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, though unlike gates they must be warped to and then jumped through as a two-step process.

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. 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. Their dynamic formation and dissolution define W-Space interactions, 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

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 particular transfer. For example, wormholes from K-Space to C1 wormhole space will restrict ships going through to battlecruisers or smaller.

Capital ships with jump drives can go through wormholes, providing the wormhole can support the ship's mass. 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 at all, as they are far too large for even the largest wormholes.

Polarization

Additionally, there is a restriction on how often in a given time a 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 jump back through the wormhole at 05:03, you will be polarized until 05:05, five minutes after your last transit in that direction. When polarized the wormhole will prevent you from jumping through, and present you with a message informing you how much time is left on your polarization timer. 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, five minutes after your last transit in that direction.

One way to manage your polarization timer is to check local chat for 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.

Keep in mind that this restriction applies to the pilot, not the ship or the account. The same ship can be swapped by ejection and boarding by different capsuleers for immediate transit through the same wormhole. This is very useful for mass reduction operations without need for multiple ships of same type. This is, however, a somewhat more dangerous way to roll a wormhole, as multiple pilots jumping from ship to ship are at least momentarily extremely vulnerable.

Aggression

Aggression timers do not apply in wormholes. You still get them when you aggress capsuleers or Sleepers, but they don't have any effect. As long as you are not polarized you can jump through a wormhole immediately after aggressing any capsuleer in any manner. There is no CONCORD in W-Space, no stargate sentry guns, and no stations. For this reason many battles in W-Space take place very near wormholes. This can provide escape options even if you are webbed, scrammed, or bubbled.

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

Example Wormholes

An example O477 wormhole with show info

From the information popup on this wormhole we can tell quite a few things.

• The O477 name means that this is an entrance, not an exit (which would be a K162 instead). The difference doesn't mean much, at least mechanically, except that an entrance give much more information. For example, the Wormhole Information page tells us that a O477 wormhole leads to C3 wormhole space, has a total mass allowance of 2,000,000,000 kg, has a per-transit ship mass limit of 300,000,000 kg, and a maximum stable time of 16 hours.
• The wormhole is not yet end of life, meaning it'll still be around for a while.
• The wormhole has had its stability decreased by mass pushed through it, but not critically left. For this wormhole, that means that there is anywhere between 1,000,000,000 and 1,000,000 kg of mass left before it goes critical. If no-one pushes any mass through it, it will last until it decays naturally after its time runs out. However if it's at the low end of the mass remaining, it could go critical and then collapse very quickly if enough mass gets pushed through it. A wormhole at this stage is fairly safe to jump through, though you should be wary. If you, for instance, jump through in the middle of someone's rolling operation and can't jump back out, you could potentially be trapped on the other side, left to scan your way out of C3 space.

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 somewhere else in the same system. It will have to be scanned down. When a non-static wormhole collapses it simply disappears forever. 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