The world of Pantheon is fraught with danger. With perils around every corner the player must be prepared when exploring the world of Terminus. Exploring is very important to us as is respecting your environment. While it is easy for us to make an area dangerous to get through it is hard to place the player in a situation where they truly fear their surroundings if they do not fear the consequences of death.
Being a fallen hero, players are familiar with breaking the bonds of death and being reborn. Of course being reborn means you come into the world with nothing but the skin on your back and some conveniently placed clothing, that is if you choose to embrace death and release. If not, you can sit above a corpse like a ghostly watcher, for a period of time, while you wait for someone to offer you a resurrection.
Regardless of the route you choose, your corpse is an important thing because not only does it hold all of your gear but a portion of your experience. Experience is a measure of how powerful you have become but, like most things, what has been gained can also be lost. This means that losing too much XP can reduce your level making that corpse even more important.
But death is not the end. If you choose to leave your corpse you will appear at your last bind point with a single burning desire… TO FIND AND RETRIEVE YOUR CORPSE! Now you consider your options carefully when at this point because you want to get as much of your experience back as is allowed. So what are your options? Well, players can resurrect you which, depending on the level, will give you back a portion of your experience, teleport you to your corpse, and give you resurrection effects. This is the most optimal option but it is only available for a certain period of time since corpses have a resurrection timer on them. Can’t find a player who can cast resurrection? You may have to find a a way back to your corpse or ask someone to drag it to you.
So what if you can’t find your corpse? Don’t worry because some players may be able to locate your corpse through the use of mystical abilities. So now that you have found your corpse, what happens if you loot it? If you loot all the items on your corpse you will recover a little bit of the experience on it and of course you will be able to get all of your gear.
So what happens if you can’t find anyone to help you and getting back to your corpse is not an option? You can always ask your god but be warned this comes at a heavy cost. The gods are not ones to interfere for free and rarely do they perform a task in the manner you desire. In order to get help from your god you must first find a prayer altar. Then, the gods ask that you give them some of your experience before they will summon your belongings. When this is done they will return your items to you and destroy your corpse and all experience on it.
This is the early design of Death in Pantheon, while we try to make death something to be feared, but not something that will cause unreasonable amounts of grief. The system will be tested during our alpha and beta phases and is subject to modification.
