Killmarks

This page covers the marks which appear on ships when they deal the final blow in combat. For the automated records of kills, see Killmail.

When a player makes the finishing blow on an opponent, using any weapon including drones and bombs, the game adds a killmark visible on the outside of the hull. Over time, a repeatedly victorious ship will accumulate multiple killmarks.

Appearance

The design of a killmark is determined by the faction that manufactured the hull that it adorns: an Amarr ship accumulates Amarr killmarks, a Caldari ship, Caldari killmarks, and so on.

The marks come in three sizes which represent, in increasing order of mark size, 1, 10, and 100 kills. The tally goes up to 999.

The location of the killmarks is specific to the base hull of the ship. So, for example, the  Merlin,  Harpy,  Hawk, and  Worm all display killmarks in the same location, because they are all fundamentally based on the Merlin hull. But the  Condor and the  Kestrel will each have their own locations, as they have different base hulls to that of the Merlin; the Kestrel will share a killmark spot with the  Manticore, the Condor with the  Crow and the  Raptor.

Exceptions

Although tackle modules and ewar (justly) include their users in killmail reports, they do not generate killmarks; the ship must deal the final blow. There is also a short list of entities for which EVE never awards killmarks:

• capsules
• shuttles
• corvettes
• unmanned vessels
• structures
• cans (cargo containers)
• wrecks
• drones
• NPCs

Additionally, ships do not receive killmarks when they destroy a pilot's corpmates. Though in the past ships flown by trial accounts would not generate killmarks, alpha clones do.

Retention

Killmarks are lost if the ship is repackaged. This means that ships cannot be sold on the general market while retaining their killmarks. Players wishing to buy or sell well-killmarked ships must use other methods, such as contracts and the trade window.

The usual caveats about contracts from unknown players apply to contracts for killmarked ships: no rule in the game prevents someone from falsely claiming that a pristine ship has many killmarks.

Further reading

Killmarks were announced and explained in a devblog in 2015.

You can find a catalogue of pictures of killmarks here.