I also very much hate the skill drop on death, so much so that I started an entirely new game with an app that disabled the penalty. On my second run through my skills were about the same after three hours of play that they were on my first play through after 300 hours of play. (ok, so I die a lot )

You may ask why did I put up with this in the first place? ... Well I had taken them at their word, in that the screen prompt that said: "no skills lost" actually meant "NO SKILLS LOST" Little did I understand that it actually meant: "no skills lost for the next 15 min of play if I should die again"

I would be ok with a 1-2% drop in skill upon death, but that is not an option, It is either 5% drop, which means I don't advance in the game in skill, or 0% drop. So I pick 0% drop