Death penalty

Death penalty (commonly abbreviated as "DP") reduces your maximum health and energy values by the current % amount of the penalty. Every time you earn a penalty, it is added to your current total; this total cannot exceed -60%. A Death Penalty is the opposite of a Morale Boost, although both are added together for a cumulative effect.

Note: The terms "morale boost" and "death penalty" are also used to describe whether this cumulative effect is positive or negative.

Removal
There are currently four known methods to remove DP:
 * 1) Killing enemies (earning Morale Boost). 2% is removed for each opponent slain by your team during PvP. In PvE the amount removed depends on how much experience you earn. This means that rewards of high-experience quests (like in the Fissure of Woe and Sorrow's Furnace) can be used to completely erase DP. In PvP you may earn Morale Boosts for achieving goals; these reduce DP by 10%. One death will erase all your morale boost, if you have the maximum boost of 10%, when you die, the 15% is subtracted from this and you have -5% penalty.
 * 2) Making an "Offering to Courage" to a god's avatar for 100g will reduce DP by 2%.
 * 3) Candy Canes, which were obtainable during Wintersday events, remove a character's death penalty completely.
 * 4) Going back to town, which will remove a character's DP completely.