Ex­po­nen­tial Idle Guides

Rank­ings & News May 2023

Guide writ­ten by AfuroZamurai. Con­tri­bu­tions from the Amaz­ing Com­munity.

Main Rank­ings Page

May 2023 #

News #

You come for up­dates on cus­tom the­or­ies? Let me en­lighten you: noth­ing new… Or is there ac­tu­ally something?

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!

May 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) - ee68826:

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 Gen still try again or will Playspout lose some mo­tiv­a­tion and al­low someone else to get close? So could you slow down please? The an­swer is: yes and no. Gen is try­ing but not show­ing, Playspout has­n’t lost mo­tiv­a­tion or slowed down, in­stead play­ing for the long game (and slip­ping by get­ting his up­dated score here, so no longer shadow #1).

  1. Adam­H99 (nemesis) - ee68612:

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! Too bad for him Playspout just pos­ted his score again but I doubt this will de­ter him. I’m pretty sure he had the num­ber 1 spot for a brief while in­between, so good for him!

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.

  1. Vin­tage­Sur­fer­56606 (kinger55) - ee68600:

He has dis­covered the main reason to be on the server: the tau bot^^ Well, that joke lost its mean­ing a few months ago but it is hard to let go^^ Else he’s not really par­ti­cip­at­ing (un­less I ask for a tau up­date) but he’s a force on the lead­er­board for sure. He cer­tainly figured out CTs and firmly planted him­self in the Top 5 un­til Adam showed up. If I had to bet I’d say he’ll get at least Top 3 one day! Not that any­one above would want to give ground though but that is not ne­ces­sary if he keeps push­ing harder. And there we go! He’s up here and re­gard­less of the cour­tesy of Gen not up­dat­ing and me not really push­ing harder it is an in­cred­ible achieve­ment! I have to add: he has def­in­itely over­taken me in any ima­gin­able way and the ques­tion re­mains: can he do the same in the fu­ture for the ones ahead? I would­n’t say no to that.

  1. Eld­rail (AfuroZamurai) - ee68304:

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 but without ac­tu­ally ever be­ing #1…! Too bad Playspout showed up again be­fore the cheater 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.

  1. Black­Seal94 (Black­Seal) - ee68278:

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 had turned on CT over­drive but as the new CTs lose their power he’s back to catch­ing up. Looks like he is firmly settled into 5th place (well, with a grain of salt be­ing Gen) after kind of los­ing the battle against his ad­versar­ies. I’ll give him good chances to over­take me though.

  1. (+1) Fi­nalul­tima (Fi­nalul­tima) - ee68223:

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 per­sever­ance is pay­ing off and they are creep­ing ever closer.

  1. (+1) colinc719 (?) - ee68168:

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 stay­ing after not dis­ap­pear­ing this month.

  1. (-2) some gib­ber­ish I won’t even try type­writ­ing[name may change any second] (nubest) - ee68135:

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! And what a state­ment to get back into the Top 10 and even climb­ing and 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!

  1. Up­Artz (?) - ee67891:

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!

  1. Reck­on­Crew (Reck­on­Crew) - ee67879:

They have all their mes­sages on the server from a single day about 25 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^^

He did give me some work by switch­ing places but at least he re­mains mainly in the same rank­ings group (which is now ir­rel­ev­ant but whatever)^^ And back to the Top 10 as well!

  1. (+2) An­thari­on1988 (An­tharion) - ee67664:

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!!!

Look­ing good! Him gain­ing places is giv­ing me joy!

  1. (+3) ad­equateryan (ad­equate ryan) - ee67600:

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 rise…

  1. (-2) TRE­DEC42 (XLII) - ee67538:

I don’t even know where to start but he’s do­ing amaz­ing in­game and out of the game! Rising more and more thanks to his CT prowess (in ab­so­lute val­ues cur­rently #2), ori­ginal the­ory push­ing, the newly reached in­sane 1e9 stars and lots of push­ing. To add to that he’s a minigame re­cord hunter (hav­ing passed 1 bil­lion minigame stars), sim pro­gram­mer, CT bal­an­cer, helper and very act­ive on the server!

I was really happy to see him enter the Top 10 for a rank­ing and not only for a short time! I heard he’s ready to cash in and start the hunt, so my ex­pect­a­tions are high^^ I should not have said that, now I jinxed it. Or maybe he’s just tak­ing his time^^ We’ll see…

  1. (+2) har­u­maki200 (har­u­maki) - ee67533:

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!

  1. (+4) birrel69 (birrel) - ee67487:

The rival of d4N­f6Bg5 (or rather the in­vol­un­tary rival). While fall­ing be­hind, he now made his move and passed him for a first time entry into the Top 20! He popped up on the server to an­nounce his entry into the Top 20 in Decem­ber, 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!

  1. (+2) Melv0r (Melv0r) - ee67407:

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!

  1. (new) hot­ab1 (hotab) - ee67401:

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 second 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.

  1. (new) In­tel­lec­tu­al­Power­112 (NG­Z001) - ee67382:

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’m not 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!

  1. (new) d4N­f6Bg5 (d4N­f6Bg5) - ee67208:

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 here 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. This can work but for now he dropped out un­til his cash-in will hap­pen. With the power of act­ive the­or­ies and ac­cel I ex­pect him to be back. The comeback took longer than ex­pec­ted but here he is. I can’t help but say: birrel69 is still quite a bit ahead ;)

  1. (new) Juan­nTitor (JuanT­itor) - ee67176:

On the server it looks like a lot of bot com­mands lately but from time to time he pops up for some other com­ment.

For quite a while he’s fight­ing really hard for his place in the rank­ing and has been out and back again. His comebacks must be a re­cord, right?

Oh no, Top 20 streak is over! Time for a comeback then? Yes, it was comeback time!

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

  1. (-4) SnaekySnacks (SnaekySnacks) - ee67174:

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^^ Due to his work he’s been less act­ive lately (which seems still pretty act­ive to me). You’re do­ing a great job though! Same goes for his own cus­tom the­ory idea (EF) which got im­ple­men­ted with the help of pea­nut and XLII.

Des­pite all this dis­trac­tions he was still con­sist­ently in the rank­ings! Now I’m even look­ing for­ward to him en­ter­ing the Top 10 for the first time (in my rank­ings, in between he already reached it). Okay, so close but yet so far… Don’t drop :( Too late… And with other things hap­pen­ing, he fi­nally fell out… No worry, you’re still on of the greats and maybe he’ll be back!

  1. (-10) spqcey (ran­dom­name) - ee67124:

No idea what the name means but not that ran­dom of a per­son^^ We have an­other minigame mas­ter with a very im­press­ive 2.95e8 minigame stars. Not only that but he’s also pretty act­ive in the realm of col­lect­ing data in sheets like the the­ory strats, vari­able power or (sadly in­act­ive for now) the tau graph­ing sheet and the \(F(t)\) sheet. He’s pretty act­ive on the Dis­cord server and a very im­press­ive cus­tom the­ory mas­ter.

When Top 10? Not this month… That aged poorly for this in­stance. What happened? About no activ­ity means an un­ex­pec­ted drop out of the Top 20. We’ll see if he’ll start to be act­ive again, which would mean I’d see him get back.

  1. (-10) Gen­Er­a­tion­Na­tion (Gen) - ee67017:

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. Don’t be de­ceived by his stag­nant \(F(t)\), he’s ac­tu­ally very close to Playspout!

Maybe not at the ab­so­lute top for CTs (though I think in terms of ef­fi­ciency he ac­tu­ally is or at least very close) but still go­ing strong enough with ac­cel (the mad­man^^) to keep closer to Playspout than he should. If this will be enough to get back his #1 can be doubted though he will try it. I also won­der when he’ll be up­dat­ing his score (and sim­il­arly dread­ing it be­cause it will be high). Will a drop out of the Top 20 bring him to up­date? The an­swer is a clear “no”. It is weird to have one of the top play­ers be not even in the Top 20 any­more be­cause of miss­ing up­dates, but what can you do? It is im­press­ive enough that it took him from Oc­to­ber 2022 (when he reached this score as #1) un­til now, 7 months later, to fall out of the Top 20. While it makes me look a place bet­ter, I can­not avoid hop­ing for him to really take part again and up­date his score to re­appear at the top of the lead­er­board.

  1. (-6) Fire­burn­er80 (Gull Dew­cat) - ee66809:

His in-game activ­ity seems to mir­ror his server activ­ity: prefer­ably idle (though he is an old vet­eran who was some­what act­ive back in the days). He did idled out of the rank­ings be­fore but already showed the fire for a comeback. And he did it again! I won­der when I’ll have to look up who had the most comebacks, though I won­der if he’ll stay for longer this time. Not ne­ces­sary to look for now^^ Maybe ne­ces­sary now, es­pe­cially with JuanT­itor back again. Not go­ing to do that now and keep­ing this as a po­ten­tial re­minder, I can for­get again. Well, if he’ll make an­other comeback it might trig­ger me to ac­tu­ally count :)

An hon­our­able men­tion goes to #

  1. (on iOS) neasi_cz (neasi) - ee67600:

A not not that new face any­more on the top of the iOS lead­er­board! Over­tak­ing Phask and fi­nally get­ting to rank 1 after a long hunt, turn­ing to work­ing on in­creas­ing the dif­fer­ence. 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. For now he climbed to #13 on the com­bined lead­er­board, which sees him get­ting closer!

  1. (on iOS) Phask (Phask) - ee67185:

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 but lately he fell pretty hard, even los­ing the #1 spot for iOS. He’s ac­tu­ally still in it though, still be­ing at #19 in the com­bined lead­er­board (or rather #20 if we count neasi_cz) which earns him the con­tin­ued men­tion! 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 (be happy for 2 men­tions be­cause last month was missed):

  1. gAlexLee (Dusk) - ee50001:

The man, the myth, the le­gend! A long over­due men­tion, which was in large part at­trib­uted to an in­sane pro­ject (which had to be fin­ished be­fore writ­ing this) I already men­tioned in the March news: reach­ing ee50000 f(t) without ever us­ing T5 and not even us­ing any cus­tom the­or­ies due to not com­plet­ing T9. While this is alone is already im­press­ive and note­worthy, Alex is a long time mem­ber of the server and has pro­grammed sev­eral bots still run­ning there. If you ever want to won­der about why the highest score is the chal­lenge score: Alex has already man­aged to get some stu­pidly high (and ob­vi­ously out of any nor­mally achiev­able) num­bers, achieved by us­ing beta tools, which put any cheater to shame (and even Baldy and his beta save). Re­cently Alex also took charge of the Prob­ab­il­ity The­ory, so he’s in about any­thing pos­sible!

  1. propfeds (propfeds) - ee63000:

Over 10000 mes­sages in the server in about 9 month show an ad­mir­able love for the game and com­munity. Con­sid­er­ing the start time, the score looks also pretty im­press­ive to me. But of course this is not what mat­ters for an hon­our­able men­tion. For quite some time propfeds has tackled his latest own cus­tom the­ory(after fin­ish­ing an­other one, cod­ing a draw­ing tool and hav­ing an­other the­ory in pro­gress) and not for any theme but for the Riemann Zeta Func­tion (which as far as my am­a­teur­ish eyes can tell) is a really dif­fi­cult task. Cur­rently it seems like it is at least play­able! Not only that, he is so in­ves­ted into cus­tom the­or­ies, that he took ser­i­ous ef­fort to keep cus­tom the­or­ies alive by cre­at­ing the CT fest­ival event and writ­ing about them a lot. Lately this in­cluded a Red­dit ad­vert­ise­ment post for the un­of­fi­cial CT lead­er­board. This is the spirit the game needs to keep the love and en­gage­ment alive!

A fi­nal note: there is one player, who popped up this month on the lead­er­board and right in the Top 20. As they were nowhere to be seen be­fore and so far an­onym­ous, this seems at least a bit sus­pi­cious. Be­fore it is not veri­fied I won’t in­clude them here, though I won’t be ac­cus­ing them either be­cause you never know - maybe they just wer­en’t con­nec­ted be­fore. Some more blatantly ob­vi­ous ones (re­gard­less of there in­tent) in the Top 3 with their 74000 save (which can­not be reached yet) are as usu­ally ex­cluded from the list.

As it turned out to be quite the un­der­tak­ing to write this month edi­tion (what an un­der­state­ment after over 2 months), I man­aged to get one ac­cel round through to take back my place from Seal!