Death's Sting/saved posts

Category: GemStone IV Announcements
Topic: Important Announcements
Message #: 1166
Author: GS4-Kitrina
Date: 9/18/2005
Subject: "Death Warmed Over Changes Released"

The "Death's Sting" system has been updated with the "Death Warmed Over" changes that were previously announced.

Summarization of changes:

1. DEPART now has greater penalties than just regular decaying.
2. Being restored to life by any means other than resurrection results in a period where the character absorbs experience inefficiently. There is no experience inefficiency in Platinum.
3. No changes were made to the penalties for characters who die with deeds and are resurrected by spells.
4. It is now possible to UNLINK to break preservation.

Upon being restored to life, a character will be in a weakened state, with all stats experiencing a reduction of 40%. The rate of recovery depends on how the character died and was restored to life.

Types Of Death	Stat Recovery
Death with Deeds & Resurrection	4% per minute
Death with Resurrection, No Deeds	2% per minute
Decay/DEPART/Spirit Death with Deeds	2% per minute
Decay/DEPART/Spirit Death without Deeds	1% per minute

The Cleric spell, Holy Receptacle (325) - Chrism, can be used to mitigate this weakness, reducing it by up to 50% (to a 20% stat reduction). This will allow characters to prepare for emergencies, like major invasions, and be able to get fallen heroes back into the fray within minutes, if needed, but at a cost of a Chrism gem. Also, characters under level 10 will recover at twice the normal rate.

In addition to the above, the character's Constitution will be reduced, with the amount based on the way that the character died and was restored to life and the number of times the character has died recently. Recent deaths are defined as those in the last 50,000 experience or 30 days, whichever results in fewer recent deaths.

Also, if restored to life by any means other than being resurrected with deeds, the character will absorb experience inefficiently for a while. This inefficiency results in only 25% of absorbed experience being transferred to permanent learned experience, with the remaining 75% being lost. For example, if a character would normally absorb 32 experience in a pulse, the character's field experience would still be decremented by 32 experience, but his permanent experience total would increase by (32 x 0.25) = 8 experience. The period during which a character suffers from experience absorption inefficiency is not affected by recent deaths per se, but if a character dies while under the inefficiency effect, the inefficiency from the current death will extend the inefficiency period by the amount shown in the table below. Characters under level 10 will not be subject to experience absorption inefficiency.

Types Of Death	Temporary Constitution Reduction	EXP Absorption Inefficiency
Death with Deeds and Resurrection	1 per recent death	0
Death with Resurrection, No Deeds	As above, + 3. Reduced health, stamina, spirit, and mana recovery rate for next 2000 experience	500
Decay with Deeds	As above, with slightly greater reduction in recovery rate	1000
Decay without Deeds, or DEPART/Spirit Death with Deeds	As above, with the reduction in recovery rate for next 5000 experience	2000
DEPART/Spirit Death without Deeds	As above, with the reduction in recovery rate for next 10000 experience	4000

The modifier for recent deaths will be capped at 5; even if a character has a chronic death problem, the character will not lose more than 5 Constitution for a normal death with resurrection. The cumulative maximum reduction will be capped at 25. These points will be recouped at a rate of 1 point per 2000 exp gained. The Cleric spell, Holy Receptacle (325) - Chrism, may mitigate this temporary Constitution loss, reducing it by up to 2 points. Characters under level 10 will not lose Constitution for recent deaths.

Characters who are restored to life by any means other than being resurrected will be restored with 1 health point, 1 Spirit Point, and no mana or stamina. Characters will also lose any unabsorbed field experience at the time of resurrection.

There will be a means by which characters can recoup these temporary losses other than gaining experience, but it will be costly (silvers).

This message was originally posted in Game Design Discussions, General Discussion about Gemstone IV. To discuss the above follow the link below.

http://www.play.net/forums/messages.asp?forum=102&category=6&topic=3&message=1972