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How to Roll a Wormhole in EVE Online

Understand wormhole mass, roll safely, and never strand your fleet on the wrong side.

A Nexum wormhole guide

"Rolling" a wormhole means deliberately collapsing it by pushing ship mass through until it dies, then letting a fresh connection spawn. Corps roll holes to reach a new random system, to close a chain a hostile is coming down, or to control exactly who can reach their home. Get the mass maths wrong and you either fail to close the hole or, worse, strand pilots on the far side. This guide covers the mechanics and the safe method.

How wormhole mass works

Every wormhole has two mass numbers that matter for rolling:

• Total mass - the combined ship mass the hole can pass before it collapses (for example ~2,000,000,000 kg on many C1-C3 statics, up to ~3,300,000,000 kg on big cap holes).
• Per-jump (maximum jump) mass - the heaviest single ship that can use it. Too heavy and the ship simply cannot jump.

Each ship that jumps subtracts its own mass from the remaining total. When the remaining mass hits zero, the hole collapses on that jump. The catch: both numbers vary by plus or minus 10% and you cannot see the exact figure in game. So the real collapse point is a window, not a precise value - which is exactly why rolling has risk and why a calculator helps.

Hot vs cold pass mass

Ship mass changes depending on whether your propulsion module is running:

• Cold pass - prop mod off. The ship jumps at its base hull mass.
• Hot pass - microwarpdrive or afterburner active. An active prop mod adds roughly 50,000,000 kg for that jump.

Rolling crews alternate hot and cold passes to land the running total inside the collapse window instead of overshooting. A common tool is a Higgs Anchor rig, which multiplies hull mass so a single battleship carries a large, predictable chunk of the total - fewer jumps, tighter control.

The safe rolling method

1. Know the hole. Identify the wormhole type so you know its total and per-jump mass (a mapper shows this from the code, e.g. a K162 is the far side of a named type).
2. Pick your roller. Battleships (often with a Higgs rig and a prop mod) are the standard. Two pilots, or one pilot bouncing back and forth, is typical.
3. Always end on the home side. Plan your pass count so the last pass that collapses the hole leaves your roller at home - never stranded in the unknown far system.
4. Pass, check the description, repeat. After each jump, re-read the mass stage. As you approach "critical", switch to your lightest safe pass so you do not overshoot into a strand.
5. When it is critical, roll it closed from the home side. The final pass should be one you can afford to make one-way if it does not collapse - and that lands you home if it does.

Let a rolling calculator do the maths

Nexum has a built-in rolling calculator on every wormhole connection. Set your roller's cold and hot mass (or hit "use my ship"), tell it which side you are on, and it tracks the cumulative mass, shows the plus/minus 10% variance band, tells you how many safe passes remain, and warns you before a pass would strand you on the far side. It also keeps a shared jump log of who passed the hole, so a whole fleet can roll off one synced count instead of everyone guessing. Because it is real-time and collaborative, two pilots rolling from opposite ends see the same numbers.