Death Penalty

Related topics: Game Mechanics

• See Death Penalty for details about dying and leaving corpses.

• See Recovering from Death for Turbine's own article on the death penalty, recovering from death and related commands.

Death Items

Dropping Items Upon Death

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 Rares.

Player Killer Lite Deaths
No items or pyreals are lost in PKL death.

Items Dropped

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.

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

Purpose of 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)

Notes

• 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.
• In the 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.