Death Penalty

v0.11.2

Dying used to cost a cultivator nothing but the walk back. Now every death scatters part of your Qi, and dying again soon after costs more. The penalty is on by default (Death-Penalty-Enabled), it only ever takes banked Qi, and it never takes you out of your realm.

The Ladder

Each death costs a share of your current stage's full Qi requirement, that is, the amount you need banked to advance from the stage you are standing in. It is not a share of what you happen to carry. How big a share depends on how many deaths you have already had in the last 30 minutes:

• The window is wall-clock time, 30 minutes (Death-Penalty-Window-Minutes). Each death stops counting 30 minutes after it happened, and the clock keeps running while you are logged out or the server is down. Logging off does not make a death go away, and it does not make one come back.
• Each death ages out on its own. Two deaths twenty minutes apart cost 20% and then 40%; ten minutes later the first has faded, so the next death is a 2nd again at 40%, not a 3rd.
• At the very top of the ladder, with no next stage to measure against, the percentage is taken of the Qi you hold instead, so 100% is everything you have.
• The cost is a loss of banked Qi only. Your realm, your skills, your items and your karma are untouched; only a loss bigger than your Qi can also cost you a stage.

Dropping a Stage

If a death takes more Qi than you have banked, you drop one stage and the rest of the bill comes out of the stage below. The same applies when the loss is exactly everything you hold.

For example: you are on a stage that asks 1,000 Qi, you hold 150, and this is your 3rd death in the window, so it costs 60%, which is 600. Your 150 is gone and 450 is still owed. You fall one stage, to one that asks (say) 900, and start it with 900 minus 450, which is 450 Qi.

• It is the same demotion a failed ritual causes: the skill points that stage granted are taken back and your realm stats are recalculated. See Realms & Stages.
• A death drops you one stage at most, however large the bill.
• You never leave your realm. If you are on the first stage of a realm, there is nothing below to fall to, and your Qi just empties.
• With Death-Penalty-Demote-Enabled off, nobody drops a stage: Qi simply bottoms out at zero.

What You Are Told

After a charged death you get two lines in chat, a corner notification (if you have notification toasts on) and a short sound:

• What was lost: "Death scatters 200 of your Qi.", or, if it was everything you had, "Death scatters every drop of your Qi (150). There is nothing further to take.", or, if it cost you a stage, "The loss is more than your Qi can bear. You fall to Middle-Stage of Golden Core Formation, with 450 Qi remaining."
• Where you stand: "Death strike 2 within 30 minutes (-40% of a stage). The oldest strike fades in 14 min; another death before then costs 60%."

A first death that has nothing to take (an empty bar on the first stage of a realm) is silent. A free death caused by a player who has already struck you down twice says so instead.

Deaths That Cost Nothing

Several deaths are never charged, because they already have a price of their own or because nothing real is at stake. Each group has its own server switch.

A few details that catch people:

• A tribulation only protects you once it has started hitting you. A breakthrough or advancement that is merely armed or underway, with no bolt having landed yet, is not exempt. Dying out of one costs only the ritual's own progress, plus the penalty. This keeps a ritual from being left armed as a place to die for free.
• The ritual deaths above already cost something: a failed Ascension, Reincarnation, Inner Demon or Dream Trial each has its own price, and charging twice for one mistake would be too much. Separately, the older Tribulation-Death-Penalty-Enabled item and durability loss on a world-event tribulation is off by default and has nothing to do with this page.
• A duel death is free only when the duel is what decided it. A non-lethal duel has no death at all.
• A Nascent Soul Escape that works cancels the fatal blow, so there is no death to charge. One that fails (the soul runs out of time or is extinguished) is an ordinary death and is charged like one, including the per-killer cap.
• Death-Penalty-Min-Realm is a position from 1: 1 is Body Refinement (everyone), 2 is Qi Condensation, up to 7 for Void Refinement. Cultivators in a lower realm than the setting are never charged.

Players Farming Your Deaths

A death caused by another player outside a duel does count by default. That would let someone wait at your spawn and walk you down the ladder, so one killer is limited: the same player can cost you at most two charged deaths in one window (Death-Penalty-Max-Strikes-Per-Killer).

• Their third kill inside the window is free. You are told: "This death costs you nothing: the same cultivator has already struck you down 2 times within 30 minutes, and the heavens take no more from you at their hand."
• A free death like that is not a strike. It does not push you up the ladder, so the next death from anyone else costs what it would have cost without it.
• A kill by someone's spirit beast counts for its owner.
• Deaths to different players each count normally. The cap is per killer, not per window.
• 0 removes the cap. To make player kills free altogether, turn on Death-Penalty-Exempt-PvP.

For Server Owners

Everything lives in Society/DeathPenaltyConfig.json and has its own Death Penalty section in the admin config menu (/cultivation admin). Existing worlds and saves carry over with no migration. See Society Config for the field reference.

To soften it without turning it off, shorten the ladder: 10,20,30 caps a run of deaths at 30% a time. To make it a flat tax, give one entry: 15.

Admin tools. Both need cultivation.admin:

• /cultivation admin deathpenalty status <player> shows how many deaths count against them, when the oldest fades and what the next costs.
• /cultivation admin deathpenalty clear <player> wipes their record, so the next death is a 1st again.

For addon makers. PreDeathPenaltyEvent fires before the loss and can cancel it or change the percent; DeathPenaltyAppliedEvent fires after. See Events.