Wormhole Essentials:
- they are transient paired objects which allow ships to jump between the systems in which they appear, like temporary stargates
- they must be scanned down with probes (except for Unidentified aka Drifter wormholes, on which more further below)
- they have the following 4 characteristics, browsable here (see whtype.info for a nice visualization):
- they have a Type of 1 letter plus 3 numbers, visible in space & on the overview, for example: 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 5 consequentially-different categories of space (click to show/hide them):
- Known Space i.e. KS or New Eden - 5,201 stargate-connected systems of 3 categories: High-Security (HS), Low-Security (LS), and Null-Security (NS)
- J-Space i.e. JS or Anoikis - 2,598 systems beginning with "J" and only accessible via wormholes, further grouped into 3 categories:
- Pochven - a region of 27 systems with a blend of JS & NS characteristics, connected in a loop via a separate gate network
- Drifter space - 5 named systems reached by dangerous "Unidentified" wormholes (these used to have J-names, but not anymore)
- Thera - a big system with many wormhole connections and stations with jump clone & home station functionality (its holes are publicly mapped by EVE-Scout)
- they 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 Ided before jumping, too, if you can recognize the nebulae (more on this in the visual appearance ID guide further below)
- their jump range is 5 km, double that of stargates & Ansiblexes
- 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
visual appearance ID guide (separate page) - note: the only thing you can't tell from visuals alone is if a hole to Empire is HS or LS
Show Info (text-based) ID guide & Size information:
- right-click a wormhole and select Show Info. sample provided in green text:
- An unstable wormhole, deep in space. Wormholes of this kind usually collapse after a few days, and can lead to anywhere.
This wormhole seems to lead into unknown parts of space.
This wormhole is beginning to decay, and probably won't last another day.
This wormhole has not yet had its stability significantly disrupted by ships passing through it.
Larger ships can pass through this wormhole.
- 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
- see the first Supplemental Fact below for a letter-to-class list
- 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 4 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:
- "Only the smallest ships" aka S aka frighole: ≤ destroyers, Porpoises, and ZPME HICs
- "Up to medium ships" aka M: ≤ battlecruisers, industrials, Nestors with offlined armor plates but no other BS
- "Larger ships" aka L: ≤ Nestors with onlined armor plates and all other BS except the below, Orcas
- BLOPs & Marauders won't fit if they have both a Higgs rig and an active prop mod
- one type of L can also fit Bowheads: the C729 which leads from KS to Pochven
- "Very large ships" aka VL: either:
- ≤ freighters & jump freighters, if to HS/Thera, or:
- ≤ Rorquals/carriers/dreads/FAXes, if to LS/NS/C5/C6
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, H=C13/tripnull, K=Drifter/Uni
- 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 Tripnulls only connect to JS/NS via Small wormholes and 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 JS, 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
- ~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)
- 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
- 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 bound to a to a system but spawn outside rather than inside
- a normal static respawns inside its host system and its K162 (the generic "other side" of all wormholes) appears in a random system of its zone once certain conditions are met
- a reverse static, by contrast, respawns outside its host system—somewhere in its zone—and its K162 shows up in the host system if the conditions are met
- 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: ~10 J377, from C1-C4
- the 5 Drifter/Uni systems each have ~59 reverse-statics which spawn in systems with Jove Observatories (detailed at link)
- Pochven's 27 systems host several instances of 2 types which wander around the region: F216 from C2-C6 and U372 from the Dronelands
- each Pochven system has a single associated C729 with its own unique spawn zone, each quite small compared to other spawn zones
- these zones sometimes partially overlap and are are shown in the maps here
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 is a transient gatelike object)
- as I said, this distinction is of essentially no practical consequence, but I nonetheless value precision & distinctness in language
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 the directional scanner 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
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