Everything you carried, and nothing you already banked
The short version is harsh and worth internalising early: the gear you equipped, the gems socketed into it and every loose item in your bags are all on the table until you complete an extraction. Nothing is banked mid-run. That is the design, it is the loudest complaint in the community, and no amount of careful play removes it.
What a death cannot touch is anything already sitting in camp — your warehouse, your camp building levels, your character level and talents, and whatever you sold or stored before you queued. It also cannot touch the contents of your secure pouch, which is the one exception the game builds in on purpose and the subject of a section below.
The useful reframing is that a raid is not a place you keep things. It is a place you convert risk into things you keep, and the conversion only happens at the exit. Once that clicks, most of the decisions in a run become arithmetic rather than nerve, and the article on how the exit sequence actually works becomes the more important half of your preparation.
Soul Form is not the same as being killed by a player
There is a distinction the tutorial never makes clearly. Dying to monsters or to a fall — rather than to a hostile player — puts you into Soul Form and respawns you at the nearest revival point. That is a survivable state, not the end of the run, and it changes how you should think about risky terrain and about pulling one Berserker too many.
Being killed by another hunter is the harder outcome, and it is where the community complaints about full gear loss come from. The player who killed you is standing over everything you were carrying, and they have every reason to take it. The map's context filters include resurrection markers, so knowing roughly where revival points cluster in the area you run is worth a minute on the interactive map before you queue.
Both outcomes argue for the same habit: separate the fights you must win from the fights you merely can win. A monster fight you lose costs you position and time. A hunter fight you lose costs you the run. Those are not the same wager and should not be taken with the same enthusiasm.
Pip's Pouch is the part that comes home
Pip's Pouch is the secure slot, and its contents survive death. That is the whole mechanic, and it is worth building small habits around: the moment something genuinely valuable and small enters your bags, it belongs in the pouch, not in general storage where it rides on your survival.
Pouch upgrades come as vouchers, and the Fine and Rare versions are time-limited — the reward text names durations directly, for example a three-day Rare Pouch Voucher. That means saving them for a special occasion is the wrong instinct. An expired voucher protected nothing. Activate them on nights you actually intend to play, ideally nights you intend to run harder content, and check what you are holding on the item database if you are unsure which voucher is which.
What has never been published is the pouch's value ceiling or exactly which item classes it will accept without complaint. Players describe limits, but no official statement covers it, so treat the pouch as protection for a small number of high-value objects and do not assume it will quietly absorb a full run's haul.
Downed teammates, revival and what is not confirmed
In a squad, being downed is a recoverable state before it is a fatal one, and the class you bring changes how recoverable it is. The Polearm and Shield path that shipped with the Withered Knight at launch includes a ranged rescue for downed teammates, which is a genuine structural advantage when the alternative is walking into the same attack that dropped your friend.
One question comes up constantly and does not have a confirmed answer: whether a surviving squadmate completing an extraction returns gear to teammates who died. No official statement covers it. Plan as though it does not, because a plan that assumes recovery and turns out to be wrong costs you a full kit, while a plan that assumes loss and turns out to be wrong costs you nothing.
The practical squad rule that follows is to spread value rather than concentrate it. Three players each carrying a third of the haul lose a third when one of them goes down. One player acting as the mule loses everything the moment they are focused, and being the obvious mule makes you the target.
Gyldenblod, the Gyldjar and the cap you can raise
Currency is a separate case. The Gyldenblod you gather during a run is limited by your Gyldjar capacity, which is what the Gyldenblod Pool raises across its nine levels — the same building also increases your character limit and, at its last level, cuts the Gyldenblod cost of Spirit Infusion.
The consequence is that Gyldenblod above your current cap is money you cannot carry out no matter how well the run goes. If you routinely finish raids with a full jar and are still leaving pools behind, the Pool has moved to the front of your upgrade queue, ahead of things that feel more exciting. The camp overview shows where each building's prerequisites sit.
That cap also quietly sets the value of a run. Once the jar is full, the remaining value in a raid is items and objectives, not currency, which is often the signal that the profitable part of the run is over and you are now just accumulating risk.
Combat Bags are the floor under a losing streak
Combat Bags are free preset kits in four tiers — Novice, Advanced, Pro and Elite — plus a custom variant, and one is consumed when you enter a map. Free sources include the Scavenger Squad in camp and the Echo of Fate shop, which means a bad night cannot actually strand you without equipment.
This matters more psychologically than mechanically. The most expensive mistake new players make is not losing a set; it is refusing to queue afterwards, or worse, queuing in gear they cannot replace because they feel owed a good run. A Combat Bag is a run you were given, so spending it on an aggressive line you would not risk with your own gear is a reasonable way to learn a map.
The Scavenger Squad also returns materials from timed expeditions at no run risk at all, which makes it the one part of your economy that a death cannot interrupt. Keeping it working while you are asleep is free progress, and the building levels that unlock its harder zones are listed alongside the rest of the camp.
The losses that are not fights
A disconnect or a fatal error during a run counts as a failed extraction and takes the kit with it. There is no grace path, which is why a client that has already crashed once tonight is a reason to switch to a Combat Bag rather than your best set. It is also the strongest practical argument for finishing runs promptly instead of squeezing one more building.
Ranked play adds its own quiet cost. In Path of Glory, points are deducted only when you fail to extract, so a death is both a material and a rating loss while a cautious early exit is neither. Opting in per match is a per-player choice, so on a night when your connection is unstable, simply not opting in removes half the penalty.
One thing we will not give you is a repair budget. Equipment carries durability and repair values in the interface, but no official explanation of the units or the cost curve has been published, and every number floating around the community is someone's estimate. Assume repairs cost something, keep a reserve, and do not plan around a figure nobody can source.
Build a run you can afford to lose
The risk budget is the whole skill. Before you queue, ask what this kit is worth and whether you can replace it tonight from materials and currency you already hold. If the answer is no, you are not playing an extraction game any more; you are protecting an investment, which produces timid runs and worse results.
The cheap kit that works is well established in the community: low-rarity gear with gems socketed into it beats high-rarity gear with empty sockets, because affixes carry more of your power than the rarity label does. Since there is no salvage system and no gear upgrade system, an expensive piece is a sunk cost the moment you buy it, and the only way it returns value is by going into raids and coming back.
Keep a replacement set assembled and stored, not theoretical. The players who progress fastest are the ones who can lose a set and re-enter within a minute, because they treated the second set as part of the first purchase rather than a luxury.
Where to go next
Build two kits in the loadout lab: one you would take on a serious run, and one you would happily lose. Price both against what you can actually replace tonight, and make the cheap one your default until the map stops surprising you.
Then read the beginner errors that quietly cost loot for the decision patterns that turn a good run into a death, and how to build a loadout you can lose for the fuller version of the risk budget sketched above.