9.1 What happens when my character dies?

Upon the death of your character, you have a choice: remain in your body and wait for resurrection, or release your body and respawn. If you get a rez, you appear back at the site of your death. If you release, you drop a spirit shard and appear (with all items) at a nearby explorer camp. In both cases you take damage to your items and lose a rank of spirit.

9.1.1 Just to be clear, you're saying I don't lose experience or levels when I die, nor do I incur an experience debt?

Correct.

9.2 What is "spirit" and what is a spirit shard?

Spirit is a resource that grows as you gain experience. While spirit and experience are tied together, one pool does not take away from the other (as is the case with AAXP in EQ). Spirit ranges in rank from zero to five. For each spirit shard you have in the world, the maximum spirit you can attain is reduced by one rank.

9.2.1 What does spirit do for my character, and how does its loss affect me?

Spirit will have different effects at different level ranges. For instance, it can affect the rate at which experience is earned. Since someone at level 50 doesn't really care about earning experience, spirit will impact other statistics for that player. The effects of spirit will change as the character advances, but high spirit will consistently provide benefits that are desirable and tangible.

The goal of this system is to make death something meaningful that players want to avoid at all levels of the game without taking away experience and levels that they have already earned. Spirit is essentially a modifier that affects future performance and earnings, so maintaining it is very important. Because of this, leaving shards uncollected will be highly undesirable.

9.3 How do I retrieve my spirit shard?

You must return to the site of your death and reclaim the shard. You will see it at the spot where you passed on. Though you'll have to get within a reasonable range of the shard to retrieve it, you won't have to get right on top of it.

9.3.1 Can other players get my spirit shard for me?

Spirit shards do not behave like corpses in EQ. You cannot cast resurrection spells on spirit shards, nor can other players drag them or even see them. Only you can recover your own spirit shard.

9.3.2 If I can't retrieve a spirit shard for whatever reason, is my spirit ruined forever?

No. If you cannot recover a spirit shard for some reason, don\'t despair; after gaining a sufficient amount of experience, lost shards are restored to you and your maximum spirit level is increased again.

9.4 Who can cast a resurrection spell?

All priests have the ability to resurrect players who have not yet released their corpses. Additionally, paladins, necromancers, and dirges can cast basic non-combat resurrection spells. Priests have much more variety and flexibility in their choice of resurrection spells, and are the only ones able to cast rez during combat.

9.5 Does resurrection prevent penalties like spirit loss and item decay?

Resurrection does not mitigate the damage done to your items or your loss of a spirit rank, though this is subject to tuning as we do further testing. The benefits of getting a rez are location (not having to run back to your party) and reduced resurrection effects. Higher level rez spells reduce downtime further.