Life, death and heirs

Death is permanent

Lose a solo fight, or make the wrong choice at an event, and your character dies. There's no revive, no insurance and no undo. The next life starts from level 1 in Ashsquare.

Obituaries

Every death gets an obituary: the name, class, level, where they fell, what killed them, days survived and an epitaph the narrator has clearly enjoyed writing. It's posted to the server's graveyard channel (an admin sets it with /setup graveyard), where anyone can pay respects. Deaths on the web go to your home server.

Every obituary also gets its own page here, with a card for sharing. The latest are on Obituaries.

Echoes

Echoes are the currency that survives death. They're banked the moment you earn them, so dying never takes any away.

• Each level gained: 1, or 3 for every fifth level.
• Each gate boss, the first time in a life: 5 plus the city's place on the road, so Ashsquare's pays 6 and later bosses pay more.
• The first elite you kill in each city, once a life: 3. Ghosts don't count.
• The obituary, paid when you die: 2 per full day survived (counting up to 30 days), 3 for every city on the road up to and including the one you died in, and your level divided by 2, rounded down.

For example, a level 12 character who dies in city 2 after 3 full days banks 18 Echoes from the obituary alone.

The legacy tree

Echoes buy nodes in the legacy tree, and each node helps every life after. Some nodes need others first. Spend them with /legacy or the Legacy tab. Every node players have bought is on the Legacy page.

The Codex nodes (Read the room and Spoilers) show elite and boss intents several turns ahead in every fight. See Seeing further ahead.

Heirs

After a death, the family sends someone new. You're offered 3 heirs, each with a name, a class and a trait, and a 40% chance of a second trait. Classes are drawn from the ones your account has unlocked. The traits range from useful to embarrassing; Legacy lists the ones players have seen.

Pick one with /start or on the web. Until you do, there's nobody to play.

What traits do

• Stats (max HP, attack, magic, defense, speed) scale your stats after gear and curses. Crit is added to your crit chance.
• In a fight: healing done and healing taken scale every heal, including potions. The first-hit bonus applies to your first hit that lands in each fight. A flee chance adds to the flee roll. See Combat for acting first, skipping the first turn and refusing to flee.
• No potions: healing potions stay in your pack. Bombs and tonics still come along.
• Gold found scales gold from fights, loot and events. XP gained scales XP from fights and events. Neither touches what you spend or lose.
• Shop prices don't do anything yet: there are no shops to haggle with.

Echo of past lives

Every life starts in Ashsquare, but the family remembers the way. While you're more than 5 levels below the best level any earlier life reached, you gain ×1.5 XP.

Heirlooms

An heirloom is a piece of gear that passes to the next life. In town you can mark one item, worn or in the pack: use the heirloom select on /inventory, or the crown button in the Pack tab on the web. You can move the mark as often as you like until you die, but not while an expedition is under way. With one slot, marking another item moves the mark to it.

• On death the marked item passes to the next life at level 1 and one rarity lower (Common stays Common).
• It's soulbound: it can never be sold or traded. It also gains a history line, such as "Worn by Brannoc, eaten by a bear in Cornerfax on day 11."
• An inherited heirloom stays marked, so it keeps passing down until you mark something else. The heir offer shows what's coming.
• The legacy node Deep pockets lets you keep another heirloom, and Built to last stops heirlooms losing rarity.

Class unlocks

Every account starts with Warrior. The others unlock the first time any of your lives beats a particular gate boss (one comes from the legacy tree instead).

• Unlocks are account-wide and permanent.
• They count the moment the boss falls. A life that dies straight afterwards still unlocks the class for every life after it.
• New classes show up in your heir offers from the next death on.

7 classes are still waiting for someone to unlock them. The wiki adds each one the first time anyone does.