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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
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
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.
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.
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.
