Death looms!

[Rias]

WoooOOOooOooo!!!

Wasn't that scary?

Anyway. Death mechanics changes are slowly going in. So now, you no longer ring the bell instantly on death. There's a bell floating there in the "Void" when you're dead. This is OOCish for the time being - you don't really go to a void with a big bell floating around in there when you die, but for the time being, just work with me here.

Anyway, you need simply LOOK at the bell to send out the Deathknell. You can do this multiple times, to continue to let people know "Hey, I'm waiting to be rescued, here" though there's a timer before you can ring it again - so no Deathknell spamming.

But wait!! Can EVERYone hear this "Deathknell"?

NO!

Only people with a special tuner can hear this mysterious Deathknell. Which is the way it's always been. Ehem. (Did I mention some death lore retcons will go along with these updates?) These tuners can be found in a wagon at the Mummers' Camp, and in one guild's guild shop. They'll probably be available in a few other places eventually, but for now, just those two. The shop you buy them from in the Mummers' Camp is open to everyone - the one that was the original place to buy ESP pendants and various colored tuners.

So, if you have one of those babies on your ESP pendant, you'll hear the Deathknell when someone triggers it, as well as a little more. Try one out!

Unlike other ESP pendant tuners, you don't have to tune to the Deathknell-tuned one. It works all the time, and it can't be specifically tuned to for communications. It also never runs out. So pick one up today!!

Deathknell Tuners Lore Nutshell: A prestigious Rook Parlour scholar and a certain Mummer with exceptional Mentalist abilities (and a reportedly unhealthy obsession with death) got together at one point to do some studying and experimenting together. After many years' hard work, they came up with a tuner that would occasionally pick up on a mysterious projection that occurred when certain people died - people whose souls were unable to pass on. Thrilled with their discovery, the two scholars of death quickly began production of more tuners in order to sell to the public and raked in a small fortune, which they are now using to fund further extravagant research regarding what awaits the immortal soul after death.

[xavier]

yippee!

[Rias]

NPC auto-raisers are in. Expect these to be tweaked regarding their location, availability, and blah blah blah whatever else we feel like. We don't want them to render PCs capable of "raising" null and void. For now, though, we'll see how many bugs people find.

Monk raisers can be found in the following locations:
- Shadgard Church Chapel
- Shadgard Church Crypt (for those people who logged out in frustration/rage after dying and their corpse was dragged to the crypt by a thoughtful PC - don't leave corpses for extended periods of time in the other locations please)
- Mistral Lake Church
- Valeria Cathedral Nave

Rook raisers can be found in the following locations:
- Shadgard Graveyard Mausoleum (downstairs)
- Mistral Lake Waiting Mortuary
- Corvus Basilica Sanctuary

If a corpse is in one of these locations with an attentive (online) soul, an NPC will show up after a while to "raise" the character, provided there aren't any local faction issues (HA! No sneaking people in as a corpse). The Rook soul-retrieval spell isn't available to PCs yet, as it still needs a little fleshing, hammering, and ironing out. I put in a simplified NPC version so that people who can't benefit from Monk raises will still have a way to return to the land of the living.

[Gruff]

nifty! Nice work Rias

[Orris]

2 things:

1: If you can't send chat when dead you probably shouldn't be able to hear it either.
2: I don't think people should talk about the death location on chat, I can't think of any way that could be used or discussed that wouldn't lead to taking OOC knowledge IC in order to know where the body is when you didn't know where it was until it was confirmed on chat, or denied on chat and narrowed down that way.

[Kent]

2 things:

1: If you can't send chat when dead you probably shouldn't be able to hear it either.
2: I don't think people should talk about the death location on chat, I can't think of any way that could be used or discussed that wouldn't lead to taking OOC knowledge IC in order to know where the body is when you didn't know where it was until it was confirmed on chat, or denied on chat and narrowed down that way.

Be careful, Orris, that was almost comprehensible there. ;)

[Rias]

the rook sorcerer isn't resurrecting like it should. it does the spell but the corpse remains

It's working. It doesn't work exactly like Soul Beacon where it's just "cast target" and all done. The NPCs are doing everything they need to.

[Drayla]

I sure do feel sorry for those who prefer healing "naturally" instead of magically. No herbs that I know of can heal a boo-boo and also bring you back from the dead.

[Kiyaani]

Thanks for clarifying, Rias. I was pretty sure the PC had to do something for the rook version to work, but I wasn't 100% sure since I've never used it myself. Good to know!

[Rias]

I sure do feel sorry for those who prefer healing "naturally" instead of magically. No herbs that I know of can heal a boo-boo and also bring you back from the dead.

I feel sorry for them too, but there's no "natural" way to come back to life after you die in CLOK. It's kind of this crazy weird supernatural thing, being brought back from death and having your soul stuffed back into your corpse to make it live again.

[faylen]

Can we maybe get an area name or something like that if someone dies in the wilderness? As it stands, there are so many wilderness room descriptions that are vague or duplicated that unless the person had said IC where they were headed, it would take a very long time to find them, at least potentially.

I understand the desire to maintain some mystery to it, I'm just thinking that if you've only got three people online and someone dies in a plains area after depart is totally disabled, that could just be really bad without some kind of clue.

[baerden]

I had an idea, so i'm just jotting it down here. I'm sure it will be covered in tar, feathered, and booed by all but, here goes:

I like the idea of players being lootable, but I also like the idea of giving people the choice to keep their (gollum voice) preciousess safe, so it got me to thinking.

What if when you died, you were presented a choice. While dead and not departed your gear is lootable.

Depart immediately and npcs won't take random swipes at your gear and players can't loot you for all or it could be a randomized peice of gear that they get when they loot you. But suffer harsher penalties for death.. dont know what those could be yet, but skills based or whatever.

So the other choice would be that if you decide to ring that bell (ie call for a cleric), and give a cleric the chance to find you, you avoid all the nasty penalties, are raised all healed and stuff, but you're susceptable to looters during that time!

I dunno I like it.

[Orris]

I don't think there should be any downsides to waiting for a monk that would make instantly departing a tempting option in any case.

[baerden]

So we need to make it more tempting to be raised by a monk!

[Rias]

I'm all for the idea of it being possible to lose your gear when you die. Keep in mind that insta-departing will no longer be an option when the new death mechanics are complete. There will be ways to come back without another PC's help, but it will still take some time and involve some penalties, so being raised by a PC will always be preferable to the alternative methods.

[Avedri]

Don't do it! It's too painful. Plz, leave the looting/droppage out!

[Lysse]

My biggest concern with looting, would be griefing. There's already been instances (per Rias) of PCs doing things like murdering NPCs, just because they can, or to prove their 'evil cred'.

[Rias]

The resulting encouragement of killing people to loot their stuff is primarily why it probably won't happen, but I can still dream.

[faylen]

My concerns about the ability to loot is two fold.
1. With the mechanics of being able to die by an unlucky shot to the eyeball or other body part, it would discourage exploration as well as discourage actually using any good gear you might have. This would be true with anything that made losing gear from death possible. Who once to chance difficult fights if a lucky shot could mean not only the trouble related to death, but the loss of potentially many hours of work or thousands of riln worth of stuff? I'm all for making death something more than just, oh I died again, oh well, but at the same time too much frustration isn't a good thing, either.

2. More directly related to the looting is the fact that pk policies really aren't very strict. Thankfully most people are good about it and don't pk others without strong reasons roleplayed by both parties over time, but there are exceptions. I'm very concerned that if gaining gear from a pk became possible, the ones who are the exceptions would be worse, and others would start pking with little to know roleplay between themselves and their victim just to get good gear or even just to deprive someone else. For that matter, the same type of people who might do that might also run to a corpse when a bell tolls to snag the gear before anyone could get there to help them return.

I can think of some possible compromises, but in my opinion the pk rules would need to be tightened first, at the very least.

[jilliana]

A few things:
1. I think the PC that goes out to rescue someone only to kill the person once they come alive again should pay the price. Be ejected from the church, a skill or 3 reduced significantly, among a few things. Don't make it skilled based because there are some seemingly invinsible players that have pretty high skill rates that won't feel the pain. Balance sucks.
2. I know there should be something fun and interesting about trying to figure out who died where and doing what, but it's hard for us who've only been playing a little while, or people who have descriptions turned off to know exactly where some places are, particularly in areas where there is a lot of the same thing...forests, plains, roads, blah blah. For this I suggest maybe something along with the description, a flicker of their color fading as they pass on...something to help us out just a little bit more.
3. Looting? No. I say stick with the hope that someone left their riln behind.
I really think this particular system could be really fun once the wrinkles are ironed out because it's pretty fun to begin with.

[dara]

I happen to die alot so i would like it if there was no looting corpses but what could be done is looting there riln if player killed

[Zoiya]

Told some players to post ideas and feedback on death in its current state (since it will be updated again soon), since there is a lot of chat about it, but chat doesn't always get seen by the GM's, so I'll start the ball rolling!


How about when someone departs you get messaging on the deathknell thing that says "The thrumming of the deathknell ceases in your mind, leaving only an echoing silence".




You'll know that the person departed and you no longer have to search for them.

Now who else wants to post some fun ideas?!?!

[Drayla]

I like Zoiya's idea. We need a way to know if the person departed or got rescued.

Also, I think people need more reassurance that someone is indeed looking for them. Perhaps instead of a brief flash of a person's ESP color, why not a faint glow or tint of their color until that person retracts it, therefore giving up on the search, or they resurrect them. It would let that peraon know they are still being looked for without the searchers needing to type in the same command every minute or so.

Also, simply giving the room desc. is a little too vague. There are so many rooms in the wilderness that have similar room desc. or simply say "You are out in the wilderness." for it work properly. Maybe along with the desc. we could get a mental tug in the cardinal direction the body is located from us. Or maybe we could send a single word or something to help people find us.

One more thing, maybe we could have a pay-in-advance service or something where an NPC monk or rook could come looking for us after a certain amount of time.

Peraonally, I'm ready for the death changes to be complete and implemented. A few things need tweaked before it'll work properly though.

[Laroremas]

Some way for the deceased to be alerted with some flavor text as to if someone has reached their corpse would be good as well.

[Avedri]

I also feel that some of the onus is on the player's to call out where they are going to be. I don't want ESP to become a spam fest, but I feel like it's a courtesy thing that if you expect people to come look for you that you can proactively let them know where you died.

That might just be lingering from my other MUD experiences but it worked fairly well there.