Selected Items to Keep on Death (Death Travel Penalty Reduction)

[ifoz]

I know that more interesting travel will most likely be a part of the next major update, but this is a more specific suggestion.

I have trouble not using creative (if it's a single player world) to retrieve my stuff if I die more than 1000 blocks from my spawn.
I never used to, it's just that I've become busier in real life lately so I don't really want to waste ten+ minutes just walking to where I last died.
I don't want to turn keepinventory on as I still want some punishment for death, but I don't think a needless time waste is the answer.

I know that terminus teleporters exist, and I have one in my main multiplayer world, but I've been starting a few short modded playthroughs for fun and this has become a very pronounced issue in the early game.

 

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What I'm getting to is that I think that if you die more than 1000 blocks from your spawn, you should get to choose three items from your inventory to keep with you when you respawn.
This way you could save your most precious items, but you would still be encouraged to backtrack if you wanted the rest of your stuff and your backpacks back.
This way, you could keep those one or two precious items that you found on your journey, and sacrifice everything else for not having to walk back for half an hour.
This could be turned off or increased in world creation if you desired, though I think a default of three would be nice.

I understand this may be a bit of a controversial solution to the current death penalty fans, but what does everyone think?

Edited May 5 by ifoz

[LadyWYT]

5 hours ago, ifoz said:

I understand this may be a bit of a controversial solution to the current death penalty fans, but what does everyone think?

I like player death to have some penalty, but I also like not losing all my stuff! I think this idea could work decently as a compromise between the two. If I'm recalling correctly, I think the player retains their clothing on death, so maybe the hotbar could work in a similar fashion--the items kept there could be kept on death and the bags lost instead. It could be a setting chosen at startup as the middle ground between the all-or-nothing of the other two options.

In the meantime, the mod XSkills already does something like this in its Survival talent tree. You do have to take the requisite perks though(which are somewhat of a mid-late game unlock), but it does allow for at least three inventory slots that can be kept on death.

[Thorfinn]

Kinda depends on what you are looking for in a game.

TLDR: How about maybe 3 buttons -- Rage Quit, Respawn, and Respawn within 100 (or whatever) of Death? The last of which deletes the contents of your backpacks.

I play permadeath almost exclusively. I might stumble across a corpse, sure, and loot the bod, because what's he going to do with it, but I had no previous knowledge of him or where he died, let alone did I think I was recovering something that was mine.

Even when playing in easy mode (respawn), I self-penalize in that same way. Wasn't my stuff. There's a nice place over here. Looks comfy. The owner seems to be off doing something. Might crash at his place a day or two, but I really plan to set up my own digs, and I would never dream of repaying my unknown host by stealing his stuff. At most, I'll take inspiration from his place, see what works well, what doesn't, and incorporate it into my homestead.

[EDIT]

There's some aphorism about death focusing the mind. Being able to easily retrieve "your" stuff reduces that effect. Nothing has improved my game more than permadeath has. Not exactly reckless, but calculated risk. With a stack of bandages, I can easily handle a few puny rocks. I mean, I don't know too many people who bother resource gathering under Apocalyptic, so I wouldn't say I'm playing overly cautious, either.

[/EDIT]

Edited May 5 by Thorfinn

[LadyWYT]

7 hours ago, Thorfinn said:

I mean, I don't know too many people who bother resource gathering under Apocalyptic

This is me sometimes

13 hours ago, ifoz said:

I don't want to turn keepinventory on as I still want some punishment for death, but I don't think a needless time waste is the answer.

I know that terminus teleporters exist, and I have one in my main multiplayer world, but I've been starting a few short modded playthroughs for fun and this has become a very pronounced issue in the early game.

I had forgotten about this mod as well: https://mods.vintagestory.at/show/mod/3846 Basically what it does is introduce a bleedout mechanic, so that instead of dying immediately in combat, you'll enter a bleedout state instead and have a short window of time to try to escape and either patch yourself up, or be in a more convenient spot to retrieve your stuff.

On a whim I just gave it a whirl in a test world; what I found:
1. It does not mitigate damage from poisonous mushrooms--that's still instant.

2. Damage from smaller, weaker creatures(like foxes) becomes negligible, for the most part.

3. Fighting wolves unprepared is still ill-advised, but getting ambushed by a wolf isn't a death sentence. You should be able to either fend it off, or escape to a safe place and patch yourself up.

4. Bears are still deadly without the proper equipment. If you're at full health, you can suffer a couple of attacks and still have time to potentially escape and stop the bleeding. Any more hits than that and you're basically just going to be looking for a more convenient spot to die.

5. Fall damage still kills you instantly, if the fall is big enough.

Anyway, it may be what you're looking for on the sweet spot between keeping or losing inventory on death. The main drawback I found was that when using the mod, you'll miss out on some of the funny death messages the game has to offer, as the general one you'll end up seeing will be "Player bled to death while fighting ____."

[ifoz]

I might just have to try that bleedout mod for my little modded scenarios - though I do prefer the "vanilla" punishment for any proper, more serious worlds, bleedout seems like it would really help with my problems!

To people talking about calculated risk, I get it. This is normally how I play in vanilla too, though with Better Ruins on sometimes I will find myself oneshot by something like a sawblade locust or nightmare drifter that I did not see until it was too late due to such creatures spawning in and around the new surface ruins, and bleedout seems like it could help to remove the unfairness of such situations while still providing a hefty penalty. I am quite the hoarder and treasure hunter though, so sometimes it is my fault and my usual attitude of caution goes out the window in favour of shiny, shiny trinkets.  

In my serious world, I play with normal death punishment and no cheating using creative. Though, I rarely ever die since I have full Forlorn Hope gear and steel tools.