Rank­ings & News March 2022

Guide writ­ten by AfuroZamurai. Con­tri­bu­tions from the Amaz­ing Com­munity.

This was ori­gin­ally writ­ten on Dis­cord so the text may be con­fus­ing. It is kept this way to pre­serve the ori­ginal posts how they were.
Main Rank­ings Page

March 2022 #

News #

Life calmed down after the first cus­tom the­or­ies got re­leased and un­til now we haven’t got­ten a new one (maybe soon™️). Still we have some news, so let’s do that!

• Playspout de­cided to ruin idle play­ers life even more by de­vel­op­ing 3 new strategies (T3, T7, T8) for the­or­ies, im­prov­ing on the pre­vi­ous ones, in­clud­ing a strategy for T7 act­ive. How dare you Thanks! And I should­n’t hide the fact he also found a bet­ter idle strategy for T3, so good job on that one! I as­sume T3­Playspout is great but that will have to wait^^
• We have the first “com­pleted” (mean­ing 1e100 tau or 1e1000 rho) cus­tom the­ory. After a hard fought two horse race (at the end at a snail’s pace) the win­ner was - who else could it be - Playspout, who got there first by about a day. Don’t worry, the com­pet­it­ors name will stay a secret for now un­til you read a bit fur­ther^^ Now you know it: WSP has been done. I won­der if next month we have SL com­pleted too.
• With great pleas­ure I can con­firm people play the game dif­fer­ently but more on that later be­cause the thought alone is kind of scary.
• Quite a bit of people are de­vel­op­ing cus­tom the­or­ies, in­clud­ing people not already into pro­gram­ming! Nice!

Rank­ings #

Okay, enough other talk, time for what you’ve all been wait­ing for. March2022 Top 20 on the lead­er­board, their \(F(t)\) at the time the list was com­piled and their Dis­cord con­nec­tion (Dis­cord names in brack­ets are not their nick­names!):

1. Gen­Er­a­tion­Na­tion (Gen) - ee62395:

“Only” a bit above 1000 2000 3000 mes­sages here ( I think I have to stop that soon xD) but if there is any­one who can chal­lenge wind it has to be Gen^^ For nos­tal­gic reas­ons I’ll keep the first sen­tence for this month as well.

We saw last month that a com­bin­a­tion of cus­tom the­or­ies and free time made the dif­fer­ence and al­lowed Gen to not only catch up but even over­take the long time #1 to be only the 4th num­ber one (dis­count­ing ones due to glitches etc.) since a lot of months after An­tharion took over when ee50000 was still far away. Dur­ing this heroic un­der­tak­ing he also man­aged to pass 6000 tau, be­ing the first to do it. While that was amaz­ing, he man­aged to pass 6100(!) tau as well this month, so the Jug­ger­naut is not stop­ping any time soon.

So far it looks he can­not be stopped, un­less either he is slow­ing down or wind is some­how man­aging to ramp up his speed again.

2. GrimJu­ni­per­55831 (wind) - ee62300:

The le­gend, whose pres­ence here is not that rare but usu­ally not daily, un­for­tu­nately even rarer these days. Of­ten he com­plains about the­or­ies be­ing too act­ive, though he has them all way too high xD He also man­aged to get to the ee60k lead­er­board cap be­fore cus­tom the­or­ies, in­cred­ible!

Him an­noun­cing he’ll re­duce time spent should mean he’ll only be a bit more hu­man I guess^^ This also means he is hav­ing a hard time keep­ing up with the top play­ers for cus­tom the­or­ies and sub­sequently los­ing his #1 place to Gen. So far he must still be close, though it is un­known if he can really chal­lenge Gen nowadays. I’m still hop­ing for an ex­cit­ing battle for the crown!

3. HeadedArt26 (Playspout) - ee61936:

If you ever looked at the re­cord sheet you should know him be­cause he’s lit­er­ally every­where there (still hold­ing him off from T2/​T4 for now, while wind does the same for T1/​T3^^). Also pretty act­ive here for quite a while! Ad­ded fun fact: did ee50000 without T9.

Playspout is the Ling Ling of Ex­po­nen­tial IdleAct­ive with 40 hours a day, so it sur­prises me more that he ac­tu­ally dared to only pass me in the last hour this rank­ings. Okay, I guess his idle phase al­lowed me to keep up but he’s only beaten in CTs by Gen and his power to find bet­ter strategies seems un­rivaled, so one never knows when his next push hap­pens^^

The only ques­tion re­mains: can he make ground on our Top 2?

4. Eld­rail (AfuroZamurai) - ee61904:

Al­ways a bit dif­fi­cult to write about one­self^^ Activ­ity here is more in phases but at least pretty reg­u­larly (so daily), in the game I do like my idle the­or­ies (who could’ve guessed?) and push­ing \(F(t)\). Fa­vor­ite phrase: Time for act­ive the­or­ies I guess^^ (while not do­ing that).

I paid my new mod ex­ist­ence with the third place and totally did­n’t get over­tak­ing by Playspout be­cause he’s the bet­ter player or I can’t play cus­tom the­or­ies as well as oth­ers (cur­rently I should­n’t say this any­more^^).

This does­n’t mean I’ll give up or fo­cus solely on chess as I hope my long term en­dur­ance will al­low me to catch up in the fu­ture. In the mean­time I already feel Black­Seal breath­ing down my neck, so time for act­ive the­or­ies ;)

Not much to change ex­cept I’m work­ing on something, so that might make the list next time!

5. Black­Seal94 (Black­Seal) - ee61513:

The old T6 cham­pion (un­til Playspout came…), who ac­tu­ally climbed the lead­er­board, which is im­press­ive at these heights! Sel­dom seen here but al­ways great to see him up­date his in­sane T6 stat (dis­count­ing Playspout who should­n’t count any­ways)^^ Cus­tom the­or­ies have kind of awoken him to be more act­ive here, which is nice. It also made him more act­ive in the rank­ings, which is not so nice ;)

His speed is pretty amaz­ing and he left An­tharion in the dust so far. He cer­tainly wants more but will he ac­tu­ally get more? I hope not!

The battle with An­tharion is still on and looks like Anth in­tends to keep up. This is fun to fol­low :)

6. An­thari­on1988 (An­tharion) - ee61503:

The ori­ginal le­gend, long­time #1, cre­ator of the tau sim­u­lator and sadly not that act­ive any­more (both in the game and on the server), though we can still see him (and he’s cer­tainly not given up^^) quite reg­u­larly. So far he has still some lead to those be­low him, so no drop ex­pec­ted any time soon. I once wrote: “With cus­tom the­or­ies it might be harder for him to keep up with his re­duced activ­ity. I still hope - and be it just for nos­tal­gic reas­ons - that he picks up the pace again.”. Well, right now he ac­tu­ally closed in on #5 again, so my hopes came true!

7. har­u­maki200 (har­u­maki) - ee61315:

So far with the low­est amount of Dis­cord mes­sages but at least still here^^ Cus­tom the­or­ies re­quired some posts but that was it some­what sadly.

Activ­ity on the server is no where equi­val­ent to activ­ity in­game and this holds true here very well. Con­tinu­ously on the rise, cus­tom the­or­ies proved to be a fur­ther boost. Now it will be hard to pro­gress more but maybe old le­gends will be pulled down soon nev­er­the­less? To elab­or­ate on that: while noth­ing changed re­gard­ing place­ments, the dis­tance to Anth did get smal­ler. The fu­ture looks bright here!

8. (+8) Vin­tage­Sur­fer­56606 (kinger55) - ee61062:

He has dis­covered the main reason to be on the server: the tau bot^^ Else he’s not really par­ti­cip­at­ing but he’s a force on the lead­er­board for sure. Re­cently he has been chal­lenged by Black­Seal and he seems to be los­ing that fight. Will he make a comeback?

I kept that ex­tract from last month in be­cause it is a per­fect ex­ample how cus­tom the­or­ies shook up the rank­ings: not only did he lost that fight, he dropped out of the Top 10. Who­ever man­ages to enter the Top 10 should never be un­der­es­tim­ated but if he can’t im­prove his cus­tom the­ory game be­fore the next ones come, he’ll have a hard time to keep his place on the rank­ings.

I guess I keep that whole se­quence of com­ments: it showed that old forces can pick up the pace again and just cus­tom the­or­ies won’t be enough now that they run out of steam. I won­der what will hap­pen when an­other CT is re­leased^^ -9 -> +8 -> ?? What will it be next month?

9. (+1) Rem­m­oire (Keynez) - ee60986:

Has been seen already but not 100% cer­tain what their name is here on the server. From the us­age of the !tau com­mand it looks like the given name has to be cor­rect, though they have yet to talk to oth­ers than the tau bot since April 2021. Nev­er­the­less they’re cer­tainly a con­stant on the top of the lead­er­board.

In the re­cent times no places changed but the gap to the place above closed, so the rise seems to con­tinue. The trend proved cor­rect and he got the single di­git place­ment!

10. (-2) Adam­H99 (nemesis) - ee60957:

Re­cently found here on the server and no longer an un­known! So far it was fast and steady wins the race - and now he is here in the Top 10, just a month after barely en­ter­ing the Top 20. Also worth a men­tion: he is in the Top 10 for all minigames, get­ting the fi­nal ones dur­ing the last months!

We can watch his ca­reer with great in­terest, won­der­ing if there will be a ceil­ing now or the climb can still con­tinue! News are in: the ceil­ing was hit! Maybe to much ef­fort was in­ves­ted in re­cord hunt­ing for minigames but it feels like for the first time in his Ex­po­nen­tial Idle life he ac­tu­ally lost spots on the lead­er­board. Will this fuel his mo­tiv­a­tion again to come back?

11. Reck­on­Crew (Reck­on­Crew) - ee60843:

They have all their mes­sages on the server from a single day about 11 months ago, which is an achieve­ment in it­self I guess^^

Not much else to say ex­cept they are still where they left off. While this is im­press­ive dur­ing these chan­ging times no pro­gress in re­gards to Top 10 were made while the gap top to the chasers shrank quite a bit. So I ex­pect a drop next rank­ings, which is maybe a pre­dic­tion which won’t age well but at some point I need to be brave^^ I think I should stop do­ing any pre­dic­tions be­cause I’m al­ways wrong… Should I jinx it by pre­dict­ing no change for the next rank­ings?

12. snaweky­badppl [name may change any second] (nubest) - ee60702:

She shot up the ranks and entered the Top 20 not that long ago. Long time mem­ber of this server, with quite a lot of mes­sages, a name to know. Maybe not the founder but ex­cess­ive user of a rather un­usual kind of text emoji: ouo and vari­ations of it. She also likes to call hax and people bad which seems to cor­rel­ate with her or­tho­graphic skills.

This month she won the close race against Snaeky, win­ning their long time con­test for now, which may com­fort her over the break­ing of her apple (which is neither to eat nor with iOS). The race never stops, so time to over­clock the nubest.exe!

I’m still wait­ing for Top 10, no pres­sure though. I guess say­ing act­ive bad (while still do­ing some act­ive) might hurt in that re­gard - even though as the Idle Lord I ap­prove of such a playstyle^^

13. SnaekySnacks (SnaekySnacks) - ee60570:

Had a hard time not to think of sneaky but okay^^ Maybe the most act­ive per­son on the server [cita­tion needed]. Also known for his con­tri­bu­tions to the guide and an­swer­ing ques­tions seem­ingly every­where and everytime^^ Help­ing is in his blood and so he helps nubest with their friendly battle. Due to his work he’s been less act­ive lately and thus can­not catch up. You’re do­ing a great job though!

Nev­er­the­less still keep­ing his place above Slacker. I won­der what will hap­pen to him (and nubest) if a new CT comes along.

14. Un­be­liev­ableSlacker (Slacker) - ee60535:

Prob­ably slack­ing too of­ten (sorry, could­n’t help it) but he was pretty act­ive on the server for a while some time ago. Never give up the hope to see him again - which proved right as he came back with some activ­ity after cus­tom the­or­ies re­leased! Ob­vi­ously that slowed down again but one should never lose hope for a comeback!

While ob­vi­ously not slack­ing enough to fall down much he was still not able to with­stand the at­tack of the duo. Hard times may come in the fu­ture but if he ever stops that slack­ing, who knows what is pos­sible?

15. (+5) Con­vo­lutedEarth28 (?) - ee60529:

Not much to say ex­cept a vague feel­ing I should know who this is but I don’t. Cool name though^^ Maybe we’ll know more at some point in the fu­ture?

Last month had been rough for them. Cus­tom the­or­ies can be harsh but at least they still re­tained a place in the rank­ings and I asked if they can re­cover or face the drop out of the Top 20. The an­swer is clear: the re­cov­ery has star­ted and is close to get­ting back the pre­vi­ous spot. Shows you can still do well while be­ing not on the server!

16. (-1) xelaroc (Alex­Cord) - ee60523:

He is a very act­ive mem­ber of this com­munity here and even more in the game in re­spect to the minigames. An in­sane 500+ mil­lion(!) total stars (over 350 mil­lion of them minigame stars) are un­rivaled and very im­press­ive. Now he also made him­self a name with his own cus­tom the­ory which got ap­proved and ad­ded as of­fi­cial to the game.

Cus­tom the­or­ies boos­ted him so much he jumped im­me­di­ately to rank 15. His activ­ity made me as­sume he’ll rise even more in the fu­ture. So far it has­n’t happened (and due to my tim­ing he’ still short of the prestige he needs to claim his old place) but I’m still look­ing for­ward to more Ex­po­nen­tial Idle with him! The places be­fore him are close, so there can be quite a change in the com­ing month.

17. (+2) spqcey (ran­dom­name) - ee60465:

No idea what the name means but not that ran­dom of a per­son^^ We have an­other minigame mas­ter with a very im­press­ive 1.41e8 minigame stars. Not only that but he’s also pretty act­ive in the realm of col­lect­ing data in sheets like the tau graph­ing sheet and the \(F(t)\) sheet. He’s pretty act­ive on the Dis­cord server and is cer­tainly a wel­come ad­di­tion to the rank­ings!

I said he to learn the pro strat of not to end his grad just be­low the grad mark when in a close group (which could’ve given him po­ten­tially 3 ad­di­tional places last month with prob­ably min­imal ef­fort) but he’ll sur­pass them reg­u­lar­ily dur­ing the com­ing month any­way. Not only did he ba­sic­ally did that jump already last month dur­ing the writ­ing but he passed 2 play­ers already this month. And is­n’t it nice to have +2 rather than -1 next to your name?

18. Fire­burn­er80 (Gull Dew­cat) - ee60448:

His in-game activ­ity seems to mir­ror his server activ­ity: prefer­ably idle. Long time around this spot, maybe he’ll get the fire back and re­claim his old Top 10 spot? Looks harder now as he seems to lose more but maybe the fire will burn again? Okay, that ques­tion seems a bit un­real­istic and should be re­placed by his de­sire to stay in the rank­ings nowadays.

Same as for the surfer: the fire might still burn but not enough to com­pete with the stronger cus­tom the­ory play­ers. In con­trast to the surfer who rode this months wave to get back into the Top 10 Fire­burner stayed sta­tion­ary. I fear for his fu­ture!

19. (-2) Juan­nTitor (JuanT­itor) - ee60424:

On the server it looks like a lot of bot com­mands lately but from time to time he pops up for some other com­ment. You win some, you lose some. He seems to al­tern­ate each month. So one place up for next month? Well, so far it looks like he in­tends to lose more each month, with the next few places mak­ing -3 not that un­real­istic!

Last month 16-18 where a mere ee3 apart, now he’s already at 19 with some gap to the front. Time to fight for his life in the rank­ings!

20. (new) pm­loikjuy­hbn (pm­loikjuy­hbn) - ee60422:

What an ab­om­in­a­tion of a name xD In­act­ive on the server since middle of June 2021, so not much is known about them ex­cept their de­vel­op­ment after the rank­ings star­ted.

Cus­tom the­or­ies said no to their ex­ist­ence in the rank­ings. I still had hope: “Their growth was too min­is­cule to keep up with the faster de­vel­op­ments, so for now they’re out, though their fluc­tu­ations at least in­dic­ate a pos­sib­il­ity of a comeback.” and it was proven right by an­other comeback after cus­tom the­or­ies slowed down. Still un­sure where it will end though as we have quite some the­or­ies to come.

Some enter the list and so some have to leave the list as well. Here is our fallen fel­low from this month:

23. (-14) counix86 (Ar­thurbdn) - ee60310:

Ba­sic­ally not act­ive, ex­cept for a short time when the french glitch happened and cata­pul­ted him to the top. Well, let’s just say his T2 is like a year ahead of its time… Really look­ing for­ward to the point when I get his value on my side save to see how long it took^^

It looked like he’s not act­ive enough any­more to keep up but he ac­tu­ally kept his place after cus­tom the­or­ies came out, which is a test­a­ment to his still on­go­ing mo­tiv­a­tion. If that will be enough? We will see in the next rank­ings. In this case my pos­it­ive look was really off, as he dropped really hard. I won’t ex­pect a comeback (same with pre­vi­ous con­tenders Runder­112 and Up­Artz who are out for good right now) but as I was wrong enough already I won’t rule any­thing out.

An hon­or­able men­tion goes to #

1. (on iOS) Phask (Phask) - ee60807:

Long­time leader on the iOS lead­er­board and ac­tu­ally in the Top 20 over­all if com­bined. Looks like he ac­tu­ally might be pretty close to the Top 10 on An­droid (cur­rently #12)! He’s also on the server, though his act­ive times are some months ago. Also known as the cre­ator of the first Tau data col­lec­tion sheet.

As I’m an An­droid player it is hard to keep track of what he’s do­ing but his con­sist­ency to stay close to the Top 10 over­all means he has­n’t lost his edge, though while he kept the gap, newer An­droid play­ers re­placed the old chal­lengers, which might spell trouble for him. So far it seems he’s los­ing \(F(t)\) very slowly, though who knows if it will stay that way?

As there are two sa­li­ent play­ers this month, you get not one but two more hon­or­able men­tions (please nom­in­ate someone with a reason for fu­ture in­clu­sion of play­ers if you have some­body in mind):

407. Beard­Core19 (Beard­Core19) - ee52184:

First we have a com­pletely new player, who is even far away from the top of the lead­er­board. This is ac­tu­ally no prob­lem though if we look at cus­tom the­or­ies: they need no r9 and it does­n’t mat­ter if you start from ee60k+ or dir­ectly from ee20k. So dur­ing the last month Beard­Core de­cided he wants noth­ing to do with SL be­fore he gets his WSP to the full e100 tau you can cur­rently get from a cus­tom the­ory. And so he ran it and ran it and ran it un­til it took over a day for a bit of pro­gress. Un­for­tu­nately he had to battle with Playspout on an alt for the first per­son to reach e1000 rho on a cus­tom the­ory. This is an up­hill battle seem­ingly no one can win but he man­aged to get e1000 rho on his main save only a day after Playspout, be­com­ing the first to achieve this on a main save! Very im­press­ive and an achieve­ment re­war­ded per­fectly by SL and its mile­stone swap­ping ;)

His an­nounce­ment to fin­ish the pre­vi­ous cus­tom the­ory be­fore start­ing the next might prove too harsh at some point but I look for­ward to the next com­ple­tion!

619. MorsMessorem (MorsMessorem) - ee50081:

Second we have a very old player with an im­press­ive 568 days over­all play­time! But who­ever knows him also knows that this does­n’t mean Mors is ac­tu­ally achiev­ing much in the con­ven­tional ways. In­stead his nick his his pro­gram: En­dgame Pain. This month he fi­nally man­aged to break the ee50000 bar­rier which in it­self is noth­ing new these days but he did it with only 142 stu­dents! To bet­ter un­der­stand that: his cur­rent dσ is 103(!), mean­ing he last did a gradu­ation at ee29400 \(F(t)\) if my math is­n’t wrong. So far no end (and by that I mean gradu­ation) is in sight. May he con­tinue to have fun this way or maybe he can re­lease us from our pain see­ing that^^

Not only that, he’s also known for other side-pro­jects in­clud­ing such drastic re­stric­tions on gradu­at­ing, go­ing for the smal­lest amounts of gradu­ations for (t) tar­gets. He’s show­ing per­fectly how you can play the game dif­fer­ently and every­body can have his own way of fun!

May he re­main with us for a long time!

As it turned out to be quite the un­der­tak­ing to write this month edi­tion, minor changes happened, though noth­ing to ac­tu­ally change the rank­ings this time. Nice!