Wormhole Essentials:
- wormholes are transient paired objects which allow ships to jump between the systems in which they appear, like temporary stargates
- all wormholes must be scanned down with probes (except for Unidentified aka Drifter wormholes, on which more further below)
- all wormholes have the following four characteristics, browsable here (see whtype.info for a nice visualization):
- they have a Type of one letter & three numbers, visible in space & on the overview, e.g. H296, N944, V898
- one wormhole of a pair is always K162; the "true" non-K162 Type always occurs on the originating side
- they disappear or "collapse" after EITHER their total throughput mass is met/exceeded OR their lifetime expires
- they pass only certain hulls based PRECISELY on the Type's individual throughput mass & IMPRECISELY on its Size (Small, Medium, Large, or Very Large)
- they always lead to 1 of 4 categories of space:
- Known Space i.e. KS - 5,201 stargate-connected systems of 3 categories: High-Security (HS), Low-Security (LS), and Null-Security (NS)
- J-Space i.e. JS - 2,603 systems beginning with "J" and only accessible via wormholes, further grouped into 3 categories:
- Main JS - 2,573 systems in six groups from Class 1 through C6
- Tripnulls - 25 systems accessible only to capsules, corvettes, shuttles, frigates, destroyers or specially-fit HICs. aka small ship shattered or C13 systems
- Drifter space - 5 systems reached by dangerous "Unidentified" wormholes (detailed at link)
- Pochven - a region of 27 systems with a blend of JS & NS characteristics, connected in a loop via a separate gate network
- Thera - a big system with many wormhole connections and stations with jump clone & home station functionality (its holes are publicly mapped by EVE-Scout)
- all wormholes reveal the above characteristics via their visual appearance and/or Show Info windows, so you can know these things before jumping, even at a K162
- KS region destinations can be identified before jumping, too, if you can recognize skyboxes (more on this in the Visual appearance ID guide further below)
- you can jump a particular wormhole only twice every five minutes. you're polarized with respect to a hole you can't jump through due to recent transits
- unlike stargates & Ansiblexes, you can jump wormholes with a weapons (combat) timer
- wormhole jump range is 5 km, double that of stargates & Ansiblexes
- ~40% of JS systems have 1 of 6 system-wide effects which alter the performance of ships & modules (you can filter for these with anoik.is/systems)
- if you're in JS and can't recognize the skybox, determine the class by clicking the system name in the top left
visual appearance ID guide (separate page) - note: the only thing you can't tell from visuals is if a hole to Empire is HS or LS (gotta use Show Info or Type knowledge or jump in)
Show Info (text-based) ID guide (click to show/hide)
- right-click a wormhole and select Show Info to see this information. the top sentences are irrelevant
- the sentence beginning “This wormhole seems to lead" narrows down the destination:
- plain "unknown" space is class 1-3 JS, “dangerous unknown" is C4 or C5, and “deadly unknown" is C6
- High/Low/Null Security is KS, "Triglavian" is Pochven and Thera is Thera
- if you're not currently inside a C1, you can differentiate C1 from C2/3; if the last sentence says "up to medium ships" will fit, it's a C1
- to suss C2 from C3 and C4 from C5 you must either learn to recognize the holes visually or jump in and check the region's first letter
- the subsequent sentence indicates the remaining life:
- "This wormhole has not yet begun its natural cycle..." = max life, commonly called fresh
- "This wormhole is beginning to decay..." = between four hours and max life, also called fresh
- "This wormhole is reaching the end of its natural lifetime." = 0-4 hours, called EOL for end-of-life
- the next sentence indicates the remaining mass:
- "This wormhole has not yet had its stability reduced..." = over 50% of mass remaining, called stable or healthy
- "This wormhole has had its stability reduced..." = 10-50% of mass remaining, called destab, shrunk or first shrink
- "This wormhole has had its stability critically disrupted..." = under 10% of mass remaining, called crit
- the last sentence indicates what Size the hole is:
- "Very large" aka VL: EITHER all ships ≤ freighters & jump freighters OR all ships ≤ Rorquals/carriers/dreads/FAXes (the latter group includes the former)
- "Larger" aka L: all other battleships, Orcas, and smaller (one type of L—Pochven's C729 reverse-static—can also fit Bowheads)
- "Up to medium" aka M: battlecruisers, industrials, Nestors with no onlined plates and smaller (no other battleships)
- "Only the smallest" aka S: destroyers, Porpoises, ZPME HICs and smaller (these are often called “frigholes", somewhat confusingly)
Exploring/Scanning Best Practices (make these habitual):
- ABC: Always Be Cloaked. if you don't need to be uncloaked, be cloaked
- bookmark both sides of wormholes
- understand and use DScan to reduce the likelihood of being caught unaware
- DScan is useful in all space, but especially in JS/Pochven/Thera where local chat only lists pilots if they send a message
- recall your probes ASAP when done scanning (or move them far away from accessible parts of the solar system and Analyze to hide them)
- probes show up on DScan; they betray your presence
Supplemental Facts:
- C1, C2 and C3 are often referred to as lowclass whereas C5 and C6 are highclass. C4 is one of those two or neither, depending on who you ask
- small holes have essentially infinite total mass; they only collapse when their life timers end
- the mechanics of wormhole spawning are fairly-well understood
- most holes respawn 60 seconds after collapsing. the few that don't are: the static VLs in Tabbetzur and Turnur (20 minutes) and Drifters/Unis (~30 minutes)
- wormholes can be either static, wandering, or reverse static
- statics respawn in the same system
- wanderers respawn in a different system
- note: certain wormhole Types can include both static and wandering wormholes, but specific individual wormholes out in space are never both
- e.g. a C5 system might have a static H296 and a wandering H296 simultaneously; those two wormholes are are distinct, unique entities
- the static H296 will respawn in the same system after collapsing whereas the wandering H296 will respawn in a randomly-selected C5
- reverse statics are covered here (they are all bound to either Pochven, Thera, or Turnur)
this is semantic fluff of little consequence: click to show/hide
- instead of JS or J-Space, some people say WS or w-space, for wormhole space. some also say they "live in a wormhole" or suchlike
- to me, this unnecessarily muddles two distinct concepts: star systems and wormholes
- every "place" in EVE (apart from Abyssal Deadspace) is a system, and no system is also a wormhole (a wormhole is a transient gatelike object)
- as I said, this distinction is of essentially no practical consequence, but I nonetheless value precision & distinctness in language
Mapping Tools:
- popular & actively-maintained wormhole mapping tools as of July 2025:
- I prefer Tripwire because it's what I learned on, but GalaxyFinder and Wanderer are more modern
- I won't tutorialize these, although I do offer some AHK scripts which make Tripwire a bit faster to use