Hey! just making a note: If you die and fall to level 3 or less, even after surviving the hard core prelude, you cannot respawn without dm assistance. Maybe this could be tweaked to only be in the certain prelude area's?
This is a known issue, and I suppose should be fixed some day, but it would be a bit annoying to do so... in the meantime, this is easily solved by players who take the hardcore option simply not dying repeatedly.