Wormhole Classes Explained

Whether you're just day tripping from Highsec, or looking for a new place to call home, nothing will have as big an effect on the activities you do as the wormhole's class. Sure, other things like system effects, statics, and even planets will affect things like what ship to fly, how much ISK/hr you make, or what PI to build, but the class is the only element that actually dictates what you can and can't do in that system. Gas is different. Ore is different. The combat sites are different, and even exploration sites are hugely different between classes.

But what's the difference? The game essentially groups wormholes into three categories by their geography within Anoikis. The "Perimeter" systems on the outer-most edge are made up of Class 1 and Class 2 wormhole systems. Moving further in, and up in difficulty, Class 3 and 4 systems make up the "Frontier" of wormhole space. And finally the end-game of wormhole content, Classes 5 and 6, are located near the "Core" of Anoikis itself. Players, on the other hand, tend to divide these classes into just two groups based on whether a capital ship can enter, with classes 4 and below falling into low class space, and 5 and 6 being high class.

There are some similarities between system classes:

• Classes 1, 2, and 3 all have static connections to the rest of New Eden, or K-Space.
• Classes 4, 5, and 6 only have static connections to other wormhole systems.
• Classes 2 and 4 each have two static connections instead of one. C2s have both a static to K-Space and to another wormhole. C4s have statics to two different wormhole classes.

These different combinations of statics tend to influence who decides to live where. Corporations tend to settle in classes 2, 4, and 5, while solo players and very small groups tend to settle in classes 1, 3, and 5. Huh. 5 is listed twice. And where's 6? More about all that, and what happened to class 6, below.

Class	Statics	Max Ship	Residents	ISK	PvE Ships
C1	K-Space	Medium	Industry	Low	Frigates to Cruisers
C2	K-Space + WH	Large	Small corps	Low	Cruisers
C3	K-Space	Large	Solo	Mid	HACs and T3Cs
C4	WH + WH	Large	Medium corps	Mid+	Marauders
C5	WH	Capital	Large corps / Farms	High	Marauders and Dreads
C6	WH	Capital	Farms	High	Marauders and Dreads

C2 and C4 (highlighted) are the dual-static classes.

Class 1

Class 1 is a bit of the red-headed step-child of wormhole space. Coming in at the lowest rung of the totem pole, C1 combat sites are beginner-friendly, only requiring a T1 frigate to complete, and pay out more than level 3 missions. You also only get access to the Perimeter gas sites, which average about 150 million ISK in total per site. Pirate faction data and relic sites have historically been a great way for new players to get rich quick, but recent "buffs" to Nullsec have driven the value of these wormhole sites down significantly. You also get access to Ancient Relics for T3 production, but they are much fewer and far between than in higher classes.

So, barely better than Highsec ISK, but astronomically higher risk. Why would anyone want to live here? Industry. If you look at any Upwell structure, the real bonuses come from the rigs you install, and each rig has a different bonus modifier based on the area of space the station is anchored in. Wormhole stations get the highest industry bonuses in the game. If it's just you, maybe a couple alts or a handful of friends, you'll also benefit from a very low system cost index and a 0% tax, the king of the castle after all is the taxman. And if industry is your thing, you'll be pleased to know you still get Grade IV wormhole ore sites, including the Average Frontier Deposit with more than a billion ISK worth of Gneiss on just a single rock. And since C1s always have a K-Space static, you'll have pretty reliable market access to keep those industry jobs and market orders moving, being able to put 50 DSTs through the static before it collapses. That's over 3 million m3 you can haul per connection, enough for even the most avid industrialists.

The other unusual aspect of C1s is that they are the only wormholes to have medium connections. With few exceptions, nothing bigger than a battlecruiser can enter or leave a C1. On face value this seems like it would be a massive home-field advantage to any defenders in the event of an eviction, but practically speaking, it's not a big deal. It just makes your static more difficult to roll, requiring 16 passes instead of 8 for large holes, or 2 for XL, since you can't use battleships or carriers.

Class 2

Class 2 is perfect for a small corporation, especially one just getting their feet wet in wormhole space. You have the convenience of a K-Space static, but for the first time, you now have access to a second static to essentially any class of wormhole space you wish. Not every static combination is possible, however. C2s with a Highsec static can only have another static to either a C1, 3, or 4. C2s with a Lowsec static can only have a second static to another C2. And finally, C2s with a Nullsec static are limited to only C5 and 6 for their second static.

But why is this better for corporations? Because with more than 1-2 people, content in your home system will start to run dry. Fast. And C2 content is nothing to write home about, arguably not even being better than C1. C2s open the possibility to just "roll" your static for fresh combat, exploration, gas, or even mining sites. Or even rage-roll it to find similar corps for some unannounced PvP. Plus, not only do you get the same K-Space convenience of C1 wormholes, your static now has double the mass, so that's 100 DST runs instead of 50, and now you can fit battleships through for even more and varied content.

The hard cap at C4 for your static is a hard cap on how big your corp can get, and how far it can develop. For the sake of this post, I'm pretending C2s with Class 5 and 6 statics don't exist, since they all have Nullsec statics, and the people who live in them aren't "real" wormholers.

Class 3

Class 3 has the most similarities with Class 1, and similarly, is also a bit of a wild-card. Like C1, you don't get a wormhole space static, instead only getting the one to K-Space. But that's where the similarities end, and where the real money-making begins. It also holds a special place in my heart, as it's the first class that I lived in. Combat sites pay out four times as much, or even eight times as much for the Sleeper hacking sites. You now get access to the Frontier gas sites, worth up to five times as much as C1 gas sites, which all still spawn as well. For those less blood-thirsty, C3 is also the highest class that spawns pirate data and relic sites.

You get all of the same activity and benefits of C1 wormholes, but better. A lot better. Combine that with the fact that almost all of the activities are alpha-friendly and completable in cruisers or below, and you start to see why C3 wormholes are so popular. But that popularity results in a lot of competition. That competition makes them more dangerous to explore, and more inconvenient to live in, compared to C1 wormholes. C3s are the pinnacle of wormhole sub-battleship PvE and the highest class you will likely day-trip into from K-Space.

Class 4

Class 4 tends to be where medium-sized and a bit more serious groups go to live, and is essentially the C2's older brother. They also have two statics, but both point to other wormholes. That means for the first time, you no longer have a constant direct K-Space connection, and you will almost always be at least 2 jumps away from K-Space, if not more. It also means twice as much wormhole content for your corp, so you can sustain more members in addition to members of more varied skill levels. Every combination is possible except for C6 with either C1 or C2. C4 is where I moved after outgrowing my C3 and finally deciding to join a wormhole corp.

You no longer have access to pirate faction data and relic sites, but C4 combat sites pay twice as much as C3 sites, with Sleeper data and relic sites paying up to fifteen times C1 combat sites, and you still get access to the same gas and ore. But that additional combat site loot comes at the cost of effectively needing a marauder to run the sites. While this puts the ISK/hr floor substantially higher than C3s, the risk and barrier to entry is also substantially higher.

There is no new player content here, aside from mining and gas huffing. Two statics is also a lot of overhead to manage for a solo player, so you don't tend to see a lot of them living here. Instead, solo players up for a more challenging place to live will probably end up in the next class on the list.

Class 5

Class 5 is the start of "high class" and where all but one high class corporation lives. There are just over 500 regular C5 wormhole systems, and almost half of those also have C5 statics. This gives rise to the term the "C5 highway," because of the tendency for C5s to connect to other C5s. Though statistically, C4s are more likely to connect to other C4s, but I digress. This connectivity is also why high class corps live in C5s with C5 statics, since you're more likely to roll into each other, or into people mid-krab session.

Speaking of krabbing, while regular combat sites can be completed by a solo marauder, C5 is the first system on the totem pole that has capital escalations. Warping a capital ship to a combat site will trigger 3 Upgraded Avenger battleship spawns, and then a capital-tuned Drifter Response Battleship at the end, for a combined 450 million ISK in bonus loot. Combine that with the regular site loot and salvage, and you're looking at around 800 million ISK per site. The real kicker is that with current dread prices, the cost of running dreads is actually about the same as running the bling marauders required to tank the higher DPS sites, for double the reward.

But the other defining aspect of C5 space is the XL wormholes that allow those capitals to enter in the first place, which makes C5 space the only place in wormholes where capital brawls between corporations take place. These XL holes can also be rolled in a single round-trip pass with a specially-fit carrier (if you're rolling with a dread, stop it, get some help). That has the side-effect of making them fairly easy for a single player to maintain, and has given rise to the existence of "farms." Many players in C5 corporations will also have their own farm where they keep additional alts that exist solely for krabbing. Well, they may also train them up in gas huffing, because C5s get the best gas sites in the entire game, with over a billion ISK of gas in each one. This farm culture is what fuels these capital brawls, turning home holes into content chains, and farm holes into safe-ish ISK-printing factories.

Class 6

C6 is very similar to C5, with the main difference being that there just aren't very many of them. There are only 113 regular C6s, but only 14 of those (10%) have C6 statics. Those numbers just aren't large enough to sustain a vibrant PvP culture like C5s or even C4s do. Pretty much everything content-wise is the same as C5s, except combat sites pay out more and are more difficult, with some paying out over a billion ISK with loot and salvage, and dealing over 6,000 DPS even without the capital escalations. And because there are so many fewer C6s, there are fewer places sites can respawn, so there tends to be an endless supply of combat sites available.

---

Aside from the 6 main classes of wormholes, there are some other special cases. Thera, Drifter wormholes, Sansha wormholes, shattered wormholes, and small ship shattered wormholes all have their own unique classes or attributes. Stay tuned for a future post covering some of those.

Wormhole connection images courtesy of the EVE University Wiki, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.