Originally posted by vandalism:

dying in the swamp and losing your gear and karve really sucks. Only way to combat this is dev console cheat or mods. Game is ball bustingly unforgiving artificially difficult. Just had to post this somewhere.

Alone, yes, I use the Softcore_Death mod by dch. At least this way, death is still "painful," but the mucking around on your own, trying to get gear back, is not. I have the radius set to 700, so it's only when I'm some distance from my bed spawn that the mod kicks in, which is handy when you die at sea.