Death Penalty
Related topics: Death, Game Mechanics
See also: Recovering from Death
When you die (by misadventure or by being killed by an enemy), you leave a corpse containing some of your items, and you appear back at the lifestone that you last used. You also incur a Vitae Penalty.
Corpse Location
Upon death you will drop a number of items on your corpse. Your corpse appears at the place where you died, or if you are in the process of portalling it may appear elsewhere:
- If casting Portal Recall, Primary Portal Recall or Secondary Portal Recall your corpse may be at the portal drop point.
- If casting Lifestone Recall your corpse may be at the lifestone you are tied to (note this is the Item Enchantment spell and not the /lifestone command).
Upon death there is a notification in your chat dialog stating what items you dropped, and your corpse location (if on the landscape). If you died on the landscape, you can get the location of your corpse later by using the /corpse command.
Item Loss
Non-Player Killer Deaths
| Level | Pyreals Dropped | Items Dropped |
|---|---|---|
| 1-5 | 0 | 0 |
| 6-10 | 50% | 0 |
| 11-20 | 50% | 1* |
| 21-35 | 50% | (level/20 [rounded down]) + 0 to 2* |
| 35+ | 50% | (level/20 [rounded down]) + 0 to 2 |
* Non-wielded items only.
- The number of items you lose from level 21 and up is your level, divided by 10 or 20 (rounded down), plus a random number from 0 to 2.
- Accounts with the Throne of Destiny expansion received a new formula for death items to prevent losing a pack per death at high levels. The formula was changed to divide by 20 levels instead of 10, thereby making the maximum dropped items the same.
- Tier 1 and 2 Rares will always drop and do not count toward your death item count, so store them in a safe place.
Player Killer Deaths
PK deaths use the same system as above for 35+. Below 35, you lose a number of items based on your level using the above formula. Wielded items are not excluded from dropping, and you will always lose 50% of your pyreals and all your Tier 1 and 2 Rares.
Player Killer Lite Deaths
No items or pyreals are lost in PKL death.
See Death Items for information about protecting your valuables and equipment.
Vitae Penalty
Players receive a reduction on their life force, called vitae penalty, upon each death. Each death adds 5% vitae penalty, with a maximum penalty of 40%. Your vitae penalty reduces your health, stamina, mana, and all your skills by the given percent.
To recover your vitae you must earn experience. No experience is actually lost upon death, nor do you lose the experience needed to recover your vitae. Your vitae is simply recovered as you earn more experience. The amount of experience required to recover 1% of vitae varies by level and is influenced by your number of deaths. Only experience you earn yourself goes towards recovery - allegiance pass-up does not help.
Note that while technically you lose vitae on death and need to recover it, many players will say they have gained vitae upon death. Players will often refer to vitae recovery as burning vitae. Common abbreviations for vitae penalty are vitae, VP, and vit.
- Your experience has reduced your Vitae penalty!
- Vitae penalty has expired.
Corpse Decay
Corpses decay at a rate of your current level times 5 in minutes, with a minimum length of 1 hour. After a corpse decays, all of the items it contained are placed on the ground. Once on the ground, the items are subject to the normal decay timers for any item placed on the ground.
While player corpse lifespans may be short, this time may be greatly increased depending on the location of the body. The corpse decay timer is only active when the landblock it is located within is also active. Because of this, corpses can exist for a long time, even for months or years, if they are located in a rarely visited spot.
Corpse Permissions
Your corpse is "locked" when you die and may not be looted without your permission unless you are designated as a Player Killer. You may choose to grant other players the ability to loot your corpse using the @permit command. Note that this command only grants permission to loot one corpse. If you have multiple corpses, you will have to issue the command for each one. You may only give permission to players that are currently logged on. This means you cannot permit one of your own characters on the same account.
See Death and Corpse Commands for all commands relating to permissions.
Notes
- In A Reign of Stone, corpse permission commands were added.
- In The Changing of the Ways, players are now given the coordinates of their characters' corpses when they die.
- In Hidden Vein, a number of changes were made to the way item loss on death works. See the Letter to the Players for details.