A new feature was added to make dying less punishing and I would dare say more interesting:

New Feature

• Whenever you die and loose all your non stashed items you gain Skull Tokens.
  
• The skull token gain is equivalent to the worth of the loot you lost.
  
• Skull tokens are an auto-use resource. They are consumed when enemy drops an item on death and upgrade this item's rarity. So if a Rare weapon was dropped it will be upgraded to Epic.
  
• The tokens amount consumed is related to the rarity upgraded, higher tier upgrades cost more.