Death is a condition for Players that occurs when their HP reaches zero. When they reach this state, they become inactive and a corpse is left in their place. Players then have the choice to release to the closest altar, leaving a tombstone at the location they died or to wait until another player casts a resurection spell on them.
Remedy
Fortunately for players, death is not a permanent condition (with the possible exception of on alternate ruleset servers). Various classes have spells that they may cast on fallen comrades to resurrect them. Players who die may also release from their corpse and come back to life at the nearest altar.
When a player releases to the nearest altar, they are brought back to life with their soulbound equipment and items. Items that are not soulbound are at the location that they died. A tombstone, containing the missing items, will be available for the player to retrieve. Players may either return to that location immediately, at a later time, or give other players the ability to drag their tombstone to a more easily accessible location.
Limitations
Tombstones that have not been looted will have their items and equipment sent to escrow. To retrieve items and equipment that are in escrow, one must visit an altar to take the items and equipment back.
Tombstone Retrieval
On the Locations tab of the quest log will be a list of tombstones that a player has not yet retrieved. Selecting which tombstone a player intends to retrieve places a small red marker on the compass, and a location on the world map. Players unable to retrieve their tombstone may summon it at an altar, at the expense of experience and coin.
When a player dies they will either incur experience loss or experience debt. Experience loss will not drop a player below their current level, unless they are already at the level cap. Experience debt will be paid off by splitting future gained experience and crediting portions of it to both character progression and to reducing the debt. Players will regain a portion of the experience lost when retrieving tombstones.
Tombstone Summoning
Players also have the option of summoning their tombstone at an altar. This means you will regain no experience from the death, and you will receive an item durability hit to items that are contained within the tombstone. This is currently set to a 15% durability hit.