Rank­ings & News Au­gust 2023

Guide writ­ten by AfuroZamurai. Con­tri­bu­tions from the Amaz­ing Com­munity.

Main Rank­ings Page

Au­gust 2023 #

News #

Not like I was very much in­volved in the com­munity the last month but I still heard of some news. Well, also the secret art of ask­ing was help­ing.

• Cheater cleanup again, yay! Be­cause we can’t have peace of them…
• Playspout is far enough now, that eta no longer rules as the 100% power vari­able: he’s reached the point of y tak­ing over, with my last know­ledge of 62% power to it!
• The race between Snaeky and me, it was about… SL! Yes, it was first to fin­ish Se­quen­tial Lim­its on a main save. Be­fore the race was a thing I was ahead by like sev­eral weeks or so but de­cided to save it up. Then after the start I was a bit be­hind. My only hope: a bet­ter path­ing for end­ing just right. It did come down to hours but in the end Snaeky had to start an­other pub­lic­a­tion, so I got the first e1500 SL com­ple­tion on a main save! Still, con­grats to Snaeky for a hard fight and his com­ple­tion!
• An idle game has more pos­sib­il­it­ies than one might think: of­ten enough we do have people try­ing and the­or­iz­ing about min­imal grad runs. We had Mors with over a hun­dred stu­dents ready when reach­ing ee50k but re­cently there is more and more ef­fort spend to get the best min­imal grad runs done. I won­der what I’ll have to say to that in the fu­ture. Also: who wants to be the crazy per­son to do a max grad game com­ple­tion?
• XLII de­cided at some point T6 > everything. Now he has e1400 T6. Con­grats! But also: okay? That was­n’t the best idea xD
• In sad news: Playspout des­troyed his phone. This is our time! Well, not really be­cause of backup phones and backup saves but still^^
• Also silly sea­son not hap­pen­ing for Ex­po­nen­tial Idle! Enough news all the time, un­less I act­ively start ig­nor­ing everything^^
• I sol­emnly swear I will ig­nore every news the com­ing month again un­til it is time to get into a panic on the last day. After be­ing suc­cess­ful this month, there is al­ways a new one to im­prove (yeah, sure)

Ob­lig­at­ory plea for feed­back: If any­one has ideas, please let me (and/​or the guide team) know. If you have cri­ti­cism do it as well. If you don’t want to end up in any news/​rank­ings out­side the server, then con­tact me so I could either ex­clude or an­onymise you.

Rank­ings #

So after once again avoid­ing the rank­ings in fa­vor of news for a bit (and be­ing ex­tra late any­way), it is fi­nally time for the up­date!

Au­gust 2023 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. HeadedArt26 (Playspout) - ee69760:

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^^). Also pretty act­ive here, do­ing everything ima­gin­able! Ad­ded fun fact: did ee50000 without T9. I won­der if there is any­thing he is­n’t act­ive in^^

Playspout is the Ling Ling of Ex­po­nen­tial IdleAct­ive with 40 hours a day (and more saves than any per­son should have) and still search­ing for new the­ory strats and writ­ing and and and. Hav­ing es­tab­lished a firm lead the only ques­tion to re­main seems: will Playspout lose some mo­tiv­a­tion and al­low someone else to get close? So could you slow down please? There are some chal­lengers but not like really close yet. So no, he is­n’t slow­ing down^^

2. Vin­tage­Sur­fer­56606 (kinger55) - ee69289:

He has dis­covered the main reason to be on the server: the tau bot^^ Well, that joke lost its mean­ing a lot of months ago but it is hard to let go^^ Else he’s not really par­ti­cip­at­ing (un­less I ask for a tau up­date and re­cently not even then…) but he’s a force on the lead­er­board for sure. He cer­tainly figured out CTs and firmly planted him­self in the Top 3 now. Hav­ing dis­tanced every­body else, the ques­tion re­mains: can he do the same for Playspout in the fu­ture?

3. (+1) Eld­rail (AfuroZamurai) - ee69104:

Al­ways a bit dif­fi­cult to write about one­self^^ Activ­ity here is more in phases but at least pretty reg­u­larly (so hope­fully daily), in the game I do like my idle the­or­ies (who could’ve guessed?). Fa­vour­ite phrase: Time for act­ive the­or­ies I guess^^ (while not do­ing that un­til I set my­self a chal­lenge). Also loves chess.

Fi­nally got #1 in the rank­ings a few month ago but without ac­tu­ally ever be­ing #1…! Too bad Playspout showed up again be­fore the cheater ahead of me was re­moved. I guess I’ll have to keep hunt­ing! Note: hunt­ing can be defined broadly and this ab­so­lutely inef­fi­cient phase of idle is cer­tainly just a long-term plot to re­gain my #1 spot for real. Totally.

Well, yeah, about that… I’m back to be­ing the Idle Lord and have found my fun in that. Still try­ing though, just not very hard. At least I’m back at cash­ing in with act­ives some­what reg­u­larly, so with more tau than Gen (oO) maybe I can chal­lenge for higher places again. Like my one place gain. Watch out every­one ;)

4. (-1) Adam­H99 (nemesis) - ee69089:

Found the server some while ago and no longer an un­known! Looks like he is go­ing fast and steady, this time over­tak­ing me. There we have someone on a mis­sion…

So for quite a while now he is con­sist­ent in do­ing hard­core act­ive push­ing and so I just hope he loses mo­tiv­a­tion he con­tin­ues to go strong. Good at minigames! I’m pretty sure he had the num­ber 1 spot for a brief while in­between, so good for him (and time to stop)!

Also whatever EI ster­oids he’s on, I think I’d need them too^^ I mean at some point he’ll have to pay the price of not over­push­ing but that spirit is com­mend­able. Also come back please to Dis­cord and share your secrets… Also is he start­ing to pay the price? Well, I’m cer­tainly still wary.

5. Gen­Er­a­tion­Na­tion (Gen) - ee68973:

While he can­not con­sist­ently keep up the 1000 mes­sages per month, the Jug­ger­naut is not stop­ping any time soon, neither in­game, nor in the server. While he did slow down, he passed 10000 mes­sages!

Maybe not at the ab­so­lute top for CTs (though I think in terms of ef­fi­ciency he ac­tu­ally is or at least very close) and maybe suffered a bit in ori­gin­als but still go­ing strong enough with ac­cel (the mad­man^^) to have more f(t) than one would ex­pect. It is still so weird to see him lower but to be fair: rank­ings have al­ways changed over time. I won­der where he’ll settle down…

6. colinc719 (?) - ee68800:

They were maybe the biggest sur­prise when en­ter­ing the rank­ings, shoot­ing up from some­where I can­not even re­mem­ber dir­ectly into the Top 20 and never look­ing back. We can­not even know more about them be­cause it looks like they are still not on the server. Maybe the fu­ture will give us more (so far not). For now they just entered Top 10 after first dis­ap­pear­ing for a bit from the lead­er­boards com­pletely and made clear Top 10 was just a step on the way. I feel scared…

7. (+3) Reck­on­Crew (Reck­on­Crew) - ee68799:

They have all their mes­sages on the server from a single day about 28 months ago, which is an achieve­ment in it­self I guess^^

Not much else to say ex­cept they are pretty stable, mainly gain­ing a place now and then (and some­times los­ing one). I do like stable play­ers for this rank­ing^^

I should not have said that (well, to be fair I already said that for a while). The reck­on­ing is near! (I’m some­what sorry for the totally in­ten­ded pun)

8. (-1) Fi­nalul­tima (Fi­nalul­tima) - ee68702:

While they showed up a day be­fore the rank­ings they got into the Top 20 in “real” Dis­cord con­ver­sa­tions (after some month of talk­ing with the tau bot!) activ­ity is still al­most neg­li­gible but happy to have them and look­ing for­ward to see­ing more!

Amaz­ing fast pro­gress and now the gap to close is pretty big. Still an im­press­ive achieve­ment get­ting here and after see­ing their dis­tri­bu­tion I have no doubt it is fully de­served! Though oth­ers aren’t here to settle down either…

Looks like maybe this was the height for now.

9. (+2) Up­Artz (?) - ee68698:

Seems to be act­ive on Red­dit but not here, though this is un­clear.

They were already out of the Top 20 and were of­ten on the edge but be­cause of that I’m even more im­pressed by their fight­ing spirit, see­ing the gap clos­ing to ac­tu­ally en­ter­ing the single di­gits! Ap­plause for reach­ing the Top 10! Des­pite Gen ap­pear­ing it is still the Top 10! Still suf­fer­ing from be­ing of by a tiny bit when rank­ings are taken but that makes him even more ready for the next edi­tion.

10. (-2) some gib­ber­ish I won’t even try type­writ­ing[name may change any second] (nubest) - ee68599:

She has been a 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.

Un­for­tu­nately life came in the way and be­sides a pause on the server her lead­er­board place­ment was suf­fer­ing for it. For­tu­nately she is now back! Firmly Top 10, maybe climb­ing. Maybe its the cat emo­jis^^ Or the elab­or­ate strategies which are surely not act­ive be­cause nub only idles, sure.

Looks like the com­pet­i­tion is­n’t mak­ing life easy but never count her off!

11. (-2) Black­Seal94 (Black­Seal) - ee68542:

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 ;)

He was so high on the lad­der and now it’s go­ing down. Can he turn it around?

12. (+1) birrel69 (birrel) - ee68496:

The rival of d4N­f6Bg5 (or rather the in­vol­un­tary rival). While at first fall­ing be­hind, he has long made his move and passed him for a rising spot in the rank­ings. He popped up on the server to an­nounce his entry into the Top 20, only to be over­taken again be­fore the rank­ings was made. For now he’s safely in util­iz­ing the same strat of hav­ing 2 saves. Some­times he shows up and ex­changes some words with his rival, stay­ing com­mit­ted to the strategy of not shar­ing in­form­a­tion, in­stead pre­fer­ring to use what we find to bet­ter climb. Well, its not like any­thing is forced and in the end it de­pends on how you play your save, so on you go!

13. (-1) hot­ab1 (hotab) - ee68480:

I have a vague feel­ing he should­n’t have been in when I first in­cluded him but well, now he’s in for sure. Right now he’s the player with the third highest T4 and a pretty de­cent the­ory dis­tri­bu­tion - but his T5 looks like it could help him get even higher. I’ll be in­ter­ested to see if he can keep up the pace or if push­ing T6 will cost him at some point. Note: al­ways push T6 (un­less you’re XLII). Over­rid­ing note: looks like T6 is­n’t the solu­tion to all prob­lems.

14. In­tel­lec­tu­al­Power­112 (NG­Z001) - ee68399:

Over a year ago he already had an hon­our­able men­tion. I wrote: Let’s hope at some point in the fu­ture he can enter the rank­ings to join his friends on the lead­er­board (XLII already showed the way^^)!

He was far be­hind but with his activ­ity and pas­sion I was­n’t sur­prised to fi­nally see him enter the Top 20! Back then he star­ted to ap­pear a bit more in the server and es­pe­cially for cus­tom the­or­ies. He cer­tainly con­tin­ued this trend. Very im­press­ive minigamer, second to prob­ably none, hav­ing passed 1 bil­lion minigame stars by a fair mar­gin. Equally im­press­ive in cus­tom the­or­ies, second only to Playspout and not by much. Here is one player I can see rise more and more!

15. (+5) d4N­f6Bg5 (d4N­f6Bg5) - ee68274:

He’s been on the server and the rank­ings hunt for a while. A long while ac­tu­ally. Ac­cord­ing to him surely every day he was­n’t in the Top 20 too long.

If you know chess nota­tion you can de­duce from his name he’s a chess player (you can go as far as al­low him his self-pro­claimed ex­pert status given his 2500+ lichess rat­ing^^). As I’m something of a chess player my­self I already like that^^

Be­ing driven by his de­sire to fi­nally reach the rank­ings but hindered by com­pet­i­tion, long times for small gains and not much de­sire to ac­tu­ally cash in on the act­ives, he de­cided to do a first here at the top (at least as far as we know): he split his saves. One of them is go­ing for the long haul and the other - this one - got the the­ory auto­mator run­ning 24/​7 for the short-term gain. Took him long enough but that is ac­tu­ally a some­what high place­ment now. Is the at­tack on birrel hap­pen­ing now?

16. (-1) ad­equateryan (ad­equate ryan) - ee680190:

Entered a few month ago. But who do we wel­come into our ranks? I have no idea as they are seem­ingly on the server but with a whoop­ing 0 mes­sages so far. While I al­ways feel a bit of sad­ness see­ing vet­eran play­ers fall, I do like new play­ers com­ing in, show­ing all is fluid and you can catch up.

Now I won­der if they’ll stay or even rise or maybe even more sur­pris­ingly start to talk on the server! So far only rise and no talk… Or no rise and no talk… Or no talk and fall… This is cov­er­ing every change, so my work here is done.

17. Ara­mak­iSH (?) - ee68173:

An­other rather new entry! And an­other mys­tery per­son. I knew they were already some­what close be­fore stop­ping to up­date f(t) for over 2 months. I guess this is also a way to re­appear! Out­side of this I have no idea about them at all. Maybe they’ll show up some­where (or some­body else knows more). For now it’s just ad­mir­ing the rise and see if it will be a fu­ture prob­lem to write about^^ The fu­ture is here but not like I have any­thing to add…

18. (-2) An­thari­on1988 (An­tharion) - ee68100:

The ori­ginal le­gend, long­time #1, cre­ator of the ori­ginal 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^^) from time to time.

It was a sur­prise but a wel­come one to see him back in the Top 10 at some point and even stay­ing for a bit! Now the com­pet­i­tion sadly got him but no reason to give him up. Go­gogo!!!

I jinxed him when hop­ing for a comeback, can I jinx it the other way by proph­es­iz­ing his fall? No, I can­not… If the trend con­tin­ues, it will be an­other former #1 drop­ping out. But not all hope is lost still!

19. Melv0r (Melv0r) - ee68028:

I have a vague feel­ing he should’ve been already in a month be­fore I in­cluded him, con­sid­er­ing my notes on f(t) but hey, he’s here now! It has been a while since he was seen on the server, with mes­sages dat­ing back to 2021 mak­ing him an old vet­eran but still be­low a hun­dred mes­sages. But what mat­ters for this rank­ing is not activ­ity in the server (though still nice) but activ­ity in the game. And there he fought his way up and up un­til he got into this pres­ti­gi­ous list. Now it’s time to see if he can hold his place! Close shave but for now he stays.

20. (-2) har­u­maki200 (har­u­maki) - ee67853:

So far with some of 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 held true here very well. For a while they had stopped play­ing com­pletely but now grind­ing is back on the menu! Wel­come back! Oth­ers grind as well though, so maybe that will be a short-lived re­appear­ance? Con­sid­er­ing the neg­li­gible gains even do­ing noth­ing was still enough to not fall out but an­other longer break might not be re­cov­er­able any longer.

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

Wait, there is no one? Nice!

An hon­our­able men­tion goes to #

1. (on iOS) neasi_cz (neasi) - ee68414:

A not that new face any­more on the top of the iOS lead­er­board! Hav­ing over­taken Phask and fi­nally get­ting to rank 1 after a long hunt, he’s fast in­creased his lead. He is not that act­ive on the server but not un­known either. Maybe we’ll see him more in the fu­ture? It might be pos­sible we have in him some­body who is ready to chal­lenge the es­tab­lished over­all Top 10 hold by An­droid play­ers, though it is still to early to say that. After reach­ing his all-time high of #12 on the com­bined lead­er­board, he has dropped back a place, keep­ing to that for now. I have to say: I’m root­ing for him!

2. (on iOS) Phask (Phask) - ee67600:

He was the long­time leader on the iOS lead­er­board and ac­tu­ally in the Top 20 over­all if com­bined. For quite some time it looked like he ac­tu­ally might be pretty close to the Top 10 on An­droid be­fore he lost his top spot on iOS and los­ing touch to the com­bined Top 20. Over­all he’s still fall­ing be­hind fur­ther but as iOS is un­der­rep­res­en­ted any­way and I have some nos­tal­gic feel­ings, he’ll stay for now re­gard­less. 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.

And in the end it is of course time for the “real” hon­our­able men­tion (please nom­in­ate someone with a reason for fu­ture in­clu­sion of play­ers if you have some­body in mind) as neasi_cz and Phask are tech­nic­ally in the Top 20 rank­ings (or rep­res­ent iOS and their top of the lead­er­board):

??. ? (Omega) - ee52600:

This might in some way con­sidered to be a shame­less plug but not like he is­n’t de­serving of it any­way^^ There are two parts to this. The first is the gen­eral: only on the server for not even 4 months but already with over 7700 mes­sages (yeah, a bit sad it is­n’t ex­actly 7777 right now but what can you do?) and a lot of ef­fort in­ves­ted to an­swer ques­tions every­where. It can never be over­stated how im­port­ant it is for a com­munity to have these act­ive and help­ful people to keep it run­ning, so thanks to him (and of course to all oth­ers who do)! The other part is my per­sonal one: he has been of help with provid­ing me puzzles for my Sudoku cus­tom the­ory (still Al­pha be­cause a lot of reas­ons but cer­tainly play­able: ht­tps://​raw.git­hubuser­con­tent.com/​AfuroZamurai/​cus­tom-the­or­ies/​dev/​nonof­fi­cial/​Sudok­u_al­pha.js) and be­ing in­volved into im­prov­ing it, which I’m very grate­ful for. May you keep hav­ing fun!

As it turned out to be quite the un­der­tak­ing to write this month edi­tion (be­cause of other com­mit­ments and be­cause it takes some time), I still did­n’t care to see if any­thing changed, so it will be the val­ues of the time today when I looked at them, not when I pub­lished it. Es­pe­cially be­cause cough it might not have been from the end of Au­gust.