In the last day I've witnessed over 30 KO's / Killings (The majority of it ending up in death - Without the use of Murderous Rage). I feel the harshness of death should be looked into so I have compiled a small list of common mistakes, along with issues I've noticed.
Ancestral Worship - Lamenting the Departed (Yes, I even had to look up what this is called):
The vast majority of lowbie players I come across do not even know that this exists. The only mention of recoverable LP is in the tool tip for a grave cairn. I'm sure no one reads these tooltips. (Assuming they can read English, but translation is another matter entirely and Romovs does a wonderful job at trying to help with it). The average lowbie death results in them losing their bodies. To them death results in the bare minimum of stat recovery.
Realms:
Let's be real, once realms become a thing not even the high end player uses Lamenting the Departed. Realm burial is so strong and cheap that we always just use it. Personally I've never died in a situation that I was not able to recover my body. I don't know very many people that have even used Lamenting the Departed. It is definitely less than one hands worth for sure.
Ways they die:
-Forgetting to hearth once KO'd. Yes this happens.... A lot even. So many needless deaths can be avoided if the player just hearths once ko'd or just flat out log off, instead what I've seen is they get right back up and keep trying to run. I'm not sure if it is just panic setting in or maybe they are just unable to translate the message that tells them they are free to log off or hearth.
-Bashing their boat in water. A lot of players don't know to avoid deep water when being chased, so they wind up being ko'd and having their transportation vessel immediately destroyed resulting in death. Enough said.
-They also just generally end up dying from having low HHP while doing their daily tasks (No real solution to this aside from easing up on wounds and healing.)
-A good amount of players end up meeting their doom once their hearth-fire gets compromised. It is absolutely unreal that a lot of players never consider logging off once they've been ko'd. I don't blame them as logging off a game is insanely counter-intuitive to surviving and playing a game.
Some minor suggestions:
Auto-Hearth when ko'd.
Protection from drowning when ko'd.