Insured
Contents
Overview
Item Insurance is a game mechanic introduced with the Age of Shadows expansion, when the game became more item-based, and losing an item was tantamount to losing a skill under the old system. If an item is insured, should a player die for any reason, upon resurrection the item will be in the character's backpack. Uninsured items always will remain on the player's corpse and may be potentially looted by monsters or other players.
Some items are not insurable, such as those that are Cursed, but also usually items that stack(reagents, fish steaks, etc.). Additionally, items that are Blessed are always returned to a player after they die and resurrect and thus do not need to be insured.
Insuring Items
To insure an item for the first time, a character must use the Insure Item option which is located by clicking on themselves and using the context menu. The targetting cursor will then appear asking what item to insure. When chosen, the insurance gold will instantly be deducted from the character's bankbox. Items which are actively being protected with this mechanism are given the Insured item property.
Each time the character is resurrected, the item must be re-insured unless the "auto-renew" option has been selected(recommended!), which is disabled by default. The auto-renew option can also be accessed via the character's context menu. If the auto-renew option is active, then the cost of re-insuring the item(s) is automatically deducted from the character's bankbox upon death to re-insure the item once more(which can quickly add up to a lot of gold if a player is dying repeatedly in a short span of time).
Generally, most all players always insure items they do not wish to lose. Newer players are sometimes given assistance by other players in the form of gold to help them pay for inevitable insurance costs rather than losing items and having to be re-equipped from scratch.
Insurance Costs
Beginning with Publish 64 in February 2010, insuring an item costs between 10 to 800 gold pieces, depending on the item:
- Community Collection items - 600 gold each.
- Faction armor/weapons - 800 gold each.
- Insurable armor set pieces - 600 gold each.
- All other magical items - 10-800 gold each, depending on their worth in the Imbuing system.
- All other non-magical items - 10-800 gold each, depending on their worth to NPC vendors.
Earning Gold From Insurance
Players receive 100% of the insurance gold for a player they kill that had insured their items. However, if the kill is part of the Factions system, then they only receive 50% of the gold.
Given that insuring a complete suit of armor, a few weapons and other items can easily cost several thousand gold pieces, killing another player can yield quite a bit of money, especially for those skilled in PvP combat. In this manner, it becomes possible for a character to make a living from PvP alone.
History
Prior to Publish 64, all insurable items, regardless of their value, cost a uniform 600 gold each to insure. Additionally, all PvP kills yielded only 50% of the insurance gold to their assailants.
