Dead is a Vintage Story mod by SiiMeR. Dead leaves a lootable corpse at your death site, preserving your exact skin, worn equipment, and carried items until decay or butchering.
Why this mod is worth installing
This mod suits survival servers, roleplay groups, and players who want death to create a physical recovery task instead of scattering inventory immediately.
What Dead adds
After respawning, your body appears at the death location in a random pose. It uses your character model, skin, facial features, clothing, and armor, while retaining the hotbar, offhand, bags, bag contents, and other carried equipment. The corpse description identifies the character's race and displays the remaining time before decay.
Corpses can be searched through a tabbed loot interface. Sprinting while using the right mouse button opens the inventory after a short hold, while sneaking and holding the same button transfers everything at once. Other players may loot bodies, and a temporary owner lock can restrict access; corpses can also be dressed again.
Empty-handed players can hold the right mouse button to drag a body, with configurable movement slowdown. Bodies may be attached to an elk's rear slot and removed with Shift plus right-click, although targeting a stowed corpse can be awkward. Injury records preserve recent damage types, amounts, and weapons, with body-part details available alongside Combat Overhaul.
Decay is influenced by time and surroundings: cold areas and cellars preserve remains longer, while heat accelerates their end. Once a corpse expires, its contents fall out and bones remain. Ropes allow bodies to be hung from butchering hooks for blood-dripping, race-specific hides, and later meat, offal, sinew, bones, and fat.
Race and decay timer
The corpse description identifies the character's race and shows how much time remains before it perishes.
Looting a corpse
Hold Sprint and right-click to kneel and open the tabbed loot interface, or hold Sneak and right-click to take everything. Access can be available to everyone or temporarily restricted for the corpse's owner.
Dragging a body
With empty hands, hold right-click on a corpse to pull it behind you. The movement penalty can be configured.
Stowing a corpse
Drag a body to an elk and aim at its rear slot while holding right-click to store it. Shift and right-click removes it, while interaction with the stowed body remains possible.
Recorded injuries
The body records recent injuries, including damage type, amount, and weapon; Combat Overhaul can add the affected body part.
Corpse decay
Bodies disappear after a configurable period, with cold locations and cellars extending the timer and heat shortening it. Remaining items drop and skeletal remains are left behind.
Butchering integration
A rope attaches the corpse to a butchering hook, where it can drip blood, provide race-colored scraped hides, and later yield butchering materials.
Persistent corpse storage
Corpses are backed up in a server-side database, allowing them to be restored after a loading failure. Expired records are cleaned up without loading chunks, while chunk removal occurs when those areas load again.
Where to download Dead
The official Vintage Story Mod DB page is the right place to get the current release through the in-game mod manager.