Death

"I envy his escape."

- Wendy

Death is one of the key elements in the game, and one of two ways the player can gain Experience and unlock new Characters, the other being traveling to the next world via Wooden Thing. Upon death, the player drops all their carried inventory, even if resurrected afterwards, but only permanent death will provide Experience.

Causes of Death

 * Starving to death.
 * Being killed by a Mob directly, such as a Hound, Pig, Tentacle, etc.
 * Being killed by Charlie in pitch black darkness.
 * Burning to death from Fire.
 * Dying from eating damaging food, such as Monster Meat or Durian.
 * Resurrection Sickness from building too many Meat Effigies, reducing maximum health to 0.
 * Being killed by a returning Boomerang.
 * Freezing to death.
 * Overheating. (Reign of Giants)
 * Picking a spiky bush with extremely low health.
 * Picking a Cactus with extremely low health. (RoG)
 * Eating sweet crockpot foods like Taffy and Powdercake continuously or with 3 health left
 * Eating Rot and/or rotten eggs continuously or with 1 health left
 * Standing too close to Gunpowder when it explodes
 * Being hit by falling Rocks in Caves.
 * Playing as WX-78 and staying in the rain for too long (or being wet for too long in RoG).
 * Playing as the Were-Beaver and letting the Log Meter reach 0.
 * Playing as Wes and popping 23 balloons.
 * Playing as Maxwell and summoning 5 Shadow Puppets without healing in-between.
 * Not moving after using the Old Bell. (RoG)
 * Being struck by Lightning. (RoG)
 * Eating red cap

Resurrection
There are currently three Items that allow the player resurrect themselves upon death – Life Giving Amulet, Meat Effigy, and Touch Stone. Woodie's Were-Beaver form will also automatically resurrect him upon the Log Meter reaching 0.

Resurrection Penalties

 * HealthMeter.png is set to 50
 * HungerMeter.png is set to 2/3 of maximum
 * SanityMeter.png is set to 1/2 of maximum
 * Empty inventory (items can be found at your death point)

If not resurrected, the character and the generated world are permanently lost.

Bugs

 * If the player leaves the game while the death animation plays, the character will still be alive upon return to that save file.

Trivia
.
 * Death cries were changed in The End of The Beginning Update. Now all characters have their own death cry, except Wes, who doesn't make any noise at all. Before the update, all Characters had the same death cry.
 * Upon death in Adventure Mode, all items from before the transition from Sandbox to Adventure Mode will be kept, and no alteration will have been made to the world.
 * Before the "All's Well That Maxwell" update, the game had a different death screen.
 * If the player dies, but is resurrected, there will be a skeleton found at the spot where the death occurred.