Threat when exploring is really important, and coins need to feel really valuable. So I share all the goals discussed here.
Another thing that’s really important is that player shops and trading are useful and widely used. Not allowing players easy access to their currency could quite literally cripple the economy, it’s quite at odds with some other goals.
Death penalty is important though. Lord of the Rings would have been a pretty boring adventure if there was no threat on the way to Mordor 
. All items in the game will have a very clear coin value, as will game effects (like durability – ultimately that can translate to coin). So there’s a way to impose a cash penalty from a player without explicitly needing to deduct it from their purse. Dropping some items or taking durability damage ultimately effects you in a meaningful way.
Finding a balance for this kind of thing is really tricky. Too high and people won’t leave their home, to low and there’s no threat and nothing feels meaningful. I’m not sure we’ll know exactly how to balance this or what the penalty will be until we’ve got some more systems in place, but I expect we’d scale the penalty based of some heuristics to do with how long you’ve been away from home and how far you are. Example: die in your base, low penalty. Die on the way to the capital, medium penalty. Die on another world, hours since being at home, high penalty. Tension and threat ramps the further you dare to travel.
That’s our current thinking </friday evening brain dump>