Grand Chase

A screenshot of a player character attacking a boss monster

Grand Chase was centered around player versus environment gameplay. Players would have a number of dungeons available to complete. These dungeons consisted of branching levels filled with enemies, usually with a stronger boss on the final one. When entering a dungeon, a player might form a 4-player group (or party) to complete it. When choosing a dungeon to play, the player was given the option to create a party of their own, or join one created by other players. Players could repeat dungeons as many times as they liked.

After each expedition into a dungeon, characters would gain experience points. While the amount of experience gained was partially dependent on the player's performance and character level, every player would gain some amount experience after completing a dungeon. When sufficient experience was obtained, the player's character would advance by one level. Higher levels improved statistics, granted access to better equipment, and unlocked more difficult dungeons. Characters stopped levelling up when they reached level 85.

Items required to complete quests would automatically be given to the players at a certain rate. All other items were distributed to different party members by a "dice" system. When an item was picked up by any party member, each member of the party would roll their own set of dice; the player with the highest number would then gain the item. The size of the player's inventory was limited, but could be increased by purchasing space with paid currency or through events. To encourage group play, players would get a slight experience boost when working together.

Relay Dungeons were a unique type of dungeon, only available during certain events. In a Relay Dungeon, the players fought through every boss of a certain dungeon group (or continent) in order. The bosses in the Relay Dungeon had increased statistics, making them more difficult to defeat. After a boss was defeated, a chest containing valuable items, possibly including paid items, was opened. Any boss that was available in that continent's dungeons could be chosen.

Players could also compete against each other in player versus player (or PVP) combat. There were three types of PVP combat in Grand Chase: Team Battles, Survival and Honor Guard. Win/loss statistics for each of the player's characters were recorded for these matches.

• Team battles consisted of two, four, or six players. Players would be divided in two teams, and their goal was to defeat the opposing team by knocking out all the other team's characters. Team battles encouraged players to plan their attack strategies and co-operate with one another to defeat the opposing team.

• Survival was a mode where anywhere between two and six players battled one another until only one player was left alive. The surviving player was given first place, and the other players were ranked based on their number of kills. The rounded-down, top ranked half of the Players in the room would get a win. This was done to encourage players to fight, instead of hide or run from the others until he or she was the only player left alive.

• Honor Guard was similar to a Team Battle. At the start of the match, one member of each team was randomly selected as a 'Warlord', shown by a red/blue marker. The aim of the game was to successfully defeat the opposing team's Warlord twice. Warlords were given double regular stats to help defend themselves from the opposing team. Furthermore, a Warlord had only two lives, whereas other players could respawn after defeat endlessly. When a Warlord was defeated once, the other team's Warlord suffered from a drastically lowered level of defense for 10 seconds. Warlords could not regenerate health.

Alongside the regular match types, players could choose special modifiers to make fights more interesting: Tag and Item Mode.

• Tag matches allowed players to play with two characters of their choice. By pressing a button, they could switch characters during the course of the fight. However, if one of the characters was killed, the player could no longer switch to that character. When one of the player's characters was knocked out, the player was automatically switched to their other character.[8]

• Item Mode matches had "power ups" dropped onto the battlefield at regular intervals throughout the match, that could be used by the player that picked them up. These power ups granted the player special abilities, such as invisibility or invincibility, for a short duration of time. Each player could store up to three power ups at any time. If a player was killed while holding power ups, they would be dropped on their feet and would become available to be picked up by other players.