User:ASTARIN1/Sandbox
Death and Favors
At some point, death comes to everyone in Elanthia. Death isn't permanent, but in DragonRealms it does works differently than in many other MMOORPGs and MUDs. Your character can die from a loss of vitality, a loss of spirit health, or having a critical body part sufficiently damaged or removed. Any field experience not yet converted to ranks is lost, and your character will drop anything you were holding in your hands. Once you die, your options for communicating with other players are limited. You will be able to speak to other players that come by, but you are unable to move on your own, but other players can DRAG you.
Your character can come back to life a few different ways. The two most common are for a cleric to resurrect you, or for your character to DEPART. In order for a cleric to resurrect you, an empath will first need to heal any major wounds that your character might posses. Being resurrected by a cleric is the best way to come back from the dead, but isn't always available. The other way for your character to come back to life is to use the DEPART command. New characters have a free depart option that last until second circle (level), or it has been used 5 times. These initial 5 departs allow you to return to life at the nearest resurrection location with all your items and coins still in your possession. For characters without this newbie protection, recovering from death requires favors.
In-character, a favor represents your character making some sort of sacrifice to the Immortals, the gods of Elanthia. In exchange for that sacrifice, the gods will let your character return from the dead. What this means to us, the players, is that your character will have to complete a puzzle to get a favor orb, fill the orb with field experience, and place the orb on an altar devoted to one of the gods. Orbs are filled using the RUB or HUG command, with rub transferring a little field experience, and hug filling the orb completely.
It is important to keep in mind that each favor orb takes a little more experience to fill than the last. As a rule of thumb, you should try to have 10 or more favors at any time. You can see the number of favors when you use the INFO or EXP command.
One important thing to remember when using the DEPART command, is that by default, all of the coins your character was carrying will be lost, and all of your items will go into a grave in the room where you died. Any items you were carrying may also have been dropped at your characters feet, and not in the grave. Items in a grave have some small measure of protection, but it is possible for another player to take items from the grave and not return them. Some protections are in place to keep the would-be thief from logging out with your hard-won items or running to a 'safe' room, but these protections don't last forever.