Saving Character Progress
How your character progression is saved on death, how much gets lost, what is recorded.
📓 Recovery Journal
Every new character spawns holding a Recovery Journal. When you die your next character comes back as the same person with most of your progress, so a death doesn't put you back to square one.
How it saves progression
- It saves on its own about every 17 minutes, and again the moment you die.
- You can choose to manually record progress once every 30 minutes, worth doing after a big grind. Right-click it and pick Write in the journal to save it yourself.
- It's saved on the server, not in the book. You can keep it in a container at your safehouse and it will still track progress.
- It is bound to you, anyone else who picks it up gets a blank book.
- It always restores from your best record, so dying again does not shrink it.
Reading the journal shows what is saved and when it was last saved.
Right-click the journal and pick How the journal works to see this in game.
🪦 What stays on death
Everything is put back automatically when your next character spawns, you don't need to read the journal.
Restored experience
90% of skills and experience as of this writing (23/10/26). Worked out from the best you've ever reached, so dying over and over doesn't wear it down
You never come back below the levels your profession and traits start you on.
Restored progress
- Learned recipes, the books, magazines and flyers you read.
- Tapes you watched.
- Your ambitions and trait progress.
Character build
Your profession and traits come back as they were, whatever you initially picked on the creation screen when you first made your character. They do not change even if you later pick different options after death unless you use the change traits option.
Right-click the journal and choose Burn the journal (needs a lighter with fuel). This erases the record for good.
One record is kept on the server, so do not burn any additional journals you receive or create if you wish to keep your experience.
📝 Changing traits
- While alive: Right-click your journal and pick Change traits.
- On death: Click the Change traits button, next to Burn my journal.
It's one change per life, alive or at death, not both. Change while alive and the death screen button is used up for that life.
Hover over it to see why.
Usage restrictions
One change lets you drop up to 3 traits and take up to 3, before your next character.
Every journal comes with one free change, and you earn another for every 30 hours played. You can hold 3 at most and use one per death.
Your journal changes with you, so a later death won't hand back levels you swapped away.
Change limitations
Points have to balance like the creation screen. A trait's skill levels go with it, and the levels you take can't be worth more XP than the ones you drop.
You can't change traits the game gives or takes as you play, including but not limited to:
- Your profession's own traits.
- Anything that gives Fitness or Strength levels (e.g. Fit, Strong, Stout).
- Weight related traits.
- SOTO ones like Brave or Gardener
Visual discrepencies
The skills panel can show the old XP rate until you relog, the new rate already works.
❓ Lost journal
Right-click a blank notebook with a pen or pencil on you and pick Make it my recovery journal.
Everything is still in it.
Only your newest journal works, old copies (like the one on your corpse) go blank and fall apart.