The answer depends on where you are
In the Outpost: you respawn at the mannequin, which a player locates in the cosmetic room: "You can go into spark form and respawn by interacting with the mannequin in the cosmetic room." Upstairs, death is not a problem.
In the deep layers: there is no revive. From the Steam thread "How to revive ?", the clearest answer anyone has given:
"You cant. If your vessel gets destroyed while in the basement you need to find a new one or you (spark) will die. Upstairs in the house you can just respawn at the mannequin."
That is the whole mechanic. Underground, "reviving" means possessing another body before your spark burns out — there is no button and no teammate revive.
The developers describe the same thing in their pinned Launch FAQ:
"A broken vessel does not necessarily end your run. Your Living Spark escapes and remains with the crew while you search for another vessel to possess. Different vessels provide different ways to get back into the action."
⚠️ Note the phrase "remains with the crew" — in co-op, being a spark does not remove you from the session. And "different vessels provide different ways to get back", which implies the body you find changes your options. No source spells out how.
The spark timer is the real clock
When your vessel breaks you continue as a spark, and the spark has a limited life. A player in an earlier thread put the window at about five seconds to find another body.
⚠️ That figure is from June 2026 — the demo period. We have not found a 1.0-era measurement, and the number may well have changed. Treat it as "very little time", not as a verified value.
Two things extend or spend that window:
- Lightbulbs extend the timer. From the same thread: "u can use lightbulbs to xtend the time just by the way." One player, one report, demo era — but it costs nothing to grab bulbs
- Running out of light ends the run, even if your original vessel is intact. The beginner guide covers the full rule set, including the one that catches everyone: if your starting vessel breaks, it is game over immediately, whatever body you are currently in
Carry spare bodies down with you
The best practical answer in that thread is preparation rather than recovery:
"when I see them little robots on the tables, I put them in the elevator as a back up. I take a bunch of them back home with me and just keep one in the elevator at all times. just a way home. my basement has like 10 of them now."
The small bodies are disposable — breaking them does not end your run — so stockpiling them in the elevator turns a dead vessel into an inconvenience instead of a wipe. Anything left in the elevator comes home with you, so the stock persists between runs.
If you could not respawn at all, that was a bug
Patch 1.04 (10 August 2026) lists:
"Fixed bug where the player could not respawn because the area was blocked."
If you died in the Outpost before that patch and got stuck, that is what happened. Full list on the updates page.
Solo makes this harsher
One player's complaint about the mechanic, worth knowing before you go down alone:
"at least solo even if you find a new body it still fails you."
Their suggested workaround — extracting in a spare doll body if the elevator fee is already paid — is explicitly untested: "I haven't tested that." We are repeating it as an idea, not a method. Banking the elevator fee early is good practice regardless, and is covered on the beginner guide.
What is not confirmed
- The exact spark timer in the current build. "About five seconds" is a demo-era figure
- How much time a lightbulb adds, or whether multiple bulbs stack
- What "different vessels provide different ways to get back into the action" means in practice. The developers say it; nobody has described the differences
- Whether teammates can actively help you — the FAQ says your spark stays with the crew, but describes no revive interaction between players
- Whether extracting while possessing a small body works, which the player above wanted to test and did not
- Whether the mannequin can be moved or upgraded — its location is reported as the cosmetic room, by one player