Prior to the release of a new patch, I can usually be found on Singularity, theEVE Online test server, tinkering around with the upcoming changes. It gives me a chance to get a good look at what’s coming, understand how it might affect the game, and occasionally catch any undocumented changes before the patch notes are released.

We all know about the changes to Factional Warfare and Rigs that are due in the 1.5 “mini-expansion”, but there’s always going to be bug fixes and other changes slipping in under the radar, such as the brand new pod model that’s recently made an appearance on the test server.

This isn’t the first time the pod has been remodeled, though, with the current capsule appearing roughly two years ago, as part of the Trinity expansion.

The organic shape and the green coloring of this newer model clearly mark it out as Jovian, which seems appropriate given that the pod technology the empires possess was given to them by EVE isk ’s fifth major faction more than a century ago. (Personally, I think I prefer the Trinity version; I like that it doesn’t look like the product of any particular race.)

A new ship model wouldn’t normally be that big a deal amongst the dozens of available spacecraft, but the pod is different. This is what every player sees when they leave their ship, whether it’s by choice, or due to their vessel exploding, and until we can get our hands on the Walking In Stations feature and start strutting our stuff on the station walkways, this is the closest we’ll get to seeing our avatars in the game environment. That small capsule contains your current clone; lose that and you’ll wake up back in a cloning station, minus any implants you had fitted. And you will lose it.

Death comes to us all in New Eden; no matter how safe you think you are; if you choose to leave the protection of a station you risk destruction. Losing your ship leaves only a wreck behind, which contains whatever modules survived the explosion, and unless you have some way of looting the wreck before other players can get to it you’ll lose almost everything you brought to the fight. This can be a shock to the system, and a difficult thing for new players to adjust to, especially those coming from MMOs with minor death penalties. How it handles death is what makes EVE isk stand out from the majority of its peers.