2b2. What are Zones and Stages?

DN is an instanced zone-based game as opposed to open world. A lot of areas in the game are separated by function, player visibility, etc through portals and loading screens.

Towns or Zones house shops and various other features. It’s also where you can meet other players outside your party. Channels are different instances of a Town, and only players in the same Channel can see each other.
DN currently has 7 Towns: Prairie Town, Mana Ridge, Calderock Village, Saint Haven, Riverwort Wharf, Red Lotus Palace, Milla Laurel.

Instanced fields are where only players in your party are visible. For simplicity’s sake, what I refer to as Fields in this guide is the mediate area containing dungeon/nest portals. A lot of game functions are suppressed here as compared to Towns.
Examples: Wind Forest, Cristal Stream, Silver Dragon’s Force Field, etc.

Dungeons are instanced fields where battle happens, consisting of a lot of mob enemies, maybe a few minibosses, and a single final boss. Entering dungeons costs FTG (more in 3a. FTG) and it’s the main aspect of the game.
Examples: Prayer’s Resting Place, Nameless Tyrant Tomb, Loser’s Exile Place, etc.

Nests are similar to dungeon but formatted as several stages, each stage with a singular miniboss (there might also be mob enemies and/or mechanics surrounding them) and one final boss. Nests are slightly harder than dungeons due to the amount of minibosses and mechanics.
Examples: Typhoon Kim Nest, Serpentra Nest, Mist Nest, etc.

Raids are significantly more difficult nests, allowing a party of 6 to 8 players as opposed to the usual 4. Most of them require you to know mechanics and what/when to evade, and need a ticket to enter.
The raids currently in the game are: Desert Dragon Nest, Black Dragon Nest, Forest Dragon Nest, Gust Dragon Nest, and Frozen Dragon Nest.

Some other content that involves combat and some event stages do not count as either dungeon or nest, and they have their own mechanics and clear conditions (but mostly gorilla kill all enemies). Example: Ark of Transcendence, Deep Abyss of Nightmare, etc.

Some content disregards stats and skill enhancements offered by equipment, bringing everyone to the same fixed stats for their class. We call this mechanic comp-on (compensation on). Comp-on applies prominently to PVP, but also applies to some PVE content such as Cerberus Nest, Rift in Red Lotus Palace, Storm of Time and Space and Everyone’s Banquet.