Trofogol

Thanks for the advices. Though I know (and use) them, they are still workarounds which any starting user won't be aware until it's too late. For some reason, mob corpses are containers when you open them with a knife, and players are not. My point here is that it's counter intuitive, inconvenient, and the corpse mechanic should be a standard for all entities (players and mobs) of the vanilla game w/o mods. If inventory is reclaimable, the process should be reliable. If not, the condition should be clearly delivered in some in-game guide to warn players. Perfect option is a config parameter (which is partially there, but with only two options: keep or drop the inventory, not destroy it). Main point is that it should be a part of the base game, not mod. My current vanilla experience is "you should be able to reclaim your spilled inventory, but it's a gamble, as it can despawn at some time I can't predict, if it's in a distant chunk". There's no ingame guide that explains it

This topic reminds me project zomboid experience when sleeping without alarm set will lead to waking up at random time. We have ways to avoid that in a clunky way in VS, but we don't have easy access to high tech here. Alarm clock and noise based mechanics (I like the rooster idea) look interesting, maybe adding light based mechanics will be good as well (e.g. specific level of sunlight wakes you up and don't allow to sleep until you get rid of windows or craft and use blindfold/curtains.

The problem is well known (your inventory scatters as dropped items, and then despawned after some time) and gets worse if you have settled far away from the starting chunks, as dropped items despawn faster out there (if I got it correct), and death might occur in quite dangerous zone where you cannot simply rush in right after respawning. I've lost several inventories trying to reclaim the original one (which has despawned by my second run to it). I know that it might be an intended difficulty, but such things should be customizable more clearly (not via implicit item despawn timer parameter). I certainly don't want to keep my stuff after death, but if I can reclaim it, I want to understand any limitations and conditions to do so (in the guide and in configs). Having such mod is nice, but the mod will have to be in sync with game version, which adds risk to not have it some time later.

1 hour might be not enough. Demo versions are usually can be played unlimited time. I'd say limit progression to early copper age, when people can feel satisfaction from casting molten metal and mining stone like dirt. Also, might be restricted to single player only