Death and Shelter

Status: Planned

This page defines how ChonkyCraft should handle death, inventory retention, mob griefing limits, and hostile pressure on player shelters.

The target is:

death should sting and shelter should matter

Not:

death deletes progress and random grief ruins builds

Design Goals

• Keep the adventure loop moving after death
• Let building a house and perimeter actually matter
• Make hostile pressure readable and material-aware
• Remove random terrain grief from hostile mobs in general
• Encourage stronger fortifications without turning the game into a pure siege simulator

Death Rules

• Death should not drop inventory
• Death should not remove experience
• Gear, Relics, mounts, and other progression systems should remain intact after death
• The main cost of death should be lost position, lost time, lost event momentum, or the danger of returning to the scene

If extra death pressure is needed later, prefer:

• a short wound-style debuff
• a respawn-distance problem
• event progress loss

Do not prefer:

• item drops
• experience deletion
• gear breakage

Griefing Boundary

The project should draw a hard line between:

• pressure on the player
• damage to the world

Rules:

• Hostile mobs should not randomly break player-built blocks or terrain by default
• Endermen should not steal or move player blocks in normal play
• Creepers should damage players through their blast logic without turning into terrain-deletion tools
• If a boss or special event damages the environment, it should be authored and readable, not random background grief

Shelter Pressure Rule

Shelters should matter because they buy time against hostile pressure.

That means:

• Doors should matter
• Gates should matter
• Fences and perimeter layers should matter
• Stronger materials should hold longer
• Players should be encouraged to build better homes, not only prettier ones

Fortification Tiers

Current direction:

• Soft: wood doors, wood gates, weak fences, basic barricades
• Medium: stronger wood, stone-adjacent entries, reinforced fence lines
• Hard: iron doors, iron gates, reinforced metal or boss-tier fortifications

Rules:

• Soft defenses can be breached by the right enemies on relatively short timers
• Medium defenses should resist ordinary pressure much better
• Hard defenses should be difficult to breach and usually require stronger enemies, Stormfronts, elites, or very long pressure windows

The point is not realism. The point is readable defensive value.

Breach Timing Rules

• Breaches should take time, not happen instantly
• The player should be able to hear or see that a breach is underway
• Different enemies should pressure different structures at different speeds
• A small base should be defendable if the player reacts

Enemy Pressure Rules

Current direction:

• Standard night mobs can pressure weak doors and weak gates
• Stronger variants can pressure better entries or do it faster
• Raid or Stormfront enemies can threaten stronger layers
• Special enemies can jump fences, squeeze through gaps, or force players to build smarter layouts

This should encourage:

• layered entrances
• fenced yards
• fallback rooms
• stronger gate choices

Event Rule

Stormfronts are where shelter pressure can escalate harder.

Examples:

• Redwake: stronger night pressure on weak settlements
• Blackwake Raid: organized attackers that test outer layers and gates
• Later breach or anomaly events: selective pressure on stronger fortifications

Event pressure should be:

• announced
• readable
• rewarding to survive

Co-op Rule

• Death retention should keep co-op fun moving
• One player dying should not create inventory-recovery chores for both players
• Base breaches should be dramatic, not confusing
• Fortification value should be obvious to both players

Anti-Patterns

Avoid:

• Random hostile mob grief deleting chunks of a base
• Endermen stealing pieces of player builds
• Instant door deletion with no warning
• Houses becoming meaningless because nothing can pressure them
• Death dropping inventory or experience in a progression-heavy adventure pack

Current Direction by Band

• Frontier Band: weak wooden shelters matter, fences matter, doors matter, death keeps inventory and experience
• Deep Frontier Band: stronger enemies and raids test better fortifications and layered defenses
• Breach Band: high-tier events can pressure stronger structures, but still through readable rules rather than random world grief