Wormhole Essentials

• they are transient paired objects which connect two systems, temporarily allowing ships to jump between them
• they must be scanned down with probes (except for Unidentified aka Drifter wormholes, on which more below)
• they have these 5 characteristics (see whtype.info for a visualization):
  1. a Type of 1 letter and 3 numbers, visible in space & on the overview. one hole of a pair is always K162. the non-K162 Type is always the originating side
  2. a total throughput mass which, if exceeded, causes the wormhole to disappear or "collapse"
  3. a lifetime counter which begins ticking down only when someone initiates warp to the wormhole's grid. the hole collapses once the counter reaches 0
  4. an individual ship mass limit. this value is related to Maximum Ship Size, on which more below
  5. an origin and a destination category, one or both of which are randomly chosen. there are 14 categories in 6 groups:
     • 3 of Known Space aka KS or New Eden - 5,201 stargate-connected systems in 65 regions grouped into High-Sec (HS), Low-Sec (LS), and Null-Sec (NS)
     • 7 of J-Space aka JS or Anoikis - 2,598 systems in Classes 1-6 and 13, only accessible via wormholes. all named "J" followed by 6 digits (except one)
     • 1 of Drifter space - 5 named systems only accessible via wormholes. the number and mechanics of their "Unidentified" wormholes set them apart
     • 1 of Thera - a single giant system with numerous wormholes. has stations with jump clone & home station functionality. its holes are publicly mapped by EVE-Scout
     • 1 of Pochven - 27 systems connected in a loop via a separate stargate network. accessible via wormhole or filament. filaments are useful for exfiltrating stuff to Jita
     • 1 of Turnur and Tabbetzur. Turnur became a mini-Thera in 2022 and EVE-Scout map it. Tabbetzur got a similar treatment in 2025 but EVE-Scout don't map it
       • they're both also in KS. I give them their own category because they share very similar hole mechanics which are unique to them
• they reveal all these characteristics via their visual appearance and/or Show Info windows, so with knowledge, you can know those things before jumping, even at a K162
  • specific KS region destinations can be identified before jumping, too, if you can recognize the nebulae. more on this in the visual appearance ID guide
• their associated Cosmic Signatures always spawn 7 km from the wormhole, so you can generally warp to sigs at 0 without decloaking on the hole
  • you can rarely be decloaked if your warp passes through the hole. if this is a concern, warp at 70/100 km, bookmark the hole, warp to a celestial or probe then to the BM
• it's customary to BM wormholes rather than their sigs because if you warp to 0 on a wormhole BM, you'll always land in jump range of the hole (if you're not interdicted)
• their jump range is 5 km—double that of stargates & Ansiblexes—and their radius is 3 km, so they can be entered from a 16 km-wide sphere centered on their brackets
  • this is a skosh over half the spawn diameter of the smallest stargates, so wormholes are much easier to interdict than gates
• you can jump a particular wormhole only twice every 5 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
• ~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)
• Local chat in Drifter space, JS, Pochven and Thera only shows present pilots in the Member List if they send a message. in KS, Local always lists all present pilots

visual appearance ID guide (link to separate page)

text-based Show Info ID guide (Destination/Size/Life/Stability)

• right-click a wormhole and select Show Info. sample text provided here, colored and formatted as it appears in-game:
  
  • An unstable wormhole, deep in space. Wormholes of this kind usually collapse after a few days, and can lead to anywhere.
    
    Destination: Low-security systems
    Maximum Ship Size: Extra large
    
    Lifetime: Less than 1 hour remaining
    Mass Stability: More than 50% remaining
• the top sentences are irrelevant since they're the same on all holes
• Destinations are mostly explicit as of this August 2025 patch. there are 10 possibilities:
  1. Class 1-3 wormhole systems (note: at least one side of all Medium holes will always be C1, Thera, Tabbetzur, or Turnur)
  2. Class 4-5 wormhole systems (note: Larges to C4-5 usually go to C4 whereas Extra larges to C4-5 usually go to C5)
  3. Class 6 wormhole systems
  4. Class 13 wormhole systems
  5. Drifter wormhole systems
  6. High-security systems
  7. Low-security systems
  8. Null-security systems
  9. Pochven systems
  10. Thera
• Maximum Ship Size has 4 named categories spread across 6 unnamed ones:

  • MSS	mass limit, t	fits ≤	connects
    Small	5,000	Destroyer, Porpoise, ZPME HIC, ZPME Odysseus	any non-HS/LS ↔ any non-HS/LS
    Medium	62,000	BC, Hauler, Nestor if unplated or w/offlined plates	any ↔ any
    Large	375,000	Orca, all BS except BLOPs & Marauder w/Higgs + prop on	any ↔ any
    	410,000	Bowhead, all BS except Golem & Paladin w/Higgs + prop on	Pochven ↔ KS/Pochven
    Extra large	1,000,000	Freighter & Jump Freighter	HS/Thera ↔ HS/LS/NS/C5/C6
    	2,000,000	Carrier, Dreadnaught, Force Auxiliary, Rorqual	LS/NS/C5/C6 ↔ LS/NS/C5/C6

  • Size is often abbreviated to its first letter or "XL" or "VL" for Extra large (it used to be called "Very large")
  • C729 is the only 410 k Type in the game. more on it below in Supplemental Facts
• Lifetime has 4 options, colored as they appear in-game:
  1. More than 1 day remaining aka fresh or stable
  2. Less than 1 day remaining aka fresh or stable
  3. Less than 4 hours remaining aka EOL for end-of-life or 4H
  4. Less than 1 hour remaining aka 1H (this info was also added by this August 2025 patch)
• Mass Stability has 3 options describing the total throughput remaining, colored as they appear in-game:
  1. More than 50% remaining aka fresh, stable or healthy
  2. Less than 50% remaining aka destab, shrunk or first shrink
  3. Less than 10% remaining aka crit or second shrink

Supplemental Facts

• you can determine JS class by clicking the system name at the top left; the first letter of the Region name indicates the Class:
  • A=C1, B=C2, C=C3, D=C4, E=C5, F=C6, G=Thera, H=C13/tripnull, K=Drifter/Uni
• C1, C2 and C3 are often referred to as lowclass whereas C5 and C6 are highclass. C4 is one of those or neither, depending on who you ask
• wormhole spawning mechanics are fairly well (although not completely) understood
• wormholes cannot connect a system to itself, but they can connect systems which are adjacent by stargate
• heavier ships spawn further from wormholes, and spawn distance increases for all ships as a hole's remaining mass decreases (patch notes, ctrl + f "next major change")
• shattered systems have ruinous planets and no moons, contain unique PvE sites, and can spawn sites from a class above or below their own
  • a unique group of 25 of these called C13s or Tripnulls only connect to JS/NS via Small wormholes. they get expanded site spawn & C6 Wolf-Rayet effects
• structures as well as POS and POCOs can be anchored in non-shattered JS but one cannot jump clone into or out of JS structures or set them as home stations
  • you can jump clone within a single JS structure, i.e. swap clones
• capitals can't jump into C1-C4 (nor non-Nestor BS into C1) but they can be built there if players anchor a structure & harvest/import the raw materials as necessary
  • this is why there are capital kills in C1-C4 despite capitals being unable to jump into them
• Small holes technically have 3 million tonnes of throughput, but that value regenerates. they really have infinite throughput, collapsing only when their life timers end
• most holes respawn 60 seconds after collapsing. the static VLs in Tabbetzur and Turnur take 20 minutes, and Drifters/Unis take ~30 (may be 20, too, but hard to prove)
• 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: planetary systems and wormholes
      • every "place" in EVE (apart from Abyssal Deadspace) is a system, and no system is also a wormhole (a wormhole being a transient gatelike object)
        • as I said, this distinction is of essentially no practical consequence, but I'm a tedious pedant who values precision & distinctness in language
• wormholes can be either static, wandering, or reverse static
  • statics respawn in the same system with a random connection
  • wanderers respawn in a random system with a random connection
  • reverse statics respawn in a random system with the same connection
    • 35 planetary systems have associated reverse-static Types:
      • Thera has 5: ~3 T458 from HS, ~2 M164 from LS, ~3 L031 from NS, ~4 F135 from C2-C6, and ~1 F353 from C1
      • Turnur has 1: ~5 J377, from C1-C4
      • Tabbetzur has 1: ~5 J492, from C1-C4
      • each of Pochven's 27 systems has a single associated C729 with its own unique spawn zone, each quite small compared to other spawn zones
        • some of these zones partially overlap. the zones are shown in these maps
      • the 5 Drifter/Uni systems constitute the region K-R00033. each system has ~59 reverse-statics which spawn in systems with Jove Observatories
    • Pochven as a region also hosts several instances of 2 Types which wander around its systems: F216 from C2-C6 and U372 from the Dronelands
  • to clarify the difference between normal and reverse statics, since this seems to confuse some folks:
    • a normal static respawns inside its host system and its K162 appears somewhere in its spawn zone if the conditions are met
    • a reverse static respawns outside its host system—somewhere in its spawn zone—and its K162 shows up in the host system if the conditions are met
  • 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 host a static H296 and a wandering H296 simultaneously; those two wormholes 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
• each KS region has a unique skybox and thus a unique wormhole graphic, but they have similarities based on their relative locations
• each JS class from C1-C6 has a unique skybox & wormhole graphic. Thera, the 5 Drifter/Uni systems and all 25 Tripnulls share one
• there are 8 sizes of total wormhole throughput mass, listed here along with average throughput for various hull classes (data last updated on the 6th of June, 2025)
  • there is much variation within these averaged groups. for exact throughput numbers, use my calculator or use a dscan tool w/tonnage totals then divide it in
    • there's only one 5 mil hole (D845) and it only fits BS and smaller. 500k and 100k holes only fit BCs/Haulers/Nestors and smaller

  • mass, t↓ hull→	Cap	Freighter	Rorqual	Bowhead	Marauder	Orca	BLOPs	BS	Nestor	Barge	BC	Hauler	Cruiser	Porpoise	Shuttle	Destroyer	Frigate	Corvette	Capsule	Zephyr
    5,000,000	✖	✖	✖	✖	33	34	34	51	250	286	376	378	433	1,112	3,125	3,386	4,326	4,337	156,250	1,000,000
    3,300,000	3	4	5	9	22	22	23	34	165	189	249	250	286	734	2,063	2,235	2,855	2,863	103,125	660,000
    3,000,000	3	4	4	8	20	20	21	31	150	172	226	227	260	667	1,875	2,032	2,596	2,602	93,750	600,000
    2,000,000	✖	3	✖	5	14	14	14	21	100	115	151	152	173	445	1,250	1,355	1,731	1,735	62,500	400,000
    1,000,000	✖	2	✖	3 *only fits through C729	7	7	7	11	50	58	76	76	87	223	625	678	866	868	31,250	200,000
    750,000	✖	✖	✖	✖	5	5	6	8	38	43	57	57	65	167	469	508	649	651	23,438	150,000
    500,000	✖	✖	✖	✖	✖	✖	✖	✖	25	29	38	38	44	112	313	339	433	434	15,625	100,000
    100,000	✖	✖	✖	✖	✖	✖	✖	✖	5	6	8	8	9	23	63	68	87	87	3,125	20,000

Exploring/Scanning Best Practices (make these habitual)

• ABC: Always Be Cloaked. if you don't need to be uncloaked, be cloaked
• bookmark both holes, and again, the holes themselves rather than their sigs
• use the directional scanner to reduce the likelihood of being caught unaware
• recall your probes ASAP when done scanning. they betray your presence

Mapping Tools

• actively-maintained wormhole mapping tools as of October 2025 (please poke me if this should be updated):
  • GalaxyFinder (proprietary)
  • Pathfinder (open source; repository)
  • Tripwire (open source; repository)
    • Short Circuit is a standalone program which uses Tripwire to find the shortest route between arbitrary systems (it can integrate EVE-Scout's data with your own)
  • Wanderer (open core, repository)
  • WormholeSystems (proprietary)
• I prefer Tripwire because it's what I learned on, but GalaxyFinder, Wanderer and WormholeSystems are more modern
• I won't tutorialize these, although I do offer some AHK scripts which make Tripwire a bit faster to use