YMMV / AdventureQuest 3D

• Awesome Art: The devs have to be given credit for the amazing 3D world they've created, with very fine detail on each map and simply stunning landscapes.
• Awesome Music: The Ashfall and Akriloth themes, suitably epic themes for one hell of an epic storyline.
• Complete Monster: "Dragons of Ashfall" Saga: Talyn the DragonLord is first introduced when his previous dragon that he was bonded to gets slain by a DragonSlayer. A delighted Talyn thanks said DragonSlayer for this, as with his previous dragon partner gone it allows him to bond with a stronger dragon. Specifically, Talyn plans to awaken and enslave Akriloth the Great Fire Dragon, which he would then use to lay waste to the entire world. In order to awaken the dragon, Talyn would require several tributes, one of which being livestock for it to feed upon. Talyn's choice of livestock ends up being humans; to this end, Talyn has his minions capture villages of humans, and intends to breed them like animals. When The Hero and DragonSlayer Essa manage to foil this plan and celebrate their victory, Talyn shows up out of nowhere and kills Essa by stabbing her In the Back with his sword out of spite. Once the Hero ruins three of his tributes, Talyn then vows to use his final tribute, the Fire Orb, to forcefully awaken Akriloth, before enslaving its mind with his Dragon Amulet, at which point his new slave could have "as many tributes as it wished".
• Creepy Cute: Squee the Tavern Moglin Mascot, who acts like she's possessed all the time.
• Crosses the Line Twice: Morgul is notorious for doing this, making insensitive or plain inappropriate remarks at times when someone is grieving or in danger.
• Demonic Spiders:
  • Dravir Soldiers in Brimston Ruins when questing on-level. They have more health than any other common enemy in the area, usually come in packs, and hit pretty hard for their level.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Drickens have gained this status, being the AQ3D equivalent of the beloved ChickenCows. They ended up getting introduced back into AdventureQuest Worlds.
• Fandom Rivalry: With AdventureQuest Worlds to a degree, over which is the superior MMO, and due to the fact that some of the staff for AQW were moved to work on this game. However, this is mostly one-sided as fans of AQW feel that their game is being neglected in favor of this game, while most fans of AQ3D are either indifferent towards or are also fans of AQW (although some do complain that AQW is pay-to-win in some aspects).
  • EpicDuel’s fanbase is in a similar spot with AQW’s since Titan is working on this game. This was lessened after Artix himself confirmed that Titan would be given more time to work on EpicDuel.
• Game-Breaking Bug: Some maps had a habit of making players fall through the floor and tumbling through an endless dark void swallowing the screen up. Artix Entertainment later implemented an auto respawn whenever this glitch comes up.
• Goddamned Bats:
  • Sneevils in Greenguard forest. New players will find these little goblins swarming them, and being killed within seconds.
  • The Bridge Skeleton mobs on Shadowskull Bridge could also qualify, although players have devised strategies to overcome this by standing in masses and using Area of Effect attacks simultaneously to kill heaps of them at once.
  • Any of the lesser monsters in an Epic Dungeon.
  • The Loyal Firezards and Loyal Phans found in the "Valek's Challenge" Dungeon. Level 20 monsters (where at the time of release the players maxed out at 16). They are incredibly annoying, as the pathway to Valek (the Boss) is full of them, and they can take off large amounts of player HP or even kill you before reaching the Boss.
  • Any of the non-boss enemies in the Vengeance and Bamboo Forest challenges, as killing them provides very little benefit, and are moreso distractions from the dungeon’s real goal. It’s much more beneficial if you use a travel form to easily escape from the enemies in those dungeons.
• Goddamned Boss: The Cryptodirax is a boss that not only runs away frequently, but it also requires you to farm the enemies over and over due to the fact that it can't be attacked without using Spicy Bait first (and even then, the effects wear off after a bit, forcing you to farm again unless you have some spare bait). While it's resting, it also heals a lot of HP every few seconds.
• Good Bad Bugs:
  • There are quite a few "climbing glitches", that allow players to scale buildings and walk on roof tops. While climbing is an intentional feature, they sometimes turn up in places even the devs didn't know about.
  • In the Ashfall maps, jumping into the lava is supposed to trigger an auto respawn, but sometimes the respawn kicks in late and it will be possible to run on the lava for a time.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "When It's Ready O'Clock"^note one of the notes featured for the loading screens in regards to when the game will update. Cysero uses a similar caption on his Twitter.
  • Players intentionally jumping into the lava at Ashfall.
• Moral Event Horizon: DragonLord Talyn was already portrayed as one of the most monstrous, sadistic, heartless villains the game has ever seen. However he really crossed the irredeemable line when he kills Essa in front of the player character by stabbing her In the Back.
• Player Punch: Essa being killed by DragonLord Talyn is to serve as a reminder that this game isn't just about exploring the land and that the stakes are just as high for the player in any other game.
• That One Boss:
  • The Bone Spiders in the Nightlocke Crypt Dungeons, with the ability to poison players which will kill them quicker. The fact that the Dungeons only allowed 3 players, makes the Spiders even harder to defeat.
  • General Gathomor in Shadowskull Bridge. One of the hardest monsters in the game for a long time, with a level of 16 (players maxed out at 15 at that point). It takes at least 2-3 level 15 players to bring him down.
  • Enraged Valek in "Valek's Challenge" Dungeon replaced Gathomor as the hardest monster in the game, with a level of 25 (by this time the new max level for players was 16). It takes 10 or so level 15-16 players to slowly wear him down.
  • Li’l Dage in the Arena of Souls is easily the hardest boss there, what with his constant skeletal minion summoning, using Thousand Cuts to silence you and your party members, and using Holy Bolt to heal over 5000 HP to himself, making it especially difficult if you’re soloing him or are fighting him with not many other players. It doesn’t help that since he frequently targets ranged players, he’s very hard to hit with physical classes as the ranged players often kite him around. And you need to kill him numerous times in order to get certain parts of the Legion Heretic set.
  • Raytengu in the Bamboo Forest challenge counts, having a variety of hard-hitting attacks like Crippling Blow (shared by Li’l Dage mentioned above) and Tsuchi. It only gets worse when he teleports away and summons waves of shadows that share a lot (but thankfully not all) of his attacks. There are also all sorts of hidden barrels that deal incredibly high damage scattered across the map, often leaving you weakened when you find Raytengu again. The kicker? You need to beat him numerous times if you want some of the best equipment for level 27/29 players in the game, and potentially much, much, MUCH more than that if you want the Lightning Halo. If you don’t have a Necromancer, Guardian, or Berserker on your team, good luck.
    • Recent updates have also buffed his Frozen Winds skill during the final phase so that not only does it slow down players hit by it, but it also leaves a cloud of fog on the ground, making it hard to see the AoE markers. What makes things worse is that his Shadows can use the skill too...
  • Son of Braken in the Ship’s Bow challenge is not only a long fight; it’s a very difficult one as well. Most of the issues lie in the first and final phases, where you’re directly attacking him. He uses a (thankfully fixed) pattern of hard-hitting AoE attacks, and in the final phase, he has his similarly hard-hitting tentacles assisting him, leaving you with a lot to dodge if you don’t take out the tentacles quickly. If you die even once, you get booted from the dungeon without any rewards whatsoever. And this boss, along with Raytengu mentioned above, drops some of the best equipment in the game for level 29 players.
  • Prince Vlad during the Darkovia saga has a variety of hard-hitting attacks, but most of the difficulty comes from the VERY hard-hitting bat swarms he summons. It CAN be interrupted by Mage, Dragonslayer, or Moglomancer, but the cast time is very, very short, so hope you have good reflexes. And you have to fight him by yourself.
  • The lich Noxus' rematch is sure to put you in situations that leave you... well, boned. The first phase of the fight isn't too difficult, just as long as you remember to hide behind the pillars when he charges up Death Nova, and to stay out of the green magical circle when he begins to leech souls to heal. However, his second phase is where most of the problems start rolling in. Once you're in the Necrotic Realm, he can try and trap you under skeletal hands that slow you down and deal heavy tick damage, and he also loves to swipe down your bone bridges before following up with Death Bomb to kill those who can't repair the bridges quickly enough. He also has a giant skull that randomly shoots a massive green beam flying around the arena, almost guaranteed to kill those caught in its firing range. The worst part? If you die, you're hurled into a bone prison, unable to do anything until your teammates rescue you, which takes a very long time and often leaves them vulnerable to Noxus' attacks. If everyone dies? You're kicked out of the dungeon and sent down to the skeleton pit in the Tower of Necromancy, being forced to start all over again. Have fun! Thankfully, a lot of his equipment are considered the best in the game for level 31 players, so the struggle is at least somewhat reasonable.
  • Counting limited-time events, General G. Fuel (either mascot or executive overseeing distribution of the knock-off parody energy drink Goblin Fuel) is far and beyond harder than the other bosses in the Moistverse, even in the initial (mandatory solo) fight against him needed to complete the storyline - and it turns out that's him taking it easy on you. This despite him being a pushover in terms of straight melee combat. His most common attacks are bombs of various sizes, timed so you've got enough time to be out of range of any one before it goes off (except the smallest, which hit very hard but will miss you if you're moving at all). The problem is the random bomb patterns may mean that once a bomb is descending to your location previous bombs may have left you no clean way out. And from the start he's explosion-proof and proving it by manually smashing giant bombs down at his own feet. Then he starts breaking out occasional invincible Beehive Barrier shields, and calling in air support to drop cluster bombs which burn, freeze or melt parts of the stage. These are eminently avoidable provided you aren't dodging his regular bombs at the same time. At around this point he starts mixing into his bomb-smashing Dynamo attacks the similarly-set-up Tornado Fuel, which lets him move while channeling and will hurt if you aren't prepared to run from it. Across the bombs. Then he starts calling in air support for heavier bombing runs. Once you're up to the optionally multiplayer challenge levels, his air support starts dropping bombs whose explosion radius is most of the avaiable stage, in groups, powerful enough to one-shot you, and with so many overlapping warning signs it's hard to tell which area will kill you first to escape to. There is simply no reliable way to defeat him in his party levels; increasing the number of players helps the most only by increasing the chance dumb luck will avoid a Party Wipe long enough for somebody to respawn - and that's the best option. He can be soloed, either by picking a high-damage ranged class like Pirate and getting lucky (by avoiding everything and him not going invincible for long enough to bring him down) or by picking a self-healing class (preferably ranged, meaning Healer) and getting lucky (by not getting an inescapable one-shot bomb pattern and recovering from all the glancing hits for the notably longer period required to bring him down). At least you get a title for getting through one of his challenge battles (although if you want exclusive loot or crafting materials that's another matter entirely), and after you've soloed his "easy mode" he'll send you to a non-instanced and -combat version of his battle arena for the asking (it's an octagon of deck plating riding a massive rocket careening around a world of floating rocks, fireworks, rainbows and airships, so a spectacular view in itself).
• That One Level: A lot of the parkour levels and dungeons are considered this by the community (especially from mobile players), but the Clock Tower in Darkovia Castle warrants special mention. Not only do you have to fight enemies littering the dungeon, but you also have to jump through a long series of parkour obstacles (with you often being one-shotted if you mess up)... and if you die once? You're booted right back to the beginning of the dungeon... unless you jump down to hit a button that activates a portal to the dungeon's boss. Fortunately, the enemies don't respawn.

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