The latest info on Book of Travels from the Might and Delight team covers the issue of death in the game. This update comes after community questions as well as internal discussion, so the team decided to share what their concerns are as well as their thoughts on how they might want to proceed with it in the game.
“Firstly we believe that death is an essential ingredient in the Book of Travels soup,“ they declare in the update. What this means is that they don’t want to trivialize the experience or remove danger or risk from gameplay. Combat and survival should mean something so they want to add a deeper experience and still have an edge to gameplay. This should keep things interesting and of course having a risk element encourages strategizing better.
Since Book of Travels is also a shared experience, this is incorporated into what they might consider doing when it comes to death in the game. They want to make it meaningful so they want to keep the life petals and physical death in the game but aside from the life petals in the original plans, characters can die in the game. However, if you see someone else die in the game, this will grant you a special quest that will involve mourning and closure. If your character dies, your items will be stored by your grave and you’re the only one who will be able to collect your items. Ghost forms will be able to travel around the world interacting with other ghosts, so there’s a plane to this that they are exploring. Although there will be a path to get resurrected and return to the land of the living.
Now the team is operating on a smaller scale these days, so there’s no update on when this could be introduced, but it is something they’re looking for in their direction to make the player experience deeper.
For the full update, including some of the lore that inspired them, see the update from the Book of Travels team.