Ragnarok Online

Ragnarok Online is a Korean Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game established in 2001 by Gravity Co., Ltd. Originally an adaption of the manhwa Ragnarok (1997), RO was eventually released to several countries, yet mostly stayed popular in Asia. Most Korean online Role Playing Games afterwards have had a nasty habit of almost copying the game to a T; it might have popularized the free beta idea as well, not to mention, possibly, the more-or-less standard licensing architecture foreign online game developers tend to use when setting their games up overseas. In a rather sad twist, more people play Ragnarok than World of Warcraft... if you count all the illegal, mostly free private servers.

Also of note is Ragnarok Online's rather colourful history, markedly moreso than most Massively Multiplayer games and definitely remarkable given the game's general success despite the various tribulations. At the end of its original closed beta period, a group of hackers, apparently angered by the game moving into a pay to play format, attacked the servers, not only of the game but Gravity as well, destroying everything, setting RO's development back, and causing it to disappear from the radar for a long time before finally resurfacing. A lot of anger can be seen under the community at this, at times, as not only did it enable the private servers to come about by stealing a copy of the basic Aegis architecture at the core of the game, but caused many features, such as player owned apartments, to be dropped from the final release. Not to mention a near disastrous case of Executive Meddling by Samsung after they saved Gravity from total bankruptcy (though Samsung saw how horrible things were going because of the meddling, and backed off just in time).

Since 2004, Gravity has been developing a sequel to Ragnarok Online. The first attempt was Ragnarok II: The Gate of the World, but was scrapped in 2010. In its place came Ragnarok II: Legend of the Second, which has launched in South Korea, Southeast Asia, and internationally. Interestingly, the sequel did not cause the original to be closed down, rather, they both are being run together at the same time.

At 2018, the original PC game gets a mobile 3D reboot named Ragnarok M: Eternal Guardians of Love released under a collaboration with Big Cat Company.

At July 2020, Gravity has launched a separate mobile game titled Ragnarok Origin in Korea.

Ragnarok Online provides examples of:

• Absurdly Spacious Sewer: Both Prontera and Glast Heim's culverts, though not serious offenders, both cities being large, ancient affairs, and even then the culverts feature large numbers of difficult-looking walk-ways on the rare occasions the characters aren't simply wading through sewage.
• Action Commands: Both the Monk and Taekwon Kid/Master classes use these to initiate specific skills and combos.
• Aerith and Bob: NPC names appear to have been picked at random from a database of Names From Around the World.
• Alliterative Name: The Biolabs' ghosts Errende Ebecee and Kathryne Keyron.
• An Adventurer Is You: As a rule, most classes can generally follow at least three of the archetypes, or a combination thereof - often more, and sometimes with somewhat unusual possibilities and 'user-created' ones. Especially of note for the former is the 'Super Novice' class, which can take skills from any of the classes a novice can become (barring extended classes), and for the latter, the 'perma-' characters, which aren't so much classes as a willful decision not to progress, and usually stand to prove just how scary a level 99 Acolyte can be (looking at you, Aragan). While still uncommon, this seems to be remarkably fashionable compared to most MMOs.
• The Anime of the Game: Ragnarok the Animation. Humorous, since the anime is based on the world of Ragnarok Online, which is loosely based on the original Ragnarok manhwa. The natural consequence of Adaptation Displacement.
• Apathetic Citizens: Town NPCs are completely unfazed whenever aggressive monsters show up. Kafra maids, the game's version of the Save Point and other useful utilities, also show up at various dungeon entrances, even if the map itself is hostile.
• Arrows on Fire: Fire arrows. Pretty common as well.
• Artificial Stupidity: In an art form. Many skills seem to even be designed to take advantage of the fact that all aggressive monsters make a bee-line for players or stand in place and rain projectiles.
• Ascended Extra: Do you know that Endless Tower is based on Ragnarok DS' Tower of Mirage?
• Awesome, but Impractical:
  • Mages get quite a few of these. The Mighty Staff adds a huge amount of Strength, yet is mostly useless for most stat builds that mages use. The Dagger of Counter gives the largest critical bonus in the game, yet is usually employed during PVP to stall other players.
  • Soul Linkers can also use the Dagger of Counter, which can turn them into Lethal Joke Characters when built properly, at the expense of longer leveling time (since all you can do is whacking one monster at a time with critical hits).
  • Certain Monk builds can enjoy the power boost from the Mighty Staff as well.
  • The Taekwon class is practically made of this trope. First, there is a massive power for a massive Interface Screw exchange detailed below. Secondly, there is their ability to become an unstoppable engine of destruction - but only after getting a specific buff from other class and only on three maps in the whole game, decided once and for all. It is possible to change the maps, but it's very impractical to do so, and you need some assistance to do it.
  • Water Ball is an extremely fast, easily spammable, high-damaging Water spell - more so for Rogue classes, who can actually copy an overleveled version (level 10, while the version used by Wizard classes only goes up to level 5). The catch? First, you can't spam it unless you're either standing on water or have a Ninja or Sage slave to help you. Second, if you're using it on a non-PvP scenario, take a guess on what's the Element of most monsters that lives near or in the water. There's a hidden sewer in Glast Heim (Sewer lv3) that's the perfect place for leveling up Water Ball Wizards/Rogues, at least.
• Back Stab: Used to be the main skill for Rogues, but has been seriously nerfed over the years.
• Bare-Fisted Monk: The Monk class progression, naturally.
• Beauty Is Never Tarnished: For some odd reason the females in the official art show no scars or battle damage at all. The males have a different story.
• The Beastmaster:
  • The Alchemist class and the Homunculi.
  • A few other classes have animal partners as well. Hunters and Snipers have their falcons, and the new Rangers have wolves called Wargs.
  • There is current talk and possible proof of an actual pet-based class. Along with one based off of the undead lovers Bongun and Munaks.
  • A class explicity called "Beastmaster" replaces the Bard/Dancer choice for Archers in the sequel.
• Betting Mini-Game - The Casino in the southern beach town, Comodo. It was removed from the International release.
• BFS:
  • The Atlas Weapon and the Doom Bringer, the latter of which is actually a terribly weak axe unless the user has over 90 base STR.
  • Another pretty good example would be the Violet Fear, a huge sword which was made from two magic (and equally huge) swords fused into one. Those two swords is a drop from a huge monster that wield them, the Naght Sieger.
• Black Mage: The Mage class
• The Black Smith: The Blacksmith class progression, currently culminating in wrench-wielding gadgeteers.
• Boring, but Practical: Pretty much the basis of the entire game. Wizards and most classes alike tend to be strapped with one main, powerful skill to use throughout their entire leveling career, and most flashy, rare weapons tend to not be anywhere near as powerful as customized "normal" weapons. This is because of the upgrade process - a normal weapon being lost to upgrading is at least a smaller loss to replace than losing a rare weapon, and so people will usually favour using upgraded versions of normal weapons rather than rare ones.
• Boss in Mook Clothing: Loads. Among the most (in)famous are the Valkyries of Odin's Temple and the Transcendent Ghosts from the Biolabs.
  • The Pori Pori is the supreme example of this. Disguised as an ordinary Poring, the weakest monster in the game, this monster has close to 100 million HP, ridiculous attack power, can strip gear, and cast, in some cases, twice-as-powerful versions of player skills.
  • The Valkyries might still not count - anything that big's bound to leave a mark, right? But the Biolabs ghosts sure as hell do. The worst offender is Cecil Damon, whose normal attacks are already nearly as painful as a normal Sniper's Double Strafe, yet can still quadruple her attack power. What's irritating about the Biolab minibosses is that not only do they look exactly like the normal enemies in that dungeon, but there are fake bosses among them.
• Bragging Rights Reward:
  • The Boy's Cap, which does absolutely nothing, but requires 20 rare drops from a boss, among other things.
  • For that matter, a lot of the game's hats could be considered this. Yes, some of them have nice effects, but some of them also require you to have hundreds or even thousands of a single enemy drop by high-level creatures.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: What becomes to Nydhogg when Satan Morroc's seal was weakened. She gets better after we snapped her Shadow.
• Breakable Weapons: Renewal now allows all weapons to break unless they have "unbreakable" effect (during pre-Renewal only a small few kinds of weapon cannot break), along with some skills and weapons that can damage them, rendering them unequippable until repaired. Annoyingly, there is no durability gauge or notification unlike Ragnarok II: Legend of the Second apart from the name of the weapon outlined in red when they do break.
  • There's a worse degree of breaking that has always existed since pre-Renewal: attempting to refine a piece of equipment to increase its performance permanently has a fat chance of destroying it. It wasn't so bad when the refine level only goes up to +10 in pre-Renewal, since the safe refine level can be up to +7 depending on type of equipment, but after Renewal, the refine level can go up to +20, yet the upgrading safe level doesn't change.
• Bribing Your Way to Victory: Certain servers have service providers that sell useful virtual items for real life money.
  • In addition, some private servers will reward the player with a (sometimes) custom item, usually quite good, for donating to the server or buying limited edition swag.
  • And then we have Merchant-class characters who use their in-game money to use their skills. Perhaps they thought about "money is power" a bit too straight...
• Calling Your Attacks: Skill names, when used, turn up in a little text box over characters heads. [ Lord of Vermillion!! ]
  • A special, hidden ability is available to the Super Novice while their experience percentage is a multiple of ten. By the player themselves calling (typing) the lines: 'Dear angel, can you hear my voice?', 'I am <name> Super Novice~', 'Help me out~ Please~ T_T', '<final line of player's composition, triggering activation>', they can invoke an angel's blessings ( massive bonus to critical hit rate ). Unfortunately the game can be horribly finicky about syntax here.
• Cast from Hit Points:
  • Scholars use this to convert HP into SP with the Indulge skill.
  • The Paladin's Matyr's Recknoning skill. It hurts like all get out when properly built and ignores defenses but the trade-off is that it takes a lot of HP once you complete the attacks. Better have some Priests and Alchemists with you because after completing the combo the Paladin becomes horribly weak and any Mook can take him out soon after.
  • The Ninja's Killing Stroke deals a powerful attack and leaves the user with 1% of their health.
• Chainmail Bikini: Pretty much literally done with female Rune Knight and Royal Guard. The latter appear to be in a losing game of strip poker but not as close to this trope as their alternate 3rd class.
• Christianity Is Catholic: Rune-Midgart's primary religion is not explicitly Christian, but still has a pointedly Catholic flavour.
  • With the entire setting being based significantly on Norse Mythology, as well. But it still tastes Catholic.
• Church Militant: Crusaders and Monks. And by extension: Battle-build Priests.
• Class Change Level Reset: The game does this with its Rebirth Classes. To obtain the rebirth class, one must get to level 99 and become a High Novice (thus the level reset to 1) and pick the same first and second job classes as the pre-Rebirth one. The second rebirth class has more powerful abilities and skills than the non-rebirth one. Thus, getting 3x the EXP needed than normal to obtain the rebirth classes is recommended to get the best skills for the very powerful third job classes.
• Combat Stilettos: Though the sprites can be hard to tell, the official art for the classes starting from the Rebirth jobs shows all the females wearing high heels apart from the Wanderer, the female Sorcerer and the female Sura.
• Combos: Two classes are mechanically based around combos.
  • The Monk class has skills that can be chained together once the prerequisite skill has been performed successfully.
  • The Taekwon Master/Star Gladiator class can only use certain kicks with specific stances activated beforehand; having two or more stances active leads to chains of various types of kicks.
• The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard:
  • Water Ball, an extremely powerful Wizard spell, requires the player to be standing on a water cell or certain other skills in order for them to use it. However, if a monster has it, you can expect a lot of hurt even when they're standing on dry land. Also, some monsters can cast it at level 10 instead of 5 (like the MVP Drake).
  • A few enemies also have versions of player spells that are way stronger than the strongest player usable versions, like the normal, non-boss version of the High Wizard enemy in the Biolab floor 3. It can cast level 28 Jupitel Thunder, which hits 30 times (players' Jupitel Thunder can only go up to level 10, and hits 12 times).
  • Not to mention overpowered monster only spells like Power Up, Earthquake, and Max Pain, or the fact that monsters can blatantly disregard the rules of a skill, such as Bomb/Demonstration, which cannot be cast directly on top of players or monsters. Monsters will cast it right on you anyway.
• Continuity Nod:
  • Loki from Ragnarok (1997) manhwa appeared on Bifrost update. Chaos, Iris, Lydia, and Fenrir from the same manhwa, all make an appearance in Geffen Magic Tournament instance.
  • The one who was truly responsible for Glast Heim's destruction in the past? Himmelmez.
• Convection, Schmonvection: Rather blatant. Near Juno there's a place outright called the Magma Dungeon, containing several fire monsters, up to and including a Lava Golem. On top of that, there's the Ice Dungeon (containing Ice Titans) and most dangerously Thor's Volcano. Naturally, you can just strut in to any of them with no special protection whatsoever, apparently with not so much as feeling a bit warm or a minor chill.
  • The best example of this is in the Oz Labyrinth, a dungeon set within yet another active volcano, particularly in the level 2, which is the bottom level, where big pools of magma are everywhere. In some spots, you can just step on still burning lava without any damage whatsoever.
• Crazy-Prepared: The Alchemist/Biochemist classes, to some extent. All of their skills require a potion or bottle, but give access to unique and powerful skills, most notable being throwing a Molotov Cocktail and an Acid Bottle at the same time at the enemy. Said skill is the most powerful single-enemy skill (which gets even stronger the more hitpoints the enemy has), but needs a lot of time farming the parts and preparing the bottles.
• Critical Encumbrance Failure: Picking up one tiny item can completely shut down all health and mana regen if it bumps you over half your maximum weight, or prevent you from attacking at all if it bumps you over 90%.
• Critical Hit: A few classes can focus on this as their main method of physical damage, by maxing their Critical rate so that their regular/normal attacks always inflict a critical hit (this is often simply referred as "Crit"), which not only has higher damage than regular attacks, but also ignore the enemy's Flee rate. It also has unique animation compared to regular attacks.
  • Normally, skills cannot Crit, but with the Job 4/Level 250 update, certain physical skills (mostly the ones that came alongside Job 4) have a chance to deal more damage, with that additional damage being equal to half the damage of the skill if you add Crit formula into the damage calculation (so the final damage becomes "base damage + half of crit damage"). The chance for this to happen, is based on Critical rate. Which means now Critical rate and Critical damage boost gears are useful even to physical class that tends to spam skills, like Dragon Knight and Spirit Handler.
• Cute Monster Girl: Tons. From topless half-women half-snakes, to ghostly apparitions and spirits, to even what looks like real girls.
  • Some Cute Monster Boys as well.
• Crapsaccharine World - everything looks cutesy on the surface, but if you bother to read the quest dialogs you get an evil corporation, religious fanatics preparing for war, assassinations, human experiments, Sealed Evil in a Can (a few of them) and others. And that's just the surface.
• Deflector Shields: The priest has two kinds: one that blocks melee damage, and one that cuts all damage by half. Summoner can also place a shield on a target that blocks all kinds of damage, but how much damage it can block, depends on the target's Max HP.
• Depleted Phlebotinum Shells: Each class of ranged weapons has several kinds of ammunition, ranging from common standard to pretty exotic. Depending on the type, they work better against specific enemies...or worse. And sometimes not at all.
• Disability Superpower:
  • Played with, a little brutally, by the Star Gladiator/Taekwon Master class. Their skill, 'Demon of the Sun, Moon, and Stars' (or 'Solar, Lunar, and Stellar Shadow'), grants its owner a + 30% bonus to Attack Speed - note, this bonus is insanely large. In exchange? The character's sight. This isn't like the 'Blind' status effect, where a character takes a hit to their accuracy - accuracy is just fine. However the player's screen becomes black the moment this skill is learned, with a lighted area surrounding their character. As the skill is levelled up and the attack speed bonus moves closer to + 30%, the lighted area shrinks, until at level 10 and + 30% ASPD, the tiles immediately surrounding a character can just be made out. These effects are permanent and utterly irrevocable.
  • From the same class, 'Solar, Lunar and Stellar Union', which lets them go Super Saiyan on enemies, at the cost of losing a percentage of their HP per attack. The fact that you need a buff from a Soul Linker, their counterpart class, makes one wonder if it's really worth it.
• Disc-One Nuke: Of a defensive variety. The Pupa Card, while subject to the same abysmal drop rate as all other Cards (in the ballpark of 0.01%), is dropped by a common low level monster that can't even fight back (though for very low level characters, accidents can happen should it decide to transform into a Creamy in the middle of being clobbered). The Card's effect is that when placed into a piece of armor, it provides a flat +700 HP. This is a drop in the bucket for high level characters, but seeing as how new characters with low VIT investment spend a decent amount of time not even having 700 HP to begin with it provides a huge advantage early on if placed into an armor like an Adventurer's Suit, which any class (including Novices) can wear. The effect can be enhanced by use of a Thief Bug Egg Card as well, which provides +400 HP and goes into a Shield, but on top of the aforementioned horrible drop rate of cards, getting a slotted Guard (which like the Adventurer's Suit can be used by any class including Novices) is a stiffer ask than getting a slotted Adventurer's Suit or Cotton Shirt. ^{Also on iRO specifically...} clearing one of the tutorial quests will get you a slotted Cotton Shirt which is enchanted to provide +100 HP and +50 SP. Since the defense difference between a Cotton Shirt and an Adventurer's Suit is virtually nothing and since the Cotton Shirt is slotted, this makes it a perfect match for a Pupa Card to turn that 100 HP and 50 SP into 800 HP and 50 SP instead.
• Doom Doors: The sound effect for the Shadow Chaser skill Manhole.
• Down the Drain: The different culvert areas demand that you traipse in partly flooded large drains infested with monsters, and is in fact mandatory if you want to challenge the Golden Thief Bug, who lives in the bottom-most floor of the culvert system.
  • The secret entrance to the second floor of Biolab dungeon, is through a sewer tunnel. Similarly, the secret entrance to Varmundt's Mansion, also requires you to go through the sewer.
• Dual Wielding: Assassins can wield a pair of katar in both hand, or a combination of swords, daggers, axes, and/or knives. Gunslingers can also use a pair of handguns. And because books are either weapons or shields, a Sage/Priest could end up dual-wielding books.
• Dub Name Change: The international server changed Professor to Scholar, Creator to Biochemist, Whitesmith to Mastersmith, and Clown to Minstrel. And that's just the classes. An interesting case with Clown to Minstrel example is that its third job counterpart is called Minstrel. The iRO GM had no choice but to change the name Minstrel to Maestro.
  • The Indonesian official server in the past called the Transcendent classes as "Third Jobs". When Renewal and the actual third classes came, the server has no choice but to use "Fourth Jobs" instead. However, when the server's distribution right changes to another company, the new company changed this so that Transcendent classes and Third classes are now properly referred as such in the Indonesian server.
• Easter Egg: The Super Novice class is all but made of these, such as Never give up!, Guardian Angel, and Really Super.
• Elemental Crafting: Any Blacksmith has the capability to forge a weapon imbued with an element.
• Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors: Not only are there ten elemental properties in the game that oppose each other, defending elements have four levels that dictate how much damage is resisted or enhanced based on the element. Any Ghost attack against Neutral 1 would do 70% damage, but any Ghost attack against Neutral 4 does absolutely nothing. Any Wind attack against Water 1 would deal 175% of damage, and against Water 4 would do 200%. Thus having weapons or skills of specific elements, or items/skills that can give certain element to your physical attacks, is common in order to deal massive damage (or even to deal damage at all).
• Evolutionary Levels: Porings. The Poring species of monster has an ill-defined evolutionary tree, including Poporing (green), Drops (yellow), Marin (blue), Ghostring (a ghostly poring), Angeling, Deviling, Mastering, Arch-Angeling. More keep getting added, too, like Santa Poring, Metaling, Heavy Metaling, Stapo, and Magmaring...and the Pouring, Bombring and Pori Pori/Poring the Conqueror/Bring It On to liven it up...and with the Port Malaya update, the Jejeling, fashioned after the Philippine-exclusive "Jejemon" phenomenon. Doram race/Summoner class update brings with it maps themed after food, including a dungeon that features Eggring. Issgard update brings another race of the 'rings called Calmaring (and Cave Calmaring), which looks like Poring family but with bulbs, that are actually squid-like tentacles bundled on top of their head.
  • And that's just the regular/famous/official ones. Events sometimes feature less known variants such as ones that mimic a pouch or a wrapped rice, and private servers may feature their own Poring variation made by talented editors.
• Fantasy Counterpart Culture: Due to the Global Project, the game has several towns that are completely based off various real-world cultures.
  • Payon is Korea.
  • Republic of Schwarzvald has a rather German flavor.
  • Arunafeltz states in general resembles some Middle East areas, such as Rachel having Israel feel to it.
  • Amatsu is Japan.
  • Ayothaya is Thailand.
  • Gonryun is Taiwan.
  • Jawaii is Hawaii.
  • Louyang is imperial China.
  • Moscovia is Russia.
  • Brasilis is Brazil.
  • Dewata is Indonesia.
  • Port Malaya is Philippines.
• Fireballs: The exact name for one of the skills in the game, even.
• Fire, Ice, Lightning: And Earth, among others. Lightning exist, but it is treated as Wind in the game.
• Fetch Quest: At some point even the big story quests will involve fetching something.
• Floating Continent: Juno, Gonryun, and the second level of the Gonryun dungeon. No explanation given for Gonryun (except that it's based off the mystical Kunlun Mountains mythology), but Juno's flight is said to be powered by Heart of Ymir crystals.
• Flunky Boss: Pretty much all the MVP bosses, most mini bosses and even some normal monsters have a 'mob' of lesser creatures around them. Killing them is a waste of time, since their master almost instantly re-summons them, and they're at least annoying, since fighting against multiple enemies lowers your flee rate and defensive stats. Not to mention the mooks of the higher bosses, who are often quite challenging even when encountered on their own...
• Foreshadowing:
  • Around the time Hugel patch came, the Blacksmith Guild is moved from Geffen to Einbroch. Einbroch is a Steampunk-esque city full of industrial machines. Now, what is the third class of Blacksmith and their specialty?
  • On the southeast of the Biolabs' third floor, there's a stair going downwards. The problem is, it's covered in water. Then, the Biolabs 4 update came and to access that floor the players must enter the warp on above-mentioned stair, which is no longer covered in water.
• Frilly Upgrade: Every advanced job. But Transcended class is this to Second class in terms of costume.
• Full-Contact Magic: Spell Fist is about the power of a level 10 Bolt spell for a Sorcerer, and they can upgrade that skill further.
• Funny Animal:
  • The Malangdo Cats are basically just bipedal cats. Players get to be them in the form of the playable Doram race.
  • Similarly the Dog people found in Mora Village are bipedal dogs.
• Gaiden Game:
  • Ragnarok Battle Offline. A side-scrolling single player Beat 'em Up with plenty of shout-outs to the habits of the player community.
  • Ragnarok DS (for, obviously, Nintendo DS): starring a Novice called Ales (whose name you can change) who wants to build a guild and help people in need. In his journey, he meets Sierra (a Shaman), Lucifi (Swordsman), Lisir (Mage), and Viselc (Thief). In addition of two exclusive classes (Dark Knight and Shaman), it also has a multiplayer feature called Tower Of Mirage (the concept later become the basis of Endless Tower in the online version).
  • Ragnarok Tactics for PlayStation Portable: Set on the continent of Gran Tritter, with raging war between Branchardo Empire and Aura Kingdom as the main problem of story. Featuring most of Transcendent classes (with exception of Stalker, Biochemist, and Scholar), two exclusive classes from Ragnarok DS, and -suprisingly- Zonda and Kafra.
  • Ragnarok Odyssey for Play Station Vita: a Monster Hunter clone with a dash of Phantasy Star.
  • Ragnarok Mobile: A simplified mobile version for Java-compatible cellphones.
  • Ragnarok M: Eternal Guardians of Love, a fully-fledged 3D MMORPG for smartphones.
  • Ragnarok Origin: Yet another 3D MMORPG for smartphone, with different mechanics than Eternal Love.
  • Idle Poring is a run-on-the-mill Idle Game, also for smartphones
• Game-Favored Gender: Some female players complain how weaker the Gypsies are compared to Minstrels. While Gypsies do have two extremely powerful skills (Dazzler, which stuns everyone on the screen and Slow Grace, which slows enemies down and debuffs them out of speed-related effects), they are not as important as a Minstrel in War of Emperium and all other solo skills just downright suck. Thankfully, Gypsy's advanced classes (Wanderer and then Trouve), are more balanced with their male counterpart in terms of skills and importance.
• Get on the Boat: Airships that leave at specific times and travel around the world in a loop to let players reach places like Juno for a small fee.
• Guide Dang It!:
  • If you start distributing your status and skill points without consulting the guides on the fan message boards, your character will be ineffective for 'serious' play by level 60. And heaven help you if you take such a character into either player vs player or guild vs guild battles. What often bushwhacks new players, or those spoiled by other MMOs, is that your stat and skill allocations are permanent. Fooling around, or even lag or misclicks, could gimp your character permanently. That road to 99 is long and brutal, so variations from "proper builds" start to hurt bad at high levels. There's now some reset options, but these cost real money (on iRO at least). Almost every RO player has had to scrap their first character entirely, before reading the guides and starting over with subsequent characters.
  • Quests. Most MMOs generally have you follow a linear path with quest hubs and NPCs giving tips on what to do for the next step. For Ragnarok Online's expansive world, there is no clear direction except for the next city (and sometimes not even that). The cities and maps themselves are huge compared to the player sprite, so looking for the next objective can almost be looking for a needle in a haystack - unless you had the foresight to go look up the guides beforehand, of course. Even the addition of the Quest note board (that can be viewed anywhere with a simple command) sometimes doesn't really help as the notes can be just as vague as the NPCs, although at least now you don't need to go all the way back to the NPC if you forgot what the NPC said. What also doesn't help is how the main story quests have been getting even longer with every new Episode (big update).
    • And that's just the generic story-based quest. With item creating quest, all you get is the name of the ingredients. Good luck figuring out what monster drops them, and where they spawn, without a guide.
• The Gunslinger: The, well, Gunslinger class. Who, all by itself, brings PLENTY of additional, gun-related tropes into the game. The entry for Gunslinger on the Characters page elaborates more on those.
• Happy Harlequin Hat: The Joker Jester hat◊.
• He Knows Too Much: Rekenber Corporation evoked this. You disagree with their ideas, know their secrets, or just violating Lighthalzen's rules, God helps you to stay alive. Digotz, Shinokas, and the Biolabs' ghosts (when they're still alive) learned this on REALLY hard way. Thankfully, Schwartzvalt Republic's president, Kiel Hyre, and the players (of course) avert this.
• Healing Shiv: Achievable in two ways.
  • Slotting the Chepet card into a weapon means you heal people when you hit them. Good if you don't mind the 5% chance.
  • Because the Gunslinger skill animations are always of shooting someone, a Gunslinger using First Aid is theoretically healing themselves using their guns.
• Health/Damage Asymmetry
  • Inverted during pre-Renewal. Higher level monsters had insanely high damage compared to what players can deal.
  • Played straight since Renewal.
• Highly-Visible Ninja: Ninja's advanced class, Kagerou/Oboro, when using the alternate costume color, traded the purple ninja suit for the white one. For bonus, their sub-colors are red and bright yellow.
• Holiday Mode: Lutie, the Christmas town. Permanently.
• Holy Hand Grenade:
  • The Acolyte magic skill Holy Light. Priest gets Magnus Exorcismus. Archbishop and Cardinal gets a lot more options.
  • The Paladin's Gloria Domini skill. It counts as a ranged attack, hits for 2000 HP at maximum skill and can damage even bosses without any reduction whatsoever, since it ignores defenses.
• Horse of a Different Color:
  • The PecoPecos, for whom comparisons can of course be drawn to Chocobos. Except unlike the intelligent, highly empathetic, giant canary things, PecoPecos are big, dumb, orange toucan/dodo hybrids.
  • Rune Knights have been introduced, which can ride Feruses (big lizards). Also, Rangers can ride Wargs (big blue wolves). The Royal Guards ride Gryphons.
  • Mounts for each class have been patched in, ranging from huge Porings, Nine-tailed Foxes, to Alpacas and Giant Frogs.
• Ice Magic Is Water: The "water" spells all come in form of ice-themed attacks such as Cold Bolt and Frost Driver. The exception is Water Ball, but you have to be standing in water for that skill to work.
• Immortality Inducer: the Soul Linker job change implies that your character owns several.
  This Witherless Rose will wither away instead of you...
  This Immortal Heart will cease to pump blood, instead of yours.
  This Diamond will turn to dust in place of your mortal body.
  • Notably, the NPC for the Soul Linker job change quest appears to be a young girl, but claims she is 300 years old. Assuming she isn't just pranking you, apparently becoming a Soul Linker also means you're becoming immortal and eternally young.
• Impossible Item Drop: While many of the mobs have items that make sense, such as animal skins from baby desert wolves, you really can't help but do a double-take when you kill a cute little baby pig and it drops a heavy axe. It doesn't get any much better with high-level mobs either.
• Impossibly Cool Clothes: Not the lower classes so much, but second class sprites, transcendents, and especially the new third and fourth class ones fit.
• Improbable Use of a Weapon: The Dancer class, who can even use their whip to fire arrows. Same with Gypsies, who also get a Macross Missile Massacre version of said skill.
• Improbable Weapon User:
  • Some sages and a few priests fight with books.
  • Bards can fight with musical instruments.
  • Priests use golf clubs to great effect.
  • Gunslingers can use Coins to inflict damage.
  • The Merchant class series can use their pushcarts as weapons, culminating to the High Speed Cart Ram of the Blacksmith line and the Cart Cannon of the Alchemist line.
  • Summoners fights and summons stuff not using a wand/staff - they use a fake model of foxtail plant instead. In fact, it's the only weapon they can equip.
• Instrument of Murder: Bards and their more powerful counterparts fight with their musical instruments. What doesn't entirely make sense is how they manage to throw/shoot arrows (depending on the skill) by swinging it at their opponents.
• Insurmountable Waist-Height Fence: The Gentle Slope of Unclimbability and the Rough Ground of Unwalkability variants are fairly common. The Knee Deep Water of Uncrossability variant also exist in some maps with rivers in them. They're just there to force you to take another path. Particularly obvious in El Dicastes, where it looks like you can walk past the steam exhausts but can't.
• Intrepid Merchant: The Merchant class tree revolves around kicking monster butt, collecting drops, selling items at greater prices and idle in Prontera or Payon after setting up your trading post for other players to buy your rarest drops.
• Invisible Wall: In addition to the edges of the maps, there is one in the Dicastes Diel between you and a NPC's reception desk. The NPC lampshades this, tells you he can move around freely, and it's mostly for protection "just in case".
• Item Crafting: Many of the classes have their own crafting skills, rather than crafting professions being available to all classes. This enables them to be fairly self-sufficient, provided they invest in these skills.
  • Archers can make their own arrows, provided they have enough of the right materials.
  • Acolytes can create Holy Water.
  • Blacksmiths, obviously. Their weapon crafting skills require the use of a specific hammer, an anvil of which the quality of metal dictates the success rate, and a mini portable forge. Mechanic and Meister can craft tiny robots.
  • Alchemists can brew potions and bombs, Genetics can make +20 stat foods.
  • Assassins make poisons.
  • Rune Knights have the ability to create runes to enhance their fighting.
  • In addition to all that, all classes have the ability to cook their own stat food items, no specific skill necessary, although their effects are less than what Genetics can make.
• Karakasa: There is a one-eyed umbrella monster called a Karakasa in Amatsu field 1.
• Karma Houdini: The Pickpocket NPC in Lighthalzen. He randomly appears in three different locations and steals players off their money when they get too near. In one location, if he gets cornered by the players, he...makes players buy his Speed Potions for a very hefty price.
• Karma Meter: A planned feature that has swung wildly in and out of implementation over the various stages of release. The idea was to use a PVP system, among other aspects, to control a characters rating within two areas, and for a long time the bare bones of it were there to be seen in game, unactivated. These vestiges have disappeared entirely but for an unresponsive 'Temperament' tab in the stats window, and even that is erased in an interface change during the Renewal update, and most believe that the feature has been completely given up on.
• La Résistance: Secret Wings, an organization with a goal to take Rekenber Corporation down from its domination over Schwartzvalt Republic. Interestingly, it's sponsored by Schwartzvalt Republic's president and Kafra Corporation. It's also, like the organization's name implies, a Covert Group, and therefore information about them can be really fuzzy even in the game. One quest implies they have disbanded, although newer quests shows this is not true.
• Lethal Joke Character:
  • The instant-cast Super Novice, before Renewal.
  • The Ninja class, basically not-so-squishy wizards who can spam you to shreds if you're not a caster yourself.
  • The Taekwon classes. Besides having a skill that can potentially block anything and everything (Tumbling), has access to extremely powerful abilities such as massive mana drain and unblockable attacks (Taekwon Masters), unlimited combo chaining (Taekwon Rankers), and near-immortality with crazy elemental Critical attacks OR crazy elemental magic, depending on how you build yours (Soul Linkers).
  • Gunslingers have the frighteningly-powerful Full Blast skill if properly built, as well as Gunslinger Mine to work around those pesky ninjas' Cicada Skin Shed. Not only they have a insane DPS with Desperado and a mighty finisher with Full Blast, they also doubles as a debuffer, removing an enemy's weapon (at long range), inflicting status with the Mines and decreasing DEF with Coin Fling.
• Level Ate: Lasagna, it's a hometown of playable Dorams. The continent that Lasagna is on? It's called Pasta. The two fields just outside Lasagna, are referred in-game as Ravioli Plain and Ravioli Forest, full of gigantic cheese, vegetables, fruits, and sweet treats. The dungeon accessed via Ravioli Forest is simply called Lasagna Dungeon, following the town's name, but still match the theme by having an entrance that looks like a stack of donut and ice cream while the dungeon inside looks like a cave filled with tomato soup.
• Life Meter: Two meters are displayed under your character (one if it's your party member). The green one on the top is your health, the blue bar at the bottom is your SP. Job 4 (and its equivalent for Ninja, Gunslinger, Taekwon, and Summoner classes) adds one more bar colored yellow, that acts as your AP meter, which is required for the most powerful Job 4 skills.
• Lightning Bruiser: Two-Handed Rune Knights using Two-Hand Quicken, Berserk Potions, a high AGI stat and switching on Frenzy are ridiculous. You're basically a fairly resilient attacker who will dodge most attacks and deal out pain very speedily.
• Lightning Lash: Electric Wire, whip-class weapon that's literally just a still electrically-charged wire, and the more bizarre Electric Eel, which is a, well, electric eel used as a whip-class weapon.
• Limited-Use Magical Device:
  • The Sage/Professor class can make scrolls to do elemental works. This is used to mess with a target's element if the Sage/Professor or the party is focused in an element the odd mob isn't.
  • Several monsters drop scrolls which allow anyone to use skills as long as the scrolls last. This has led to priests casting Lightning Bolt or Fire Wall in the fields just to mess with some people.
  • The Rune Knight class (advanced form of Lord Knight) are able to make runestones, which they can then use to cast some unique spells, and they expire afterward.
• Lost Technology: The Juperos Dungeon and Verus maps are futuristic-looking ancient ruins with tons of robots that are still active. Similarly, Varmundt's Mansion also contains a lot of robots made by the Great Sage Varmundt himself, who are still actively maintaining the location for his return ever since he left the location, unaware that Varmundt has been presumed dead for some time. Notably, even though his current status is unknown, Varmundt himself has been recorded to be alive (and somehow still looking like a young man) for almost 200 years, meaning his robots have existed for hundreds of years, unknown to many until the recent discovery of the mansion.
• Luck-Based Mission: Certain quests involve a fair amount of luck.
• Luck Stat: Raises critical and perfect dodge rate. One of the main stats needed for forging weapons, potion brewing, and cooking.
• MacGuffin: The Heart of Ymir.
• Magic Dance: Dancers, obviously. They can put monsters to sleep, for one.
• Magic Knight:
  • The Sage/Professor/Sorcerer and Crusader/Paladin/Royal Guard classes, as well as the Rune Knight third class.
  • There are scrolls, cards, and equipments that allow for automatic spellcasting. Whether the spell damage is any good mostly depends on your character's stats, as the casted spells are usually the low level version.
• Magic Music: Bards and Dancers.
• Mana Meter: There is one under your Life Meter. You don't see it on your party members, however. Job 4 update brings in a second "Mana" meter called AP meter, which works the same but only used for specific skills learned by Job 4 (and its equivalents for Expanded class and Summoner).
• Mascot Mook: Porings! But not their evolved powerful relatives.
• Mechanically Unusual Class: The Taekwon Kid > Taekwon Master line, and Super Novices.
• The Medic: Any Priest with a Full Support build.
• Meido: Alices and Alizas. On the NPC side, Kafras.
• Mighty Glacier: Shield Crusaders/Paladins become this with many of their defensive skills mastered.
• Mini-Mecha: The Mechanic class's Madogears.
• Mushroom Man: The Spore and Poison Spore monsters, which resemble mushrooms with faces; their caps pop open to reveal a huge mouth full of teeth. Players can also get a hat that resembles a mushroom cap and look like one themselves.
• Musical Assassin: Bards and Minstrels. Dancers and Gypsies also count, since some of their attacks are music-based.
• Navel-Deep Neckline: Some classes and monsters have outfits with plunging necklines:
  • Female Assassin Crosses.
  • Female Alchemists/Biochemists.
  • The Zealotus monster.
• Ocular Gushers: The death animation of Dumpling Kid. And the /sob emote.
• Our Fairies Are Different: The Laphine in the New World. They have Pointy Ears and insect wings, and wear loose, light clothing due to their climate. They can be diminutive in height, almost shorter than a human child sprite, or as tall as adults.
• Our Giants Are Bigger: The Sapha in the New World are a race of very tall tree giants with branches growing out of their heads as hair, very large clawed hands, subsist on minerals to prevent themselves from turning into stone and have a caste system.
• Ominous Pipe Organ: For some reason, used inside the non-Corrupt Church. If your background music turns weddings into Nightmare Fuel, you're doing something wrong.
• The One Hit Killers: Champions/Assassin Crosses/Snipers. There are servers where at least 60% of all characters you'll see are any of those three...
  • One-Hit Kill: Every attacking skill has potential to be one. The most infamous example would be Ashura Strike/Guillotine Fist for the Monk branch and Killing Stroke for Ninja. This does allow for bragging rights if you manage to beat them without access to a similar move.
• Paper-Thin Disguise: You just have to wear a pair of geek glasses and a white mustache to get pass the guard to the Rekenber Corporation's Laboratory, and it doesn't matter if your hairstyle and clothing are different or if you're a female.
• Peninsula of Power Leveling: In Pre-Renewal where there are no level restrictions on what you can get EXP from, Geographers are the main source of this sort of thing. They're aggressive and do a lot of damage to low level characters... but are also completely immobile and have a short striking range which makes them very easy for Archers and Mages to wail on with no major risk of retaliation. The main snag (other than the risk of one respawning right on top of you) is that they will heal nearby injured monsters other than themselves, so if they're clumped together then outdamaging the healing without a way to push them apart (such as the Arrow Repel^*also known as Charge Arrow skill) can be a tall order. Archers and Mages aren't the only classes that can take them on safely, but they are the best at it due to how easily they can exploit Geographer's weakness to Fire and reliably hit them from afar whether by having high DEX to overcome their Flee rate or just bypassing it entirely and in an Archer's case since the nearby town of Einbech sells Fire Arrows. Greatest Generals are also a lesser variant due to the same principle of being immobile, though they give a good deal less EXP than Geographers and mainly serve as the thing to go to before Geographer.
• Permanently Missable Content: Many quests can become this by selecting the wrong dialog option during a Dialogue Tree resulting in content never becoming accessible to the player. Extremely annoying in a game which is played online and thus does not allow Save Scumming. Thankfully, there are now more quests where either the selection doesn't actually matter, or you can redo the selection by simply talking to the same NPC again.
• Pile Bunker: A weapon, as well as the name of a skill that requires said weapon to use.
• Plague Doctor: The guards of the city of Geffen have a uniform heavily based on the plague doctors, sans hat. There is, however, no plague. Note that the plague doctors' outfits in real life are themselves based on military uniforms.
• Plant Mooks: Spore and its variants, such as Poison Spore, resemble mushrooms with faces and their caps pop open to reveal a huge mouth full of teeth.
• Player Personality Quiz: In the tutorial area, the last stage before entering the gameworld is a test of this kind that determines which of the original six "first jobs" fits your personality. If you choose to follow the results, you get several extras before entering the game.
• Player Versus Player: Both in the form of normal PvP arenas and the War of Emperium. Some servers set themselves to PvP in the open world.
• Polly Wants a Microphone: Iwin is a race of huge fluffy birds that are fully sentient and intelligent, even capable of speech, and works alongside humans in Issgard region's ice castle. Most of the daily quests in Issgard involves talking with them, and the Iwin Patrol daily quest has you following a group of them that talks A LOT.
• Power Copy: The Rogue class's Intimidate skill (known as Plagiarize outside of iRO), which lets them temporarily copy one opponent's skill. Shadow Chasers also get Reproduce, which let them permanently copy any one skill at a time. Also worth noting is that most skills they copy are much more useful and/or powerful in their hands as compared to the version used by the original job classes (the aforementioned Water Ball, plus a few other examples). They can copy even the signature, One-Hit Kill moves of the other jobs (the Monk's Asura Strike, the Sura's Gate of Hell); however, since their copied skills retain the requirements (items, Required Secondary Powers) as used by the original job class, some of the copied skills may be Awesome, but Impractical.
• Power Glows: An aura beneath the player's feet that signifies the character has reached certain level for their class. Level 99 characters have blue aura, Level 185 characters have red aura, and Level 260 characters have yellow aura. Many MVP monsters have green aura beneath their feet to symbolize their status and power, and those MVPs only takes 10% of your regular damage.
  • Some skills also adds a full-body aura to the target character, such as High Priest's Assumptio that gives glowing white outline to the target's entire body, or Knight's Two-Hand Quicken that covers the Knight's entire body in yellow light. Another example is Rune Knight's Aura Blade skill, a weapon power buff skill that like its name implies, makes the target's weapon glows white.
• Power of Rock: Loki's Weil/Classical Pluck.
• Prestige Class: The entire "transcendent" class line, which require you to max your levels out and then do it all again with higher EXP requirements to level.
• Pretty in Mink: Stalkers, High Wizards, Scholars, Snipers, and female Alchemists include fur in their outfits. The Santa outfits get this too, unsurprisingly. And now Shadow Chasers and Wanderers.
• Purely Aesthetic Gender: Mostly true, except for the aversions:
  • 2-2 classes for Archers: Females become Dancers, and males become Bards. The division continues for subsequent class advancement.
  • The Kagerou/Oboro update for the Ninja class, which gives each gender exclusive skills in the same manner as the Bard/Dancer example.
• Rain of Arrows: The Maestro's / Wanderer's new skill, Severe Rainstorm. Also, Ranger's Arrow Storm, and its upgraded version, Windhawk's Gale Storm.
• Random Drop: There are tons of them. For example, the dolls you get from certain monsters.
  • Random Drop Booster: The game has Bubble Gum item, which increases item drop rates by 100% for 30 minutes. It's not an ordinary item and is only sold at Cash Shop or usually given out as an event prize.
  • Rare Random Drop: Cards. 0.02% chance.
• Real Money Trade: Typically for an MMORPG, albeit a bit more pronounced given RO's age. The international server had a somewhat unconventional response to the issue, replacing its free trial with a wholly free server (while giving significant benefits to the original, subscriber servers). Valkyrie functions in effect both as a free trial, and a glorified RMT trap, since the primary servers need a working credit card and payment for access. Whether exposing your new players to the EULA-breaching excrement of the game in full force is a good idea or not, however, is questionable.
• Real-Place Background: Players have noticed that many of the building models and places within the game correspond to their real-life cultural counterparts. Examples here.
• Really 700 Years Old: The NPC for the Soul Linker job change looks like a kid, but she is 300 years old.
• Regenerating Health: HP and SP regenerate over a period of time. Sitting down, using certain gears/cards and/or having passive skills, like Increase Health Recovery, speed up the regeneration rate. Additionally, the Taekwon line class can sit next to another member of the Taekwon line class and use the command /doridori (which has the character shaking their head) to speed up the regeneration rate.
• Repeatable Quest: The Bragging Rights Reward hats (among other awards, but mostly hats) can be obtained in Fetch Quests, and can be repeated as long as the player is willing to hunt down the same items.
• Resting Recovery: /sit.
  • Swordman class also has a passive skill that increases HP recovery while not moving. Mage class and Priest class also have the same skill, but for SP instead of HP.
• ReTool:
  • A few of RO's updates (the Comodo update in particular sticks out) have drastically altered monster spawns in the past in order to keep the game fresh (possibly to combat botting as well; how else do you explain the Hunter Flies in Geffen?). The game's developers finally decided to take things a step further, and rebalanced the entire game in order to appeal to modern MMO gamers, including changing how character stats work, altering the exp table, and, of course, drastically altering monster stats and spawns, in the Renewal patch.
  • An update to iRO's repeatable EXP quests has been put in effect to further combat botting, while drastically changing the way the repeatable EXP quests themselves work.
  • The "Renewal" patch mentioned, meant to make the game comfortable for users new or old.
• Ridiculously Human Robots: The Kiel Hyre Academy is home to many. Varmundt's Mansion has a lot of them, who looks and acts just like human, however, they are also still aware they are robots.
• Roboteching: Most notably the Soul Strike spell, though there are a few other cases as well.
• Run, Don't Walk: Averted. All characters move in walking animations, regardless of the character's actual moving speed.
• Sadly Mythtaken: The Odin statue in the center of Prontera, as a young girl nearby puts it.
• Saintly Church: The Prontera Church trains Priests who provide heals and buffs to other adventurers.
• Samus Is a Girl: Khalitzburg. Even better part: This is how she looks like when Glast Heim dungeon is introduced. More than 12 years later since then, via a much newer quest dungeon that allows you to see Glast Heim's past, it's revealed THIS is how she originally looked like.
• Sexy Priest: The priest class has rather uncharacteristically enticing outfits.
• Sexy Santa Dress: Female Santa outfits.
• Shout-Out: Priests using golf clubs? That sounds familiar.
  • The captain of the Airship? He's called Captain Tarlock.
  • Also, Maestros have a skill called Melancholy (also known as Gloomy Shyness in iRO). That's the icon of the skill◊. Why is it important? This is why.
  • Maybe this is a bit subtle, but Lighthalzen Somatology Biolaboratory's official name is "Regenschirm", which is Germanese of "Umbrella". Remembering what happened there, most likely it's a reference to Umbrella Corp from Resident Evil.
  • From 'The Sign' quest, we have Vigorgra, which is RO's version of, well...
  • Once you see the MVP monster Gloom Under Night, it's hard not to think that you are up against EVA-05.
  • The new monsters in the God Items Quest 3 are blatant references to Heartcatch Cures. The pink one (Aira) for example, is essentially Tsubomi!
  • A book-type weapon called the Ledger of Death is quite obviously a reference to the Death Note according to its description. It is even actually called Death Note on certain servers and also in the internal game files related to it.
  • A headgear called Dark Bacilium looks very similar to Sauron's helmet.
  • Thanks to iRO's headgear contest, a headgear that reference Touhou Project made it into the game.
• Showgirl Skirt: Many of the female class outfits. For Assassin branch, this applies to both genders until Guillotine Cross.
• Slave Race: The Grey Wolf clan. Initially the natives of Rachel area, many of them ends up driven out of Rachel because they were treated terribly by immigrants that ends up ruling the area and using the natives as their workers, something that has been a constant problem for the priests of Rachel as they actually want the immigrants to be at peace with the natives. One particular mini quest even has you encounter a group of kids who have this ingrained into their culture - most of the kids, who are from immigrant families, treat one particular native kid as someone they can bully because the kid's family is a native that works for their family, and the native kid has no choice but to comply because otherwise no one else will play with the native kid.
• Snake People: Most of the Rgan race members are the result of a mutation on snake monsters that turns them into half-humanoid beings resembling a Naga, complete with human face. Failed mutations only turns them into more monstrous and hideous snake, however.
• Soundtrack Dissonance:
  • Nifflheim is portrayed as the village of the dead. Its field's theme? A house music akin to the ones you'd hear in rave clubs.
  • Similarly, Nameless Island's dungeon, full of hordes of zombies and evil spirits, has an orchestral choir with a rather rocking tune as its BGM.
  • It's heavily implied that the only way to get through Hazy Forest for the first time, is by eliminating the gardeners, who all don't seem to have done anything wrong. The BGM for the map? This.
    • It is then revealed that the clickable flowers inside the forest all yield an item that allows you to bypass the forest. However, you need to use it on a specific location outside the forest, and the first area of clickable flowers is some areas after the first few gardeners, so the trope still applies.
  • Invaded Prontera map, as its name implies, is not a pleasant map. It's a darkened Prontera full of dead bodies, Zombie Guards, and Legion invaders. The BGM zig-zagged this trope, with low notes at the start, but then the guitar riff kicks in, until it reverts into low notes again near the end.
  • Doing PvP in any town sometimes induce this. Especially in Geffen.
• Spell My Name With An S: Rune-Midgarts or Rune-Midgard? Juno or Yuno? Morroc or Morocc? Gonryun or Kunlun? Niffleheim, Nibelheim, or Niflheim? Rael or Rachel? Schwarzwald or Schwaltzvalt? And that's just locations!
• Sprite/Polygon Mix: Player, NPC and monsters are all 2D sprites. The world itself is 3D.
• Stripperiffic: Any female class, besides Acolyte, Swordswoman and Merchant. The Dancer and Gypsy classes are the worse offenders as a whole, followed by the full tree of Mage classes who wear "dresses" seemingly inspired by the character Maniña Yerichana◊ of Soap Opera Ka-ina fame (the female mage's outfit has been described as "a bikini with a mudflap and a rain cape").
  • Mind you, that counts for both female and male priests.
  • Assassin Cross, if that Navel-Deep Neckline and Showgirl Skirt didn't tip you off already.
  • Most of the 3rd classes females, are very skimpily dressed even if their previous classes were a bit more modest. Crusaders in particular were covered from head to toe in armor, only to take most of it off in the upgrade to Royal Guard, which makes zero sense considering their job. Averted in the 4th classes progression, which takes people's complaints about the skimpy clothing into account, and have all classes back to wearing more modest clothing.
  • Also averted by the female Hunter progression. Female Hunters, Snipers, Rangers, and Windhawk have been maintaining a fairly standard practical fashion sense compared to the others.
• Summon Magic:
  • Alchemists can summon plant monsters and Marine Spheres, apparently from trapping them inside bottles but it still counts.
  • The Dead Branch item and its more potent sister, the Bloody Branch. These summon a random monster to to the location of the user, with the latter having a great chance of calling up something nasty (read: an MVP boss).
  • Sorcerers summon one of four Elemental Spirits, which can enhance the spells corresponding on their own elements.
  • Sages have a random skill called Hocus Pocus/Abracadabra that has a chance of doing just about anything in the game including summoning MVPs. This was abused for nearly a year to level characters quickly to 99 before players got upset about the ease of grinding off Lord of Death's summoned mobs for those who have access to the skill, and in response, Gravity nerfed all MVP's summoned mobs to give no EXP.
  • Summoners summon spirit of animals and plants and use them for attacks or buffs.
• Symbol Motif Clothing: Priests, Crusaders and Lord Knights have several crosses on their outfits.
• The Gadfly: This is how the aptly-named Lazy, an NPC who is an agent of Secret Wings, normally act. To the point where it actually comes off as surprising whenever he goes serious like what you expect from a professional secret agent. Episode 16.2 and Episode 17 main quest has him messing with not only you but pretty much everyone, including the people he's supposed to negotiate with, and regardless of status (even the vice president of Rekenber!), while pretty much forcing you to do most of the work.
• The Syndicate: Rekenber Corporation. There's a saying on the fandom that if something bad happens, 90% chance Rekenber has something to do with it.
• Theme Naming: The servers are traditionally named after characters from the original manhwa.
• There Is No Kill Like Overkill: Warlock's Comet spell. The damage is huge, but it's the range that is an absolute overkill: 31x31 in Level 5. It covers more than your whole screen sight, and is absolutely unnecessary in every scenario except War of Emperium 2.0.
• The Guards Must Be Crazy: In order to pass the guard and enter Rekenber's underground lab, all you need to do is equipping Grandpa's Beard and Geek Glasses. And he'll always let you pass. Even if you play as a female character.
• Throwaway Country: This might actually be said of Morroc, after the Nightmare of Morocc update when it got utterly trashed by Satan Morocc's awakening. Episode 14.3 eventually see Morocc being rebuilt.
• Throw the Book at Them: One of the melee weapons for magic types.
  • A properly built Sage (or its transcended variants) can really dish out some hurt with it.
  • For some reason, Star Gladiators/Taekwon Masters can equip them as weapons, but not actually use them to attack. They still kick the enemy to death instead.
• Toy Time: The Toy Factory dungeon.
• Trauma Inn: Most inns let you rest to regain health. But why would you need to do that when there are faster - and free - alternatives at hand? They also tend to be out of the way.
• Unidentified Items: Equipment obtained from monsters are only listed as generic "Shoes", "Armor", "Sword", etc and cannot be equipped until you appraise them with the Magnifier item or skill (only for Merchants).
• Video Game Stealing: Successful use of the Steal skill gives you one random item from the monster's droplist. This item is "extra" and doesn't affect the actual drops. Of course, many droplists contain bodyparts from their monsters...so yeah, you can "steal" the beak of a bird that's attacking you with that beak, kill it...and get the beak again.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: Digotz and Maku from the Friendship Quest. At one point they exchange insults with each other, but in the end their friendship is undeniably close.
• Walking Shirtless Scene: Several male versions of classes, particularly higher tier ones.
• William Telling: The game has an already shot-through apple as a hat, called "Apple of Archer". Very popular amongst archers and, surprisingly, wizards.
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Kiehl.
• Wrench Wench: Female Mechanics, though sadly the actual wrench is an Acolyte weapon.
• You Have Researched Breathing:
  • You have to level a few times before you can even learn to sit. VG Cats even had a strip about it here. /sit is a bit of meme in the RO community, which views it rather fondly.
  • Some of the quest skills feels more mundane and useless than skills you already have by default.
    • Thief class needs to complete a quest to gain the ability to...throw rocks. And another one to just pick them from the ground.
    • Archer class have skills that let them shoot multiple arrows at once (despite using up less arrows than what the skill animation implies), and their regular attack already uses 1 arrow per shoot. And yet, their quest skill lets them gain a skill where....they're actually shooting just 1 arrow.
    • Bard and Dancer's quest skill let them learn how to shout and wink, respectively.
    • Prior to the update that removes the cast time, Knight's quest skill, Charge Attack, is considered absolutely useless thanks to its stupidly long cast time when the target is further away (even though the entire point of the skill is to rapidly move closer towards an enemy), so people prefer to just walk normally and whack the enemy with a stronger attack, as the long cast time means you actually save more time just walking normally towards the enemy.