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Cloning is the technology that makes New Eden's capsuleers (i.e. EVE players) immortal. It consists of two main technologies:

• Medical clones (also known as skill clones), which are only activated when your current body is killed.
• Jump clones, which are additional bodies (often scattered all over the galaxy) into which you can jump your "consciousness" at will.

Medical Clones

Every capsuleer receives a free medical clone as soon as they are "born" (i.e. when the character is first created). If your character is killed (i.e. when their pod is destroyed; this is also known as "being podded"), his/her conciousness is immediately transferred into this medical clone, causing you to "wake up" again at the station where your medical clone is installed. Any implants plugged into your brain at the moment you were killed are destroyed alongside your body.

Locations

Selecting a new location for a medical clone.

When you first create a new character, their medical clone will be located at the academy space station in the starter system where they begin their life. You can move your medical clone elsewhere by docking in a station with medical facilities and paying a nominal fee to move your medical clone to that station. It makes sense to move your medical clone to a station near where you will likely be flying, in order to avoid the long journey back should you get podded. Also, you may want to consider leaving a few fitted ships at the station with your medical clone, so that you can immediately board a ship and get back into the action.

In addition to installing a medical clone in the station in which you currently are, you can also install a clone remotely at any station where your corporation has an office. This is the basis behind the "pod express" travel method: set your medical clone at the station where you want to go, undock and self-destruct your pod. You will "wake up" at your destination station, but you will lose any implants you had installed, and you will need to upgrade your medical clone again (see below).

Skill points

File:Medical window.jpg

The medical services window, showing how many skill points your current clone can hold.

The primary purpose of medical clones is to safeguard the skill points your character has accumulated. When your character is first created, and every time you "use up" a medical clone (i.e. by dying), you receive a basic medical clone (for free) which can store up to 900,000 skill points.

Once your character has accumulated more than 900,000 skill points (which will happen after roughly three weeks of skill training), should you die, you will lose 5% of the excess skill points (SP) you have accumulated.

If a character with 1 million SP dies, but has a medical clone which can only hold 900,000 SP, they will be resurrected with 1,000,000 - 5% * (1,000,000 - 900,000) = 1,000,000 - 50,000 = 995,000 SP, which represents about a day's worth of training time. If a character with 5 million SP (and only a basic 900,000 SP clone) dies, they will be resurrected with 4,795,000 SP, losing 205,000 SP (or about 5 days' worth of training)!

This can be avoided by upgrading your medical clone to make it hold more skill points. You can do this through the medical facility window in any station (not just the station where your medical clone is currently located), but you have to pay a fee (higher-capacity clones cost more money). The basic clone is called an "Alpha-grade" clone and can hold 900,000 SP; higher-grade clones can hold more skill points, all the way up to the Omega-grade clone, which can hold 450 million SP (about 25 years' worth of skill training!). You can check the capacity of your current medical clone (and compare it to your skill points) in the medical facility or character screen.

Once you "use up" a clone, you are given a new Alpha-grade clone for free, but you have to upgrade it again if your character has more SP than the Alpha clone will hold. For characters with few skill points this cost is fairly trivial, but when very experienced characters die, the cost to set up a new clone starts to become noticeable. As a rough guide, a three-month old character can expect to pay about 200,000 ISK for a new clone, a one-year-old character about 1 million ISK, and a 3-year-old character about 9 million ISK.

After you die (i.e. were podded), make sure to upgrade your medical clone to avoid losing skill points the next time you die!

The table below lists all the available medical clone grades, along with how many skill points (SP) they hold, their cost, and approximately how old your character is likely to be when you need that clone grade (i.e. when you are likely to have more SP than the previous clone grade can hold).

Grade	SP capacity	Cost	Age
Alpha	900k	FREE
Beta	1.38M	28k ISK	3 weeks
Gamma	2.05M	46k ISK	4 weeks
Delta	2.8M	66k ISK	6 weeks
Epsilon	3.75M	91k ISK	8 weeks
Zeta	4.8M	125k ISK	2 months
Eta	6.1M	175k ISK	3 months
Theta	7.75M	235k ISK	4 months
Iota	9.8M	330k ISK	5 months
Kappa	12.4M	455k ISK	7 months
Lambda	15.7M	650k ISK	9 months
Mu	20M	940k ISK	11 months
Nu	25.6M	1.4M ISK	14 months
Xi	32.8M	2.1M ISK	18 months
Omicron	42.2M	3.3M ISK	2 years
Pi	54.6M	5.5M ISK	2.5 years
Rho	71M	9.1M ISK	3 years
Sigma	92.5M	14M ISK	4 years
Tau	120M	21M ISK	5 years
Upsilon	156M	32M ISK	7 years
Phi	203M	46M ISK	9 years
Chi	264M	63M ISK	12 years
Psi	343.5M	84M ISK	15 years
Omega	450M	105M ISK	20 years

Jump Clones

Main article: Jump Clones

Jump Clones allow a pilot to store a non-emergency clone in a different part of the galaxy and instantly jump his mind from his current body into a clone stored on the far side of the universe. Unlike medical clones, these can be activated at will (although there is a cooldown between uses) and have no limits to their skill point capacity. Also, unlike medical clones, they are not provided for free, and require specialised training and high standings with NPC corporations to use.

Jump clones very useful to safeguard valuable implants (to prevent them being destroyed when your pod is destroyed), or to quickly travel around New Eden.