Death and respawn

Dying in Pascal's Wager is cheap when you bring a partner and costly when you do not. The punishment is a loss of Bone Fragments, not of levels or equipment, and it only applies when the whole team is down. This article gives the exact numbers, then explains what the game resets on respawn, how the companion mechanics work and what triggers a save. See also World mechanics, Sanity and Drops and loot.

When one hero falls#

If the hero you control dies and the other team member is still alive, the game fades out and swaps the partner in at the dead hero's respawn position, facing the nearest enemy. No bones are lost and no trophies are destroyed. In a boss fight the incoming hero starts with the same sanity percentage the fallen hero had (the bar is set to that fraction), so a boss fight cannot reset sanity by a swap.

The partner can come back later. Dead partners are revived in these ways:

The key item cannot be used in dream stories and can only be used while the companion is dead.

When the whole team falls#

On a full-team wipe the game does this in order:

1. Special trophies vanish. Every equipped trophy of the "destroyed on death" kind (logic 114) is removed. In the data these are the 36 alchemy products 61011-61066, such as Active Niter Pot, Crimson Spar, Stone Grass Ring, Spellbreaker Runestone, Glistening Mercury and Seal of Flame.
2. Bones are lost. The game draws a random fraction between 25 % and 35 %, multiplies it by your Bone Fragment count, rounds down, and then adds 1 with a 30 % chance if the product had a fractional part. The lost bones are removed from the bag immediately and shown on the death screen. The Broken Bronze Whistle runs this same routine without a death (Carriage#Getting back to the Carriage).
3. Sanity monsters and summoned heroes disappear.
4. A fade to black, then the respawn routine below runs.

Only Bone Fragments (the first entry of the experience-currency list, item 40001) are lost. Big Bone, Anthozoan Bones, Spectre Mushrooms and Dominator Crystals are not touched.

Worked examples:

The expected loss is therefore about 30 % of what you carry plus a small rounding term.

The Heggie stash#

With the trophy World-Devouring Promise equipped (four copies exist, items 60091, 60291, 60391, 60491; logic 131), the lost bones are not gone. In the respawn routine a special pick-up (item 20008, the Heggie marker) is created that stands in for the lost bones: picking it up gives back the full lost amount instead of the marker itself. Rules from the code:

• Only one such stash exists. Creating a new one removes the older stash that is waiting for the same bones, so dying twice before recovering the first stash loses the first batch for good.
• The stash is one of only two kinds of ground item that survive a respawn (the other is the scene marker, see below).
• The text says the Heggie appears "where you stand"; the code places it at the hero's stored footprint position at the time the respawn routine runs. Whether that is the death spot or the respawn point (unverified).
• Stash and recovery are done by the story-mode routines only.

What respawn resets#

After the fade the following happens, in this order:

1. Drops on the ground are deleted, except scene markers and the Heggie stash. Anything you did not pick up is lost.
2. All monsters are removed and the dead-monster list is cleared, so every ordinary enemy of the area returns, together with offended Heggies. Bosses that you killed are controlled by quest flags and normally stay gone (inferred).
3. Hero state: Health Potion counts are refilled to their maximum for every hero (the maximum includes the Item HP max talent), debuffs are removed, sanity is set to the maximum and HP to the maximum for the whole team.
4. Merchant stock counters are refreshed (the code calls RefreshTransactionNum on every respawn; what that restocks is not traced here, unverified). The Crow companion resets, the Heggie happiness meters reset (Heggie offerings), and the first-kill flags stay as they were (see Drops and loot).
5. In a boss fight the boss is reset to its starting grade, the quests that the fight had set are reverted, and you start the fight over.

Respawn goes to the respawn area and position saved by the last altar or area change, not to the place you died. In the Deep into the Dark Mist maze a death returns you to the maze start instead (Deep into the Dark Mist).

When a boss fight ends, the game also runs the same recovery: for a final-grade boss it restores sanity and HP for the whole team and clears debuffs (in a maze boss only sanity), and for other bosses it restores sanity and clears debuffs without healing.

Level-load refills#

Every time the story scene loads (not on the very first load, and not inside the maze) all Health Potions are refilled to the maximum.

Switching heroes by choice#

The swap button shows only when a partner exists and is alive. You can switch only if all of this holds:

• You are a player-controlled hero and are standing or walking (a plain moving state), not attacking, dodging or falling.
• You are not being locked by an enemy and not in a boss fight (the button simply does not work against bosses).
• Your sanity is not in the crazy state (Lunatic state).
• No whisper dialog is playing.

On a swap the old hero's status effects are saved with them, and the new hero appears at the same position and facing. A hero that was swapped out keeps their effects but is hidden and does not take part.

Saving#

The autosave timer only counts up while the conditions below hold, and the save fires once it passes 60 seconds. Your hero must be standing safely: on the ground, not on stairs, not flying or in a cutscene, not in a menu, not in a boss fight, not while a whisper or the Crow's arrival plays. It is skipped in the Boss Time Challenge, in dream stories and in story id 10011 (except special handling for that story). A failed attempt retries each frame until it succeeds.

Hidden mechanics#

• The bone penalty is random between 25 and 35 percent and applies only after the last hero falls.
• Alchemy trophies of the "destroyed on death" kind disappear only on a team wipe, not when one hero falls.
• Ground items vanish on respawn; only the Heggie stash and scene markers stay.
• The swap-in after a death keeps the boss-fight sanity percentage, which makes a swap a poor sanity reset.
• Rested monsters return on death, but a defeated boss is tied to a quest flag.

Sources#

• controller/controllerstorymode.lua 1839-1894 (HostPlayerDead, HostPlayerDeadDrop, bone loss, trophy removal), 1944-2046 (OnMenuReborn, HostPlayerReborn, respawn steps, Heggie stash), 2048-2073 (SecondaryHostReborn), 2428-2447 (RecoveryProperty), 920-950 (boss defeat recovery), 1470-1485 (reborn property rates, level-load refill), 3685-3705 (RefreshMonster), 8300-8340 (CheckSaveAuto), 8404-8530 (Save types), 7770-7840 (bonfire swap).
• controller/controllermain.lua 3205-3235 (IsSecondaryHostPlayerDead), 3326-3475 (StartSwitchHostPlayer, SwitchHostPlayer).
• logic/player/animalbase.lua 9514-9549 (IsSwitchPlayerReady), 9593 (IsPermitAutoSave), 12999 (revive item use), 13500-13525 (death flow and ChangeNextDead).
• structdata/ms_itemdata.lua 103-160 (ExpItemDropProbabilityMin 0.25, Max 0.35, IndependentProbability 0.3, ExpAddList, FrogItemId 20008, TrophyLogicType DeadDropSub 117, DeathDisappear 114, GetDeathDropItem 131); structdata/fs_trophyequiplist.lua 259-280; structdata/fs_savestory.lua 2277-2360 (drop item list, ClearDropItemAll).
• gamedata/playerdefine/animalbase_value_define.lua 19-20 (ForceReborn rates). Tables: ItemData 20027, 21027, 20008; TrophyData 60091, 60291, 60391, 60491, 61011-61066.