Ex­po­nen­tial Idle Guides

Rank­ings & News Janu­ary 2024

Guide writ­ten by AfuroZamurai. Con­tri­bu­tions from the Amaz­ing Com­munity.

Main Rank­ings Page

Janu­ary 2024 #

News #

It has been some time, I know, I know. But hey, here are some news to dis­tract you!

In cus­tom the­ory news:
Find­ing cus­tom the­or­ies be­sides the of­fi­cial ones is no easy thing. Luck­ily we have a doc­u­ment con­tain­ing links and in­form­a­tion about a large num­ber of cus­tom the­or­ies in dif­fer­ent stages of de­vel­op­ment: ht­tps://​docs.google.com/​spread­sheets/​d/​1_VILoIE8qOx­Gi7UD-HiDKH95uKir­G­zL2Ujn­Hva2c­aBo/ \

There might be up­dates about what was ad­ded in the fu­ture but keep­ing track of that might not work out so per­fectly. Just look for your­self for now :)
Just to pro­mote it, here is the the­ory of the month: Lemma Garden.
Go ahead, find it in the sheet and play it!

Thanks to Jo we now have this nice info about dis­tri­bu­tion of play­ers in cer­tain f(t) ranges:
70000: 2
69000: 13
68000: 16
67000: 21
66000: 28
65000: 39
64000: 55
63000: 60
62000: 72
61000: 84
60000: 84
59000: 113
58000: 102
57000: 95
56000: 104
55000: 112

Ac­tu­ally Jo has a lot of data, so there is much po­ten­tial for fur­ther in­form­a­tion. As a teaser here are three facts about Janu­ary:

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; not in this edi­tion but over­all), it is fi­nally time for the up­date!

Janu­ary 2024 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) - ee70512:

If you ever looked at the re­cord sheet you should know him be­cause he’s lit­er­ally on top every­where there (well, ex­cept ap­par­ently 7/​8 of the ori­ginal the­or­ies on main save).

Also pretty act­ive here on the server, 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 is one chal­lenger now and his pace seems a bit slower. So who knows, what will hap­pen?

  1. Vin­tage­Sur­fer­56606 (kinger55) - ee70400:

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?

  1. (+1) Eld­rail (AfuroZamurai) - ee69852:

Al­ways a bit dif­fi­cult to write about one­self^^ Activ­ity here is more in phases but at least pretty reg­u­larly (so hope­fully dailyweekly), 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.

I did get #1 in the rank­ings last year 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. I even man­aged to push f(t) a bit. Watch out every­one ;)

  1. (+1) colinc719 (?) - ee69815:

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…

Hav­ing over­taken me already in-between, I feel it is only a mat­ter of time be­fore Top 3 is their spot.

  1. (+1) Reck­on­Crew (Reck­on­Crew) - ee69774:

They have all their mes­sages on the server from a single day about 33 months ago, which is an achieve­ment in it­self I guess^^

Ac­tu­ally can­not find them any­more, maybe be­cause of the Dis­cord name up­date? Or maybe be­cause Dis­cord some­times does­n’t want to ac­tu­ally search.

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^^

  1. (+4) birrel69 (birrel) - ee69756:

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!

After be­ing on the edge of the Top 10, he has turned on over­drive. Scary stuff, with no end in sight so far.

  1. Gen­Er­a­tion­Na­tion (Gen) - ee69661:

With a heavy hard I have to re­port that the Jug­ger­naut has slowed down and maybe no longer is the Jug­ger­naut. Still pretty strong though^^

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…

  1. d4N­f6Bg5 (d4N­f6Bg5) - ee69614:

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.

After a looong time he has man­aged to com­bine two things: over­tak­ing birrel and do­ing it while en­ter­ing the Top 10. Con­grat­u­la­tions!

Top 10 per­sisted but birrel eludes him ones more. Will he catch up again?

  1. (+4) In­tel­lec­tu­al­Power­112 (NG­Z001) - ee69524:

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, with the Top 10 only the be­gin­ning!

  1. (-1) Up­Artz (?) - ee69468:

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. some gib­ber­ish I won’t even try type­writ­ing[name may change any second] (nubest) - ee69419:

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!

Po­ten­tially her com­pet­it­ors are too act­ive now, though she is still pretty high up. 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. (-9) Adam­H99 (nemesis) - ee69402:

Found the server some while ago and no longer an un­known! Looks like he is go­ing fast and steady, 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 in-between, 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 has not up­dated for quite a while. Oh no… I hope he did­n’t read the strikethrough parts and took them by heart :(

  1. (-1) hot­ab1 (hotab) - ee69270:

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 one player lis­ted on all 8 main save the­or­ies on the re­cord sheet (wow).

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 the­or­ies. Wait, that seems pretty ob­vi­ous.

  1. (+1) Ara­mak­iSH (?) - ee69114:

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…

  1. (-1) Fi­nalul­tima (Fi­nalul­tima) - ee69097:

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. But okay, little activ­ity could mean a burst com­ing later. Or the com­pet­i­tion is too bru­tal.

  1. (new) EdgeOf­Dreams (EdgeOf­Dreams) - ee68933:

An­other new entry! And this time an act­ive Dis­cord user - at least this was some­what true when the last rank­ings came out. Hope­fully this was­n’t it…

A lot of mes­sages were in chan­nels help­ing newer play­ers, so sad to see no mes­sages since Oc­to­ber.

Cur­rently the holder of the T7 main save top spot by a de­cent mar­gin.

  1. ad­equateryan (ad­equate ryan) - ee68928:

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.

  1. (new) Ab­soP­erf (?) - ee68893:

This time I can only say that they hovered near the Top 20 for a long time. Act­ive play with lots of pushes seems to fi­nally be the re­cipe for pro­gress.

There is no server pres­ence, so noth­ing more to say so far.

  1. (new) NeirinD (Neirin) - ee68770:

Third new entry, this is def­in­itely a re­cord. While the lead­er­board name seems to be chan­ging quite of­ten (I know at least three dif­fer­ent ones), they have a server ac­count as well.

Not too much mes­sages but hey, that is still more than 0 of oth­ers!

The fol­low­ing quote de­scribes life here very well: “it’s very slow now”. I hope it is not too slow for an exit next time!

  1. (-2) Melv0r (Melv0r) - ee68741:

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.

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

  1. (-2) jgaumer (jgaumer) - ee68726:

The most re­cent ad­di­tion to the Top 20! It is even someone on the server - with a whoop­ing 3(!) mes­sages dat­ing back to 2021.

It has been a long time since ask­ing for vari­able auto­buy amounts (looks like switch­ing from x25 to x1 or max has helped) but be­sides show­ing up here, I know noth­ing.

Since the start of the year at rank 26 or higher, so no sud­den stel­lar up­rise (though +3 to get here is noth­ing to scoff at). Will that be enough to stay? Yes for now!

Well, that is that. Noth­ing new I know but for now the race is lost. But as the dis­tance is­n’t so great, the chance for a comeback seems still high enough.

  1. (-7) Black­Seal94 (Black­Seal) - ee68575:

Sel­dom seen here but was al­ways great to see him up­date his in­sane T6 stat (good old times…)^^ Cus­tom the­or­ies had kind of awoken him to be more act­ive on the server, which was nice. Nowadays activ­ity is go­ing down all around…

He was so high on the lad­der and now it’s go­ing down. Can he turn it up a gear or was that it?

Un­for­tu­nately an­other one of the old ones has fallen. My hope of an awaken­ing is low be­cause the last up­date has been a while.

  1. (-6) An­thari­on1988 (An­tharion) - ee68349:

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.

The times where he ac­tu­ally got back into the Top 10 are long gone and now the mo­ment an­other former #1 is drop­ping out is get­ting closer. But not all hope is lost still!

I fear hope is lost at some point after all. He fought long but now I think it will be the fi­nal men­tion of him here on this list :(

An hon­our­able men­tion goes to #

  1. (on iOS) neasi_cz (neasi) - ee69408:

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. But still, he did once again reach his all-time high of #12 on the com­bined lead­er­board.

I have to say: I’m root­ing for him!

  1. (on iOS) アケローン川に住む入道坊主 (?) - ee68599:

There is­n’t much I can say ex­cept he has been play­ing catch-up since quite a while un­til fi­nally get­ting on here.

My glor­i­ous Ja­pan­ese skills were enough to read the first part as “Acheron river”. Seems the rest means a (young?) monk liv­ing there, ac­cord­ing to my re­search.

Or I could wait for someone to provide a bet­ter trans­la­tion: Nyūdō monk who lives on the Acheron River (no guar­an­tee for be­ing right).

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 the iOS play­ers are tech­nic­ally in the Top 20 rank­ings (or rep­res­ent the top of the iOS lead­er­board):

I don’t have a player but I guess a shoutout to all who still be­lieved in news hap­pen­ing, so here they are again! Thanks for not los­ing hope!