Ragnarok Online

Ragnarok Online
Developer: Gravity Publisher: Gravity Platform: Windows Released in JP: December 1, 2002 Released in US: June 1, 2003 Released in EU: April 14, 2004 Released in AU: December 2004 Released in KR: August 31, 2002 Released in BR: February 22, 2005 Released in CN: May 20, 2003 Released in TW: October 2002 This game has unused areas. This game has unused enemies. This game has unused graphics. This game has unused music. This game has unused sounds. This game has regional differences.

This page is loooong... Consider grouping related content into additional subpages to ease readability.

This game is still under active development. Be aware that any unused content you find may become used or removed in the future. Please only add things to the article that are unlikely to ever be used, or went unused for some time. If they do get used, please remove them from the page and specify in the edit summary!

This article is a work in progress. ...Well, all the articles here are, in a way. But this one moreso, and the article may contain incomplete information and editor's notes.

Ragnarok Online is one of many Korean massive multiplayer online role-playing games (or MMORPGs, if you prefer that). This one, unlike others, is based on the manhwa Ragnarok (what else did you expect?) by Lee Myung-Jin.

Sub-Pages

Changes The ever-changing state of an online game, then versus now.

Deleted Lost items spread thinly around various clients like butter.

Test Maps They made test maps, too!

Unused Sound Effects Ancient sounds, now with 100% more moaning upon death.

Introduction

This opening sequence originated from the alpha phase period. It was ultimately disposed of when the majority of testers thought it was too tedious to sit through it every time they opened the game client.

When extracting the assets, a filename in particular stands out from the rest of the .dll family. binkw32.dll is an unusual file to be incorporated in the folder as Ragnarok Online utilizes no video playback. It isn’t used, but trying to remove it creates a bizarre error. It must be included in order for the program to open.

Thanks to Jordán Craw from the RO Preservation Project, it was discovered that the code exists and is still prevalent to the client, but since there is no registry key set it will skip directly to the login screen. With a little client trickery to call in a function that opens binkw32.dll, the client can be made to display the startup video labeled openning.bik although it will display rather oddly with abnormal scaling. Additional digging into an .exe shows that you could skip the video by holding any keys for a certain amount of time.

Unused Classes

There are three unused classes sitting in the server files since 2006. They have a JobID, JobIdentity, an HP/SP pool up to level 99, and a plethora of unused skills. They do not have their own sprite sheet, instead using existing Job Classes as a placeholder. Death Knight has an empty code of participating in a ranking system with Alchemist, Blacksmith, and Taekwon but a deeper look in the internal files shows that all three of them were meant to be in a ranking chart in their own ways before they were axed.

Death Knight

Uses the Knight sprite. Their HP/SP starts out with 40/17 at level 1 and 4254/703 at level 99 with a base weight of 36000. A player could change to Death Knight from Novice with their skills and attack speed inherited from the Gangsi Class. There is a disabled Skill Tree loaded with inaccessible(and incomplete)set of skills. MSG_DEATH_Q is a related quest where an “Angel” speaks to the player in third person by having them solve a series of alphabetic number riddles, their response should the player succeed, and one if the player failed the quiz. The hex to access the quest is 0x4a8~0x4b5.

Death Knight ranking is nearly identical to Blacksmith, namely to create weapons and refine them consecutively without fail for a certain amount of points. Since there is no discoverable code yet, the design around this feature remains speculative. The hex for Mission Points is 0x4b9.

Dark Collector

Uses a Sage sprite with 40000 Weight. At level 1, their HP/SP starts out at 40/13 and ends on 3029/307 at level 99. Like above, there is a Skill Tree that cannot be accessed by normal means. There are leftovers for completing a “Mission” for points akin to Taekwon. Instead of killing monsters, the player had to obtain items that may or may not involve grinding. The files reference the ranking as having to collect Zeny or obtain certain Accessories by creating the items or dropping them from a certain monster. Given that the drop rate table for most accessories varies between 2% and 0.01%, it was likely dropped as a game mechanic since it would be too tedious for a player if the RNG game decided to be extra mean to them.

MSG_COLLECTOR_POINT = 0x4f0 MSG_COLLECTOR_MISSION = 0x4f1

The player would’ve been able to change to Dark Collector from Novice. The class inherits skills, weight and attack speed from Gangsi.

Gangsi

A Munak(Female) or a Bongun(Male) Undead based class using the Acolyte sprite. At level 1 their natural HP/SP pool is 2040/13 and ends at 5029/307, making it the highest HP of all the extended classes. Its base weight is 32000 and has quite the weapon selection to a point of wielding Job exclusive weaponry such as Ninja’s Fuuma Shuriken, Gunslinger’s Rifle, Gatling Gun, and Shotgun. An Assassin’s Katar, Dancer’s Whip, Bard’s Instrument and the unused Two-Hand Mace.

Gangsi uses the ranking system through taming pets and leveling them similarly to a Homunculus rather than grinding for Mission Points.

MSG_GANGSI_MISSION = 0x4a6 MSG_GANGSI_POINT = 0x4a5

Job Skills

Skills Gravity has an array of unfinished skills. Some have icons, others have descriptions, the rest have... gibberish names.

2-1 Wizard

Fire Ivy (Skill ID 82)

Offensive(Fire Magic)

Damage enemies by summoning ivy vines of flame from the ground.

• Only the effect animation remains, which is just a singular flame rising up awkwardly with a fire sound before disappearing again.

2-1T Whitesmith

Coin Craft (Skill ID 385)

Active.

Create a coin that gives you a random amount of Zeny when it is used. You can receive many different coins depending on the item you use to create. Sometimes you can even receive a Money Pouch!

• This skill can be enabled through hacking methods. It seems like you were supposed to have a chance of obtaining a Bronze Coin, a Silver Coin, a Gold Coin, a Platinum Coin or a Mythril Coin when using the skill. It may have been possible to use these bags ( ) to gain even more amounts of "valuable" coins since they are under the Usable item table. It is unclear whether you dug up money by random chance or if you needed certain materials to use Coin Craft as most of the code is omitted from the final version.

Nugget Craft (Skill ID 386)

Active.

Create a gold piece using Iron Ore, Gold Ore, or Silver Ore, then combine it to create a nugget. This nugget will be used to create specific weapons, or it can be sold to NPCs for a high price, or to create coins with. It can also be used to increase your chance of making a weapon.

• As above, it is possible to make this skill usable. Nothing happens when you cast it. Though most of the code is gone, there are graphical leftovers of both the ores and the Bullions.

Silver Ore. Gold Ore. Mythril Ore. Gold Bullion. Silver Bullion. Platinum Bullion.

Battle Machine Craft (Skill ID 388)

Active.

Create a small tower that attacks enemies for you. You can install up to 3, and even if they don't attack, they will disappear eventually. It has an auto-Detect skill, and it will automatically attack all enemies within its range. It does 100 to 300 random damage, and it ignores enemy DEF.

• A Plant Bottle is needed to activate the skill, it does not consume the item, and no towers are installed. The player simply looks at the direction of a monster, if any.

Music

TeMPotato

This was used in Yuno fields before being replaced with the music pieces Antique Cowboy and Big Guys Love This. TeMPotato never saw the light of day again, though it's still accessible through the game's BGM folder as Track 67.

WeWish

A placeholder MIDI holiday theme that went unused sometime after it was replaced by SoundTemp songs. Even though it's in the game files, it's not an actual music piece from their composers - Gravity decided to use a free MIDI sample from westnet.com. The song was later made into a sound effect used when equipping the Christmas Musicbox and casting its bonus skill ALL_WEWISH, presumably as a Christmas event item.

Unimplemented Features

Unused Content A lot was planned to make the game even more unique than what it already was! Too bad it was scrapped.

Time and Weather System

There's a partially working Day/Night system, complete with non-functioning weather. The system would cycle between blazing hot weather, rain, snow, fog, cloudy, day and night to apparently create conditions that would give players advantages in some situations. Only graphics remain; any code for special adjustments has been removed. However, a simplified bit of code remains to launch simplified effects for Rain, Maple leaves, Snow, Cherry Blossoms, Clouds, Fog and Fireworks. These are used for seasonal events, such as putting Snow in Prontera during Christmas.

In a "Preview to Ragnarok Online" roadmap from Korea, the feature was in active development and was slated to release in the second half of 2003. The previews of the cut feature shows Comodo, Al De Baran and Lutie being presented in day, dawn, dusk and night time.

게임상에도 실제시간을 기준으로 밤 , 낮이 바뀌며 때때로 비나 눈 , 폭염 등의 기상현상이 나타나게 되는 시스템을 제작하고 있습니다. 밤 낮에 따라 마을 주민들의 대사내용이나 판매하는 물건이 변동될 것이며 , 날씨나 시간의 일정 조건을 만족시켜야만 등장하는 특별한 이벤트와 퀘스트도 있을 것입니다. 또한 몬스터들의 등장종류도 달라져 밤에만 나오는 몬스터 , 비오는 날에만 나오는 몬스터 등도 있을 것입니다. 또한 기후는 일부 스킬들에게도 영향을 미치게 되어 폭염이 일어난 곳에서는 화속성의 마법들의 위력이 강해진다거나 , 비가 오는 지역에서는 발밑에 물이 없어도 워터볼을 쓸 수 있는 등의 변화를 경험 하실 수 있게 될 것입니다.

In the game, night and day changes are based on real time. Weather phenomena such as rain, snow, and heatwaves are produced from time to time. Depending on the hour, the contents of the villagers' dialogue and the items sold will change, and there will be special events and quests that appear when certain conditions of the weather or time are met. In addition, the types of monsters that appear will also change. Certain monsters will only appear at night and on rainy days. Also, the climate affects some skills, such as fire-type magic becoming more powerful in hot weather and being able to use the Wizard's Water Ball skill even if there is no water under your feet in rainy areas.

Furthermore, a look through iRO Alpha Client .scr files have NPCs talk about time such as the player needing to check in, or out, of Prontera Inn at 12 o'clock(Noon) and a special event happening at 8 o'clock(Dusk). These timed events hint that players could not perform trading with NPCs at those times. The .scr files no longer exist in the client.

"[여인]"	"Woman"
"프론테라 최고의 시설과 청결함을 자랑으로 삼는 저희 여관에 오신것을 환영합니다."	"Welcome to our innǃ We pride ourselves on having the best facilities and cleanliness in Frontera.
"저는 이곳 여관의 책임자인 안네리제 라고 합니다."	“My name is Anneliese, the manager of this inn.”
"[여관주인 안네리제]"	"Innkeeper Anneliese"
"방은 위층에 많이 있습니다. 하룻밤 숙박하는데는 30000제니 랍니다."	"We have plenty of rooms upstairs. It's 30,000 Zeny for a night."
"체크는 매일 낮 정오, 12시에 하도록 되어있으니 유의하시기 바랍니다."	"Please note that checks are made every day at noon at 12 o'clock."

Alignment System

In early development, the Alignment System was referred to as Temperament/Tendency and utilized four categories:

• Righteous(R) refers to a lautic character. The more you kill aggressive monsters the higher the antecedent value. Using a number of skills also gave points in Righteous. Depending on a tally the attitude of monsters and NPCs toward the character would change. A character would receive a benefit of increased success rate of certain skills and magic spells.
• Wicked(W) refers to a chaotic character. In this state various Guards attacked the player unnoticed should they enter a city. Other people could kill you without receiving penalty and the attitude of monsters or NPCs toward you may become aggressive (some monsters became passive?). A player turned Wicked instantaneously if they were to kill a Righteous player. Points would increase for killing passive monsters, or stealing loot from other people.
• Fame(F) indicates that the character's behavior is correct and has good manners. It showcases how high a character's reputation is. It would have passively risen over time(?), When you kill aggressive monsters or a player with the Wicked or Vulgar alignment on them, by joining a guild of Fame or completing some quests successfully. The NPC's view of you changed positively. Some quests would only unlock after becoming Famous.
• Vulgar(V) implies that a character's behavior is rude and has poor manners. Although similar to Wicked there's some notable differences. A player will not be penalized for being killed by an NPC or a player, nor would the Town Guards attack them directly. However, there would be obstacles joining an "honorable guild" and some quests would be inaccessible. Poor manners in-game punishes the player by restricting their gameplay in a few ways. It would rise when you kill a Righteous or Famed character or use abusive language frequently. If you stole loot, if you left a guild, or if you were expelled for one reason or another. You lost points if you were killed by a monster or someone else.

The Temperament system would be used to customize player character performance and would be accessible through a separate tab on a character's Status window. Points would be assigned to the categories in the Temperament window and players would be able to assign alignment points to other players on a monthly basis as well. Players could begin using it by leveling up their Basic Skill to Level 8 as a Novice. Depending on a player's alignment, various effects around the world would come into play. For example, leaning towards Righteous would give the players a bonus in success rate. Wicked had Town Guards attacking them for being a bad sport. It was possible to counter and kill these guards. Fame had certain NPCs change their attitude towards them, and being Vulgar created issues joining guilds and other social interactive elements in-game.

The Tendency of a guild depends on the overall statistics of the guild members' individual Temperament (e.g. if the majority of guild members were of a Vulgar Temperament, then the guild's Tendency would lean towards said Temperament).

The Alignment System is actually a part of another cut feature called Guilds & Clubs. Remnants of the system remained in the UI long after the system was killed off. It can be restored to a certain extent though trying to give a point displays “No Msg” and “N/A”. A text file for interface translations contains some leftovers.

Message String Table
You haven't learned enough skills for aligning.# Aligning has been done.# You already spent your point for today.# Hasn't been a month yet since you aligned with this person.# You got a Good Point from %s.# You got a Bad Point from %s.# Aligning with a Good Point# Aligning with a Bad Point#

With the Renewal update, the Temperament tab in the Status window was finally removed. However, the Tendency box still remains on the Guild window. Whether a different alignment system will be implemented in the future or not is unknown. However, it is very likely the alignment system as originally planned will never see the light of day.

Apartments

In the early days of when Ragnarok Online was free to play, there used to be a feature called "Apartment" which enabled players to have their own houses. Gravity decided to take out the apartment system and everything included in it from their regular data.grf when a group of hackers almost destroyed the company due to being extremely angry at Gravity's decision to make the game pay to play. pData.grf dated 22.05.2001 shows graphical assets of this feature located in data/texture/외부소품. The models associated with the textures were later abolished from the .grf. Old domains slightly mentions the cut feature in Hangul.

Users can purchase/rent a house where they can live and use and decorate items. You can store your own items here, and you can invite others, have a party, or have a meeting.

Working Shirt, Gallabiya, Resident_certificate Certification_of_Business_register, Trading_License, Swordman's_Examinee_card, Swordsmans_License, Merchant_License, Receipt_of_Clothes and ID Card could be related as well, although all of this remains undefined to their actual intentions, if any.

Through decluttering corrupt Hangul, it appears that the visualization of the Apartment feature may have been close to being finished before the hacking incident happened. These are private houses that can be found in the Alpha Client through data/model/ÇÁ·ÐÅ׶ó/¹Î°¡01.rsm, ¹Î°¡02.rsm, ¹Î°¡03.rsm and ¼º_¹Î°¡.rsm. Generic houses are common in towns, though they are labeled ¹Î°¡01-1, ¹Î°¡02-2~. These models were either altered or removed altogether from the .GRF in later updates.

Interestingly, Ragnarök M: Eternal Love later revisited the idea of player housing in Episode 6.0: "Homeland System". In this implementation, players can also upgrade their homes and gain various bonuses to stats and discounts on gear enchantments.

Card System

Players of the game are familiar with the card system, where monsters drop by an unnecessarily low chance a card which can be slotted into equipment of different types. Originally, there were 6 types of cards, with unknown purposes. Those are Monster Cards, Weapon Cards, Tarot Cards, Job Cards, Magic Cards, and Order Cards.

• Monster cards were comprised of the original monsters, from Poring to Baphomet.
• Tarot Cards were comprised of Tarot cards, such as The Sun, The Star, etc. Each one would grant the user up to about 5 different base stats.
• Job Cards would work the same way as Tarot cards, but the status granted would be related to the job type. It's worth noting that some of the jobs never came to the game such as Berserker, Mimic, and Kanji? Card.
• Weapon Cards were all named for different types of equipment (not just weapons), but had no effects.
• Magic Cards were named for different element attributes but had no effects.
• Order cards were named for unknown properties such as Arrows, Celery, and Recovery, but also had no documented effects.

It's worth noting in addition, the game later changed all armors to have 0 or 1 card slot, but these pre-alpha armors were documented having multiple slots.

Sprites

Graphical Bytes There are many hidden frames inside a sprite sheet.

Whenever a character takes damage they always face diagonally left or right, rendering these sprites unused.

When a character dies, their death sprites only display diagonal lower-left, lower-right, upper-left, and upper-right regardless of camera rotation. Here, it seems like all angles were covered, though the front, side, and back sprites never served their purpose. Seems to have been dropped rather early as only Female Swordsman and Male Acolyte are the only two classes with these directional aspects.

Blossom is the only Kafra lady to have eight direction sprites, along with proper walking animations. All of 4w-f-kafra2 movements are disabled in-game as seen when a Game Master changes to NPC 423. Surprisingly 4w-f-kafra2 does have her standing angles presented when rotating the camera all around.

In Episode 14.3, one could go through a quest to rebuild Morroc by enlisting help from a local Morroc Mercenary where they would temporarily follow the player. This became obsolete and thus were subsequently removed when Episode 15 hit as Morroc rebuilt from ground up. These walking NPCs have remained non-functional since.

Animated Hairstyles

Animated Hairstyles All those hair straws gone to waste from the alpha versionǃ

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The default hairstyles had animations to bring life into sprites. This was a prominent feature until Beta 2, where it was removed.

Unobtainable Items

Equipment

There is an unused weapon category called 2H Mace. Various Mace animations inside data/sprite/¸ùÅ©/¸ùÅ©_h_³²(Male Monk) shows a second attack animation, implying that similar to the Assassin's dual weapon system, Monks would've performed a double attack using two Maces of different types. The category is surprisingly not limited to Monks. In job_db.conf, several Jobs such as Novice(700), Swordman(700), Acolyte(600), Merchant(650), Knight(700), Priest(600), Blacksmith(675), Crusader(650), Alchemist(650), Taekwon(500) and Gangsi(550) have Attack Speed values attached to them. 2H Mace also have a Size modifier.

Balmung is a Two-Handed Sword wielded by former Korean Ragnarok Online staffer GOD-POING, who worked from the beginning of the game and left sometime after Open Beta. The Sword description isː "Sword wielded by mighty GOD-POING, the lawless heroine. INT + 20, LUK + 20. Indestructible (except in upgrade attempts)." Balmung has a level requirement of 49, sells for 10 Zeny (the default), starts off with 250 Attack and its property is Holy. A duplicate sword is used with an identical description to the original Balmung, however, all the references to GOD-POING are gone, as someone replaced her name with a man called Siegfried. A Game Master can get this weapon by typing /item Balmung.

Angra Manyu Is a One-Handed Sword obtained through the GM command /item Angra_Manyu with the description "The Real Holy Cross". It is a Mace with a starter Attack of 200, granting 50 to all base stats, with no element property, and unable to be sold. Later releases on different international servers added custom bonuses to it, such as boosting ATK by 3800, and giving full lifesteal.

AddExtParam User VAR_ATTPOWER 3800
AddExtParam User VAR_MAGICATKPERCENT 200
AddHPdrain 100 100
AddSPdrain 100 20
AddHealValue 200
ClassAddDamage CLASS_NONE Target 100
ClassAddDamage NPC_CLASS_BOSS Target 100
ClassAddDamage NPC_CLASS_GUARDIAN Target 100
EnableSkill WZ_STORMGUST 10
EnableSkill WZ_METEOR 10
EnableSkill WZ_VERMILION 10
EnableSkill GM_SANDMAN 1

Ahura Mazdah is a shield that can only be obtained through GM commands /item Ahura_Mazda. It starts off with 50 to all base stats, 100 DEF (making the wearer immune to physical damage), sells for 1 Zeny (instead of the default 10), and is equipable by any class. The description is "The Shield of all Shields". Ahura Mazdah is intended to only be wielded by Game Masters. The name is also a reference to a character from Arcturusː The Curse and Loss of Divinity.

AddMeleeAttackReflect 100
AddRaceTolerace RACE_Human 95
EnableSkill CR_FULLPROTECTION 5
EnableSkill WZ_ESTIMATION 1
EnableSkill ST_FULLSTRIP 5
EnableSkill HW_MAGICPOWER 10
AddExtParam User VAR_MAXHPPERCENT 200
NoJamstone 1
Condition EFFECTHaste 9999 100
Condition EFFECTEndure 9999 100

Angelic Wing Dagger is a Dagger with a level requirement of 50 and is only equipable by Novice and Super Novice. The description when trying to view the weapon is "Not much is known about the mysterious Angelic Wing Dagger...". The weapon was probably going to be included with the Angelic set but was scrapped for unknown reasons. Angelic Wing Dagger uses an apple image as a portrait placeholder.

Zeny Knife is a Dagger with a level requirement of 70. It had a custom attack sprite for knife attacks, the knife resembling a dollar sign. The description when trying to view the weapon is "A dagger that steals zeny from monsters upon their defeat.". The weapon gave a 40% chance of the user gaining 1 to 100 zeny each time a monster is killed with the knife equipped. Removed because of botting.

GOLDEN AXE is a One-Handed Axe with no stats. Similar to the Angelic Wing Dagger, it uses a default apple as a portrait placeholder with a similar description. Its ID is 1308.

Blue Robe, Red Robe, & White Robe(Ao Dai) are three traditional dresses. While they do have icons and portraits assigned to them, complete with armor descriptions attached to them, the robes cannot be properly called due to missing sprites, which leads to a resource failure. What this means is that as soon as you click on any of them the game will crash trying to locate sprites that do not concurrently exist in the database.

Variant 1(Blue Robe & Red Robe)

"A type of traditional outfit. It brings out the hidden powers of the wearer through its spiritual power.", "All Stats +5", "MDEF +5".

Variant 2(White Robe)

"A type of traditional outfit. It brings out the hidden powers of the wearer through its spiritual power.", "All Stats +3", "MDEF +5".

Ordinary Armor is a plain Wooden Armor of unknown usage. "An ordinary armor, nobody knows that it can be refined or not."

Ru Blue & Ru Gold Weapon Series

Two weapon series went unused. They are functional for the most part, as all of the weaponry can be equipped by their specific class roles with bonus stats to them. When spawning them in-game, they become an "Unknown Apple". Standing animation is misaligned with the avatar. From their description, it seems like a rental set a player could temporary borrow if they were a VIP member. Somehow, it was dropped late into development.

Inaccessible Areas

Louyang Dungeon 3 seems to have an area where you could go up some stairs leading to the top of a wall but was dropped somewhere in development.

Priest_job is a map that goes unused entirely, as all Undead Priest trials go through the map prist_job.

Regional Differences

• Orc Warriors have a smoking animation in their sprite sheet that was removed from the international version. The smoking effect still exists in-game, but because their sprites for that action were removed, they use the default standing position when taking damage while taking a drag of a cigarette. In the Korean version, this sprite functions as intended.

• Isis, a half naked female snake-like monster, is censored in some official versions of Ragnarok Online by covering her skin with a silver breastplate. It is currently unknown as of why, although one can speculate it may be of religious reasons in certain regions.

• There are myriads of events in various Asian servers that did not make it to international or European versions spanning from items that promote real life products such as Karada Meguricha Tea and Black Tea Kochakaden brand from Japan, to items added from SNS events like the 2006 Nokia Sports Festival where players from Korea could get an in-game sprite of Nokia 5300(and later 5500) in their inventory by participating in some activities, usually by playing in a PC방 for a period of time or sending a specific keyword from their cell phones.

• There is an equipable school uniform consisting of a traditional blazer, which is a common dress code in the Japanese educational system. A weapon series by the name of Requiem can only be obtained from the Japanese version of Ragnarok Online.

• In the Indonesian version there’s exclusive eggs that contain the symbolism of life and rebirth. Some of these items were translated but never saw an international release.

• Most regions serviced in Asia have an exclusive open-world PVP only server where players participated in a game mechanic named Slayer where they could compete for the most kills, separated from the main servers. This was disabled in the International version of the game.

References

• More information about active and discontinued services can be found here.
• Links from defunct servers will not be included in this page as a reference. This is to prevent misleading information from a potential Private Server that may reuse the domain to mimic an official server.

GRF Reference

Please use verified data files for accurate information. These can be found at Gravity/data.grf downloaded from official servers. For earlier versions such as pre-renewal, you can also use event.data, sdata.grf and pData.grf.

Some clients can only be retrieved from a web archive. You can find an untampered version of the Alpha here courtesy of Flygon for preserving it. And a Japanese Beta 2 Client here.