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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 can play it here.

Guardians are allowed to play ArchKnight, DragonFable, and 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 AdventureQuest servers, while there are a certain amount of slots for free players.

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 in a War Chest, which can be accessed after defeating the final enemy. Some wars have had a limited time to be completed for the rewards to be made available. Now, the servers can handle 2 different wars at the same time. The amount of slots can peak at around 22000 users, and can have a low of 10,000 users. Currently, it seems that the maually updated percentage bar is preferred by the staff. There is also a type of war where players can fight for one side or another and whichever side fills their quota for enemies defeated fights a boss and collects the rewards from the chest, although all players can fight the boss.

Events

Adventure Quest celebrates Easter, Halloween and Christmas, and other holidays. Easter is known as Grenwog Festival, Halloween is known as Mogloween, Christmas is known as Frostvale, and Valentine's Day is known as Snugglefest. During these holidays, special quests become available.

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 AdventureQuest related games are being produced, and will be released in the future.

DragonFable

This is the newest game by Artix Entertainment, entitled DragonFable. 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 interact with another Artix Entertainment game, "AdventureQuest". In fact, Guardians may already access DragonFable. However, it will come out of Beta on June 9th, 2006, begin to sell the DragonAmulet, and is due to open to free players by October in 2007.

Recent updates on the game's progress are available on the Design Notes page. It will be intertwined with the AdventureQuest storyline so that players will be able to play both games to get cool stuff. Even though the focus will be on DragonFable, AdventureQuest will still be updated. Unlike AdventureQuest, though, DragonFable will be a 'walk around' game, where players can walk their characters through towns and quests. However, the game has no character interaction besides NPCs.It has also been stated by Artix himself that Guardians and X-Guardians will have a special "Guardian Class" armor at their disposal for making the payment on AQ. New, free players from "AdventureQuest" who want to become Guardians on "Dragonfable" will have the option (along with Guardians) to buy the special "DragonAmulet," allowing players to go to special places and get rare and powerful equipment.

DragonFable will take place two to three years before AdventureQuest. All characters from AdventureQuest will appear in Dragonfable as well, with characters such as "Galanoth" and "Artix." The game will tell the origins of things such as the missing "Guardian Towers," how "Battleon" was founded, and how the "DragonSlayers" came to be. New characters will also be added, and the "DoomWeapons" and "DragonLord's" weapons will make their mark as some of the most powerful weapons in the game. However, the DragonLord's weapons will need the DragonAmulet to activate them.

Currently, characters may be created in only three classes: Warriors, Mages and Rogues. Additional classes, such as Dark Knights and Paladins, are due to be released in the future. Minor additions such as weapons and enemies are constantly being introduced, as well as new locations, such as towns.

Community

Artix Entertainment maintains forums for all Artix Entertainment games. They can be found here, and include around 60 000 people.

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

Furthermore, 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.

Links

Adventure Quest - Main site for Adventure Quest.

Adventure Quest Forums - Main forums for AdventureQuest.

DragonFable - Another Flash game in the making by Artix Entertainment.

Undead Assault - First mini-game made by Artix Entertainment.

Dragonfable: Firespawn - Second mini-game made by Artix Entertainment.

Trivia

• In the desolate town of Granemor, there is an apothecarist named Lucretia. This is may be either a reference to the mythological woman Lucretia or the notorious 14th century Italian poisoner and aristocrat Lucretia Borgia .

• 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 Mogloween is not wearing a mask — because the AQ staff doesn't have time for that. Also, during the Frostval 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. He also frequently quotes, "Burninate!! Don't sue us please." The "burninate" quote is from Trogdor from Homestar Runner and a game based off of it, Peasant's Quest.

• There is a reference to the Lord of the Rings series with the weapon Glamdrung. It is a wordplay on the weapon Glamdring, Gandalf's sword in the Lord of the Rings.

The Glamdrung is not to be confused with another weapon, the Glamdung, which is an extremely weak weapon, replaced Custom Weapons the bug abusers obtained on a false release of the Custom Weapon Quest. Its sellback is a negative number, causing the seller to lose gold and does 1-1 Earth Damage, making it possibly the weakest weapon in the game.

• 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. One of its descriptions is, "This door has the answer to the universe," which is another reference (there is an untrue rumor 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 planning 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 the average MMORPG player. With that said, during the intro, they mention "Divine Intervention", which is a reference to a spell in World of Warcraft which was also used after Leeroy botched the plan in the movie.

• After you do the Zorbak and vampire queen quest to destroy all the bases, Zorbak yells out, "ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US!!", a reference to AYBABTU from Zero Wing.

• If you go into the Lounge section of the Inn/Weapon Shop, in the second area, there is a bottle with purple fluid in it that says "Drink Me." Drinking it makes you tiny, a reference to Lewis Carrol's Alice In Wonderland.

• There is also a quest with the Frogzard Hunter by talking to Twilly. The Frogzard Hunter is a reference to the Crocodile Hunter.

• A series of weapons called the Master's Blades was also released as a limited rare item. They refer to the Master Sword of the Legend of Zelda series in both look and name.

• Another Legend of Zelda reference happens when you ask Robina Hood (who in turn is a reference to Robin Hood) about the Rogue class. She responds by saying "*gasp* Are you calling me a Rogue? By the Great Tri-farce, I am a Ranger!" The Tri-farce is a pun on the word Triforce.

• There is a very rare pet which you can only get if you upgrade one of your accounts to Guardian within 24 hours of creation. This pet is the "Guardian Darkzard." () If you are a Guardian, but upgraded after 24 hours, you can still buy the "Guardian Firezard," which is mostly the same, except it does fire damage instead of darkness.

Controversy and criticism

Guardian Only Login

There is a limit on the number of free players which can play simultaneously. In the early days of AdventureQuest, the limit was fixed at 4000, but now the limit is always at least 7500, 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.

New accounts get four days of free play. During that time, they can bypass the limit. However, Guardians can bypass it anytime.

AdventureQuest will eventually have advertisting added to its game site to allow more free players to run the game simultaneously.

Lack of in-game interaction

AdventureQuest is essentially a single-player game, and provides few 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 because staff had to do it manually, and there were too many requests.

Monotony

AdventureQuest is sometimes accused of being repetitive 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. However, many people enjoy it because they can multitask while playing.

Lack of features

AdventureQuest is often accused of lacking basic features present in other RPGs. Artix Entertainment rebutts by reminding users that AdventureQuest has weekly updates and is ever-changing. The reason no user interaction is possible, is because it is a purely singleplayer RPG.

X-Guardian Boost

In the Guardian information page, it says that buying the Guardian status lets one's character recieve all future Guardian updates and features. However, Guardians still have to pay for the X-Guardian boost, but they don't have to, if they don't want to. In X-Guardianship, there are only 4 things recieved that are different from normal Guardianship:

• 10,000 extra Gold
• A seperate Hall of Fame list showing only X-Guardian characters.
• X-Guardians get 10% more experience from every battle, whereas normal Guardians get a normal amount of experience.
• 3 health and mana starting potions, instead of 1 (Adventurer) or 2 (Guardian)
• A potion limit of 35, instead of 25(Adventurer) or 30 (Guardian)

Character Classes

Fighter

A basic warrior who practices swordplay - and then uses it.

Rogue

A quick warrior that uses daggers to assassinate.

Mage

A magic user that is good with spells and staves.

Knight

A strong fighter who fights to defend the king (although no one knows who the king is). (You must be a level 5 fighter to become a knight)

Necromancer

A magic person able to re-animate corpses and become an undead (lich). (You must be a level 5 wizard to become a necromancer)

Ninja

A person that uses a mix of both dexterity and strength to quickly assail an opponent.

Paladin

A blessed knight on a journey to slay undead. (You must be a level 5 knight and a level 5 mage to become a paladin)

Dragon Slayer

A person who devotes their life to dragon-slaying.

Dracomancer

A person who studies under High Khan Cyrus to learn and protect the ancient knowledge of dragons.

Vampire Slayer

A person who slays vampires and werewolves.

Wizard

An advanced mage who is extremely good with spells and magic. (You must be a level 5 mage to become a wizard).

Sub-Race

One can choose to either a Werewolf or a Vampire, but not both. They both have seperate weapons to use, and their armour have special powers. Guardians can also be a Werepyre, a combination of the two, which harness the power of both Werewolves and Vampires, but at the cost of not having weapons, and being a reject from werewolves, vampires, and humans. But even though werepyres are "rejects" nothing changes except the can't enter either the werewolf lair or the vampire castle.

Coming Soon

Ranger, Beastmaster, Beserker, Pirate

Guardians can train up to level 10, and unlock the "ultimate attack" for the class. Adventures can only train to level 5, where only some advanced class moves are available.

Myths

Over the history of Adventure Quest, a few myths have appeared that have spawned dozens of rumors.

• During the Great Fire War, there were rumors that the Ice Katana would cost over 1 million gold and many players became extremely rich trying to save up for it.

• In the final parts of the Great Fire War, a myth circulated that if one saved the Fire Orb, instead of using it to fight the final boss, the player would be able to keep it for use as a shield.

• After Demento's death, rumours abounded to the extent that attending his funeral would let the player keep his armour.

• It is rumored the staff-only shop is located in plain view behind the door with the number 42, though staff and the more intelligent players know that the door is just a reference to the book Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. It is not surpising, seeing as the staff are big fans of the book.