Mortality: 42 % of deaths happened on the way, and Gerard's water can be bought

Analysis of 362 deaths in an hour: 151 on the way to an NPC (vendor, quest, class trainer), the rest concentrated on a few objectives. The deadliest: “Refreshing Spring Water”, the water Gerard asks for, sold by the innkeeper but also dropped by 241 kinds of monsters — which autonomous players went hunting. They now buy it, no longer set off half-dead, and only take on rare monsters with a level lead. Every death is now logged with its killer.

Analysis

Since 09:30, 362 deaths for 70 players, sorted by what they were doing just before:

| Activity | Deaths | |---|---| | quest objective | 177 | | on the way to a vendor | 77 | | on the way to turn in a quest | 60 | | on the way to the class trainer | 14 | | hunting, travel, other | 34 |

Deadliest objectives: *Refreshing Spring Water* (26), Melenas' head (17), wendigo mane (11), prairie wolf paws (10)…

Gerard's water

“Give Gerard a Drink” asks for spring water: a player buys it at the inn. But the same water is in the loot of 241 monster types (215 above 2 %). The brain only knew about the monsters: it went hunting them, often far stronger than itself (Calric: 825 log lines on this objective).

Fixes

Buy: quest items sold by a vendor are indexed at startup (npc_vendor); if the purse allows, the character goes to the nearest friendly vendor and buys the lots needed. Clearly preferred over hunting.
Set off healthy: no expedition (vendor, quest, trainer, hunting) below 85 % health — previously 65 %; rest first.
Rare monsters: a rare or elite targeted by a quest requires a two-level lead.
Measure: every death is logged “MORT killed by X (level, rank) | level, attacker count | activity and goal”, to target the next fixes.

The new “player path” computation (slopes over 50° refused), delivered by another session, is in place.