns in a linear way. Though subverted for the Feita region; story-wise, you'll have to go to this region while you're still progressing in your current one, and only after those regions completed you can complete the Feita region. Geography-wise, the path that goes after Bethma region will split into two: one goes to Altera and the other goes to Feita.
  • Cool Airship: The Cargo Airship, The Black Crow, and The Sandtilus (and the smaller one that goes with it).
  • Cooldown Manipulation:
    • Add's skill EMP Shock can induce cooldown extension on his enemies' skills.
    • Time Tracer's buff skill Seal of Time can shorten the cooldown of his and his allies' skills by a few seconds when used. It is limited in that it can't shorten the cooldown of other buff skills, including itself.
      • As Diabolic Esper (Time Tracer's advancement), he can learn a passive skill Time Control that gives him the chance of reducing the cooldown time of his skills whenever he uses his skills.
    • Blade Master's skill Giga Drive: Limiter is a Super Mode that lets him spam active-level skills (those that don't dim the screen) by turning the cooldowns of those skills into 1 second.
    • Part of Elesis' Chivalry system is that, one of its modes, Knight of Gale, affects all of the Gale-specific skills, reducing their MP cost and cooldown drastically.
    • Deadly Chaser's passive Intense Showtime lets him having decreased cooldown time and MP on his skills when he enters his Berserk Mode.
    • Elemental Master's Element Study passive skill lowers general cooldown for all her skills.
    • Lord Knight's Intense Strike passive strengthen his active skills at the cost of increasing their cooldown time.
    • Code Empress' Nasod Recharge passive skill gives her a chance to reset all of her skills' cooldowns by using a skill.
    • Do note that all of the above have no effect on Hyper Active skills, which are very strong but have 3 minute cooldown.
  • Cool Shades: A purchasable accessory item.
  • Cores-and-Turrets Boss: The Nasod King and Enraged Karis are glorified variant of this.
  • Costume Porn: Loads of them in the Item Mall's Unlimited Wardrobe section. Even more porn-y are the costumes obtainable through Ice Burners note .
  • Crafted from Animals: The game has a lot of weapons and occasionally armors made/taken from the bosses' body. The Secret Dungeon Optional Bosses in particular tend to either drop the special equipments themselves (rarely), or drop the materials you'd need to craft the equipment (more commonly).
  • Creation Myth: There was once an empty continent on the world, where demons reside. The Gods created humans, elves, spirits etc to live in said continent while driving off the demons to their own realm. The demons retaliated and declared war against the gods, and turned said continent into a battlefield. The war pretty much ruined the continent.

    Until one day, three goddesses sacrificed themselves to create a sacred gem that will create and sustain life, and then dropped it in the center of the continent. Said gemstone slowly emanated life around itself, creating oceans, forests and rivers. Then soon animals and people began to appear. The gem was then called "El" and the world is named "Elrios" after said gem.

    The wars ended not long after the appearance of said gem, and the Demon King, Krom, died in the process. However, he left a remnant of himself, named Angkor, that he can use to resurrect himself someday. The rest of the demons are banished to their realm once again, and the gateway to the realm is guarded by the Dark Elves.
  • Creepy Doll: The boss of Burning Hope Bridge stage is this, aptly named Crazy Puppet.
  • Critical Failure: The Evasion stat in this game works this way.
  • Critical Hit: Par of the MMORPG course; any normal critical hits will do 1.5x of the normal damage. Some characters have their ways to increase the chance and/or the damage multiplier of this.
  • Curb-Stomp Battle: A lot of the earlier boss battles can end up like this in a matter of seconds. Simply put, most of the bosses can be Zerg Rushed into oblivion with little-to-no effort from a good well-collaborated party. However this starts to decline between the Altera-Velder mark with tougher bosses that require more strategy to beat; see Wake-Up Call Boss below.
    • In the final region, Elysion, the battles against Code: Maya, Herbaon, and Solace can be this in reverse, with the bosses stomping the players if they lack damage, healing, or resurrection stones. Maya's attacks are fast and hard to see due to her small size, Herbaon constantly flees the players and spams high-damage lasers that cover almost the whole screen in party play, and Solace is just an all around pain with high attack, defense, speed, and minigame-like special moves, including one that cannot be dodged or manabroken but drains nearly 2 entire health bars, forcing players to dodge with invincibility frames from a special active, use a resurrection, or spam healing items until the attack ends.
    • The latest dungeon boss Chrysalis is notorious for That One Attack that guarantees Total Party Kill if not prevented. The said attack can't be Mana Broken and inescapable even with long invincibility frame, but can be prevented by constantly using attacks that knocks down once it prepares to unleash it, although such attacks are sadly least prioritized by players.
  • Cute Bruiser: One of Rena's possible job change - Combat Ranger. Also Ara and Lu in general.
  • Cutscene Power to the Max/Cutscene Incompetence: In Add's release cinematic, Add (being merely in his base form) is the former and Eve (being a Code Empress), and Oberon in particular, is the latter. While there are cases of base forms beating 2nd jobs in PvP, it's still a rare occurrence.
  • Cutting Offthe Branches: While in game you're able to freely choose whichever job path you want for your character, all CG cutscenes after Feita's use the same specific 2nd jobs for each character, also around Elysion onward some dungeons show characters talking with still images, these will also have the characters in these very same jobs.
  • Cyborg: Raven is made half Nasod and half human to save his life.
  • Cycleof Hurting: The game averts this - comboing normally will eventually knock down the victim, regardless of how long the combo was (though some classes have longer combos than others). There is also a Combo Breaker mechanic available.
  • Damage Over Time: Many of of the Status Effects do this.
  • Damage Reduction: One of the many stats. It acts as your "ultimate defense" - even attacks that pierce normal defenses will have its damage reduced by this.
    • Damage reduction also applies when a mob is knocked down or guarding, as well as guarding Elswords, Ravens and Chungs. Elsword will also significantly reduce any damage coming at him if he's hit with an attack while he's in Destruction mode (it only works for one hit, however).
  • Damage-Sponge Boss: A lot of the field bosses are this, even more so than the dungeon bosses. They have an absurd amount of HP so it's not uncommon to see players in the field team up against a field boss whenever it pops up. They're also just stronger variant of regular mooks, with their similar regular attack doing much more damage than normal.
    • Of course, some of the dungeon bosses are this as well, e.g Giant Waldo (in Sander's first stage) or Wally no. 8 (Elder fifth stage).
  • The Field Superboss has 99 bars of health. Thankfully the game allows you to beat them with up to 12 players at once.
  • Damage Typing: Comes in 2 types - physical and magical.
  • Damsel in Distress: In Hamel, you have to rescue the Priestess of Water who is being held by Ran, the main villain for the region. Later in Sander, a similar situation happens, this time with the Priestess of Wind, who's kidnapped by one of the bosses. All other El Priestess except the Fire Priestess are also this throughout Lanox region.
  • Dark and Troubled Past: Raven definitely qualifies for this trope the most: he was adopted into a famous war general's family and went to a prestigious military school, both of which mocked him for being an illegitimate child. At first he hated nobles, but realized not all of them were as greedy as he assumed after he befriended his classmates Owen and Seris. He later married Seris and became the captain of the Crow Mercenaries, but was betrayed by Owen, who framed him and got him sentenced to death. He escaped prison with the help of Seris and his knights, but was caught and forced to watch them die right before his eyes. After he himself died, Nasods found him and repurposed him into a half-Nasod killing machine as an experiment. He now spends his life trying to atone for his sins committed under the Nasods' control.
    • Add. He was tortured, enslaved, saw his entire family slaughtered in front of him, and trapped in a library outside logical timespace for years (about 9-10 years for him, and hundreds of years outside) with only books to keep him company. No wonder he's insane.
      • The webtoon expands on this and shows that he also had an abusive father who was obsessed with Nasods and had no qualms about using Add as an experiment.
    • Lu. She was formerly a high-ranking demon, but was betrayed by her trusted underling Karis, stripped of her power and imprisoned by being impaled with chains for an extremely long time, until she used the last shreds of her power to escape (and, as a result, took on the appearance of a child). Then she met Ciel, a former underworld hitman, who took her under his protection and got killed for his trouble. However, they're both alive because they made a soul contract.
  • Dark Is Evil: The demons invading Feita and Velder. Taken higher up with the "Shadow" demons in Hamel. As well as the Henir's forces the attack Elrianode.
  • Dark Is Not Evil:
    • Aisha's Dark Mage class has her dabble into black magic as a means to get stronger quickly, and is simply treated as a highly advanced school of magic that she thoroughly understands the risks of. As the Void Princess though, she behaves in a more sinister manner, especially after making a pact with the little bat-demon, Angkor, and giving evil stares on most of her ending poses. She still works for the good guys, as while she acts in an evil manner, she's not necessarily corrupt.
    • Played straight with Elsword's Sheath Knight job path, since the Eltype comics explain that the class's power come from Dark El, yet he shows no real character difference, aside from being a little more harsh in his quotes.
  • Death-Activated Superpower: One of the guild skills can let you release an aura that heals your allies when you die.
  • Death of a Thousand Cuts: Code: Electra, Eve's third job change, has "Thousand Star", which, when activated a second time, creates a barrage of up to 50 orbs, each one dealing only slightly more damage than your magic attack. However, combine the move with the El Crystal Spectrum Mode (or god forbid, Fusion Mode) and you can summon 300+ of them.
    • There are reports of a party of Code Electra doing 2 thousand and above of those orbs.
      • Upon release, you could actually fuse "Thousand Stars" with "Sweep Rolling's" Spectrum, if you had Spectrum Mode activated, the three orbs of Thousand Stars would be then tripled again by the other spectrum, turning the 100 max stars in the original skill into 1200 Stars, it should be noted that, unlike the above report, this could be done with a single Electra.
    • Battle Seraph (Code Electra's advancement) has the Energetic Heart, a Super Mode which will let all her energy balls/lasers attack become this - combine this with Thousand Stars and she would tear through whole areas within seconds.
    • Blade Master can potentially turn it up to eleven with Hypersonic Stab - more the number of targets it goes through, more the number of slashes per target. This technique can be used to defeat a notoriously difficult secret dungeon boss in one go.
  • Defeat Equals Explosion: The Nasod Scout mook and Nasod King explodes when defeated.
  • Deflector Shields: One of Eve's abilities in later class changes is this, as well as part of her special mechanic after a patch that involves her Awakening Mode-only drone.
  • Degraded Boss:
    • Sometimes you can find minibosses (or even bosses!) in the normal stages to become mooks in the secret stages. Joaquin is the interesting inversion - that is, he's actually a sub-boss but became a boss in Velder's secret dungeon.
    • Some bosses often become minibosses in later stage as well, e.g Crow Ridernote  and Chloe note .
  • Deliberate Injury Gambit: Since you can gain MP through being attacked a lot, it's a common tactic in PVP to let the enemy combo you until you're knocked down naturally, and then use the gained MP to counterattack later. This tactic is only useful if you have sufficient defense against the opponent's attack; otherwise the damage would be too much to handle.
  • Demonic Invaders: On Feita onwards, the stories revolve around demons invading/occupying the region you're visiting and you have to save them and give them chance of fighting back.
  • Draw Aggro: Elesis as Grand Master has the skill "Provoke" which affects all enemies at certain range in front of her. Under the "provoked" status effect, monsters will selectively attack her (as well as having their defense lowered).
  • Driven to Madness: After being tortured, becoming a slave, having his parents killed right in front of him and being isolated for centuries inside a library with nothing but the books to keep him company, it's no wonder Add became this.
    • Elesis in her Crimson Avenger path is this as well. After she and her troops were ambushed in Feita, all of her troops were killed and left Elesis mortally wounded. She absorbs the energy from a Dark El shard to keep her alive, but in exchange, she loses her sanity.
  • Driven to Suicide: The only thing keeping Raven from this point until he met Elsword and co. was the fact that the Nasods were controlling him.
  • Drought Level of Doom: The secret dungeon of Altera lacks any boxes and/or other supporting gimmicks, unlike the others.
  • Dual Boss: The boss at the Dragon Road (Bethma's first stage) are two boss lizardmen, and Sunken Resiam (Hamel's second stage) has 2 giant water serpents. Later on you get a Triple Boss in Underground Garden (Feita's fourth stage).
    • Many bosses come in twos or threes in Henir's Time and Space.
  • Dual Wielding: Elsword's Sheath Knight job path, he can wield two swords now.
  • Dude Looks Like a Lady: Chung, made even more glaring into his "Fury Guardian" class, and even MORE glaring at the further development into Iron Paladin.
  • Dump Stat:
    • Accuracy stat ensures your attacks not to miss. Here's the catch: the reason your attacks will "miss" at all is due to the Evasion stat - which not many mobs (aside from a handful) have; essentially the Accuracy is just a counter for the Evasion. Having 10% of it is enough to make your attacks reliably hit all the enemies. Some characters also have passives that already increases accuracy stat so socketing for accuracy won't be needed for them.
    • For PVP, since the accuracy stat is easier to stack (combined with one common purchasable accessory that gives high accuracy), evasion often also falls out of favor.
    • Added Damage is this if you don't care for PvP, despite being really useful in PvP, recent nerfs made it ridiculously weak in PvE, making it so that players only invest on it when they have nothing else to invest on.note 
  • Dungeon Town: The whole Velder Kingdom. All of the dungeons consist of taking back the town from an army of demons.
  • An Economy Is You: Pretty much the only things you'll be bothered with in towns are: Blacksmith shops (which make and sell equipments), alchemy shops (which make and sell consumables and various other magical things), and accessories shops (which sells... well, accessories).
  • Elaborate Underground Base: Wally's Underground Laboratory, where Wally has been secretly conducting Nasod experiments. Add's Energy Fusion Theory and Debrian Laboratory are much more advanced versions.
  • Elemental Powers: Players can infuse their weapons with elemental Elshards, which gives their weapon some upgrade responding to the elements.
    • Aisha is the go-to girl for your elemental magic, especially if she becomes Elemental Master.
  • Elevator Action Sequence: The boss fight against the Crow Rider.
    • The lift in the Heart of the Ancient Waterway also counts. Surprisingly subverted as the lift only serves as the build-up towards the boss Victor.
  • Emergency Energy Tank: The Complete Recovery Potion would recover your whole HP and MP, and as such they can only be obtained by finishing certain objectives or by luck via boxes or Ice Burners. A number of events also give similar kinds of consumables that do the same thing.
  • Emergency Weapon: If you don't equip any weapon to your character, they'll be seen wielding a dull-looking weapon on their place, so they aren't exactly helpless... even though they'll be really weak.
  • Emperor Scientist: Lord Wally of Elder is a minor version of this; specifically, a king who secretly holds up Nasod researches.
  • Energy Weapon: A lot of Code Electra's attacks involve laser beams, making Dark Mage's Plasma Cutter fail in comparison.
    • Wally series and Nasod King are fond of using them.
  • Equipment-Based Progression: Starting from a patch, equipments are given "equipment levels" and dungeons are given "minimum average equipment level". Now do the math.
    • The item level requirements are pretty lenient provided you've been keeping your equipment up to date. Only time it would be an issue would be Hell difficulty secret dungeons.
    • Also, leveling up will only gives you HP increase and skill points, while keeping your equipment up to date gives you much more: better socket values, better attack and defense stats, and so on. See No Stat Atrophy below for more details.
  • Equipment-Hiding Fashion: The "costumes" are special equipments that will override the look of a certain piece of actual equipment (e.g the weapon costume will turn actual weapon's design) while also giving a few socket slots of their own.
    • The Magic Wardrobe system. With this you can conceal even the costumes themselves, and even accessories, with another. You have to set an equipment or a costume as a "wardrobe fodder" which then you can equip to turn the equipment and accessories' look to the one that you desired. Aside from nice cosmetic changes, players also do this to fool other players into thinking they're wearing weak equipment.
  • Equipment Upgrade: You can get numerical upgrades (+1, +2, etc) to attack/defence for any piece of weapon or armour from a blacksmith. The success of the upgrade is determined by chance, with better upgrades being less likely to work (and purchasable items increasing it). Upgrading equipment also increases the bonuses from socketing them.
  • Eternal Engine: The Nasod Foundry stage takes place in a factory. Altera Core also counts since it is the main base of Nasod operations.
  • Everything Fades: Pretty much everything you kill will disappear shortly after. Even if they explode first, their remains will still disappear.
  • Evil Is Burning Hot: The Dragon Nest in Bethma is Kayak the evil shaman's lair, where the skull of a dragon resides - which, in the secret dungeon, is revived by Kayak to fight you - and said dragon is Playing with Fire.
  • Evil Is Deathly Cold: The Temple of Frozen Water in Hamel, home to the undead ice sorcerer Avalanche.
  • Evil Laugh: Aisha indulges in this in her Void Princess job change.
    • Ran does this too in his pre-fight cutscene.
  • Evil Sorcerer: Kayak the Shaman, the Big Bad for Bethma storyline.
    • Also Wise Dutor, one of the minibosses in Feita, a high-ranked Glitter Necromancer. As well as Shadow Master in Hamel.
    • Chieftain Trockta, the leader of the Trocks in Sander. Although he's revealed to have been Brainwashed and Crazy.
    • Our Liches Are Different: Amethyst of Feita is an undead sorcerer resurrected by demonic necromancers who has control over souls. Avalanche of Hamel is another one, who's responsible for freezing Temple of Water in said region.
  • Exact Time to Failure: Many quests involve you beating a dungeon on a certain difficulty within a certain amount of time. Needless to say, a timer near the top of the screen shows you exactly how much time has passed, to the nearest second.
  • Exclusive Enemy Equipment: Some of the bosses can drop weapons (and, in few cases, armor) that are generally better, stat-wise, than the regular weapons of similar level.
  • Excuse Plot: To an extent. The team starts off trying to find all The Elshards that have been scattered throughout the world. After that, the plot becomes the team trying to avoid Elshard being corrupted.
  • Exotic Eye Designs: Chung has blue eyes with pupils shaped like dog paws.
    • There's also a purchasable item that gives your eyes glowing star-like pupils, cat-like eyes, fox eyes or pale grey eyes.
  • Expansion Pack World: Par of the MMORPG course. Though technically the world isn't expanded, instead they explore more unexplored parts of the continent.
  • Experience Booster: A purchasable item can increase your EXP gain by 30%. The item's only temporary, though.
    • Also a guild skill, but only if you play in party with at least one of your guildmates with you.
  • Experience Meter: It hangs out in the lower-left corner. Hovering your mouse over it gives you an exact percentage of how full it is.
  • Explosive Overclocking: Invoked by the 'Self-Destructive Acceleration' title you can obtain during matchmaking fights. The title ups your abilities, but reduces your HP and MP drastically.
  • Expy: The first three starter characters mirrors their personality and relationship from their counterpart in Grand Chase.
    • Meanwhile, the Ponggos in Altera resembles the Ewoks in Star Wars.
  • Eye of Newt: Hyper Active skills need a special item called El's Essences to perform.
  • Eyepatch of Power: a purchasable accessory item.
  • Eye Take: A few characters have done this.
  • Failure Is the Only Option: Zig-Zagged.
    • Some of the playable characters' personal goals (namely Elsword's and Chung's, and arguably Aisha's) are fulfilled; however, the goals of other characters are either perpetual (such as Raven trying to be a good guy) or have an indefinite end (Eve trying to revive her race). Rena's goal (preventing her home realm from disappearing) is directly tied with the whole group's goal (searching and securing the El Gems) and thus is perpetual as well, and Elesis doesn't seem to have any beyond being a Velder knight. Some, however, play this straight, such as Add trying to abduct Eve or Ara trying to bring her brother back (he escapes after he's defeated in Hamel).
    • And for the Series Goal, the whole "retrieving Ruben's El Gem" story, "fight against demon invasion" story and "saving the El Priestesses" story ended on a positive note, and the current story of "restoring the large El" is still ongoing.
  • The Fair Folk: You can encounter Wisps in early Elder stages, while Velder region onward has evil fairies as enemies.
  • Fake Difficulty: See Boss In Mook Clothing above, also, some bosses (Like Karis, Ran, Fallen Chloe though she's a miniboss, to name a few) will be almost permanently in Super Armor and when they are not, their Super Armor threshold (Essentially how many times you can hit them before they automatically activate Super Armor to counter you) is so low and the counter-super armor's duration so high that your option is to either not deal damage at all or deal damage but risk losing half your health.
    • Another example is the boss of 6-3, the Taranvash of Light. Her second most damaging move (losing only to her Fricking Laser Beam), her Teleport Slash, is performed under two conditions: You either being way too far from her, or occasionally when hitting her. What makes this Fake Difficulty is that she can go an entire fight without using it once, or pretty much spam it when you're hitting her. The animation is, generally, too quick to dodge, especially when you're so focused on comboing her, though this can be circumvented in other bosses through abusing their attacks, Taranvash is special in that her most commonly-used attacks either have very little Super Armor or none at all, and one of her three less common attacks punishes you for being too close (Which is where you wanna be to take advantage of enemy super armor).
  • Fantasy Counterpart Culture: Bethma looks very much like the Rocky Mountains in the US and the lizard folk in said region has some Native American influences. North Floune is much like Korea.
  • Fantasy Gun Control: Played straight for the most part unless you're in a technologically advanced area where Mecha-Mooks are present. However this gets averted with Chung, Ciel and Rose, all of whom use guns in battle.
  • Fantasy Kitchen Sink: Let's see, you fight with forest guardians, then robots, then more robots, then suddenly back to medieval... later jumped to more advanced robots and then more robots but with angelic touch this time, and then monsters made out of pure darkness.
  • First Town: The Ruben Village, where you learn the basics of the game mechanics. Contrary to most examples, though, this is but a small village compared to the next town after this, the Elder Village.
  • Fishing for Mooks: A common tactic during dungeon play; by gathering mooks together, you can more easily take them down in one fell swoop, saving time and MP. Sometimes this tactic isn't so viable, however, if the mooks are spread too far apart.
  • Fixed Damage Attack: The Battle Magician's "Energy Spurt" 200mp skill is pretty much this, since it completely ignores defense (or just 50% defense after a patch) and deals damage based on your character level.
    • This actually becomes a GameBreaker against Joakin's Boss Form (Boss of Illusionary Velder, Velder's Secret Mission) since it immediately negates his shield which makes most attacks deal only 3-digit damage (In a game where even the newbies deal 4-digit damage), therefore immediately stopping him from healing, therefore taking away any difficulty from the boss whatsoever.
  • Floating Continent: The Calluso Tribal Village, whose territory consists of giant rocks lifted up in the air by wind magic.
  • Flunky Boss: A good number of bosses in this game can summon mooks to aid them in one way or another. E.g Magmanta (with spider mooks), King Nasod (with his Nasod mooks), and Berthe (with Glitter troops), and Spatio Reaper (with Henir monsters).
  • Follow the Leader: This follows both games like Dungeon Fighter Online and MapleStory, though more towards the latter these days.
  • Following in Relative's Footsteps: The title character wants to become a powerful and famous knight to follow on the footsteps on his sister, Elesis, a famed knight who has a high ranking position in her own guild, the Red Knights.
  • Foreshadowing: Beautifully done on the Fourth Volume of El Type Season 2, "My Mascot And Me", where a seemingly random character receives a package which is a Book Ends moment for the Volume, considering how the story was going and how it was pure comedy, everyone thought the character was Ara Haan, but her eyes were obscured. However, with the release of the video showing off the eighth character, Elsword's Sister (who's Elesis from Grand Chase, no less) it's been confirmed through her necklace that the character in the El Type was, in fact, Elsword's sister.
    • Double points because Elsword's sister is actually mentioned in the El Type, but in such a comical way nobody thought anything of it. Triple points because the Main Character, who's supposed to be a student nicknamed "Raven", enters the world of Elsword, just before the last page showing off Elsword's sister.
      • Credit to the Elsword forumer and theorist CaptCatalan for a breakdown in this post.
    • Rena mentions in one of her Transporting Tunnel: CA dungeon clear quotes that she "regrets ever taking pity on that flower". Her character side story reveals she was talking about her childhood friend Lua's flower which she tried to resurrect but failed at due to overexerting the powers of the nature spirits. The dungeon was released in 2010, and the side story was released in 2016. Talk about planning.
  • Forgets to Eat: The game actually warns players about this. "You must not skip meals even if Elsword gives so much fun."
  • Four-Leaf Clover: A rare obtainable item that will give the user more critical chance and increased in-game money drop.
  • Fragile Speedster: Ara Haan, highest mobility in the game (topping even the air dash girl, Eve), low HP pool, still ridiculously strong.
    • Her later classes averts this with passive that increase her damage reduction and HP, the only thing stopping her from being a Lightning Bruiser in her later classes is just how low her damage-per-hit is.
  • French Maid Outfit: The Ice Burner costume set "Royal Maid/Servant" puts the girl characters in maid outfits (and the males in a tuxedo).
  • Freudian Excuse: Raven's past, the Belder capital falsely accuse him of treason and plans to execute him just because the royals hate him, his friends and fiancé came to rescue him but all get killed, leaving Raven half-dead, and later getting taken by Nasod races to be brainwashed into helping in a siege in Altera.
  • Friendly Fireproof: Par of the course. Even Reckless Fist's Nuclear will only harm his enemies and never his teammates.
    • Interestingly, Joaquin's Hallucination (boss of Velder secret dungeon) can avert this, by giving a debuff randomly to one of your team members; when they get the debuff, their attacks can hurt their teammates as well.
  • Gameplay Grading/Score Screen: After completing any dungeon, you'll be given grades and scores based on your performance, as well as whether you have Experience Booster and/or playing in the right channel for your level (as they'll give you more points). Grades can go from F to SS, although you'd have to be really bad to even get a B; on the other hand, the SS rank is not only hard to obtain, some achievements require you to get that rank in certain levels.
  • Gathering Steam: The game contains "buff stacking" passive skills for certain character classes which makes the character stronger the more they hit enemies.
    • Sheath Knight's Cruel Slayer passive gives him additional damage buff that occurs and stacks per 5 hits he does in a normal combo and active skills. The additional damage he can gain is (depending on the passive skill's level) 2% to 10% of his physical attack power, and it can be stacked 5 times. If he spent 10 seconds without adding to the stack (i.e not hitting 5 times), the buff will be gone and he'd need to build it up again.
    • Crimson Rose's Awakening Will passive can activate a special buff that occurs if she uses skills related to chain attacks. Each hit of chain attacks will accumulatively buff her physical attack power and attack speed, up to 25 stacks. The buff stacks will lose by 5 every 3 seconds she isn't attacking with any chain attack, however.
    • Arme Thaumaturgy's Reinforced Projection passive gives increased awakening duration, attack power, and critical damage and is stacked each time skills labeled as "Projection Skill" are used. Stacks go up to 50 and he loses 7 for every 15 seconds it isn't being stacked (relatively kinder compared to CR above).
  • Get on the Boat: The Hamel region is located in a different continent and you have to take a ship from Velder to go there.
  • Giant Enemy Crab: You'll encounter these in Hamel dungeons.
  • Giant Mook: The secret dungeons have bigger, stronger version of mooks of normal stages.
    • There's also Rash Iron Trock in the Trock's Lair stage; bigger than other Trock mobs and wields a mean mace.
  • Giant Spider: Magmanta's Cave (in Hamel Region) is full of these. Naturally, the boss of this stage is the largest of them.
  • Glass Cannon: Aisha, although it can be subverted temporarily with Mana Shield.
  • Goggles Do Something Unusual: There's a special accessory you can purchase in form of goggles, which lets you Enemy Scan your opponents in PVP and see their mana meter (you normally can't).
  • Gold–Silver–Copper Standard: Change copper to bronze and you got the standard rate of the currency you can find from enemy drops.
  • Golem: They consist some of the mobs in Feita region.
    • The "Ancient Nasods" in Hamel region turns out to be these.
  • Graphics-Induced Super-Deformed: Not as extreme as other examples, but their body proportions in-game clearly have this.
  • Gratuitous Japanese: One of the Phorus in Velder Academy Library event dungeon is saying "Senpai!!".
  • Great Gazoo: In one supplementary comic, it is shown that if Glave is pushed enough, he'll show you why he's the administrator of Henir's Time and Space - he can easily beat anyone with his power over the dimension. What he usually does is, well, being an admin; he claims that he loves watching people struggling against his challenges.
  • Grimy Water: The Trock's Lair stage has this near the end; step on it and it'll sap both your HP and MP quickly.
  • Guns Akimbo: Chung's Deadly Chaser path, though he still uses his Destroyer. Rose also usually uses a pair of firearms.
  • Hallucinations: Velder's secret stage is actually this - complete with crazy, wacky things that you wouldn't normally see in the normal stages such as when Crazy Puppet (a normal boss) became a gigantic background obstacle, undead demonic mooks crawling up from a single grave, pieces of building falling on you out of nowhere, and some of the mooks imitating Aisha, Rena and Raven...
  • Harder Than Hard:
    • The seven Secret Dungeons are much more difficult than the normal dungeons of their respective towns. There's even a chance for an NPC named Luto to appear in any room of the dungeon and activate Luto Mode if the majority of the party votes "Yes" when prompted. Enemies are even more dangerous in this mode, and with the difficulty scaled to match that of the highest-leveled party member, if you have a capped character in your party it's going to be one bumpy ride.
    • Henir's Time and Space has the Challenge mode in which you have to go through the Boss Rush without using recovery items at all.
    • The Heroic Dungeon is a much harder version of a randomly chosen dungeons from Velder to Elysion (excluding the last two which are already way too difficult by themselves)
  • Harping on About Harpies: The second Sander stage takes place in the harpies' lair, led by their strongest, Kelaino. Somewhat like in Greek myth she also has 2 harpy minibosses as her subordinates, Aello and Okypete. Harpies in general are also noted to hate humans.
  • Healing Checkpoint: The dungeon Henir's Time and Space, there are checkpoints in which you can replenish a bit of health and MP, as well as getting a special buff.
  • Healing Factor: One of the guild skills gives you a chance to recover HP from a single attack.
  • Healing Magic Is the Hardest: Due to the nature of the gamenote  skills that allow healing are really scarce; only 4 classes have access to it (Wind Sneaker, Blade Master, Dimension Witch & Erbluhen Emotion) and even then the healing are marginal for each case.
    • It can be argued the introduction of Crimson Avenger which siphons HP from nearly every single attack in her arsenal by utilizing her "Knight Of Gale" mode subverts this trope, at least for her. Of course, this is offset by how many of her skills are also Cast From Hp.
  • Healing Potion: Pretty much the go-to way to regain HP lost in dungeons is to use some of these, as well as healing foods. There are some boxes that will drop health items in the levels, but they Randomly Drops.
  • Healing Spring:
    • There's an area in Hamel called exactly "Healing Spring" which, in universe, is believed to relieve pain and ease stressful minds. Gameplay-wise, while it does exactly that, so do the other "resting" areas in the game.
    • The Spirit Falls and Charming Geyser Hot Springs areas have a variant, where sitting in these areas for an extended period provide a buff that increases EXP gain, Attack Speed, Maximize and Critical.
  • Health/Damage Asymmetry: Par of the course; even the bosses' strongest attacks are technically weaker than the best the players could do, but they have much higher health than you. Players can inflict a 7-digit damage and only took a small portion of HP, while the boss hit a 4-5 digit damage and it really hurts.
  • Heavily Armored Mook: Arc Glitter Panzers in Velder stages. They're heavy (if you try to launch them, they fall quickly), will not flinch from frontal attacks, and has a strong, unstoppable attack.
  • Heel–Face Turn: Raven, though it's more on being the case of being Brainwashed and Crazy.
    • The same thing happens with Helputt (the boss of Hamel's secret dungeon) as well.
  • Hell Gate: The Gate of Darkness stage revolves around demons coming out through these and you have to destroy it.
    • There's also one situated at the top of the Feita tower (in the stage Altar of Dedication).
  • Helpful Mook: The Mana Eater and Blood Eater can be this; since they steal all your MP/half your remaining HP respectively, but then will drop essence of full MP/half of max HP when killed.
    • Arc Glitter Alchemist mook has a move where he throws a shining powder to the air that will heal himself and the other mobs nearby... as well as yourself, if you're close.
  • Heroic Sacrifice: One of the guild skills; upon one of the party members' death, he/she will generate an aura that will replenish his/her teammates' health. The skill is called exactly that, "Heroic Sacrifice"!
    • Yuno/Herjuno pulls out one in the end of Atlas portion of Elysion story.
  • Hidden Elf Village: Rena and the other elves are stated to come from a different realm/dimension that is the place of the Eldrasil tree.
  • High School AU: In the first season of Eltype comics, the Yon Koma section of the comic tells gag stories of the Elsword characters in a school setting.
  • Hit Stop: When you deal the final blow to a boss, the screen will freeze and flash (and zoom in) for a moment, then cut to the boss kneeling over.
  • Hot Bar: Used for skill usages and consumable item usages.
  • Hour of Power: The Fever mechanic, which appears everytime you killed a number of monsters in a dungeon. It gives you around 30 seconds of Awakening Mode and replenishes your MP to max.
  • Hover Skates: Add can use his Nasod Dynamos to do a hovering dash by placing them around his feet. He can also use them to dash in midair.
  • Hyperactive Metabolism: Players will occasionally find things such as chicken, eggs, or fruit which can replenish health or mana points, and some potions increase speed or Awaken your character.

    I-Q 
  • Idiosyncratic Combo Levels: You've got your basic "Good" and "Excellent" levels, but it keeps going to 200 hits with "Evil!".
  • Immune to Flinching: Several examples.
    • All of Elsword's first jobs have access to the move Iron Body (Stoic). It has a rather high MP cost of 50, but not only does it activates super armor for about four seconds, but it reduces a moderate (formerly large) amount of damage during the duration it is active. Usually, the best thing to do when fighting against an Elsword in this mode is to RUN.
    • Elsword's Way of the Sword aura system also activates this when he's hit in Destructive mode. However, not only does it not reduce damage, it is preceded by a roar which, while it does damage nearby enemies, also prevents Elsword from moving for a short period. This makes Elsword more vulnerable to damaging combos from which he can't escape from. After the roar, however, Elsword will retain super armor for a brief period, and he'll be able to roar again if he is hit when it runs out.
    • A few of Raven's base job moves have this. Burning Rush is Raven dashing through his enemies and cannot be stopped until the player stops holding the button or he runs out of MP. Veteran Commander's Breaking Fist is a super-armored version of one of his combos.
    • Chung's Heavy stance is a variation of this. When hit during certain moves that proc Heavy stance, Chung will block any incoming attack and only take about 10% of the damage, while being able to follow up with a swing or blast of his cannon. However, too many blocked hits without counterattacking will break the stance.
    • The item Unaggressive Aura gives this ability to anyone, but only for about ten seconds.
    • Elesis also has a similar skill to Elsword's, called "Stoic - Strong", though it plays differently: when she activates it, next attack that hits her will have her release a small aura blast that knocks down the attacker if they're close, and then triggers the immunity. Her Chivalry mechanic's Annihilation mode also lets her do the similar "roar and be super-armored" thing like Elsword's, but hers are only active if you do Mana Break (while Elsword's activates automatically on any hit, even stray ones).
    • Many of the normal moves and skills will make the user immune to getting flinched for the duration.
    • Some elite mobs may come with this ability. Most bosses will also proc this after taking too many hits. A few bosses are immune to flinching entirely.
    • Bosses starting from Elysion region are painfully immune to flinching and debuffs that can stop movement will not work either.
  • Immunity Disability: A few skills will deal more hits/be easier to follow up if the enemy is Immune to Flinching. Spatio Reaper can use such against player, in which its spinning attack will deal extremely heavy damage if the player is in super armor, otherwise it will just throw the player away.
  • Impossible Item Drop: Par of the course; mobs often drop things (such as weapons, money and crafting materials) that obviously aren't to be expected to the monster in question. Exceptions can be made from special equipment and accessories from bosses, but that's pretty much it.
  • Incredibly Lame Pun: In earlier versions, some of the quests at the beginning had these in their titles. Most of them are thankfully gone in the newer versions, however. For example: "Prankly, Enough!" and "Fighting SPEA Rit".
  • Increasingly Lethal Enemy: The Superboss Alterasia Type-H is surrounded by constantly spawning Alterasia Spores which periodically heal him. Failing to stay on top of them can cause him to be healed constantly.
  • Inexplicable Treasure Chests: You can find many boxes and chests containing money, health and support items in the dungeons. Best not to think about how they're there in the first place.
  • Infinity -1 Sword: Instead of the below trope, chances are you'll meet more of these equipments in play: craftable "regular" Elite or Unique-grade equipments, post-upgrade special rare sets (such as Bizarre Chaos or Tempest sets), special weapons dropped from regular boss/miniboss, or (at most) Henir equipment just below the "final".
  • Infinity +1 Sword: The best weapon in the game, yet, is the weapon you can acquire from beating the Field Optional Boss that is very rarely dropped. It is of the highest grade (Unique), thus it has 4 socket slots (the most you can gain on a weapon), and also has the best stats. The only downside is that it doesn't have any Set Bonus effect.
    • Armor of Invincibility: By the same token, there's also the secret dungeon equipments (especially after you upgrade them), Henir Time and Space's "final" equipments (which needs weeks, if not months, to complete a set), and the special equipments found in boxes (which factors on luck). All of them are Unique-grade, with special Set Bonus for each set.
  • Informed Equipment: A variant: While normally any equipment you wear will show in the character's model, equipping a costume will obscure the actual equipment that you used (e.g "top piece costume" will obscure your upper garment). Equipping a "suit" costume will obscure even the regular costumes, depending on said suit costumes.
    • Played straight with ring and necklace accessories, although it's probably justified.
    • A special system, after an update, called "Magic Wardrobe" can let you assign an equipment, a costume or an accessory as a "coverup" to another, actual equipment/costume/accessory. There also exist "invisible" accessories, likely to accommodate this trope.
  • Instant Armor: Chung has this in berserk mode, followed with a full-faced helmet.
    • Chung as Shelling Guardian, beside a full-faced helmet, he also included a chest plate and Shoulders of Doom
  • Interface Screw: Some of the enemy's attacks can induce this on you, reversing your left and right controls.
  • Irony: Wally was researching the ancient Nasods and hired Banthus to steal an El stone for him so he could create some of his own. After being defeated by Elsword's crew, the actual Nasods, through Raven, steal the El stone from him and begin making a second attempt to wipe out humanity.
  • Irrelevant Sidequest: Many of the sidequests are irrelevant to the conflict (read: main quest) the characters are facing.
  • It's All Upstairs From Here: The last two Feita dungeons: Heart of Spire and Altar of Dedication, are basically this.
  • Item Amplifier: One of the guild skills increases the recovery amount from consumables.
  • Item Crafting: A LOT of good items can't be bought, only crafted or randomly found.
  • Item Farming: In this game, rare items are often farmed and hoarded for the purpose of selling it in the player market.
  • Joke Level: Some events have a special event-only dungeon that is filled with silly contents.
  • Jump Physics: Many. To name the basics: spring-steppingnote  and high jumpingnote . More advanced ones have Some Dexterity Required.
    • And that's not even touching characters with special dashes such as Eve or Ara.
  • Kaizo Trap: Some bosses' attacks will still linger on the battlefield seconds after they are defeated, notably Dark Nephilim or Coral Sea Serpent.
  • Kiai: All of the player characters do this in their attacks, and a few bosses do it too.
  • Kick Chick: Rena's fighting style when not using her bow. The Combat Ranger job path focuses more on this aspect of her. Rose also delivers kicks.
  • Kill Enemies to Open: This is pretty much inherent in the game system — You can't get to the next area in any dungeon unless you have killed all the mobs in the current area first.
  • King Mook: Many of the minibosses and bosses are merely stronger/bigger variants of normal mooks, such as Chloe (of Dark Elf Sentinel) or Magmanta (Mantares and Mantaray).
  • Knockback Evasion: You can do a techroll whenever you get knocked down. Wind Sneaker, and Grand Master have passives that let them do this faster.
  • Kungfu Proof Mook: Some of the many examples:
    • A few mooks cannot be launched upward.
    • Many mooks have shields that let them block frontal attacks, forcing you to attack from their behind.
    • A certain mob in Halls of Water stage can heal itself if struck by projectiles.
    • Airborne Mooks are frequently unaffected by You Will Not Evade Me type of attack.
  • Lag Cancel:
    • The "spring step" technique in Jump Physics above is done by cancelling the recovery of landing into another jump. Good timing is required, however.
    • Some part of the normal combo moves can be cancelled into a dash, and then a dash attack. This also allows a dash jump cancel. A common technique for comboing is to cancel it to a dash, then do an immediate stop (by turning backwards after dashing and then forwards again) and then do the first part of the combo again (which can also lead to dash cancel again).
    • A common trick of doing skills is that cancelling it over the first Z (weak) attack will make the skill be performed faster.
  • Large and in Charge: The Nasod King. He's HUGE!
  • Last Disc Magic: the Hyper Active skills are only unlocked when you reached level 65 (when you're in the final region, Sander).
  • Last Ditch Move:
    • Sometimes a few bosses will continue attacking with certain moves when they are defeated. Case in point: Dark Nephilim and Coral Sea Serpent. They often are easily avoided, though.
    • A few mooks have these as well, e.g Laguz will encase you in a bubble if you're happen to be close as she's dying.
  • Launcher Move: Every character has a few. In this game launches are limited to 2 times; do it more and the victim will fall down instead. note 
  • Leaning on the Fourth Wall: Eve's exact words after finishing Henir's Time and Space are "A long time ago, there used to be much harder challenges at this space. This is an easy job". Ironic, considering that yes, Henir's Time & Space was much harder on Elsword's early days.
  • Level in Reverse: The Night Bethma Lake stage is this, to the normal Bethma Lake stage (aside from being, well, at night.)
  • Level-Locked Loot: Many equipments are only usable when your character meets the required level.
  • Level Scaling: Occurs in the secret dungeons where the enemies' level will be scaled up to yours. In their higher difficulties, the enemy can be several levels higher than you.
    • In Henir's Time and Space, the bosses will have the same power level as that of your party's highest leveled member. In the dungeon's Challenge mode, however, your party and the bosses' levels will be scaled down to level 1.
    • The Gates of Darkness special stage also scales down your level and the enemies' to 1.
  • Level-Up Fill-Up: When you gain a level in a dungeon, your HP and MP will be refilled to full instantly.
  • Limit Break:
    • Awakening Mode, which can only be activated by attacking enough times.
    • Hyper Active skills as well, which can only be done with maximum MP and a special item with a long cooldown after it.
  • Limited Move Arsenal: You can go through a dungeon with only four skills. You can buy an item that increases the skill slots into 8.
  • Limited-Use Magical Device: Thematic (i.e not exactly literal) example: Aisha's special gameplay mechanic "Memorize" lets her save up to 3 spells in her "memory slot" so she can instantly use them later. Every time she memorizes a spell, a scroll icon appears above her.
  • Lizard Folk: The mobs in Bethma mostly consist of these.
  • Loading Screen: Whether you're entering dungeons or PVP mode, or teleporting to a town, you'll be treated with one.
  • Lone Wolf Boss: A number of the bosses are merely hindering you without being related to the conflict at hand e.g William Phoru, Corrupt Nasod Driller, Alterasia Turret and Alterasia Type-H.
  • Lost Technology: The Nasods' technology certainly counts. Eve herself could be Lost Technology. At least in Elrios.
  • Low-Level Advantage: Applies for the PVP - for gaining a better rank in PVP you have to gain rank points by defeating your opponents; having a lower level speeds up the process (by fighting against those in higher levels). Sure, lower level means lower stats and less skills, but in this game, a particularly skillful player would just get enough stats and let their dexterity do the trick.
  • Luck Stat: The Critical Hit stat, as well as the old Evasion.
  • Macross Missile Massacre: Shooting Guardian's Shooting Star skill. He has some other missile spamming skills, but this one's easily the most prominent.
  • Made of Explodium: The fire faries known as Kenaz explode when killed. Fogta Trock also self-destructs.
  • Magical Accessory: All of the equippable accessories will add some good stats, and a few of them also yield special effects.
    • In story, Battle Magician's Battle Pendant is this, as well as Ara's Eun hairpin. Banthus' magic necklace as well, which allows him to fire lasers.
  • Magical Girl: Although Aisha's Elemental Master path dresses the part, Aisha's new Battle Magician job comes with a Transformation Sequence and a costume change as part of a skill.
  • Magic Antidote: How antidotes work in this game.
  • Magic from Technology: The Nasods (plus Raven) are particularly good at pretending to be elementalists despite being robots.
  • Magic Knight: Elsword's Magic Knight class.
    • Bosses Ran and Chief Karu are also this; they specialize in fire/dark magic and wind magic respectively in addition to swordplay.
    • Hennon is also no slouch in both sword and magic.
  • Magic Mirror: Taranvash, boss of Hamel's third stage, has these in his arena. She can use the mirror to make illusionary copies of herself.
  • Magikarp Power: Your abilities as a base job will be limited, but as you advance you can access things that makes your game easier.
  • Magnet Hands: All characters (and many mobs and bosses) have this with their weapons; no matter what they do or what happened to them, expect their weapon to stay near them. Even for Eve and Add's drones, although it might be justified for them.
  • Magnetic Plot Device: Most of the time, the El Gems are the reason the plots happen in the story.
  • Male Gaze: Ara's Asura class skill cut-in shows her bending over, prominently displaying her rather large breasts.
  • Manipulative Bastard: Everything bad that's happening in Sander can be traced back to Karis, the end boss of the region. She manipulated the harpies, the Trocks, and even the Calluso Tribe to fight against you.
  • Marathon Level: The Henir's Time and Space can be this, depending on how long you took out the bosses and/or whether you take the Optional Bosses or not. On average, you'll complete the stage in around 20 minutes, while normal dungeons are completed in 4-5 minutes.
    • Taking the secret dungeons' secret difficulty (randomly accessible while in the middle of it) will take you back to the start of the dungeon, prolonging your playtime.
  • Mass Monster-Slaughter Sidequest: Par of the course.
  • Mascot Mook: Phorus, walking critters that can talk with William (early game boss and appearing upon getting dud items) being the most famous of them. You also get one as a quest given pet early on. Events in the game often have costumed ones to defeat for their quests, as well as event-only pet phorus. And we have their ancestors the Ancient Phorus which are quadped firebreathers, now available in mount form.
    • More recently, with a side of Ensemble Dark Horse, is the Icy Hedgehog mob, who took the community by storm when it was released as a pet. Particularly its baby form, with its very simplistic face and design. It became such a fan-favorite that when an Elsword-themed popup café was opened in Korea, a portion of the merchandise had nothing to do with the actual main cast. Instead, it featured baby Icy Hedgehogs.
  • Mecha-Mooks: The Nasod mooks in Bethma, Altera, Elysion and Elrianode.
  • Mechanical Lifeforms: The Nasods, of course, especially those in the ancient times (that includes Eve).
  • Mechanical Monster: A few Nasods look monstrous, such as Nasod Scorpion King and Nasod Driller.
  • Medieval Stasis: Despite King Wally's town of Elder being quite advanced due to his influence, it is still strictly medieval. The Velder Kingdom also looks medieval for the most part, despite the enemy having an access to a battle tank of all things.
  • Megaton Punch: One of Psychic Tracer's combo extensions ends with this, knocking them pretty far away... Sure, they don't become a Twinkle in the Sky, but considering that Add seems to punch the enemy so hard the player's screen shakes it's obvious this is what they were going for.
  • Meido/Ninja Maid: One of the costumes only attainable through Ice Burners will dress your character in a maid/butler outfit. 2017 April Fool's event also give crossdressing maid/butler outfits.
  • Merchant City: The towns Elder and Sander are often noted to be the center of market activities in Lurensia and Fluone continents respectively. Gameplay wise, however, they aren't much different than any other town.
  • Mercy Invincibility: Whenever you stand up after getting knocked down, you'll get this, but the duration is very short.
  • Metal Slime: The golden variant of Mimic (treasure chest enemies) that only appears by chance in the secret dungeons. They have high HP, runs around quickly and will disappear if you can't kill it quickly, but if you do, it'll drop a rare item. A gold variant of Mana Eater appears in Heroic Dungeon that if killed, will grant the party helpful stuffs like stopping all monsters, infinite mana and zero cooldown for a short period of time.
  • Microtransactions: How the Item Mall works. You can buy its currency (differs within directly or win it via giveaways or filling out surveys.
  • Mighty Glacier: Chung. More so as Fury Guardian.
  • Mind-Control Device: Raven had one built into his Nasod arm so that the Nasod king could control him and manipulate his emotions. Raven regains control of himself after fighting with Elsword, Aisha, and Rena.
  • Mineral Macguffin: The El Stone of Ruben Village is this for the story until Altera arc is done, with our heroes taking it back from King Nasod.
    • In general, finding and securing El Stones is the duty of the El Search Party, of which our heroes is a part.
  • Min-Maxing: It is common for players to just focus on some particular stats rather than spread it equally. Especially since some characters benefit more from some particular stats than others.
    • Due to the limited amount of skill points you can gain, sometimes you'll also face this whenever you're putting your skill points in the skill tree; you'll max skills that matter the most and the others will just be given a small amount, if not none entirely.
  • Minor Crime Reveals Major Plot: The entirety of Ruben through Altera storylines are this. It starts from just a thievery of the El Stone by Banthus, then it's revealed that he's working with Lord Wally, who then tries to escape with said stolen El Stone, only for Raven to take it away from him and then gives it to King Nasod.
  • Mirror Boss: William, a rat like monster who uses a poor mimic version of Elsword's swordsplay, and Type-H, an Eldritch Abomination who not only knows all Elsword's swordsplay and skill, is much much deadlier than William.
    • Hacking reveals that the files for Type-H are labelled "Parasite Elsword". Make of that what you will.
    • Raven and Crow Rider are this for Raven players, complete with basic special attacks.
    • During the second encounter in Hamel region, Chloe loses her bow, adopting a kick-based combat akin to a Wind Sneaker when fighting against you.
    • There's also Helputt, Chung's father, the boss of Hamel's secret dungeon.
    • The Sinister of Dimensions dungeon pits you against bosses that behaves exactly like a player character. Though if the boss is based on Lu/Ciel, it's either only Lu or Ciel.
  • Mirror Morality Machine: Closer to the point of what the Nasod control device in Raven's robotic arm does to him at times.
  • Money Multiplier: 2 unlockable titles act as this. Also one of the guild skills.
  • Money Sink: In the board market, costumes and high-level (usually also higher stage of upgrade) equipments can cost hundreds of millions of ED (they're capped at 700 million, though.)
  • Mook Commander: The Glitter Commander can command nearby Glitter Troops into making a strong and nigh impenetrable formation: the Protectors on the front blocking advances and frontal attacks with their shields, the Spearmen sticking their spears to the air, anticipating aerial attacks, and the Snipers doing long-range attacks from behind the formation. Occasionally the Pounders may also help with their hammers to create mini quakes that throw their enemies off balance.
  • Mook Maker: Several, such as Micky House (which spawns small rat monsters), Oro House (a robotic Expy of the former), Zombie Glitter Grave (which spawns... you get the idea), and Piranha House (that spawns piranhas).
  • Mook Medic: Quite a few, such as Shaman Lizardmen, Nasod Healer and Glitter Alchemist. As always, you should Shoot the Medic First.
  • More Dakka: Shooting Guardian, Chung's magic class.
    • Taken further by it's upgrade Deadly Chaser.
    • All Chung players have two combos (XXZX and ZZZX) that involve dumping every single round in their gun into someone, the latter even has Chung assume the Chainsaw-Grip BFG stance before firing.
    • The Hyper Actives update gives us Lunatic Scud, the Code Nemesis's Hyper Active. You can practically hear her shouting "I NEED MORE GUNS".
    • Ciel as Royal Guard has a cross-shaped firearm than can function as either machine gun or cannon.
    • Rose is centered around using varieties of guns, especially as her Heavy Barrel line.
  • Multi-Mook Melee: A particular section of the Trock's Lair stage has groups of Trocks coming one after another to ambush you. You have to beat all of them before you proceed to the next area.
  • Multiple Life Bars: Bosses can have lots of bars of health, especially the later ones. The Field Superboss has 99 bars!
  • Mutually Exclusive Power-Ups: When you picked 2 special potions in arena, the second potion's effect will override the first. Unless when the effect is instant Awakening Mode, which will overlap with the others.
    • The skill tree incorporates this: there are sections where 2 skills is put next to each other; learning one of the two skills will result in you not being able to learn the other one.
  • My Rules Are Not Your Rules: Epic NPC heroes in arena, see Secret A.I. Moves for details.
  • Mythology Gag: Many references from Grand Chase can be found in Elsword. Seen here.
  • Nephilim: The Dark Nephilim is a monstrous figure worshiped by the Dark Elves. Their leader, Chloe, summons it on your party to ambush you. Advancing Boss of Doom ensues.
  • Nerf: Happens rather often, will often overlap with They Changed It, Now It Sucks!.
  • Never Split the Party: The characters always stick together and never split up. The gameplay has this too, depending on your skill level: the game is much easier when in a large party.
  • New Skill as Reward: Each character job will automatically learn their skills as they level up, but a few of them are locked unless you do Skill Quests for them.
  • Non-Combat EXP: The only other way to gain EXP in this game is by playing quests.
  • Nonhuman Undead: the Zombie Glitter mobs that are found in certain maps and stages.
    • Draco Lich: Ancient Bone Dragon, the boss of Bethma secret dungeon, freshly resurrected by Kayak to fight you.
  • Nonstandard Skill Learning: Some skills are locked and you have to take up quests to unlock them.
  • No Sidepaths, No Exploration, No Freedom: Most, if not all, of the dungeons take a completely linear path.
  • No Stat Atrophy: Subverted. Whenever you level up, most of your stats (i.e the ones that aren't HP, attack or defense power) will go down a bit. This is because the formula for stat calculation depends on the level of your equipment and your character level - the amount of points counted in each of your sockets is relative to that of the equipment's level, while the amount of stat represented by those points is relative to your character level.
  • Not So Extinct: The Nasod race. The Nasod King had been doing all he can to revive the entire race that perished during the Robot War. However, it is revealed later that the Nasod extinction only applied of Elrios Nasods. The Nasod race continues to thrive in their new home Elysion after their creator escaped Elrios before the Robot War occured.
  • Oddly Shaped Sword: A number of Elsword, Raven and Elesis' "weapon costumes" will turn their swords into this. To an extent, other characters' weapons can be this, as well. That is, when the costumes don't outright change them into improbable weapons.
    • Nerf Arm: and you can still be powerful with those improbable weapons.
  • One Size Fits All: After an update, all kinds of equipments (barring weapons) can be equipped on any character. Although, the exact form of the equipment will change depending on the character.
  • Only Shop in Town: Only applied in the Ruben Village, where Ann (an NPC) will sell you things that blacksmiths, alchemists and accessorizers in other towns would sell.
  • Oral Fixation: Some of the accessories are this, such as a lollipop or a watermelon wedge.
  • Ornamental Weapon: A few of the possible accessories.
  • Our Founder: Elder Village has a statue of its leader, Lord Wally, on its middle plaza.
  • Our Orcs Are Different: While not explicitly referred to as such, the Glitter monsters in Feita and Velder can be seen as stand-in for orcs. As a trained demonic army, they have many kinds of soldiers, including alchemists. They also have named 'Hero' units that compose the mid-bosses.
  • The Overworld: The city areas and resting areas, as well as the "fields".
  • Oxygen Meter: You get one for underwater areas.
  • Oxygenated Underwater Bubbles: The underwater sections of dungeons in the Hamel region use these.
  • Palette Swap: Minor case - within areas, there ARE Mooks that have their colors changed (Red/Green for Fire/Poison cross-bowmen, respectively). However, the model sizes and movement patterns are almost identical between "small sniper" and "large BFS wielder" pre-Feita, and several enemies and bosses in later areas are outright up- or down-scaled copies of one another.
    • Velder's secret dungeon is notable as the black/purple(?) Glitter Alchemists, Blue Glitter "Spearmen" (though they're with a sword the commanders have), and Green Glitter Snipers impersonate Aisha, Raven and Rena respectively, using some of their skills. Most normal mobs there now also wear red armor as opposed to the yellow ones they wear in normal Velder dungeons. Certain monsters in Elrianode City are also just "Henir-infested" version of earlier monsters.
  • Panacea: The item Yggdrasil Leaf can cure many status effects.
  • Patchwork Map: The sandy region Sander is located right next to the cold region Hamel.
  • Percent-Based Values: The damage of both normal attacks and offensive skills tend to use a percentage (often more than 100%) of the value of either Physical Attack stat or Magical Attack stat depending on the kind of attack used.
  • Perfect Play A.I.: SS ranked NPC Blademaster is the most notable example, and all the AI can use skills and awakenings in the middle of YOUR combo.
  • Perpetually Static: Par for the MMO course, your actions don't really have an effect on the environment. Most of the action is in the background and the towns are fairly idyllic looking, so you don't have to see them constantly in a dire state despite your personal progress saying their problems have been solved.
  • Personal Space Invader:
    • One type of enemy in Bethma named Fire Bat can latch onto you and then explode.
    • The Shadow Chargers in Hamel will sometimes try to hug you.
    • Later in Sander, the Caskey mobs will try to leap onto you and then bite you multiple times before letting go. The Bomber mobs also acts like the Fire Bats above.
    • Hernacyd Fear mobs in Elysion will also latch on you and self-destruct.
  • Piñata Enemy: Some of the mobs will be powered up (i.e with higher amount of HP, buffed strength/speed, and having one or two elemental enchantments); those mobs will drop lots of money and a temporary powerup as well.
  • The Pin Is Mightier: a few of the accessories in game are hairpins that gives you additional stats.
  • Player-Exclusive Mechanic: A minor case: while Epic NPCs thrive on Secret A.I. Moves (see below), Noah (Elemental Master) cannot do the XXvXX combonote  - the explanation is that she's pyrophobic. The real explanation, though, is that because High Magicians lacked access to that move in Season 1.
    • As above, because the Epic NPC/s follows the old Season 1 system, they cannot do some things that their player equivalents can do in later seasons. Such as Noah and Speka's three fireball combo (whereas now Aishas can do 4) and Amelia's stiff as-in-season-1 arrow combos (whereas Grand Archers have a much faster, easier one and can even cancel into Siege Mode).
      • NPC copies of Elsword, Rena, Raven and Eve lack access to the Way of the Sword, Nature's Force, Anger of Raven and Queen's Core systems respectively because they didn't have those systems yet back in Season 1. Rena's clones' arrows are also the same old arrow and didn't changed into newer arrows that are larger and has longer range.
    • Also, for servers which have access to the Evolution update, the Rune Slayer's Storm Blade cannot be Mana Broken, this change, however, was not applied to Alterasia Type-H's version of Storm Blade, likely because it would make the battle impossibly hard.
  • Player-Generated Economy: The game has a market board where you can sell and buy items from other players.
  • Player Nudge: The game will tell you what to do whenever a boss is preparing a special attack. Note that such thing doesn't happen when you encounter the same bosses in Henir's Time and Space, however.
  • Playing with Fire: Magic Knight has some fire skills, and he's able to shoot fireballs in some of his normal moves. But he's more geared towards generating spectral blades and, as Rune Slayer, runes.
    • Played 100% straight, however, with the Pyro Knight and further Advancement into Blazing Heart, even the abilities which ARE based in Spectral Swords have fire effects!
    • Raven's Weapon Taker and its advancement Veteran Commander class plays with even more fire - to the point that it can burn himself in some of his moves.
  • Point Build System: You receive a few skill points whenever you level up. You can also purchase a special item in the Item Mall that gives you a bunch of free skill points, but they're just temporary.
  • Poison Mushroom: Some special power-up items in dungeons can randomly give an undesirable effect: summoning William Phoru to harass you, or lowering your stats temporarily.
  • Popularity Power: The game appears to invert this as far as KR popularity in PvE as unpopular classes get buffed and overly popular/overplayed characters get nerfed. This works to avert Complacent Gaming Syndrome for the most part though there have been some hiccups with it:
    • The buffed class ends up too strong and needs to be nerfed.
    • The buffs end up having unintended effects, such as making Wind Sneaker even stronger in PvP than before (thus strengthening the stigma she has of being a PvP only class in KR)
    • The nerfed character/class's players don't budge, often inviting more nerfs. The main example is Eve, particularly her Code Nemesis line. Needless to say, her North American fans are not amused.
  • Port Town: Velder and Hamel.
  • Post-Climax Confrontation: After you completed all dungeons in a certain region, said region's secret dungeon will be unlocked for this trope.
    • A more immediate example would be the Gates of Darkness stage, which appears randomly after a boss fight in dungeons.
  • Powered by a Forsaken Child: In a sense. Eve had to shut herself down and use her own energy to power the Nasod King and his subjects. She was only rebooted when the Nasod King was destroyed.
  • Power Creep: The game is pretty bad about this in both releasing overpowered new content and the nerfing of things, often resulting in an uneven level of power. Like the League of Legends example, people suspect the new classes are overpowered to cause people to buy class change items to change them. All the while they're very slow to really bring up older classes/characters up to speed to the newer ones.
    • One of the oldest characters, Rena, has the skill Perfect Storm, which affects all players in its range and heals 6% of their HP and MP. Her Wind Sneaker path has Airelinna, which heals 9% HP over 30 seconds. Nearly 10 years later, we get Ain's Erbluhen Emotion path with Rein-enhanced Blatt Blume, which affects all players in its range and heals 6% of their HP and MP...but per second, for ten seconds. 60% of HP and MP. That's the equivalent of 10 Perfect Storms.
  • Power Equals Rarity: The higher the weapon/armor grade is, the stronger they tend to be, and the rarer they will be (because getting those items require luck and/or lots of grinding).
  • Power Glows: If you upgrade your weapon up to +5 and above, it will gleam multiple times. If you upgrade it up to +10 and above, it will grow brightly.
  • Power Source: Eve to the Nasod King, as stated above. Also, the Nasod King turns to the El Stone stolen from Ruben and installs it into his Powertrain.
  • Power-Up Magnet: A purchasable item that is equipped to your pet will let you attract all drops from monsters to you.
  • Power Up Mount: The Mount System which gives you a special creature as your mount, which enables faster movement as well as strong attacks.
  • Pre-Asskicking One-Liner: The dungeon start lines and Transcendence and Third Job awakening lines are a form of this.
  • Prestigious Player Title: The "titles" in this game are akin to achievements, and a title can be "equipped" after you gained them; equipping a title will give you some good effects and additional stats.
  • Primordial Chaos: The Henir is a dimensional void ruled by the eponymous god of darkness. One of region is administered by Glave and formerly, Luto which serves as the Boss Rush dungeon Henir's Time and Space. The void also fills the gap between Elrios and the Demon Realm.
  • Pure Energy: Elsword has a few special attacks which seem to use giant swords made of this. Aisha can use laser beams, though that could be magic and not energy. Rose's energy weapons are not magic amplified, but pure energy.
  • PVP Balanced: This game kinda has it easy due to how RPGs Equal Combat; everyone has many different skills and tactics on their own to hold their own in PVP combat. Of course, how each class are balanced inbetween themselves is another story...

    Q-Z 
  • Quad Damage: Some consumables give you increased power for a little while, such as the Giant Potion or the Superhuman Apple.
  • Random Event: Borderline example with the Gates of Darkness stage, which appears randomly after you beat a boss in a dungeon. Subverted in KR, however; there's a helpful interface that notes you when the demon invasions will happen (in specific real-time); while the chance of entering said stage is still random, the chance will go higher if you play near the "invasion time".
  • Randomly Generated Loot: When you craft certain equipment, you can get either an Elite-level or an Unique-level one.
    • When you get an equipment as a Random Drop, the upgrade level of said equipment may range from +0 through +9.
    • Unknown Item Identification: Some equipments and accessories can't be equipped unless you do this, which will give the item random additional stats as a side effect.
  • Rank Inflation: PVP grades go all the way from SSS to F.
  • Rare Candy: There exists the Unique-grade item "Philosopher's Scroll" that is only given through events, which, when used, will level you up instantly.
  • Rare Random Drop: The boss' accessories and boss-exclusive weapons, mostly. Also, the special box-only Unique grade equipments, and the ancient version of said boxes (which increases the chance of said equipments appearing), and the special Ice Burner costumes.
    • And in NA, you also get the Gate of Darkness' special accessories this way too, with the boxes that you get per each play.
  • Reactor Boss: A variant: the Nasod King can only be harmed after you exposed its reactor. You have to destroy the other smaller reactors first, though.
  • Real-Time Strategy: The secret dungeon: the Gate of Darkness, has some elements of this. Unlike other dungeons, your objective is to summon your own army of monsters to defeat an advancing army of demons and their commanders, and ultimately destroy the gate from which they originated from. This dungeon can be accessed sometimes after defeating a dungeon boss in the Feita regions onward.
  • Recurring Boss:
    • William Phoru is a boss in 2 stages, and in the second one, he's fought as a miniboss twice before the finish.
    • Meanwhile, Banthus is a boss in 3 stages, and he gets stronger each time.
  • Recurring Traveler/Intrepid Merchant: Helen, the peddler who always appears in all resting areas. It's part of her business, that's why.
  • Red Eyes, Take Warning: Ara, when activating her Eun Mode, gets completely possessed by her Guardian Spirit, Silver/Eun, and this is one of the many bodily changes that she undergoes because of that. Double points because Silver/Eun is described to be both ruthless and merciless while Ara is described to be kind and compassionate.
  • Red Shirt Army: Almost literally with Penensio's Red Knights, a supposedly powerful mercenary group which gets captured by spiders in Magmanta's Cave. When you free them, they become helpful allies (they know some Elsword's skills), though not by much.
  • Remixed Level:
    • The Burning Hope Bridge stage is exactly the Hope Bridge stage, but gets ruined and burnt down to the ground by demons.
    • The secret dungeons combine the elements of the stages of the respective normal dungeons, along with their mooks.
  • Repeatable Quest:
    • There are many quests tagged as "repeatable" in all towns. They don't give you much, though, aside from a few consumables and a small amount of money.
    • Field quests upon completion give bigger chunks of exp, though the first time also gives you a sizable chunk of ED and starting in Sander, some items.
    • In a similar manner, some quests are only available in a certain level range which you can repeat for some extra EXP.
  • Rescue Arc: This becomes very apparent starting from Lanox's endgame story missions but it is slightly noticeable even before you reach that town since the Water Priestess after you save her wants you to ensure that the other El Priestesses are safe, of course you have to rescue four other El Priestesses and even help get reason into the fifth. Then after the final battle against Solace, the entire El Team minus Elsword himself enters the El itself to save Elsword who was absorbed into it when he restored the main El. They have to save him but to do so they must each set aside their own individual missions or else they won't be able to save him or themselves.
  • Respawn on the Spot: When you revive with a Resurrection Stone in dungeons, you'll be revived right where you died before (or at the start of the level's particular section if you don't revive immediately)
  • Resting Recovery: in the fields (the ones with enemies generally roaming around and respawning) you can sit down to replenish health. There are also places designated as "resting areas" where your HP will regenerate slowly.
  • Ridiculously Human Robot: Eve, the only way to tell her she is a Nasod is her eyes.
    • Justified with Myu (an NPC), who was intentionally designed to be as human as possible.
  • Road Runner PC: The players can get very fast compared to the mobs you'll be fighting against. Necessary, since their attacks will hit rather hard when they connect.
  • Robot Girl: Eve, as unbelievable as it seems.
  • Robot War:
    • In the backstory, when it became apparent that the power of the El Stone is fading, humans and Nasods struggled against each other to conserve the power of the El for their side. Then the Nasod Turned Against Their Masters and causes a revolt that devastated the world, but humans ultimately won and the rest of the ancient Nasods went into hiding. This had the unpleasant side effect of encouraging slavery since the Nasods are no longer there for them.
    • Another robot war breaks out in the main story, this time involving our heroes.
  • Ruins for Ruins' Sake: The Forest Ruins in Ruben region. We're told that preserving those ruins is important, yet we never know what those ruins were.
  • Scary Scorpions: There are scorpion enemies in Bethma, as well as a gigantic version of them as a miniboss. Robotic scorpions also appear in Altera.
    • One of the available mounts is based on said robot scorpions. Although they may help you, they still look rather scary.
  • Schizo Tech: Here, you have both the fantasy lore and the high-end technology (from the Nasods).
  • School Uniforms are the New Black: Some of the purchasable costumes are school uniforms. Do the math.
  • Schrödinger's Gun: In Elesis's story, if the player chooses to become a Grand Master, then Elesis, upon discovering the demon attack in Feita, grabs a few soldiers and trains them incessantly to counteract the Demon attacks, gaining the title of Grand Master, and then, after beating the Demons in Feita, she goes back to Velder and forms an entire army under her command, creating the Red Knights. If you choose to become a Blazing Heart, however, Elesis is simply rumored to be the reincarnation of a great warrior that could control the essence of fire itself, and someone else created the knights.
  • Screen Shake: Some of the player characters' attacks and a few of the enemies' moves can cause the screen to shake.
  • Screw Yourself: It's pretty frequent in fanarts and fanfics. In a variant, the characters are shipped with another path version of the same character (e.g Reckless Fist x Blade Master or Sakra Devanam x Yama Raja).
  • Secret A.I. Moves: All Epic NPC heroes in arena.
    • Lowe (Lord Knight) has increased range on everything due to his Large Sword and has Heavy Landing, a more vertical version of the Lord Knight's Rolling Smasher. His Armor Break will also have 100% chance of dealing the ailment.
    • Penensio (Rune Slayer) has access to a special Barrier Rune (and in servers which haven't gotten the Evolution updates, the Heat and Freeze runes also apply) which serves as an obstacle and damages enemies who hit it and the roar which completely depletes a player's MP and deals 33% of their HP as damage, and has infinite range. Amusingly enough, his version of Luna Blade reduces less MP than the Rune Slayer's.
      • After the Evolution update, him having both Storm Blade and Luna Blade (as well as both elemental runes) counts - the update only allow you to have one of them.
    • Speka (Void Princess) has an infinite Mana Shield and her Dark Cloud depletes both HP and MP, instead of just HP. In servers which doesn't have the Evolution update, Petite Angkor - Heavy Doll (Which is a stationary trap that attaches itself to enemies who get too close) also applies. Her Flame Circle will also deal full damage regardless of distance, which means that it can potentially deal a lot of damage. Her Plasma Cutter also fires 3 lasers at once, instead of one.
    • Noah (Elemental Master) also has an infinite Mana Shield, can freeze players with Iceberg, her Blizzard Shower hits multiple times per "ice meteor" (though hers doesn't have an immediate freeze like the regular one, which gives an escape chance), and her Blaze Step is changed to a Freeze Step - which causes frostbite to opponents caught in it. Her iceballs are also valid, in case the server is question doesn't have the Evolution update. Her Flame Circle is also changed to an Ice Circle, and works exactly like Speka's (which means, it deals full damage regardless of distance).
      • Noah doesn't have access to the Elemental Master's X Xv XX, due to being pyrophobic.
    • Amelia (Grand Archer) has access to both versions of the Siege stance, both the new one and the old - now unused - one.
    • Lime (Wind Sneaker) has a grappling arrow that pulls you to her, which she only uses in case you're running away too much.
    • Edan (Blade Master) gains infinite duration on his Bloody Accel, his Shadow Stab is guaranteed to not knockdown and his Emergency Escape has a 99% proc. His XXZ~Z combo is also drastically faster and doesn't knock the opponent away, instead ending with a One-Flash like finisher. He can also do the same roar that Penensio can.
    • Valak (Reckless Fist) completely ignores any and all player defense (though Damage Reduction still applies), his X Xv X combo is extended and severely more damaging, and he can do the exact same roar that Penensio and Edan can, also, like Edan, his Shadow Stab does not knockdown. His Charged Bolt is also slightly bigger than normal, and he doesn't need to charge his Wild Charging (though it has reduced range), his Valkyrie's Javelins also have a much weaker delay than the original. However, his Nuclear is severely weaker than a normal Reckless Fist's.
    • Q-Proto_00 (Code: Nemesis) has an infinite Queen's Throne, is permanently in awakening (which increases all damage she deals by 20%) and a slightly weaker version of Iron Scraps (though it's still a huge threat), can get out of a player's combo at any point by countering and can do a "rain" of spears coming from the ground with very, VERY heavy hitstun. Her Cloaking gives her Super Armor for the entire animation, which allows reversals, her Hornet Sting deals much more damage than the original, and due to her permanent awakening, her Generate Black Hole will always be multi-hitnote  and finally, she also has access to the roar that Penensio, Valak and Edan have.
    • Apple (Code: Empress) is the only one who's largely the same as the original, however, her Charon Guard knocks opponents away (which is only true for some servers) and her Mana Conversion doesn't cost any HP and gives her Super Armor during the animation. Also, her Heaven's Fist can automatically reach the opponent anywhere in the arena (while normally the fist only drops in front of Eve).
  • Sequential Boss: The Wally's Underground Lab and Dragon Nest Abyss stages (both are secret dungeons) has many boss characters (some of them bosses from normal stages) lumped in for extra fun.
  • Set Bonus: Many equipments come in sets; equipping those sets together will yield some extra effects.
  • Set Right What Once Went Wrong: Literally Add's entire motivation to be in his quest is to become strong enough to beat Eve and use her soul as a power source to go back to a time before his parents were killed, so he can save them and stop his forced slavery, torture, isolation and eventual madness.
    • Add goes completely insane at the end of the Time Tracer line when he realizes that this is practically impossible without an astronomic amount of effort.
  • Shield-Bearing Mook: Quite common from Altera dungeon onwards.
  • Ship Tease: The 2013 Valentine's Day and White Day event videos sail the following: Elsword/Aisha, Elsword/Eve, Raven/Rena, and DeadlyChaser/IronPaladin.
    • The 2014 Valentines/Wedding update in NA seems to do this with Elsword/Aisha, Raven/Rena, and Chung/Ara.
  • Shows Damage:
    • Whenever player characters are on critical amount of health, they'll pose differently, frequently being Limp and Livid.
    • The Gate of Darkness will gradually be destroyed once its HP goes down to certain points.
  • Shrinking Violet: Luriel/Ruriel, the Bank NPC.
  • Shout-Out:
    • There is a rat enemy species in the underground waterway called "Micky". note 
    • In the same level, White Ghost Magicians occasionally says "Stop! I'm Gandalf's pal, honest!"
      • On a Lot R note, Elemental Master in one of her cut ins, says "YOU SHALL NOT PASS".
    • Mid-area miniboss Proxy the Nimble bears an uncanny resemblance to Ezio and the other Assassins, right down to the hidden knives.
    • One of Dark Mages'/Void Princess' Skills summons a book with the words Killing Note written on the cover. The Skill is called Death Field.
    • The Five Glitter Troops (a pack of field bosses in Velder) are an obvious shout out to the Power Rangers, right down to them shouting out their names of their own respective colors.
      • Also, note that Glitter Pink wields a bow and Glitter Red wields a spear. Their matching color and weapon schemes are a reference to Madoka and Kyoko.
    • The city of Hamel bears a lot of resemblance to Grand Chokmah. Both are capitals of their own respective kingdoms, are situated along the seaside and use water as their theme, and have a lot of grande structures that are related to arches, viaducts, and bridges.
    • One of Eve's cut-in poses makes a clear reference to Phoenix Wright. Particularly with this image.
    • In the April Fools' Day event, some of the genderbent characters are references to another shows: Ara to Leonidas, Elesis to Aikuro Mikisugi and Add to Saori Bajeena.
    • The charm on Infinity Sword's necklace bears an uncanny resemblance to the Infinity Blade.
    • One of Mastermind's Dynamo Configuration modes uses the Aperture Laboratories logo.
    • The floating island of Altera in general. It is home to a subterranean species of intelligent animals called Pongos who live within the island's cavernous interiors and are at risk of being wiped out by a mass army of killer robots. There are also deadly plants called Alterasia that are poisonous to said species and can corrupt whatever they touch. In addition, most of the dungeons take place in the interior of the island. sound familiar?
    • One of the mounts you can purchase resembles Toothless.
    • Other mounts are shout-outs to other things too, namely Cockatigle (to Final Fantasy), Nightmare (to Ghost Rider) and Nasod Battle Gear (to Gundam).
    • Lots to Grand Chase.
  • Silliness Switch: A number of the costumes and accessories purchasable in the item mall can be used to invoke this. Bunny costumes, crying expression (as an accessory) and even pajamas are just a few examples.
    • From certain events, you can get each character's Chibi costume suit that, well, chibi-fies them.
  • Sinister Geometry: The monsters in first Varnimyr dungeon, Labyrinth of Ruin are geometric Henir lifeforms.
  • Situational Damage Attack:
    • Sword Taker's Hypersonic Stab skill does more damage to the individual enemies if more of them are caught in the line.
    • Psychic Tracer's Static Field first generates a small blast of electricity that can hit multiple enemies at once. Depending on how much the enemy gets hit, you can either release a powerful shock blast that deals higher damage or get some MP back.
    • Arc Tracer's Panzer Buster deals more damage the closer the enemy is to the laser.
      • His other skill Psionic Generator works similarly to Static Field above (minus the MP regain).
    • Battle Magician's Supernova skill's damage depends on how much of her allies and enemies are caught up in the spherical field that appears before the giant magic explosion.
    • Some of Ara's skills depend on the amount of beads inside her Spirit Gauge; the more she has, the stronger the skills become. Same goes for Chung's skills that use ammo for his cannon.
    • After a patch, some skills have its damage reduced over time/long range, so maximum damage would be achieved if you use the skills immediately at closer range to the enemy. E.g High Magician's Blaze Step or Arc Tracer's Panzer Buster.
  • Skill Point Reset: A purchasable item can let you do this. You're also given the item for free whenever you advance to a next class or hit the level cap.
  • Skill Scores and Perks: The game follows the "skill scores" version for their skill system.
  • Sliding Scale of Cooperation vs. Competition: This game falls into the "emergent competition" level, at least in Korean version.
    • The game automatically marks players who don't contribute much in dungeons for a kick vote. In theory, this prevents AFKing players and nudges the rest to contribute in the dungeon play, but as a side effect, players try to out-contribute each other, creating endless discussions of "the best PVE character" and lots of character rebalance updates, and forcing players to get better gear. Essentially, it turns PVE play from cooperative to competitive.
  • Sliding Scale of Plot Versus Characters: The game is more of the plot side of things, as oftentimes the characters' backstory and personality are only there to add nuances to how they face problems, and they rarely get focus (except for a few stages).
  • Smash Mook: Quite a few, such as the Stone Golems (in Feita) or Arc Glitter Panzers (in Velder). All of them are tough mobs with slow but hard-hitting attacks.
  • Socketed Equipment: Equipments can be socketed with "Magic Stones" that gives a particular amount of boost in a particular stat.
    • Meanwhile, equipments can also be given an elemental attribute with El Shards. Attributing weapons means giving a chance of activating an elemental effect on attacks, while attributing armor means giving resistance to said element.
    • A craftable item (with drops from Field Optional Boss as its ingredient) can give you an extra socket slot for your weapon/armors.
  • Solar and Lunar: There exists The Power of the Sun and Lunacy as 2 El Shard elemental types, as well as the associated masters of them in the backstory (Master Solace and Master Ebalon) as well as their respective El Priestesses Gloria and Darkmoon.
  • Special Person, Normal Name: Where else could you find an elf called Chloe or a demon named Victor?
  • Speed Echoes: Some power-ups give the characters this, such as speed potions in dungeons or an effect of Magic Knight's Phoenix Talon.
    • Also seen sometimes when characters use skills, or when Ara is running in midair.
  • Spiritual Successor: Of Grand Chase
    • This game gets its own in form of Closers Online, made by Naddic Games which houses former KOG employees including Elsword's original artist, RESS.
  • Spell Levels: Skills are divided into categories - Passive (skills that have passive effects), Active (those that don't trigger the Super Move Portrait Attack and are usually utility skills with low MP cost), Tenacity (skills that use around 100 MP), Strength (skills that use 150-225 MP), Bravery (skills that use 250-300 MP), and Hyper Active (skills that use 300 MP and a special item, usually covering large area, do hefty amount of damage and have very long cooldown). There's also a skill that you can only get after marriage that heals you to full and gives you quick HP/MP regen for a few seconds.
  • Squashed Flat: One of the status effects in the game. It disables your attacks, but most attacks will pass over you.
  • Starter Equipment: They're all Normal-grade Lv 1 equipments.
  • Starter Villain: Banthus, the very first boss in the very first stage. He's fought 2 more times before being dispatched from the story for good to make way for the new villains.
  • Stationary Boss: Many. To name a few: Plant Overlords in Feita and Alterasia Turret in Altera.
    • Some downplayed it - they can move, but only occasionally, and they're immovable from attacks. Case in point: Amethyst in Feita and Coral Serpents in Hamel.
  • Stationary Wings: Some accessories come in form of wings, that only barely move (if at all) and don't give them flight (but do give them other bonuses).
  • Stat Sticks:
    • The "costumes" - items that are equipped over your normal equipments (such as "glove costume", "weapon costume" and so on) are not substitutes to the actual equipments themselves, but offer additional socket slots (and a few other stats and effects) and make your character look pretty.
    • Also, while most characters will visually attack with their weapons (which gives their stats), there are some cases where they don't (at least not directly), such as how Reckless Fist and Veteran Commander use Raven's Nasod Arm more, yet his attack power still comes from his equippable swords.
  • Status Effect-Powered Ability:
    • Lord Knight's passive "Counter Patience" gives him increased strength that stacks based on the number of negative status effects he's suffering.
    • Fury Guardian's "Caladbolg Pain" skill does extra damage the more status ailments the enemy has.
    • Blazing Heart's "Fire Blossoms" passive, by random chance, turns any status ailments she may have into a flower of fire, which can be picked up by her or her allies for a buff.
    • Iron Paladin's Burst Wolf skill lets him transfer any status ailments he may have to the enemies that get hit by it.
  • Steam Vent Obstacle: A few of these appear in certain levels.
  • Storming the Castle: The stages Wally Castle, Altera Core, Halls of Water and Trock's Lair are all about assaults on the enemies' headquarters.
  • Succubi and Incubi: They appear in later Sander stages as mobs, along with their leader, Queen Karis.
  • Sugar-and-Ice Personality: Eve.
  • Superboss:
    • There are seven superbosses, waiting for player at the end of secret dungeons. Alterasia Type-H gets special mention for being endlessly infuriating due to a fight essentially rigged against you.
    • Steel Watcher Eltrion's boss area can only be accessed from the Fields and is only open periodically. It's a gigantic Ro Beast who has 99 bars of HP and devastating area-clearing attacks. Normally, the battle was rigged so that, even though the game allows 12 players to be in the fight at any given time, Eltrion would still be a Marathon Boss. Unfortunately this is hardly the case, as while the battle has a 12-minute time limit, and most people who are interested in Eltrion's drops normally have equipment strong enough to destroy him in 6~7 minutes. There have even been reports of the best players in the server getting matched together and killing him in less than 2 minutes.
    • An update added Drabaki, a gigantic Creepy Centipedes that sometimes will appear in place of fellow superboss Eltrion.
  • Super Move Portrait Attack: All characters display this whenever they do a Special Active or Hyper Active skill.
    • There's an purchasable item in Item Mall that gives you alternative portraits for each class.
  • Superpowered Mooks: Some mooks are able to replicate some skills of the player character. For example, there are some Elite Mooks in the Velder secret stage which replicates Aisha, Rena and Raven's skills.
    • There's also the Red Knights in Hamel region that has Elsword's skills (either as Lord Knight or Rune Slayer). In one level they're helping you (after you free them), in another they're your enemies (because they're Brainwashed and Crazy).
  • Super-Speed: Oberon is capable of doing this in one of the active skills. But Raven as Sword Taker cuts everything up with one slash (depending on the number of enemies within the range).
    • Ara's job advancement Sakra Devanam can even do Teleport Spam as she slashes enemies in range.
  • Sword Lines: Each characters' normal attacks have lines following them. Exceptions would be Rena's kicks and Add's most attacks (as he rarely employs his dynamos directly).
    • If your weapon have been socketed with enough (certain) elemental stones, the lines will turn red/blue/green.
    • Some mobs have these as well.
  • Taken for Granite: The effect of light-elemental weapons is to turn the enemy temporarily into stone.
  • Take Your Time: Par of the course - some of the missions display urgency that is not expressed in gameplay.
  • Technicolor Blade: Many blades (especially the rarer ones) come in many kinds of colors and patterns.
  • Technology Porn: Chung's Trailer turns his Berserk Mode transformation into a sequence that would have done Iron Man proud.
  • Teleport Spam: The Sakra Devanam can burst her entire En Gauge to activate Shallow Assault, which is literally a Teleport Spam of massive proportions, she will only stop when her En Gauge runs out. One of Elesis's Jobs Paths, Blazing Heart, has her own version of this called Blazing Dance, which is limited to only five teleports, but looks every bit as cool.
    • Add's first job change, Psychic Tracer, has a few combo extensions he can do after every normal combo, all of them start with a teleport, and they're spammable.
  • Techno Wreckage: the entirety of the Altera secret dungeon consists of broken Nasods infected with the Alterasia plant and its poisonous spores filling the whole place.
  • Temple of Doom: Hamel's secret dungeon Temple of Trials takes place in a temple full with traps.
  • Tomorrow Land: Atlas Station takes place within a futuristic environment, with the area's dungeons and hunting fields being overrun by mechanical mooks.
  • Threatening Mediator: Rena, who's usually nice, becomes so angry at Elsword and Aisha for butting heads with each other that they're reduced into cowering in terror.
  • Timed Mission: Not a strict example, per se, but appears in Altera's secret dungeon due to it being heavily contaminated with poisonous plants and your only protection lasting for about 10 minutes. Also some of the main quests and side quests.
    • Was played straight all the way back in Season 1 though, and it was coupled with Nightmare Fuel too, as the timer ran out the screen got progressively darker, once it ran out, the dungeon would "light out" and all players would immediately die and not have the option of using ressurrection stones, immediately failing the mission. The Nightmare Fuel comes from when the lights go out, if the timer ends during the stage portion all you could see were the particle effects of the Alterasia Pollen in the air... Time out in the boss's chamber though, and not only could you see the pollen, you could also see the boss's Red Glowing Eyes, staring directly at the screen.
    • Steel Watcher Eltrion's battle has a 12-minute time limit, after which, he simply gets bored and leaves, and the battle ends in failure.
    • Add's Energy Fusion Theory dungeon has no time limit, but it is advised to clear it as quickly as possible as the enemies there gets stronger over time.
  • Token Mini-Moe: Aisha is often portrayed as such by fandoms, Lu and Laby.
    • Chung and Noah could be seen as such too, even if they are male.
  • Tone Shift: The game's background story noticeably darkens from Feita onward, with increasingly-monstrous Demons taking the place of the bandits, lizardmen and Nasods that had previously been the primary foes. The story also focuses more on big wars as opposed to the raids in the previous sagas.
    • Particularly jarring in that the Altera region looks like something that came from a mixture of Sci Fi and Fantasy genres, while Feita is squarely in Fantasy, taking place inside an ancient ruin.
  • Total Eclipse of the Plot: The Harmony Festival is celebrated when the sun and moon became one (apparently every 3 years), the sky will become dark and all living creatures spend this time to unwind and enjoy each other’s company (hence "harmony".) This also apparently the time when the El Stone generates massive amounts of energy and thus become unstable when not checked.

    Then in one Harmony Festival night, one of the El Lady's aides, Master Solace, feeling a certain sympathy over the lady, attacks the El Tower where the El Stone was placed and then disappears together with the El Lady. The El Stone, left unchecked, generates too much energy and explodes, causing the world to shake violently, causing the continent to split in two.
  • The Tower: The Temple of Feita has this in the middle of it. Some of the region's stages take place on it. As well the the El Tower in Elrianode.
  • Tremor Trampoline: A few of the mooks and bosses' attacks are tremor-inducing smashes that can launch you to the air.
  • Turns Red:
    • The Nasod Inspector's movement will get faster when in critical level of health.
    • The Ancient Bone Dragon will generate intense heat that burns you if you get near it, in critical level of health.
    • Magmanta will summon lots of spider mooks while low on health.
    • Ran has 2 levels of this: One where he's down to 3/4 health (where his attacks have Mana Burn effect), and another where he's down to 1/2 health (where his attacks have fire effects and he breaks out his most powerful moves).
    • Kill One, Others Get Stronger: When the 3 Plant Overlords are down to one, the last one will mutate to a stronger form, slightly healing itself as well as attacking much faster.
  • 20 Bear Asses: Par of the course.
  • Twinking: The Level-Locked Loot system is in effect, but only with equipment, so you can trade everything else with all your created characters. Newly-made characters, during their first five days, cannot send things from the mailbox, do transactions with other players, or sell items on the market, to limit this.
  • Underground Monkey: Many kinds of mooks have their own stronger versions; if not in a later level, then definitely in the secret dungeons. An example would be Glitter Pounder (in Feita dungeons), then Glitter Dasher (still in Feita), Arc Glitter Dasher (in Velder dungeons) and finally Bloody Glitter Dasher (in Velder secret dungeon).
  • The Unfought: You never get to fight Wally in person. Instead, he gets rather spectacularly blown up alongside his Cargo Airship by The Black Crow.
  • Unholy Ground: The Black Forest is stated to be having insane amounts of Henir energy that simply entering it is deemed dangerous as it risks of getting insane or killed by mutated monsters. Likewise, the Central Fluone near the Elrianode Capital has also corrupted by Henir. Laby however are able to get through these areas due to being resistant to Henir energy.
  • Universal Poison: Whether it's Jubigee's poisonous spores or Magmanta's poisonous spit, all of them can be resisted by similar means (enchanting your armor with Nature element) and cured by the same antidote.
  • Unobtainium: Mainly the El Shards, which are rare, sold in high prices, and used in many things as enhancement items. Aside from that, the playable characters' class upgrades uses other kinds of unobtainium as catalyst.
  • Vapor Wear: Some of the female characters' costumes have this in effect.
  • Verbal Tic: Chacha Buch from Bethma has "buch" and the Ponggos from Altera have "pong" in most of their sentences.
  • Veteran Instructor: Camilla (an NPC) was a famous gladiator before she became a Battle Arena administrator. She also teaches adventurers new skills in her spare time.
  • Violation of Common Sense: Elsword, Raven, Chung and Ara moves faster when jumping than when running. As a result, it's rare to see experienced players of these characters ever touching the ground for extended periods of time.
  • Void Between the Worlds: Henir's Time and Space is hinted to be this. Field Bonus Boss fights are also hinted to take place in one. Chaos Labyrinth is set in Henir space between the rift that appeared in Elrianode City and Varnimyr region in the Demon World.
  • Wacky Wayside Tribe: Bethma, technically, since the majority of it is about fending off attacks of the Lizardmen tribe, while the previous plot (chasing Lord Wally) is left hanging until Bethma's fifth stage.
  • Waddling Head: the Mana Eater and Blood Eater mobs are just ball-shaped creatures with small stubby legs. Don't be deceived though - when they run, they run rather fast.
  • Wake-Up Call Boss: Those bosses will teach you that bumrushing (something that works for bosses before them) isn't always going to work. You'll have to be aware of automatic "super armor" which puts them into temporary no-flinch status once they've taken enough hits. Some of them also have super armor while executing certain attacks(usually the most powerful ones) and will be able to interrupt you mid-combo if you so much as hesitate.
    • Berauk and Kayak are two bosses that will really learn you how to pay attention to dodging. While the former is fairly forgiving as he does not do as much damage(but can drain you off mana easily with status effects), the latter has a homing magical projectile, devastating fire-based attacks and summons a previous boss once his health gets low enough.
    • Then there's Wally No.9, who, unlike other bosses faced so far, moves almost as swiftly as you, super armors at will and can take a potshot at you with no warning from across the map if you refuse to approach him. And you had to fight another boss just a minute earlier with no chance of recovery in-between.
    • Raven moves on the exact same rules as the player character and can combo you with impunity if you so much as let him hit you with his Nasod Arm.
    • Magmanta the spider will punish bumrushing with jumping into the background, having mini spiders drop down while it goes about unleashing wide poison sprays. Even at best, this'll drag the fight out for 1-2 minutes each time.
  • Walk, Don't Swim: When in the underwater levels, you can't swim - instead you walk slow and jump high.
  • Walking Swimsuit Scene: You can give your female characters swimsuit costumes.
  • Wallet of Holding: You can hold up to around 2 billion ED in your inventory without any issues.
  • Warmup Boss: Banthus, who unlike the mooks in the first dungeon is capable of jumping.
  • Warp Whistle: You can warp to a specific point in the world map at the cost of some ED.
  • Weak, but Skilled: A possible set up using rare Unique-grade equipment from rare boxes. They have lower stats than the other endgame equipments, but come with the benefit of adding bonuses to specific skills. Some characters benefit from these sets more than others.
  • Weapon of X-Slaying: A variant: Some of the titles you can acquire lets you deal more damage to certain kind of enemies, such as "Phoru Slayer" for Phoru mobs or "Band of Trocks" for Trock mobs.
  • We Buy Anything: No matter which kind of shop you go into, you can sell virtually anything there.
  • Which Me?: It gets somewhat confusing when you get to the Black Crow as Raven and have to fight...Raven. Also, in the Eltype comic serialization, Aisha experiences this when she dreams about life in the future. Each character has advanced to their last job class, only for their alternate job path selves to later appear, Aisha's included.
  • World in the Sky: The Elysion region which is in a separate dimension from Elrios, where the Nasods thrived on floating landmasses after escaping from their extinction in Elrios.
  • Wutai: The North Floune is where the East Asian-themed Xin Empire of Elrios located. Ara originates from its capital Fahrmann. Laby had wandered into a village that left untouched by the demon invasion led by Ran.
  • You Get Knocked Down, You Get Back Up Again: You're invulnerable every time you get knocked down (including in PVP).
    • This is one of the key mechanics in PVP; many guides will tell you how not to knock enemy down prematurely, and some characters have passives that prolong combos (as comboing normally will eventually knock down the enemy after several hits) and/or a special attack that delay the knock down.
    • Aside from that, some characters have passives that allows them to get back up again faster.
    • The mobs, however, aren't invulnerable (though they are Immune to Flinching and most of the time have Damage Reduction during getting up) so whaling on the knocked down enemy is often a standard tactic. However, be wary of mobs (and sometimes bosses) with a Recovery Attack.
    • However due to how the damage reduction increases in later areas, recklessly knocking down enemies is heavily frowned upon by most.
  • Your Princess Is in Another Castle!: During Ruben-Altera storyline, every time our heroes almost reach the El Stone and whoever's holding it at the moment, said stone gets stolen/given to another baddie. Only after defeating King Nasod do the heroes finally managed to complete their mission.
  • Zettai Ryouiki: With the cash shop you can dress up your girl characters into this. What class is up to you but class A or S is possible. Velder Academy costumes also has this for Lu and Laby.
  • Zip Mode: Cobo Services lets you transport between towns for a fee, depending on how great the distance is. Since you can access any dungeon from any town, it's mostly for getting to fields for quests or to towns with specific items.
  • Zombie Puke Attack: Field Boss Bater (a stronger variant of Zombie Glitters) has an attack where he pukes out poisonous gas at you that will hurt continuously.


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