Death and Respawning

The Death and Respawning rules decide what a player loses when they die in Fear Nightfall, how a death can be prevented, and where the player returns. Several mods change the vanilla rules. Corpse replaces the death drops with a corpse at the place of death, Charm of Undying lets a totem worn in an accessory slot prevent death, Accessories and Curios decides which worn items survive, and The Hordes turns the death of an infected player into a zombie player.

Death is common in this pack. Horde Nights, Zombie Infection and the undead of the night are the main threats, so a player needs to know what each death costs and what protects against it.

Items on death

With the Corpse mod loaded, every death removes the vanilla drops and stores the player's items in a Corpse at the place of death. The corpse holds the main inventory, the armour, the offhand slot and any items that do not fit in the main layout. A corpse that still holds items is not removed by the default timer. An empty corpse disappears after 30 seconds. Opening, transferring and despawn rules are described on the Corpse page.

The pack runs the Corpse mod with only_owner off, so any player can open any corpse. On a multiplayer server, another player can loot a corpse unless the owner is protected by that setting. Every death is also kept in a death history for the player, which records the time, dimension and position. It is opened with the death history key, which the mod binds to U by default. The pack's client defaults bind it to O instead. The operator command /deathhistory opens the history of another player.

Worn items follow their own rules, which the Corpse mod does not change:

The pack's config files do not set the keepInventory gamerule, so the vanilla default (off) applies unless the server operator changed it in the world. The pack's testing confirmed that a ring in a Curios slot, a lantern in the Accessories belt slot and a backpack worn in a Curios slot all went into the corpse, and that nothing was left on the ground. For the slot rules themselves, see Accessories and Curios and Accessory Items.

Preventing death: Charm of Undying

A Totem of Undying worn in the Curios charm slot protects the player from a lethal hit, without taking up a hand or hotbar slot. The mod checks the charm slot before the hands. A charm totem that saves the player prevents the death, so no corpse is created. When the totem is used:

• health is set to 1 point;
• every active status effect is removed;
• Regeneration II lasts 45 seconds, Absorption II lasts 5 seconds and Fire Resistance I lasts 40 seconds.

The charm totem is used first. A totem held in a hand is used only when the charm slot is empty, so a player can carry one of each and survive two lethal hits. The Totem of Infinity rule, the Enchanted Totem and the Friends and Foes totems have no effect in the pack, because those mods are not installed. The totem's worn model is shown to other players by default. The effects are listed on Status Effects.

Death by infection

Undead with the infection ability can infect a player with the Infected effect. Each hit rolls once. The chance is the attacker's infectivity multiplied by one minus the victim's infection resistance. Players start at 0.25 resistance, so a zombie hit on an unarmoured player infects with a chance of 56 per cent. The effect runs four stages, lasting 5,700 ticks each for a first infection, which is 22,800 ticks (19 minutes) in total. The player dies when the final stage ends. Details are on Zombie Infection.

An infected player who dies leaves a player zombie at the death position. Its variant depends on where the player died:

• a death underwater creates a drowned player;
• a death in a desert, savanna or badlands biome creates a husk player;
• any other death creates a zombie player.

A player zombie has 20 health (10 hearts) and 3 attack damage, and it carries the player's name, skin and equipment. Because zombiePlayersStoreItems is off in the pack, the zombie holds no inventory, and the items stay in the corpse. Player zombies appear only when an infected player dies, because the zombieGraves option is off in the pack. They do not appear on Peaceful difficulty. The variants and stats are on Player Zombies.

Respawning

A player who dies returns to the respawn point they last set, usually a bed. Without one, they return to the world's shared spawn point. The pack changes some of the ways that point is set:

• Beds. Horde Nights blocks beds on a player's own horde night. While any online player has an active horde, sleep is blocked for everyone, so a respawn point cannot be set during that time.
• Fancy Beds. These sleep and set a respawn point like a vanilla bed. See Fancy Beds.
• Sleeping bags. A sleeping bag does not set the respawn point by default, because the enableSleepingBagSpawnPoint option is off.
• Mana. Players respawn with no mana, because the manaSpawnPercent option is 0. See Spellcasting.
• Sanity. A player who reaches 0 sanity in the Sleepy Hollows biome gets Insanity. When the Bad Dream part of the effect reaches its final tick, the player is teleported to the respawn bed, or to the shared spawn point if no bed is set. Mental Fortitude prevents the effect in practice. See Sanity.

Night dangers that end in death

Horde Nights and Graveyard Hordes come at night, and they are the usual reason players die in this pack. Horde Nights send waves of undead at one player every ten in-game days, counted in that player's playtime. Graveyard Hordes appear in the overworld near a random online player, and they are led by a patrol leader. Undead members of these hordes burn at dawn, so leading a horde into daylight thins it out. Neither event creates player zombies. Only infected deaths do.

Tips

• Keep a totem in the Curios charm slot and a second one in a hand. Each death uses one.
• Note the place of death before moving on. The corpse keeps its items until they are taken, and its skeleton model appears after one hour without changing them.
• Empty the corpse quickly on a shared server, because any player can open it.
• Set a bed as the respawn point before a horde night. Beds cannot be used during a horde night, and sleep is blocked for everyone during it.
• Check the death history after a loss. The Corpse page explains how to transfer items to the player's own inventory.