DeathGuide

GSIV Guide for the Recently Departed

Introduction

Unfortunately, you have died. 🪦 However, unlike in the early days of Gemstone, your character is no longer at risk of being lost permanently. This guide will help you get back on your feet and ready to hunt in no time. Don’t feel bad: Gemstone is designed to challenge players and encourage cooperation, and death is part of that design. To put it in perspective, in its over 35 years of continuous history, nobody has hit level 100 without dying a lot. Below is a brief guide about what to do next. You may even gain some long-term experience from the process!

You Died

After you die, other active players are alerted to your passing with a message like this:

   Tatterclaws is super dead. Guess he will sleep in his crypt tonight!

You now have 10-16 minutes before you decay and suffer some annoying yet temporary debuffs. You can either tell other players where to find you by using ESP TUNE HELP and then THINK ON HELP <message>, or they can use Locate Person (116) and show up to offer aid. Be sure to mention where you are when asking for help, and include a room number if you use Lich.

After help arrives, your rescuer can preserve your body so that it doesn’t decay. There are three ways to do this:

• They can POUR a white flask INTO you.
• A Cleric can cast Preservation (305) on you.
• If you’re in Voln, you can use SYMBOL OF PRESERVATION yourself.

Good Etiquette: If you’ve asked for help on ESP and someone arrives, please send a message saying as much so that others can turn around!

Pre-Resurrection

Before being raised by a cleric, you might consider taking the following steps:

• If you’re in Voln, use SYMBOL OF RECALL to automatically recast all of your current defensive buffs after you’re resurrected.
• If you have unabsorbed field experience (e.g. “You must rest!” under EXP), you can ask for a chrism, which is a special gem that allows you to retain that experience through the resurrection process. Chrisms cost about 10k, and it’s polite to either provide your own or pay the replacement cost. If you use them a lot, you might consider finding a chrism holder, which will let you drop the chrism inside after your death so a cleric can use it for you. Chrisms also help reduce Death's Sting (see below).

Resurrection

There are several ways you can return to life. In order of best to worst, they are as follows:

• Find a Cleric to cast Raise Dead (318) on you. The best way to find a cleric is to use ESP, as follows: ESP TUNE HELP THINK ON HELP Hello, I’ve died. Can someone please come raise me? Thank you!
• Find a Paladin to cast Divine Word (1640) on you. This is a limited resurrection, and the cleric version is very much preferred. Make sure you understand how this works before someone uses it on you.
• Have someone drag you to the Town Cleric (the link has directions for each town).
• DEPART and suffer significantly worse Death’s Sting. This will cancel the effects of Symbol of Recall.
• Decay naturally, suffering lesser Death's Sting. This also preserves Symbol of Recall, making it preferable to DEPART if you have the time to kill.

Post-Resurrection

After you die, you may experience Death's Sting. This is a temporary effect that slows your experience absorption, and disappears as you gain experience. You can minimize it with the steps above. You can also remove Death’s Sting with salve and potions, noting before you read that link that this process is considered an in-game secret.

Additionally, after you die, your Spirit will be lowered temporarily. This resolves after a few minutes. You should wait to hunt again until your Spirit is maximum, or very close to it. If you hunt prior to that, you will be very weak, and much more likely to die again. You can check your Spirit via HEALTH or SPIRIT. If you use Lich, you can also use ;uberbar_eo for a paper doll which displays your Spirit, among many other values.

After you’re resurrected, please wait until the link to the Cleric expires before attempting to hunt again. This is because the Cleric who raised you is bonded to you during that time, and if you die during that window, they cannot raise anyone else for a full hour. You will receive a message when this time is up referencing your soul unlinking, and after this point the cleric is safe.

Next Steps

Deeds are small monetary sacrifices (silver or gems) you make in order to acquire a favor from the goddess of death and rebirth, Lorminstra. When you die, one deed is automatically consumed in exchange for protecting you against worse Death’s Sting. Each town has a puzzle to acquire deeds, but if you want to do it the fast way and you use Lich, the recommended script is ;dirty-deeds. When you run this script, you can specify a container, and it will calculate the value of gems inside and optimize them to acquire as many deeds as possible. The lower your level when you acquire deeds, the cheaper you are, so you might consider filling up a gem pouch at some point early on and running the script once.

Advanced Tip: If you’re a high level and deeds are expensive, you can use BOOST GIFT LORMINSTRA to obtain 10 deeds.

Death Prophylaxis

Consider the following to minimize your chances of dying:

• Escape mechanisms, such as SYMBOL OF RETURN for Voln members
• Group hunt with trusted companions
• Obtain defensive spells
  • If you’re a Premium member, the Invoker arrives in Mist Harbor every 2 hours and provides a full, 4-hour set of spells in exchange for 10,000 silver
  • People will often offer “massies” in Town Square Central
  • Use the SERVICE verb to see if someone is advertising availablilty.
  • You can ask people on the ESP HELP channel to help give you spells.
  • Don't forget your small statues and moonstone cubes.
  • You can find “a rectangular green crystal bottle” in shops which has pills inside that give you the same spells as the Invoker
  • As a last resort, you can also purchase this bottle for Simucoins via the website
• Keep your gear upgraded
• Your character can wear half their level in armor enchantment, e.g. if you’re level 10, you can wear +20 armor, which is added directly to your Defensive Strength (DS)
  • Temporary padding is underrated. Search the player shops for armor with a +20 or lower enchantment, temporary padding, and flares, which you may find at a surprisingly low price.
  • If you cast spells, keeping your runestaff upgraded is also critical, as its enchantment impacts your DS.
• Ask for help with your Stats and Skills. If you used the Auto-Assign option in the Character Creator for either, it is strongly recommended that you ask other players for help making better assignments.'
• Don't be too stubborn to run away!

Death Settings

There are several customization and settings options relevant to death:

• FLAG DEATH OFF will extend the automatic logout timer after you die
• FLAG SHOWDEATHS ON will show messages to you when others die. You can send these to a separate “Deaths” window in Wrayth.
• FLAG SILENCEDEATH ON will prevent others from seeing your death message, if you prefer to decay or log out
• CUSTOM DEATH will display any custom death messages you’ve unlocked, such as from special events

Contributors

Alhazrad, Anstara, Duffield, Evii, Evise, Fyrrow, Grevous, Lyra, Messil, Norastra, Peatwyn, Saesyra, Savcia, Tatterclaws (primary author), Yunni, and many other helpful adventurers over the years!