What We Generally Know About Dragon Nest

Dragon Nest
What We Generally Know About Dragon Nest
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Dragon Nest General Information

In the world of Dragon Nest, the threats of Evil are very real and very present. Dragons haven’t been seen for a while, but their evil is still felt. The Abyss encroaches and monsters grow bolder. A young girl has been kidnapped and the Black Knight has been seen. Evil dark elves, orcs, goblins, and other nasty monsters have set up all around the world. It’s up to you and other adventurers to get to the bottom of this and drive them off.

In Dragon Nest, there are four classes: Archer, Warrior, Sorceress, and Cleric. Archers and Warriors start in Ironroot Village, and their tutorial is witnessing that girl being kidnapped. Meanwhile Sorceresses and Clerics start in Mana Ridge, and have certain items stolen from them. The early missions parallel each other for some time, before finally reaching the central village, Carderock Pass. There’s another city, Saint’s Haven, but it’s not yet available.

Dragon Nest is an action-RPG MMO. Gameplay is third-person over the shoulder combat, much more fast-paced than something like World of Warcraft. The emphasis in combat is combos, keeping the enemy from getting their own attacks in while you lay down the pain. Each class has it’s own unique playstyle, and at level 15 they subclass into an even more unique character. The current level cap is 24, because the game is still in Open Beta. Get in now to get a head start above the rest! Unfortunately, as this game IS a Nexon MMO, it’s IP-locked to North America only. European gamers will have to look up their own version, Dragon Nest SEA.

For more on the classes, read on below, and view each of our in-depth guides. Unfortunately they’re gender-locked, so you can’t create a male archer or a female cleric.

Setup For Beginners

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Before you can play Dragon Nest you have to do a few things. The first is to make sure you have a Nexon account. If you play any other Nexon games, like Mabinogi or Maplestory, you just use that name and password to log in. If not, you can go to any Nexon game site or simply www.nexon.net to register one for yourself.

From there, on the Dragon Nest homepage, you can click the giant “play” button. Since you don’t have the game installed, it will ask you if you want to download the installer. Say yes, and a fast download will happen. It’s worryingly small, but don’t be concerned. What you just downloaded was essentially itself a downloader. Click and run it, and you’re finally downloading the actual game.

Once it’s downloaded, run the installer and follow the prompts. Once it’s installed, you may notice that you have a new Dragon Nest icon on your desktop, but clicking it only takes you to the website! That’s right, Nexon makes you use their website to launch their games. Click the play button again and it will launch the game.

Dragon Nest Basics

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The control scheme is simple. Use WASD to move your character, and the mouse to aim and attack. Left-clicks are regular attacks, while right-clicks are your special attack. Skills show up on your skill bar, which is the numbers 1 - 0 . If you’re worried about 7 - 0 being too hard to reach, you can press ~ to switch between one of two hotkey bars, so you can set it to ~1 - ~6 if you want. Or, all of the keys are remappable, so you can set your control scheme to whatever you find most useful.

If you’re one of those people who uses a controller to play your computer games, you can do that too. Dragon Nest has built in support for controllers, though it may be a little wonky. When in doubt, use Joy2Key and set it up any way you’re comfortable with.

Don’t worry about remembering all of this now. It’s built up slowly in the tutorial and first few quests, so you have plenty of time to get used to it.

Experience is gained for completing quests, killing monsters, and finishing dungeons. You also have a certain amount of empowerment points per day. Running dungeons drains this empowerment. While you’re empowered, you gain bonus experience. Also, if you party with people on your buddy list, two things happen. First, you get a lower drain on your empowerment. Second, you get friend bonus exp. So running dungeons with a full party of four friends is the fastest way to level.

Dungeons come in a variety of difficulties. Easy is, well, super easy. Run through on easy if you just need to pick up a quest item. Normal is slightly harder, but still trivial. Hard is where you should be running if you’re not confident in your skills or power. Master is where it gets tough, and you either have the be confident in yourself or running with a party. Abyss is the hardest difficulty we have available, and is the best for rare drops and experience. It can be challenging however, so taking a party is recommended. Kings difficulty is even harder, but we don’t have it yet.

The Classes of Dragon Nest

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The four classes you can play as in Dragon Nest, listed above, are Archer, Warrior, Sorceress, and Cleric.

Archers are just what they say on the tin. You use a bow to attack enemies from a long distance away, and if they get too close your kick skills keep them at bay. Archers are the strongest damage class at range in the game. (Detailed guide forthcoming.)

Warriors are the close-range half of Ironroot Village’s militia. Wield swords, axes, or hammers to smash your enemies to the ground and fling them around like they’re nothing. (Detailed guide forthcoming.)

Sorceresses are haughty magic users that stay at range and can lay down elemental damage. Or, if they so choose, they can harness the powers of gravity for various laser- and black hole- based attacks. (Detailed guide forthcoming.)

Clerics are holy warriors that get right up in the face of enemies. They have relics to place for effects and the only healing spell in the game, but they can also lay down the hurt with light-elemental magic attacks.

That’s it for now! Is there something you’re curious about, or something you think we left out that beginners should know? Drop us a line in the comments and we’ll add it right away!

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