Death



Death occurs when a player's health reaches zero. A death message is displayed dependent on how the player died. For example, "" is one that is displayed if the player died from lava damage.

When a player dies, a Tombstone is dropped at the location of their death. When it finds a suitable space, it will become a 2×2 tile. It stores text, much in the way the Sign functions, with the player's death message, and the real-world date. Being affected by physics, a Tombstone will fall after the player's death if they were moving at the time. If there is no flat 2-block space for a Tombstone, it will get stuck before it despawns.

If the player holds more than when they die, the spawned Tombstone will be one of the five following golden Tombstones: Golden Tombstone.png Golden Headstone.png Golden Gravestone.png Golden Grave Marker.png Golden Cross Grave Marker.png

Upon death, a large red text saying "" will be displayed on the center of the screen. The amount of dropped coins will be shown underneath, and a timer will display showing how long until the player respawns.

Causes of death
Death may occur from:
 * Damage inflicted by enemies, bosses, and, during PvP, other players
 * Drowning
 * Lava
 * Traps, explosives, and explosive weapons that cause damage to the player, such as Exploding Bullets
 * Fall damage
 * Debuffs, typically causing damage over time and being inflicted by enemies
 * Suffocation (being below Silt/Slush/Sand)
 * Burning (contact with certain blocks)
 * Horrified (only causes death when trying to escape the Wall of Flesh)
 * Chaos State (only causes death when using the Rod of Discord too often while affected by the debuff)
 * Damaging buffs: Paladin's Shield and
 * Failing to destroy an Altar too often

Difficulty differences
A Softcore character will drop half,, or of each stack of coins a player is carrying at the moment of death in each inventory slot (always rounded up). Coins stored in storage items are not affected.

A character will drop all carried items, including money and ammo. Maximum health and mana will be kept, and will not be reduced back to the default.

A character will also drop all carried items. Furthermore, the character is permanently deleted upon death and the player turns into a ghost, unable to interact with the environment, but still able to observe, move about, and chat with other players.

Tips

 * The Tombstone mechanic can be very useful for locating items/coins dropped after death, since the Tombstone will usually fall within the vicinity of where the player died.
 * On the minimap, a [[File:Map Death.png]] cross symbol will display where the player died most recently, allowing the player to quickly find the location again.
 * During multiplayer boss fights, the last surviving player should play defensively until the other players can return to the fight after respawning. The boss may despawn if all players are too far away from the fight.
 * If the Worm Pet is active at death, it will say "Bye bye!", and will drop a Strange Looking Tombstone.

Trivia

 * The text that appears after death saying "" does not appear in the of the game except on PS3.
 * On the, the "" message will have a faded and translucent version of itself behind the opaque text that flickers around in an eerie twitching motion.
 * Several death messages from entities do not explicitly mention the cause.
 * One of the death messages displayed when dying from the debuff, "", is a reference to the nursery rhyme , which has a verse: "All the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't put Humpty together again".
 * The death message displayed when the player is killed by a Paladin's Shield used to be displayed when the player attempted to destroy a Demon or Crimson Altar with an insufficient hammer power instead.
 * The death message "" may be a reference to a death message in the 3D sandbox game Minecraft, which says the same thing when the player dies in lava.
 * Most death messages obtained in PvE circumstances are grammatically incorrect - there is no preceding "a" before the name of the killing monster or object, and the killer's name is always capitalized.