My lowest resolution Cleric
Dragon Nest, like the blog post title describes, is really a cross between Flyff and Vindictus. You have cutesy characters, and fun environments, but instead of "farming monsters" in fields outside of monsters you would grind out dungeon quests for experience. This is more like Vindictus. Your starting town is where you collect quests and conduct business. Those quests take place in dungeons, which you reach by entering a portal Hub at the edge of town. Also like Vindictus, the dungeons you enter have increasing difficulty and achievements, which definitely lessens the "grind" if you choose to do them. Over the course of the game, you may enter the same dungeon with the same boss monster 3 times for 3 different quests. Luckily you can change the difficulty to make it more interesting, and you may even have achievements for bonus experience such as:
-Clear the dungeon while taking no damage.
-Obtain a 30+ hit combo.
-Clear the dungeon in a 4-man team
And many more that I only caught a glimpse of.
Chelsea's higher resolution Archer
The next area that sets this game apart from our favorites like Ragnarok Online and Flyff is the battle system. Instead of autoattacking monsters and using skills when available, Dragon Nest uses a more modern system. Your character's movement is done via WASD and your mouse is locked into the camera. Instead of seeing a mouse pointer, you have a Crosshair that is indicative of your mouse location. That means the camera has no boundaries for mouse movement, and you can roll your mouse all over your desk and the camera will keep turning(Ah, the days of slamming my mouse for quick spins in Gunz Online.) Each individual attack your character does is performed with a Left Click. You can link left clicks together to make combo attacks that will hit anything in range. If you're using a weapon with a sweeping attack, you will hit multiple monsters. There are even some bows that fire multiple arrows, so not only can you aim and left click to hit whoever, however you like, it may also it multiple enemies in a multi-hit combo. Right click is called a special attack, and usually costs no Mana/MP/Energy. I like to think of them as combo finishers. While you're moving around punching and slashing enemies, they will be attacking you back, so Dragon Nest has quicksteps in the form of Double Tapping a direction. I hold Shift and press a direction, as my computer is too slow to register a double tap. As all of the newest Action MMORPGs are showing, positioning matters for both you and your opponent; damage mitigation is not just Math in your head, but also hand-eye coordination.
Of course, it wouldn't be a MMO without Classes and unique skills for each. Skills are set to the number keys and can be learned/upgraded via NPC or item drops. Each time you level up, you get skill points that you can spend to build a skillset that you prefer. Just like the Normal Attack system, skills also require aiming, positioning, and timing. Some skills, such as a rain of lightning bolts, light up individual spots on the ground to show where they will it. If you or the enemy aren't standing on one of those spots, then noone will take damage from it. As your level progress and you reach level 15, you can evolve your class up a tier!
-Clerics can choose to become the ever present healing and tanking Paladin, or the equally as popular support Priest. Priests in Dragon Nest also have a small number of damage dealing Skills, helping them fill an additional DD role.
-Warriors can choose to become Swordsmen, which excel in long combo chains. You can specialize your Swordsman for single opponents or taking on multiple enemies at once. The other choice for Warriors is the Mercenary. Mercenaries are also high armor classes to fill the tanking role. I'm not sure if they have options for healing like a Paladin does, but they have many shouting auras.
-The Sorceress, as usual, gets to decide on a full damage dealing character, or the option of crowd control. Elementalist get additional high damage, multiple monster hitting skills whereas the Mystic gets more options for controlling monsters. Not only do they get cool skills like Black Hole that draw groups of enemies to its center, but they also get their own abilities like Teleport and the fast-moving Mirco Hole.
-Archer are always popular and their upgrade choices are no different. You can choose between your long range attacks with no close-range options in the form of the Sharp Shooter. Your other option is to sacrifice some of that damage for close-range abilities and escape options a-la Acrobat. Essentially, you can either continue your high damage, long-range barrages, or you can do great damage at any range and attempt to broaden your versatility.
From the original Korean server.
After finishing what is left to do in your home town, the next step of Dragon Nest is teaming up with your buddies and doing Instanced fights in the many high level dungeons. The game is still a little new, so the choices are slightly limited. But, from what I understand, there is some fairly difficult end game content in Dragon Nest with awesome rewards to show for it. For some players, high level content makes the game what it is. For others, it is the joy of taking a cute girl with a bow throw several quests for estranged NPCs. Perhaps the most important thing to make a note of is that Dragon Nest is free to play, like all other Nexon Games. Of course, you can choose to buy NX for various things from Costumes and Wings with a few stats on them, to experience point boosters. Feel free to give it a try, any computer bought in the last 2 years could play the game and you don't really lose a thing by trying it out.
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