Death Penalty

"When you are slain, you'll resurrect at the last lifestone to which you attuned your character, having lost one or more valuable items, half your pyreals, if any, and a percentage of your "vitae," or life force. All your skills are decreased by the percentage of your vitae loss and so are the maximum values of your secondary attributes -- Health, Stamina, and Mana."

Character Corpse

Upon death you will leave behind a corpse containing a number of your items.

Location

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 or /cor commands.

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.

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.

Item loss

The first item to drop will be the highest value item regardless of type. All items of the same type will now be counted at half their face value. This process repeats (next highest value item, if an item of the same type has already dropped, the face value is halved). Note: The halving-mechanism appears to no longer be in effect. If you have a number of Massive Mana Charges, and they are your most expensive items, they will always drop first no matter how many you drop.

The number of items you drop can be reduced with the Clutch of the Miser augmentation. If you get the augmentation three times you will no longer drop any items (except half of your Pyreals and all Rares). If you drop no items you will not leave a corpse.

Some players use gems particularly the Archmage Portal Gems as death items, so it's important to note how stackable items work with the death system. When you die, a stack is considered to be one item for the purposes of death items. However if that stack is selected, only one item off the stack will drop. For example, let's say you can currently cover all of your items with five Portal Gems. After the event, if you do not stack these gems there will be no change. However, if you combine the five gems into a single stack, you would drop one gem and four other items on death.

When you die there is a notification in your chat dialog stating what items you dropped, and your corpse location (if on the landscape). If you do not leave a corpse the notification will state so.

Item loss and character status

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

For further information on PK, see Player Killer

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 Rares.

Player Killer Lite Deaths

For further information on PKL, see Player Killer Lite

No items or pyreals are lost in PKL death.

Death Items

You can protect important items like your armor and weapons by carrying death items. These are items that are ideally light weight as well as high in value. You can tinker loot items with bags of Salvaged Gold to raise their face value. Although tinkering special items can remove some of the benefit, as you feel obligated to recover them. Items that can be purchased can just be left if the corpse would be too difficult to recover.

Popular items to use as Death Items:

• Massive Mana Charges (most common death item)
• Pristine Mana Shards
• Crowns (tinkered with gold)
• Robes sold by the Mastermages
• Nanner Island Portal Gems (somewhat difficult to obtain)

Bonded items

Items that have the Special Property Bonded will never drop on death. Some notible bonded items include:

• Academy Weapons (Starter weapons)
• Augmentation Gems (Asheron's Benediction and Blackmoor's Favor)
• Pathwarden Armor (Starter armor)
• Trade Notes

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.

See also

• Combat
• Recovering from Death—Official Turbine article

Notes

A Reign of Stone

• Corpse permission commands added.

The Changing of the Ways

• Players are now given the coordinates of their characters' corpses when they die.

Hidden Vein

• Many changes made to the way item loss on death works. See the Letter to the Players for details.

Throne of Destiny expansion

• The formula used for working out how many items a character drops was updated. For details on the old formula how it changed see here.