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 Extra Large)
- they always lead to 1 of 5 consequentially-different categories of space:
- Known Space aka KS or New Eden - 5,201 stargate-connected systems of 3 categories: High-Security (HS), Low-Security (LS), and Null-Security (NS)
- J-Space aka 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 identified 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
- ~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)
visual appearance ID guide (separate page) - note: the only thing you can't tell from visuals alone is if a hole to Empire goes to HS or LS
text-based Show Info ID guide (Destination/Size/Life/Stability information):
- 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 now mostly explicit as of this August 2025 patch. there are 10 possibilities:
- Class 1-3 wormhole systems
- if you're not currently inside a C1, the Size isn't Small, and you're not in Tabbetzur or Turnur, you can differentiate C1 from C2/3; if it's a Medium hole, it goes to a C1
- otherwise (and to suss C2 from C3) you must learn what the holes look like or jump in and check the region's first letter
- for visuals, see the visual appearance guide linked above; for region letters, see the first Supplemental Fact further below for a letter-to-class list
- Class 4-5 wormhole systems
- if you're currently in KS and the hole isn't Small, you can suss C4 from C5 with a 3.4% chance of being wrong: Large is usually C4 whereas Extra large is usually C5
- 18 of the 531 C5s have Large KS entrance holes whereas the other 513 only ever connect to KS via Small & Extra large holes (and C4s only ever connect via Small & Large)
- otherwise, you must learn what the holes look like or jump in and check the region's first letter
- Class 6 wormhole systems
- Class 13 wormhole systems
- Drifter wormhole systems
- High-security systems
- Low-security systems
- Null-security systems
- Pochven systems
- Thera
- Maximum Ship Size has these 4 categories:
- Small aka S aka frighole fits ≤ destroyers, Porpoises, and ZPME HICs
- Medium aka M fits ≤ battlecruisers, industrials, Nestors with offlined armor plates but no other BS
- Larger aka L fits either:
- ≤ Orcas, Nestors with onlined armor plates and all other BS except the below (though plates may change this):
- BLOPs & Marauders won't fit if they have both a Higgs rig and an active 100/500MN
- ≤ Bowheads (only the C729s which lead from KS to Pochven)
- these will fit all Higgsed + active prop BS except Golem & Paladin (though plates may change this)
- Extra large aka EL/XL/VL fits either:
- ≤ freighters & jump freighters, if between HS/Thera and LS/NS/C5/C6
- ≤ Rorquals/carriers/dreads/FAXes, if between LS/NS/C5/C6 and same
- Lifetime has 4 options, colored as they appear in-game:
- More than 1 day remaining aka fresh/stable
- Less than 1 day remaining aka fresh/stable
- Less than 4 hours remaining aka EOL for end-of-life or 4H
- 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:
- More than 50% remaining aka fresh/stable or healthy
- Less than 50% remaining aka destab, shrunk or first shrink
- Less than 10% remaining aka crit
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 C13s or 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 a single JS system, 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
- 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
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
- 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 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
- 30 planetary systems and two whole regions 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
- Tabbetzur has 1: ~10 J492, from C1-C4
- the 5 Drifter/Uni systems constitute the region K-R00033 and each system has ~59 reverse-statics which spawn in systems with Jove Observatories (detailed at link)
- 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
- Pochven itself hosts several instances of 2 Types which wander around the region: F216 from C2-C6 and U372 from the Dronelands
Exploring/Scanning Best Practices (make these habitual):
- ABC: Always Be Cloaked. if you don't need to be uncloaked, be cloaked
- bookmark wormholes themselves and not their Cosmic Signatures (so you always land in jump range if you warp to 0 to the hole's BM)
- 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:
- actively-maintained wormhole mapping tools as of October 2025:
- 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