What to expect from death

[Israfel]

So I experienced my first death recently. It was a pretty messy ordeal but I managed to head to a priest, get resurrected, and retrieve my belongings whilst avoiding death again (only just )

I am wondering about a few things mentioned in 'help death' though and have two suggestions about how the helpfile could be clearer from the perspective of someone new (see below). Here are the relevant pieces:

(...)

Every time your character dies in GEAS, your character looses vitality,
your char will be resurrected temporarily weaker and more clumsy than
he has been before. The vitality of your char restores itself after a
while again, but please be aware, that death has - until your chars
vitality has recovered again - a severe impact onto your chars stats
and abilities - especially in combat.

The vitality of your new body can be dependent on your faith with the
chosen god, your overall karma, and whether the resurrecting priest
is a PC or NPC. As already mentioned, every death costs your char a
significant amount of vitality. Additionally, the more faith you have
in the god, and the closer to the god's ideal karma you have, the
relatively healthier your new body will be. The worse your faith and
karma is with the god, the relatively weaker your new body will be.

And also this part:

Death in Geas is generally a temporary condition. Note, however, that
it will take some time to become adjusted to your new body. You will
be weaker for a while as you accustom yourself to it and recover from
the experience of dying. Death is neither easy nor pleasant.

So, my experience after death has been pretty true to the helpfile. I am very clumsy right now, dropping my weapons seemingly at every opportunity in a fight and getting hit a lot more often by creatures that were easy before.

My 'stats' too have taken a serious hit. My strength and agility in particular dropped from 'close' and 'very close' to their next level to 'very far' and 'far' away now. - ( much to my horror, I should add, as this was about 2-3 weeks of grind-ish combat to build up.)

I am wondering about vitality though and whether I'm understanding it correctly. Here's a description of how I've understood the helpfile and information the game has given me when dying:

To me, the helpfile implies that vitality is an underlying state that modifies all other stats/abilities and that it will always build back up to full over time. In other words, my strength dropping is a temporary effect of my vitality being low, not the same as actually losing strength.

Here's an example:
A regular healthy character possesses full vitality (let's call it 100%). That character dies in combat. They seek out a priest of their faith. That priest resurrects the character into a new body. The character has high faith but the resurrection still costs the character 25% vitality so they're down to running at 75% capacity. Over time, they'll build back up to 100% again and with it they'll see their strength and agility back at their full 'healthy' levels.

It would also follow that a low faith character (or one with really bad karma) will take a bigger hit to vitality (eg 50%) but will still build back up to 100% over time.

This didn't occur to me in the first read of 'help death'. It took me reading the helpfile very closely about 10 times to finally get it, and even now I'm unsure about it. Assuming the above is true though, a very helpful point to make in the helpfile would be something like:

"Given enough time, every character will regain their full vitality in their new body."

My second query is about how long that process takes. Since dying I've put in about 6-8 hours playtime and have seen basically no recovery of my strength/agility since dying. I am not dropping things as much now but I'm definitely much weaker still.

The logic behind Israfel's actions after dying has been along the lines of:
- I've been devout and faithful, and for that Asral has given me this new body, but it is unfamiliar to me and awkward
- I'm weary from the resurrection and am not at my full strength
- I should stay clear of combat for a time until I'm back to my usual self. Instead I'll rest frequently, eat well, stay hydrated and go about more civic duties like giving and attending sermons, reading books, polishing my armour and sharpening my weapons.

To me, 6-8 hours of playtime seems like "a while" - about two days in GEAS time. But I haven't seen anything like the restoration I was expecting. Should I be expecting things to improve in the next few hours? (or days of playtime... weeks?). Will I recover only while online or does time in the game simply need to pass with or without me present?

I'd find a clarification to the helpfile about this to be really helpful so I can adjust my expectations IC, not to mention my playtime and other commitments OOC.

Thanks
Israfel

[Arsicas]

Yes, "vitality" is something other people have been curious about too. Some people have suggested having a way to check how close you are to regaining your full strength. It's also been a bit unclear what exactly helps to regain vitality faster (if there is a faster or if it's just a certain amount of time no matter what).

With recent deaths, I've noticed it takes about 2 days of playtime to get back to full (when my stats match what they were previously). I'm not sure if this is consistent for all characters or if newbies have an easier time due to having lower stats to begin with.

[Israfel]

Thanks, that's good to know.

Are scars an indication of impaired vitality? Or just a mark of a death in the character's past?

It would be nice to have a way to check vitality in a vague way. Using scars for that could be quite logical. Something like:

'examine scars':

You have one scar on your right cheek. It appears red and fresh from a very recent wound. This could take weeks to heal.

OR

You have one scar on your right cheek. It is faint and pale from an old wound. It is almost fully healed.

When vitality is back to full they'd disappear completely or have a description like:

You have one fully healed scar on your right cheek. It is but a memento of your past now and no longer hinders you physically.

Alternatively, a 'healer' or doctor NPC could exist to tell characters how long they should expect to heal for, and any herbs or activities that might speed up the process (in exchange for a fee).

[Arsicas]

Neat idea. As far as I know, scars just mark the fact that you died though, and they stay with you unless you use certain potions to remove them.