---
number: 40
title: Dying — lava burns, your bag spills, and you wake at home
date: 2026-10-24
summary: A player can now die. Lava hurts everywhere — the fifth cell kills — and flames come up round you while you wade. Dead, you lie down; the chest you carry drops in front of you or falls apart; your bag spills on the ground round you for anyone to collect (what lands in the lava burns); the screen goes black and you get up at home. Health heals slowly and no longer refills at a door. The fire hounds bite three times as hard and take three times the beating.
epic: mvp-definition-of-done
status: delivered
artifacts: ["docs/handoff/death.md","game/world/death_rules.gd","game/world/area_server.gd","game/world/carry_rules.gd","game/director/src/inventory.ts","game/world/client/client_main.gd","game/world/client/burn_effect.gd"]
cta: [object Object]
---

<div class="embed-grid" style="display:grid;grid-template-columns:1fr 1fr;gap:12px;margin:1.2em 0">
<figure style="margin:0"><img src="/images/game/land-of-lor/2026-10-24-death-burning.jpg" alt="A player wading into lava, flames rising round her legs" loading="lazy"><figcaption>Into the lava — flames come up round you</figcaption></figure>
<figure style="margin:0"><img src="/images/game/land-of-lor/2026-10-24-death-lying.jpg" alt="A player lying dead at the lava's edge, her chest set down on the grass and her bag spilled round it" loading="lazy"><figcaption>The chest set down, the bag spilled round you</figcaption></figure>
</div>

Kris, 24 October, by voice: "if your health bar gets down to zero then you can now die." The
MVP's "ability to die" had been one line; his spoken spec that evening is the whole of it, and
it is written into issue #27.

**What a player meets.** Lava hurts everywhere, whatever an Area's own rules — "between four and
eight cells of lava would kill you": a step onto it costs four of your twenty, standing in it
four more every half second, so the fifth cell kills. Flames come up round you while you are in
it. When you die you lie down (a burst of flames if it was the lava). What you carry drops on the
cell in front of you, or the next one round, or — nowhere will take it, or this is a mini-game —
"it just kind of breaks apart", with whatever was in it. Your bag spills on your cell and the
cells round you, three things to a cell, further out if it needs room: anyone may pick it up, you
too if you get back in time — and what lands on lava burns, "not retrievable by anyone". Then the
screen goes black, and you get up off the ground at home. Health heals one every thirty seconds
(potions and food come later); only dying fills it, and a door no longer does. Golem Hollow and
Cinder Hollow keep playing when you die there. The fire hounds bite three times as hard, on you
and on the Moon Well, and take three times the beating. And the Area setting "a player who was
last here comes back…" is gone: you always come back where you were, unless nobody may stand
there now, and then you are sent home.

**On Kris's phone, the same evening**: "the dying is excellent!" — and the second death went
black and stayed black. The server had hung up on the phone a moment too soon after telling it
to go home (a cleanup meant for connections that never said hello swept a departing one), so the
phone never heard where to go. Fixed on both ends and proved by a test.

Live on spellgrove.com and in the Android build v58, and sent to both stores as 0.2.2.