Mortem Aeternum Permadeath

Dungeons & Dragons Online with permanent death

Mortem Aeternum Permadeath Guild Rules

Table of Contents (hover/tap to expand):

Entering the Guild

To join the guild (located on the Sarlona server), a player is required to read the rules and to agree to abide by them. Upon confirming that the player is familiar with the guild rules, any officer may add the player to the guild, provided that the new member is a new toon at level 1 with no prior deaths.

Character Death

• If your character dies, you must delete your character or that character must leave the guild.
• Exception: dying as a level 1 character that does not have enough XP to advance to level 2 does not count as permanent death.
• Exception: dying as a Veteran Status I or Veteran Status II starting character does not count as long as the character is within the first quest played, viz. no experience or final reward items have been earned by that character yet.
• Exception: characters that are legally raised from death do not permanently die, see the sections on Raising the Dead and Being Raised from the Dead.
• Exception: deaths due to the game being nonfunctional do not count as permanent deaths, see the section on This Game is Bugged.

Looting Bodies

• If your character dies and surviving groupmates recover your soul stone, groupmates may loot any items (but not platinums/money) from your corpse.
• Exception: items designated as heirloom items (see Heirlooms) by the deceased cannot be looted.

What About My Gear?

• If your character dies, any items that are not looted by survivors (and are not heirloom items) are either deleted, sold for guild funds, or otherwise transferred out of the guild.
• This also includes collectables, consumables, personal bank items, and money.
• Exception: roguing gear^[1] may be freely traded between characters within the guild and may be transferred to your other character(s) even after your character dies.

Raising the Dead

• Raises that make use of the capabilities of a character (e.g. casting Raise Dead, activating Rise of the Phoenix, etc.) are generally legal.
• If the raiser is not the same character as the raisee, the raiser must have the raisee’s soul stone in their inventory prior to the raise attempt.
• Exception: Resurrection and True Resurrection (including these spells as cast using scrolls or as a Paladin with the Redemption enhancement) do not require possession of the soul stone.
• Exception: using Undying Call does not require possession of the soul stone if the raisee is an Elf or a Half-Elf (including any subspecies thereof).
• Exception: using the level 5 Druid spell Reincarnate does not require possession of the soul stone.
• Use of resurrection shrines is strictly forbidden.
• Resurrection cakes of any kind are strictly forbidden.
• You cannot invite others into the group to assist with raises.
• Clicking the “Release” button while dead removes any possibility of a legal raise.

Being Raised from the Dead

• When your character receives a legal raise effect, you and the raiser (these may be the same character, e.g. when Death Pact is triggered or Rise of the Phoenix is activated) must leave the instance immediately.
• Exception: if your character receives a legal True Resurrection (including one cast using a scroll or by a Paladin with the Redemption enhancement), neither you nor the raiser have to leave the quest.
• Exception: if your character is an Elf or a Half-Elf (including any subspecies thereof), and you receive a legal Undying Call, neither you nor the raiser have to leave the instance.
• No character can be legally raised more times than half of its inherent constitution score (i.e. only including initial score, level-ups, and tomes) rounded up.
• Each time your character is legally raised from death, you must make a note of it on that character’s in-game biography page (“bio”).

Reincarnation Rules

• All forms of reincarnation except for Epic Reincarnation are permitted.
• Lesser Reincarnation works as normal and can be done freely; see the section on Respec’ing Characters.
• “Dead” epic-level characters (level 20 or higher) can undergo True Reincarnation^[2] (TR) to restart at level 1.
• When TRing, one additional heirloom item may be designated in addition to the heirloom item(s) that you would normally be able to designate.
• Otherwise, TRing is treated similarly to character death.

Items and Equipment

• No twinking (transferring items from your other characters).
• You may not use Tomes of Learning.
• Daily Dice are not allowed, including gold rolls.
• Do not accept gifts of any sort from characters that are outside of the guild.
• Items discovered/acquired while in an adventuring party may be freely traded amongst the party members until the group disbands.
• Exception: Consumables (potions, vials, trap parts, wands, scrolls, tomes, thieves' tools, healer's kits, repair kits, spell inscription materials, and ammunition) may be traded within the guild freely at any time.
• Exception: roguing gear^[1] may be bought from brokers or from the platinum auction house.
• Exception: roguing gear^[1] may be shared freely amongst all guild characters and members at any time.

Heirlooms

• When you die, you may designate one of your items as an heirloom item.
• Exception: a character can always keep their Voice of the Master and/or Mantle of the Worldshaper as heirloom item(s) in addition to their other heirloom item(s).
• Exception: TRing^[2] characters may designate an additional item as an heirloom in addition to the heirloom item(s) that they would normally be able to designate; see Reincarnation Rules for details.
• Exception: you can always heirloom any collectable bags, ingredient bags, and gem bags that are not bound to your character, in addition to your chosen heirloom item(s). Any such bags must be emptied before being transferred.
• Exception: purely cosmetic items may be heirloomed in addition to your chosen heirloom item(s).
• Items that are heirloomed may be transferred from the character that heirloomed them to any other character(s) that that guild member has, including the “re-roll” of their now dead (or TRing) character. No other items may be traded amongst a given member’s characters (see the section on Items and Equipment for exceptions related to roguing gear^[1]).

Magic is (Not Quite) Everywhere

• You may not purchase wands, potions, scrolls, nor any other magical items (e.g. a +1 shortsword).
• You may, however, purchase mundane (i.e. non-magical) items of any kind from any vendor; this includes items of Masterwork quality.
• Exception: you may purchase magical varieties of the following kinds of items, from favor-related vendors only: ammunition, throwing weapons, thieves' tools, healer's kits and repair kits.
• Exception: roguing gear^[1] may be bought from brokers or from the platinum auction house.
• Exception: if you are capable of natively casting a given spell (i.e. not through the use of scrolls/wands/potions/clickies), and that spell has one or more material component(s) that are considered magical item(s), then you may freely purchase those material component(s) from any NPCs, so long as you use them only as material component(s) and also do not trade them with any other players.

Daily Dice

You may not use daily dice, including gold rolls.

Auction Houses and Brokers

• You may not use the auction houses or brokers to buy or to sell.
• Exception: roguing gear^[1] may be bought from brokers or from the platinum auction house.

Hirelings

You may not purchase hireling contracts or use hirelings.

Wolf/Iron Defender Companions

• If your companion/pet dies in a quest, you may raise it by using one of the thrice-daily clickies that the companion comes with. This raise counts as effectively True Resurrection, except that the raiser must have the soul stone in their inventory.
• Companions may also make use of resurrection shrines, unlike players (this is mostly due to the fact that the companion AI is programmed to automatically raise itself if a resurrection shrine is in range).
• Companions may otherwise be raised using the methods available to player characters, but are subject to the same restrictions^[3], except that companions can be raised an unlimited number of times and it is not required to keep track of each time that they are raised.
• When a quest is ended (by finishing the quest or otherwise), all companions that were dead in that quest are effectively considered to be automatically affected by True Resurrection (this is so that companions cannot suffer permanent death like player characters can).

Grouping

• You may not group with others that are outside of the guild.
• Within a given group, the difference in level between the highest level character and the lowest may not exceed 3.
• You may not join a group that has used a shrine in their current instance; this includes explorer areas.
• You may not invite others into your group to assist incapacitated and/or dead characters.

Questing

• In order for a given character to be allowed to enter a given quest, the adjusted level of the quest must be greater than or equal to the level of the character. For example, a base level 2 quest (like e.g. Bringing the Light) that is being done on Elite difficulty has an adjusted level of 4, and thus may be entered by a level 4 character, but not a level 5 one.
• Exception: a character that is over the adjusted level of a quest may still enter the quest if all of the following hold:
  • The quest is part of a chain.
  • The character has never done the quest before.
  • There is at least one quest further along in the chain that the character has not done and that the character is eligible to enter (that is, eligible other than the fact that they haven’t completed the pre-requisite quest(s)).
• Exception: if the base level of the quest is 20 or higher, the restriction on what level a character that enters it may be is loosened by one. That is, characters that enter such a quest may be at most one level over the adjusted level of the quest, rather than at most zero.
• Exception: when a party whose kismet members make up at least 50% of the population of the party chooses a quest to enter, they may choose to do at most one of the following:
  • Enter the quest on one difficulty level lower than would normally be allowed (e.g. Hard instead of Elite).
  • Enter a quest whose adjusted quest level is one level lower than would normally be allowed.
• All quests must be done on at least Elite difficulty, that is, either Elite or Reaper.
• Exception: level 1 characters that do not have enough XP to advance to level 2 may enter and complete quests on Normal difficulty or higher, provided that they do so solo, i.e. with a party size of 1. Level 1 characters that do not have enough XP to advance to level 2 may enter and complete quests on Hard difficulty or higher, regardless of party size, so long as all party members satisfy the XP requirement.
• Exception: some quests cannot be entered on Elite or Reaper (e.g. Solo-only quests). These quests must be done on the highest difficulty allowed.
• Exception: see the exception above pertaining to kismet characters.
• Quests cannot be repeated; that is, once a given character completes a quest, they can never enter that quest again.
• Exception: a quest can be repeated if at least 50% of the members of the party have never done the quest before.

Exploring, Slayers, and Rares

• You are free to run explorers/rares/slayers as long as your character level does not exceed the maximum level listed on the entry screen and you do not have an XP penalty from being over-level.
• If you are above the level on the entry screen, you may enter an explorer area with the intent of going to a quest, but not with the intent of doing explorers/rares/slayers.

Shrines

• Resurrection shrines are forbidden.
• In any group, if one member rests at a shrine, every other member must also use it or forgo it entirely (for the rest of the quest).
• When the group decides to use a shrine, all must use it to remove existing buffs. No buffs may be cast until all have shrined.
• Once a shrine has been used, no group member may go back and use it later.
• Exception: If your immediate next action will be to enter a quest, group members may choose to use or forgo a shrine, even if the shrine was already used.

Quest Re-Entry

You may not re-enter a quest until the quest instance has been reset.

Crafting

Crafting is allowed.

Collectables

Collectables are encouraged.

DDO Store

Only the following may be purchased/acquired from the DDO Store:

• Cosmetic items/kits that do not confer any bonuses (i.e. are purely cosmetic)
• Collectable bags
• Ingredient bags
• Gem bags
• Bank slots
• Cosmetic pets
• Quest packs
• Character slots
• Guest passes
• Backpack slots
• Races
• Classes
• Universal enhancement trees
• Hearts of Wood and Hearts of Blood, except for Epic Hearts of Wood
• Guild renown elixirs

This Game is Bugged

If your character dies because of broken quest mechanics, lag, erroneous falling damage, or stuck spots, this does not count as a permanent death. We trust that you know not to abuse this rule, as otherwise you wouldn’t be playing permadeath.

Veteran Status

• If your character levels to 8 or higher and that character dies, you may re-roll it as a level 4 veteran (Veteran Status I).
• If your character levels to 14 or higher and that character dies, you may re-roll it as a level 7 veteran (Veteran Status II).
• A character with one or more past lives that dies is considered to have “leveled to 20”, and may re-roll as a level 7 veteran (Veteran Status II).
• Only the character that has achieved a given level threshold can start with Veteran Status after death. All other new characters will begin at level 1.
• Dying as a Veteran Status I or Veteran Status II starting character also does not count as long as the character is within the first quest played, meaning no experience or final reward items have been earned by that character yet.
• Members who have reached level 26 and capped an Epic Destiny can create a single Iconic character for each time that they do so.

Special Events

Guild members are not permitted to partake in any special event(s). This means no Crystal Cove, no Risia Ice Festival, etc.

Respec’ing Characters

Respec’ing characters (that is, re-specifying them using Fred, enhancement resets, and/or Lesser Reincarnation) is allowed. This includes using items from the DDO store to do so.

Guild dismissal

DDO is a game and is played to have fun. The members of Mortem Aeternum enjoy the added challenge of permadeath in order to have fun when playing. As such, we do not see the purpose of not following the rules of the guild when there are so many other non-permadeath guilds available. Nevertheless, a player found to have broken one of the guild rules, or to have acted in an offensive and inappropriate manner towards one or more players, will be expected to explain the reasons for that to officers. Such a player should expect that dismissal from the guild may occur. Repeated offenses, regardless of reasons, will result in dismissal.

Footnotes:

[1] “Roguing gear” is defined as thieves' tools, as well as any equipment items that bestow, passively and/or actively, at least a +1 bonus to one or more of the following skills by name: Spot, Search, Disable Device, Open Lock. That is, a piece of equipment giving a bonus to skill checks in general does not count for the purpose of this definition.

[2] “True Reincarnation” (TR) refers collectively to Heroic, Racial, and Iconic Reincarnation.

[3] Note that this makes using a lesser form of raising (e.g. Raise Dead) on companions counterproductive, since it means having the raiser leave the quest just to save a companion that cannot actually permanently die anyways.