Wormholes

Wormholes are rifts in space that connect two locations. Like stargates, they allow the travel of ships from one system to another. Unlike stargates, wormholes are not permanent. They connect two systems for only a short time and collapse when either their lifespan ends or too much mass has passed through them. Wormholes can connect any two systems regardless of distance from each other, providing temporary shortcuts to areas that would otherwise take many jumps to reach. Wormholes can also connect to uncharted space, or wormhole space. These systems are uncharted, and do not operate like normal systems.

Finding Wormholes

A wormhole leading to W-Space

Wormholes can be found by scanning down cosmic signatures. Once a wormhole is probed down, it can be warped to and jumped through much like a stargate.

You may refer to the Scanning & Probing and Exploration guides if you want to learn about finding wormholes.

Destinations

Wormholes lead to many different places. A subset of wormholes connect to New Eden systems (henceforth referred to as 'Known Space' or 'K-Space') and some others connect from K-Space to the Anoikis (henceforth referred to as 'Wormhole Space' or 'W-Space') galaxy. Most wormholes form within W-Space, providing the sole method for inter-system travel since there are no stargates in W-Space.

Known Space to Known Space Wormholes

These wormholes are used to quickly travel throughout New Eden, they're also used to access high-sec or low-sec islands without risk of travelling through potentially dangerous space. They're commonly named for the sec status on both ends. High-to-high, low-to-null, null-to-high etc.

Known Space to Wormhole Space Wormholes

These connect K-Space to W-Space. Players that do exploration use them to access W-Space to run cosmic anomalies and signatures. W-Space inhabitants use them to shop, resupply, sell loot and products and go on K-Space PvP roams. Without these wormholes, W-Space would be a desolate wasteland and nobody in K-Space would have access to Strategic Cruisers.

Wormhole Space to Wormhole Space Wormholes

Since there are no gates available in W-Space systems these wormholes provide the sole means of interstellar transport, giving the Anoikis galaxy life in the form of capsuleers killing sleepers or each other. W-Space to W-Space wormholes are very crucial to moving down system classes because higher class systems very rarely get a wormhole connection to K-Space.

Wormhole Identification

The color of a wormhole will give you an impression on where it leads. The outline will be the color of your current system and the center will be colored based on where it leads. See Visually Identifying Wormholes (and also below).

For a table of wormhole type identification, visit the Wormhole Types page.

Wormholes will also have a description about where they lead and their stability status.

Wormhole Classification

Leading to Known Space

Wormholes leading to K-Space take the image and color of the region on the other side. A red K-Space highsec or lowsec wormhole will most likely take you to Metropolis or Heimatar(Minmatar Space).

Leading to Wormhole Space

Wormholes leading to W-Space take the image and color of the class of W-Space system on the other side. A white W-Space wormhole will take you to a Class 3 W-Space system.

Here is a table of W-Space connections imported from here.

Wormholes/W-Space Wormhole Colors

Wormhole Sizes and Restrictions

See also: Wormhole Information

Wormholes come with different restrictions. Wormholes not only allow certain amounts of mass through them in their lifetime, but they may also have mass restrictions for each and every transfer. For example, wormholes from Known Space to Class 1 wormhole space will restrict ships going through to battlecruisers or lower.

Capital ships with jump drives can go through wormholes, provided that the wormhole can support the mass of the ship. Cynosural fields can be opened in wormhole space, but ships with jump drives cannot lock on to these fields, nor can they lock on to cynosural fields outside of wormhole space to jump out. Supercapital ships, such as Titans and Supercarriers, cannot go through wormholes as they are far too large to get through even the largest wormholes.

Polarization

An additional restriction is placed on how often an individual pilot may jump through a particular wormhole. You may not jump through a wormhole in the same direction twice without waiting five minutes. For example, if you jump through a wormhole at 05:00 and then you jump back through the wormhole at 05:03, you will be polarized (unable to jump through that same wormhole) until 05:05. Similarly, if you were to jump as soon as the timer was up, you would be polarized on the other side of the hole until 05:08. .

One way to manage your polarization timer is to check the local chat for the time stamps (multiple wormhole jump time stamps are kept in the chat, unlike gate jumps in k-space) for your jumps and then plan accordingly.

Note the restriction is on the pilot not the ship (or account). The same ship can be swapped by ejection and boarding of different pilot for multiple transit through the same wormhole. This is very useful for mass reduction purpose without need of multiple ships of same type (but rather multiple pilots who can utilize the same ship) (http://wiki.eveuniversity.org/Living_in_Wormhole_Space#Unwanted_Wormholes).

Aggression

Aggression timers do not apply to wormholes. As long as you are not polarized you can jump through a wormhole immediately after aggressing an other pilot in any manner. For this reason many battles in Anoikis take place near wormholes as this can provide an escape option even if you are webbed/scrammed/bubbled.

For more information on aggression see the Uniwiki page on Timers.

Wormhole Text

System Type

What type of system will the wormhole lead. These will be of the following format:

• This wormhole seems to lead into {important part} parts of space.

System Type Text

Text	Meaning
Unknown	C1/C2/C3
Dangerous Unknown	C4/C5
Deadly Unknown	C6
High Security	Hisec
Low Security	Lowsec
Zero Security	Nullsec

• If the wormhole is named (anything other than K162) you can look up the location using this table.
• If the wormhole is a K162, you can tell what type of system it leads to by color.

Life

How long will the wormhole last before collapse? Show Info on the wormhole will list one of the following:

• This wormhole has not yet begun its natural cycle of decay and should last at least another day
• This wormhole is beginning to decay, and probably won't last another day
• This wormhole is reaching the end of its natural lifetime
• This wormhole is on the verge of dissipating into the ether

Life Text

Text	Meaning
not yet begun	more than 24 hours
beginning to decay	between 24 and 4 hours
reaching the end	less than 4 hours
on the verge	minutes

Mass

How much mass can be transported through the wormhole before collapse? Show Info on the wormhole will list one of the following:

• This wormhole has not yet had its stability significantly disrupted by ships passing through it
• This wormhole has had its stability reduced by ships passing through it, but not to a critical degree yet
• This wormhole has had its stability critically disrupted by the mass of numerous ships passing through and is on the verge of collapse

Mass Text

Text	Meaning	Slang
not yet	over 50%
not to a critical degree	between 50% and 10%	First Shrink
stability critically disrupted	less than 10%	Crit

The Death of a Wormhole

After a certain amount of mass is transported through or after some time the wormhole will disappear. While most wormholes only last for 24 hours, there are some variations to this rule. When a static wormhole collapses a new one with the same properties will spawn. You can read more on static wormholes in the Wormhole Space article.

You can artificially induce "premature" death of a wormhole (Living_in_Wormhole_Space#Unwanted_Wormholes).

Links

Guide to Solo-Wormhole