AdventureQuest

AdventureQuest is a free online single player RPG developed by Artix Entertainment in 2002. The system requirements for the game are a web browser and version 7.0 or later of Macromedia Flash Player.

The game is free of cost, but a one time upgrade grants players the Guardian or X-Guardian status, allowing them to acquire certain in-game perks and features not available to other players. You are able to play it on http://www.battleon.com

Guardians are allowed to play ArchKnight, DragonFable, 2 other RPGs based loosely off AdventureQuest; as well as Zardwars, which is a "mod" created to test multiple databases. Guardians also have a separate server which is used for testing possible changes to the game and participating in special game events open only to Guardians. Guardians have the advantage of being able to play whenever they want on Adventure Quest servers, while there are a certain amount of slots for free players.

Gameplay

The game itself plays much like any other turn-based RPG; the player has a menu with several commands which his or her character can perform. These include attacking with the current weapon, using spells, using potions for health/mana restoration, changing equipment, selecting pets, and fleeing from battle. Guest characters can also be obtained and will help you in battle.

Attributes

In order to increase their attributes, players must challenge specialized NPCs called stat trainers. There are currently three stat trainers, each holding a different form of training, cost, and type of stats to train, and also there is an un-trainer, who decreases your stats for free. At this point there exist three primary strategies for statistical assignment and two rarely used secondary strategies.

1. Melee and range oriented players focus on training strength, dexterity and luck - Warriors.
2. Magically oriented players focus on training intellect, dexterity and luck - Mages.
3. The so called hybrid player attempts to create a rounded character by dividing these with about equal intellect and strength - Hybrids.
4. Players directed toward ranged weapons, and more specifically, the Rogue class put a lot more into dexterity. However this is rarely done due to a shortage of strong ranged weapons - Rangers.
5. Players directed toward using Pets and Guests effectively focus on charisma. This has become increasingly potent as a bonus of (CHA/10) is now added to the BtH (Bonus-to-Hit) of all pets, as well as a bonus of (CHA/15) base damage per hit - Beastmasters.

In addition to these listed categories, there are many players who more or less evenly train their attributes perhaps in anticipation of future features not yet present in the game. Or more likely because they want equal boosts with different weapons (melee, ranged), spells, or other aspects of the game such as pets and stat rolls.

Non-Player Characters

As well as the players there are many Non-Player characters in Adventure Quest. These include mage characters (Warlic from the Mage Shop), Ranger Characters (Robina Hood from the Inn) and Quest Characters (The Werewolf/Lycan King from the Werewolves's Lair in Darkovia Forest). Though you cannot play as these characters, they sometimes come along with you on certain quests and assist you in battle. For example, the Maelstrom quest features both Captain Rhubarb (a pirate) and Aquella (a water elf). Also, during most major wars, you can choose a partner to fight alongside you

Classes

In AdventureQuest, classes are gained by completing missions for Non-player characters. Class abilities may be used by donning the appropriate class armor. As long as you have the appropriate class armor, you can use the special abilities you have earned regardless of your current class. In other words, a Fighter or Dragon Slayer will still be able to use Elemental Explosion (the level 10 Wizard attack) as long as he/she still has one of the wizard armors. You can advance up to level 5 in a class for Adventurer (non-guardian)characters and all the way to level 10 as a Guardian or Master X-Guardian (14.95 or 19.95 US, respectively).

Each level you gain in a class gives you access to a new ability. This ability may be a passive bonus, such as improved defense or elemental resistances, or a special attack which usually costs HP/MP to use.

Generally every class has two or three defensive abilities, six or seven offensive powers and a level 10 attack which causes huge damage. The most well-known of these are Ninja Death Strike, which has a one-in-five chance of dealing 300 damage, Dracomancer's half dragon transformation which turns you into a half dragon and deals massive damage or you do a normal attack, and the Dragonslayer's Call Forth the Fire Dragon (CFTFD). CFTFD must be charged by using 90 dragonslayer attacks, then deals huge damage to the enemy it is unleashed upon. When logging in, the first CFTFD charge is set at 60/90, so only 30 attacks made in Dragonslayer armor are needed.Also if you do the Paladin class (Requirements Level 5 Fighter, then Level 5 Knight), the two special abilites; The Lay on Hands; requires 90 hits, sucessful or not, on the enemy in the paladin armor. This ability allows to be healed completely, HP and MP. Another one is Resurection. This allows you to be fully healed if you die. This is a passive skill you must hit the enemy 15 times sucessful or not in order for this to work, in paladin armor. NOTE: Even if you die do not be expected to be revived all the time its a 50/50 chance)

You can achieve any level in any class, and there is no limit on how many classes you may take. Only one can be active at a time due to class armours, though. In AdventureQuest, a character may own up to eight different armors. In order to use class ablities you must wear the corresponding armor. You can sell a class armor and buy it back later, at a loss, but your class levels are permanent once gained.

The abilities you gain by training in these classes can only be used when you are equipped with the related class armor. The currently available classes are Dragon Slayer, Vampire Slayer, Fighter, Knight, Mage, Wizard, Rogue, Ninja, Paladin (already released), and Dracomancer. Many more are planned,e.g. such as Ranger, Pirate, Berserker and Necromancer.

Class Reviews and Requirements

Fighter: A strong hearted and strong bodied body warrior that talks with his sword. (Base Class) Mage:Masters of Lore's magic, known to defeat powerful Fighters with their sheer cunning. (Base Class) Rogue:Quick, speedy assassins, known to attack and rob people at night. (Base Class) Dragon Slayer:These heavily armored warriors defeat the powerful dragons with their special abilities. (Slayer Class) Vampire Slayer:These dark clothed warriors use their powers to hunt down vampires and other creatures of the night. (Slayer Class) Ninja:These ninjitsu masters are living weapons, using their bodies as a fighting force. Wizard:These magic masters collect their powers from the mysterious Ethereal Realm, using magic to its fullest extent. Requirements: Level 5 Mage. Knight:An incredibly powerful warrior who fights for his king and would rather lose his life than his honor. Requirements: Level 5 Fighter. Paladin:this armored warrior utilises the power of Light in his quest to rid Lore of evil. Requirements: level 5 Fighter and Mage.

As of yet, there are no classes besides paladin requiring 2+ classes at lvl 5.

Races

At present players may only be a human; there is speculation that other races may be available in the future, but AQ staff have said this is "unlikely" to happen. Certain armor called "Forms," however, temporarily transmogrifies the player to a different race. Form armors include: Dwarf Form, Drakel Form, Zombie Form, Twilly Form, Lilliputian Form, Minotaur Form, Troll Form, Giant Head Form, Martial Artist Form, Samurai Form, Werewolf Form, Vampire Form, Lycan, Vamp, Werepyre Form, Blob Form, Snow Golem, and Ninja.

Sub-Races

Sub-races are similar to classes in that players must wear a special armor to access abilities. Currently there are three sub-races: Vampire, Werewolf and Werepyre. Vampires can morph into a Vampire Lord which may drain enemy health. Werewolves morph into an Alpha Wolf and may recover mana upon inflicting damage. The Werepyre (half werewolf, half vampire) attacks twice with increased damage and recovers 5 HP with each attack turn. Being a Werepyre also allows one to utilize both the Vampire and Werewolf sub-race armors to their full potential. Sub-race armor will only confer special benefits if the player belongs to the appropriate sub-race. ==

Wars

As well as random encounters and quest battling, there are sometimes events called wars. These are server-wide events that call for a certain amount of monsters to be defeated before moving on to a boss battle. If a player defeats the boss he/she may be able to claim a rare war prize. In the past players did not actually have to slay the boss to get the rare prize. The matter was resolved by implementing a system where items are now purchased in-game. Weapons are the most common items. They often do more damage than weapons available normally or have other advantages, such as powerful specials.

Several new war methods are being held currently, including a manually updated percentage bar, and a quest-style war where there is no waiting bar for the boss. Both of these sell the rewards directly in the shop. Some wars have had a limited time to be completed for the rewards to be made available.

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Events

There are normal events, as well. The two most famous are Mogloween and Frostvale.

Mogloween happens a bit before Halloween, and the time is also the game's birthday. During Mogloween, you go trick or treating at people's houses. The house names are a moderator, Arch Knight, or respected member of the forum's names (for the most part), followed by a type of building (mansion, school, outhouse, etc.). If you get the treat option, you get candy. This candy stays with you temporarily, and you can redeem it for temporary masks and a temporary version of the Pumpkin Set. The trick option has you fight a monster. If you encounter Moglins during trick or treating, and you don't have a mask on, the moglins mutate into a Moglinster you have to fight. If you have a mask on, then you must pick a hand. The right one gets you a trick (monster fight) or treat (more than the normal amount of candy).

Frostvale happens during the winter holidays. Generally, the Frostvale presents are stolen in some way and you must return them. During the first Frostvale, everyone could get free gifts. This was before the level cap, so theoretically you could have a level zero character with level forty armor. The second Frostvale featured gift boxes that opened after Christmas. These were only purchasable by Guardians, and they cost money. Zorbak, the "ebil" Moglin, generally has a hand in the disruption of the presents.

A few years ago (in the production stages of Adventure Quest), when Frostvale had yet to be created, there was a different quest which entailed delivering presents to Battleon's residents. One could choose to travel by foot, horse, or dragon--these would turn your armor into Ice Breaker armor, Horse Rider armor, or Ice Dragon Rider armor, respectively. Players took advantage of this--in the guardian tower you could joust if your default armor was a rider armor. Free players could not normally do that, but were able to by using the horse rider armor.

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Mini-Games

There are currently at least two mini-games from Artix Entertainment: Undead Assault and Dragonfable: Firespawn. All users and non-users alike were allowed to play or download the games into their own website.

Undead Assault was the first mini-game which features a Paladin (which resembles Artix) as he slays the undead on his path thus earning experience to which the next level and gold to spend in Aria's shop, with special weapons that give you more experience and/or gold, in between each level.

Dragonfable: Firespawn features Galanoth, the head of the order of dragonslayers, as he rides atop of his steed and shoot the arrows from his crossbow at the vicious fire dragon while avoiding obstacles such as cacti, rocks and fireballs.

More AQ related games are being produced and will be released in the future.

DragonFable

Main article: Dragon Fable

The newest game by Artix Entertainment entitled DragonFable has been released for Beta testing to Guardian Players. For Guardians, Phase 2 Round 1 has been released! DragonFable is something of an interactive serial web comic the storyline of which will consistently evolve over time. It has been stated that DragonFable will be released in mid 2006. To see recent updates on the games' progress view the Design Notes page. It will be intertwined with the Adventure Quest storyline so that players will play both games to get cool stuff. Even though they will focus on Dragon Fable, Adventure Quest will still be updated. It has also been stated by Artix himself that AQ Guardians / X-Guardians will have a special "Guardian Class" armor at their disposal for making the payment on AQ. Also DragonFable will take place a few years before AdventureQuest.

Community

Artix Entertainment maintains forums for all Artix Entertainment games. They can be found here, and includes around 60.000 people.

Counting all players in the world, AdventureQuest RPG has over 15 million characters.

Further Artix Entertainment maintains a chat community via Caelestia.net IRC network and has two channels. #battleon which deals specifically with AE game discussion and help and #yulgarsinn which is a location where Artix Entertainment members can gather to discuss anything. Both channels can be accessed via a web chat applet hosted at the Caelestia.net website.

Trivia

In the desolated town of Granemor, there is an apothecarist named Lucretia. This is likely to be a reference to the mythological woman Lucretia

If you ever go to Darkovia and choose to go to VampireSlayer E, the screen will say that he dumped his girlfriend 'Buffy' for some good old vampire-slaying. Buffy is the title character of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The name of VampireSlayer E is itself a reference to the anime character Vampire Hunter D.

Moglins, especially Twilly (the prototypical lead moglin) frequently break the fourth wall in the game. A good example of this occurs during the Mogloween event when a moglin says that he will not turn into a moglinster — something that occurs when a moglin is insanely hungry, angry, touched by darkness or monster cure, or if a trick-or-treater on Mogliween is not wearing a mask — because the AQ staff doesn't have time for that. Also, during the Frostvale season, when Zorbak tags along with the player, Zorbak sometimes casts a spell where a pencil erases the game.

Another frequent fourth wall breaker, the Guardian Dragon, (a being that is summoned from the Guardian Blade) will often say "Sorry I'm late, talking to Artix about lowering my summoning rate" or "Don't blame me for my bad lines, all the idiots on the forums made them up" or some such.

There is a reference to the Lord of the Rings series with the weapon Glamdung. It is a wordplay on the weapon Glamdring, Gandalf's chief sword in The Fellowship of the Ring.

There is a door on the second floor of the Battleon weapon shop that says 42, an obvious reference to Douglas Adams's The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and one of its descriptons is "This door has the answer to the universe", which is another reference(there is a rumor (which is untrue) that between 3:00 AM EST and ten seconds after 3:00 AM, you may enter the room and buy extremely rare armor.) It has a sign on it that says "Beware of Leopardzard", a parody of the "Beware of Leopard" sign on a disused bathroom's door where a local planing office had hidden the orders to demolish Arthur Dent's house and build a bypass.

On Friday 9th September 2005, a quest relating to the Leeroy Jenkins meme was introduced into AdventureQuest. Leeroy Jenkins is a craze that originated in World of Warcraft, when a Paladin called Leeroy ran ahead, luring hundreds of monsters to the main party, butchering a very well planned operation. The quest's point is to get past a nest of Vampragons. Also, in the quest intro, there is some poor grammar and no punctuation, stereotyping MMORPGs. With that said, during the intro, they mention "Divine Intervention", which is a reference to a spell in World of Warcraft though the spell actually originated in the Game Morrowind, made before World of Warcraft. The spell was also used after Lerroy botched the plan in the Warcraft movie.

After you do the Zorbak and vampire queen quest to destroy all the bases, after you do so Zorbak yells out."ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US!!", a reference to AYBABTU from Zero Wing and a cheat in Warcraft 3 that makes you automatically win.

Controversy and criticsm

Guardian Only Login

There is a limit on the number of Adventurers which can log in simultaneously. In the early days of AdventureQuest, the limit was fixed at 4000, but now the limit is always at least 8000, and the number of extra slots fluctuates according to time of day and server load.

Once the limit is reached, only Guardians may log in, until sufficient Adventurers log out to free up slots, or the limit increases. There was previously a bug which allowed Adventurers to log in even if the limit had been reached, but it has since been closed. Adventures believe that by making them wait a long time to log in, Artix Entertainment is trying to force them to become Guardians, and this is often cited as a reason for quitting AdventureQuest.

It should also be noted that new accounts get 15 logins that bypass the limit. Guardians can bypass it anytime.

Hacking and Scamming

You can find many hacks on forums to be a guardian. However, hacking is illegal and next to none (or none) of the hacks actually work. Password scams are probably the only type of scam, i.e. "If you type your password it shows up in all stars" and then using that player's password in the player's account. Most players are too smart to fall for a scam. Otherwise, it is impossible to scam in-game as there is no direct interaction between players.

Lack of in-game interacton

AdventureQuest, provides no means of in-game interaction between players. Some commonly-requested in-game interaction features include:

• Battles between players. High level players may find the monsters too easy and wish to challenge other players.
• Item trading between players was once offered but was taken away since staff had to do it manually and there were too many requests.

Monotony

AdventureQuest is often accused of being repititive and boring. Almost all of the gameplay activities involve killing monsters to gain experience, and there is little else to do. Training up and levelling takes a long time, and often requires repeating tedious tasks.

Lack of features

AdventureQuest is often accused of lacking basic features present in other RPGs. Artix Entertainment rebuts by reminding users that AdventureQuest is still in the testing stage and therefore lacks many features, although they will add features that users suggest. These features include user interaction (you can only see yourself), monotony of attacking, defending, etc. However they have added in the Isle d'Oriens, a mini-game, in which you must 'catch' bugs in order to increase the size of a plant-like object. (There is a chat... See the aq forums for more details!)

External links

• AdventureQuest Homepage
• ZardWars
• ArchKnight
• Zorbak!
• DragonFable site
• Undead Assualt
• Ultimate AQ