Charon is a module provided in Cartographer. It provides a large number of tweaks and options that modify the death systems in Vanilla Minecraft. These options generally make death more lenient than it otherwise would be in your Minecraft experience, but also more engaging and interactive.

Death Note

Charon features an in game Advancement tutorial page called the "Lexica: Death Note" (or just Death Note for short). This advancement page is brought up when the player first dies, and only shows all currently used modifiers that are in effect on the world. (Only active or selected effects are visible in this menu, the rest are hidden.)

Death Note only shows itself when the player has died at least one time, to prevent spoiling map mechanics.

A helper function exists to reset a player's death note called via "function cartographer_charon:revoke_death_note"

An option in settings of the pack allows the Death Note to be disabled and permanently hidden.

Dev Box

Charon features a dev box that can be accessed by typing: /trigger give_dev_box This will give you the Charon dev box (as well as other installed dev boxes) and it contains two useful items.

Respawn Statues

These act as automatic beds. Place one and all survival mode players that walk within 12 blocks of them will have their spawn set to in front of the statue.

Ambrosia

This gives the player a point in the Boon score when consumed. While the player has points in the Boon score, they will lose 1 point instead of being affected by normal death rules the next time they die. Boons can be given by the mapmaker arbitrarily, this is an item that is already setup to give the drinker a Boon on use.

Death Modes

Charon features 4 different (plus an optional addon for multiplayer) death "modes" that modify how items are dropped / the base penalty for death in game.

All of these system interact with "dropped items". Explained in later sections, not all items drop when a player dies with Charon enabled. By default settings, only a percentage of your items are dropped, randomly. The rest are kept on respawning. The amount of items and which item slots can drop items can be dropped are configurable (explained further below).

Note: Curses like Shattering from Cartographer and Vanishing from vanilla still apply their effects, regardless of the new system.

Death Drop

Death Drop changes a player's death to drop a bundle at their last safe location (the last location they touched the ground at). The bundle is placed in an item frame and safe from despawning. The Bundle will contain all dropped items of a player's inventory. The Bundle can be punched out of the frame to drop on the ground, and picking it up will automatically unpack and return the items in the Bundle to the collector's inventory.

Collector

Collector changes a player's death to spawn a hostile entity (a Collector) at their death location. The Collector will hold a bundle of items that the player dropped. When defeated, the Collector will drop this bundle floating in the air, allowing players to collect it. Like with Death Drop, the Bundle automatically unpacks itself, returning the player's items.

Trader

Trader changes a player's death to create a bundle and send it to a special villager. The Bundle will be rebuyable for an amount of Emeralds (changeable in the datapack file). The cost of the bundle is directly equal to the number of unique item slots the bundle contains. (So taking 4 different slots of items costs 4 Emeralds) Once bought, the bundle in question can no longer be purchased again. All players' bundles are shipped to the same villager.

The villager can be summoned with this command: "function cartographer_charon:summon_charon". This villager has a unique UUID which MUST be used. Only one of these villagers can exist in the world at a time.

Cage

Cage changes a player's death to drop a bundle like all other modes. However, the bundle is hidden inside of a random spawner within 32 blocks of the death point. This spawner will glow and spawn mobs at a faster rate. When destroyed, the Cage will drop the bundle at the spawner, and like with all other modes, the bundle can be picked up, unpacking itself and returning the dropped items.

Multiplayer Option: Shades

Multiplayer Shades are an optional mechanic that can be turned on separate from setting the death mode. When enabled, when there are at least 2 players in the world, a Shade will be spawned holding the item bundle when a player dies. The shade will persist for 30 seconds, after which it will despawn unless it was "revived". When the Shade despawns, the set death mode will occur at the position of the Shade (e.g. if set to Death Drop, a Death Drop will be created at the feet of the Shade).

Shades can be revived by a player sneaking and looking at them within 4.5 blocks of the Shade. After completing the channel effect, the owner of the Shade will be teleported back to the Shade, and the Shade will vanish, dropping its bundle at the feet of the owner player (restoring their items).

Shades can also be right clicked with an empty hand to take the bundle from them, but this will forcibly despawn the Shade, preventing the owner from being teleported back to it (but protecting the bundle of items from any incoming death mode)

Note: Shades can be enabled in a world and if there is only one player, the mechanic will not activate. 2 players must be in the world for Shades to activate, even if the setting is turned on.

Void Settings

Charon allows for configuring how the void works when it comes to interacting with death modes. Because Charon activates effects at the last safe ground the player was at, all death modes will drop their bundles/effects at the last safe position the player was standing at, rather than losing the items to the void.

Execute

Execute is the default setting, and kills the player immediately when they cross below the void level.

Lift

Lift will damage players when they reach the void level, and provide them with Levitation based on the distance they fell. This will allow the player to rise back up out of the void to (hopefully) safe ground. The damage the player takes is proportional to the distance fallen. If the player would instead die to the damage, they will be executed instead.

Return

Return will damage players when they reach the void level, and then warp them back to their last safe ground. The damage the player takes is proportional to the distance fallen. If the player would instead die to the damage, they will be executed instead.

Void Home

Void Home settings allow Charon to spawn void death items at a custom position rather than the last safe place the player was at. This can also extend to all deaths (not just void) if set using the Settings menu. Void Home Location can be set to the mapper's current position by clicking on it in the options menu, but the mapper must then forceload the chunk they are currently standing in.

Item Drop Rules and Taxes

Item Drop Rules and Taxes are settings that configure what items can drop from a player death into a bundle and what penalties might apply to them.

Item Drop Rules

Always Drop Shulker Boxes

Causes all Shulker Boxes to drop every time a player dies while holding one.

Never Drop Hotbar / Armor / Offhand / Backpack

Causes items in the selected slots to never drop into a bundle (Backpack is the 27 inventory slots the player has that aren't equipped or on the hotbar).

Drop Rates

Experience Drop Rate

Configures the amount of XP dropped on death. When dropped, the player loses all xp but stores the set percentage in the dropped bundle. Picking up the bundle will restore the exact percent of XP (in points, not levels) placed into the bundle.

Item Drop Rate Presets

Can be set to Default, Gentle, or Harsh, with Gentle dropping less items overall into the bundle, and Harsh dropping more. More precise tuning can be done by directly modifying the gamerule values via scoreboard commands.

Use Difficulty

Toggles on the use of difficulty in item drop rates. Easy will drop less items, and Hard will drop more.

Death Taxes

Item Count Tax

Items that are dropped on death lose a percentage of their total Count size, if applicable. Items will always leave at least 1 count, and unstackable items are unaffected. (20/40/60% via settings)

Item Durability Tax

Items that are dropped on death lose a percentage of their remaining durability, if applicable. Items without durability are unaffected. (20/40/60% via settings)

Item Vanishing Tax

Items that are dropped on death have a percentage chance to be destroyed instead of dropped, not appearing in the bundle. (10/20/30% via settings)

Progressive Taxes

Each death accrued over time increases the taxes by an amount up to a cap. Not dying over time will slowly lower the tax rates back down to 0. This can be toggled to start gaining Vanishing Tax if enough deaths occur.

Retain Items for Taxes

Items that would have normally dropped are not dropped, but their tax penalties will still apply.

Death Settings

Other miscellaneous effects added by Charon.

Death Compass

When players respawn, they are given a custom Recovery Compass that points to their death location. The compass has Curse of Vanishing.

Spawner Defenses

When players die, spawners near their death location can have their times reduced or reset back to 0, repriming the spawners. (This mechanic is designed to make hostile and hastily ran through areas more dangerous and to discourage "death running". It is not recommended to be combined with severe item penalties like Vanishing Taxes.)

Retain Potion Effects

When players die, their potion effects' durations will be cut in half rather than losing all effects. This only applies to Positive effects, not Negative ones.

Item NBT

Always Steal

{AlwaysSteal:1b} will cause Charon to always take this item on death and place it in a death bundle.

Never Steal

{NeverSteal:1b} will cause Charon to never take this item on death and place it in a death bundle.

Specific Settings

Each Charon gamerule can be more precisely tuned via direct scoreboard settings. This is a list of all fake players on the "charon.gmr" score who's scoreboard values can be set. While the settings menu allows you to change all of these, they are set to presets for simplicity. You can modify these yourself to have more control over the pack.

$xp_percent: The amount of experience recovered on death pile. (They will always drop all) When set to -1 or not set, the player retains all experience.

$drop_coeff: The number that controls how likely items are to be dropped. (Minimum of 1, Default of 5). The drop chance is equal to 1/(x-1), where x is drop coefficient. (So 5 is a 25% or 1/4 chance) Lower numbers make items more likely to drop. Higher numbers make items less likely to drop.

$inv_coeff: The number that controls how inventory size increases drop_coeff. (Minimum of 1, Default of 9). This number is equivalent to the number of filled slots to raise the drop_coeff by 1 (making drops less likely). (Every "x" items, where x is this number will increase drop_coeff by 1.) TLDR - The higher this number, the more items drop in fuller inventories. Setting this to a number of slots greater than the size of the player inventory (e.g 50) will make this setting irrelevant.

$scale_coeff: The number that controls how the max coeff changes per item taken. (Minimum and Default of 0) When an item is taken successfully, the max coefficient will be increased by this value. This being set to a value above 0 will make an item less likely to be taken after the first. (And even less likely for each additional item taken) Resets at starting value each death.

$tax_count: takes away a portion of count of item (if the item is stolen) The number specified is the percentage taken. Any value unspecified, 0, or less disables this.

$tax_durability: takes away a portion of remaining durability (if the item is stolen) The number specified is the percentage taken. Any value unspecified, 0, or less disables this.

$tax_vanish: Percentage chance that a stolen item slot is deleted instead of stolen. Any value equal to or less than 0 (or unspecified) disables this.

$death_disabled: Set to 1 or higher, this will turn off player death mechanics, enabling traditional and normal Keep Inventory.