You are not the body
You are a living spark. The vessel is what you are wearing. Vessels are wooden, and they crack, collapse and catch fire. When one breaks the spark escapes — so death in this game is usually a change of housing rather than an ending.
The developers' pinned Launch FAQ puts it this way:
"A broken vessel does not necessarily end your run. Your Living Spark escapes and remains with the crew while you search for another vessel to possess. Different vessels provide different ways to get back into the action."
Usually. There is one exception, and it ends runs.
The rule everyone learns the hard way
If your starting vessel breaks, the run is over immediately — even if you are alive inside a different body at the time.
A player found this out by dying, successfully possessing a new body, and still getting a "no survivors" screen. The explanation from that thread:
"The body you start with is the one you need to keep alive. If that specific body breaks then it's an instant game over. However, you can use the small bodies and break them all you want without triggering a game over."
So your starting vessel is not a body, it is a life bar with legs. Protecting it is the whole game.
Small bodies are meant to be spent
The same rule read the other way is a strategy: the small bodies are disposable. Break as many as you like.
Players stockpile them deliberately — one keeps mini robots in the elevator permanently as spare bodies, "just a way home", with about ten in the basement. Details on how to revive.
⚠️ Being out of a body is its own timer. As a spark you can scout safely, but if your light runs out before you get back into a vessel, that is also a game over.
Vessels and the world
Two facts about vessels that come from official sources rather than player reports:
- Sunlight burns them. Step outside the Outpost without an umbrella and you catch fire within a few steps
- Balconies used to burn you too. Patch 1.04 lists "Fixed so Vessels can now be on all balconies without taking any fire damage" — which retired a whole category of older guide advice about picking one specific safe balcony
Corruption also acts on vessels: the deeper you go, the more the bodies down there distort, and the Corrupted are vessels this has already happened to.
A new vessel is coming
The developers' roadmap promises, within a month of 12 August, "a batch of new constructs, and a new vessel" — stated as a monthly goal, not a date.
Together with the FAQ line above — "different vessels provide different ways to get back into the action" — that is the whole of what the developers have said about vessels coming in meaningful varieties.
What is not confirmed
- How many vessel types exist. The developers say "different vessels provide different ways to get back into the action" without naming any of them
- Whether vessels have separate stats — every stat we can source comes from Outpost room upgrades instead
- The exact spark timer outside a body. A demo-era thread says about five seconds
- Whether the starting vessel can be repaired or swapped deliberately
- What the new vessel does — announced, not described