Wormholes

I spent a lot of my previous eve-time solo dwelling in w-space as owner-occupier of C2, C3, C4, and C5 systems. When I started the best I could muster was a hurricane or maelstrom, and C2 sites were difficult. As my skills and experience improved I moved on to rattlesnakes and tengu and then just tengu. You can solo all C5 sites (non-capital-escalation component only of course) and you can make a decent income from solo C5 occupancy … but I would not recommend that.

It has been around a year since I have done any w-space PvE but my experience was that a decent C3 offered the best income-effort ratio for the solo or semi-solo wormholer. C4 and C5 sites returned more isk per site, but my isk-per-week was always greatest in a C3. I’m not gonna quote any sort of isk amounts, because some tool will always come in to bignote that they make more, and because isk-per-hour is not such a meaningful statistic when you’re talking about w-space. You *can* harvest 150 million isk worth of stuff after ten minutes of shooting and a few minutes of looting / salvaging … but none of that is isk in your wallet until you have safely hauled it to empire space and sold it off (or used it to build tengu which you then sell off).

I accessed all resources available, but dropped mining after a while. W-space PI is great, even though PI itself is horrible. W-space gas harvesting is a reasonable income source. W-space ‘ratting’ – killing and salvaging / looting the sleepers in grav and ladar sites without harvesting the resources – can also be fairly lucrative. The cosmic anomalies are usually your bread and butter, and the mag and radar sigs can be the icing on the cake – tougher but usually better income.

Some people live in one w-system and use their ‘static’ wormhole to regularly harvest neighbouring systems. I did not do this, and don’t see it as being particularly attractive unless you have a larger group and need to access those additional sites to provide everyone with a decent income.

If your just starting then I’d recommend a C2 if you have no problems soloing all lvl4 missions, or a C1 otherwise. IMO a hisec static, common in those classes of w-system, is more a liability than a benefit … you will get enough hisec K162s to haul your goodies out to empire. I always chose systems with very good PI, no system effects (e.g. not blackhole or other), and with either lowsec or nullsec statics if to empire or C2 statics otherwise. I found my own system in some cases but mostly purchased from the market (got scammed once, but was too hasty on that occasion).

Like anything in eve w-space PvE can become boring, but you always have the option of moving to a tougher class of w-system, and you can always take ‘holidays’ to pursue whatever other venture empire space offers. Living in w-space is demanding and is certainly not for everyone, but it can be a lot of fun and very rewarding.