Until October 4 nobody in the game could die. Late that day wounds began to kill: bites, a falling tree or heavy blows that add up to a lethal wound end a life, while hunger, thirst and cold still only weaken. The body stays where it fell with everything it carried, anyone can loot it, and its owner wakes at the last place they slept or at the camp.
Twenty minutes later a deadly blow began to put a player down first. Down, you crawl, you can still talk, and you bleed out: at first after about a minute with a friend near and about 12 seconds alone. Another hit finished you. Within the hour a friend could help you up by staying beside you while a ring filled for 4 seconds.
The rest of the evening went into closing the ways out. Going down healed you, so a player could come back up whole; now a friend helps you up still badly hurt, and the next real hit puts you down again. The two bleed-out times became one, about 40 seconds, near friends or not. A graze no longer finishes a downed player, a real blow does, and you cannot swing while down. Leaving the game while down does not save you either: you come back still down, or dead if the time ran out.
Then the gaps in the other direction. A player who died with nothing and had no body to go back to woke with the starting kit, so nobody was stuck dying naked. Within the hour that became at most once every 30 minutes, because a friend could loot you again and again to farm new kits. Someone you do not want helping you can be pushed off with E and cannot try again for 20 seconds. Early on October 5 the last gap closed: a server restart while you are down leaves you down, with the time you had left.
Down is also when the wolves come. The same evening a downed player near a pack began to be taken by a leg and dragged into the dark, at about 1.4 meters a second, slow enough to catch. The rules are written for friends playing together, which is why so many of them are about what another player can do to you.
