Level Up
You grow by doing. Crafting, building, cooking, harvesting, foraging, fishing, butchering, taming, smelting, mending gear and picking locks all earn experience, and so does every kill: a person counts for more than a beast, and a predator for more than prey. Felling a great tree or breaking a big ore node pays more than a small one, and a quick chain of kills pays extra.
LEVELLING UP
When the experience bar is full you are READY TO LEVEL UP, and the bar stops filling: whatever you earn past that point is wasted. The new level is not yours yet. Find a Bed or a Tent and sleep it through: one full, unbroken sleep raises you one level. Each level grants two attribute points and two ability points to spend on the Character screen (F2); see ATTRIBUTES and SKILLS. The highest level is 12.
DEATH AND LIVES
You have up to three lives, and every death costs one. Everything you carry and wear falls into a bag where you died, which rots away after fifteen minutes, and the experience gathered toward your next level is lost. Your levels, karma and standing stay with you.
PERMADEATH
Die with no lives left and your story ends. You are reborn as someone new: back to level 1, your attributes and skills wiped, your karma and every people's opinion of you returned to a newcomer's, and your quests forgotten.
AVOIDING IT
- Sleep. Every full sleep in a Bed or Tent wins back one lost life, up to three. Any hurt taken in your sleep wakes you, and a broken sleep gives nothing.
- Watch the counter. Your lives appear on the HUD once you have lost one, and flash on your last.
- Sleep where you mean to wake. The bed or tent you sleep in becomes the place you can return to after a death.
- Never log out in the open. The body you leave behind stays in the world, and a single blow kills it and spills everything you carry.