It has been quite a while since the last news come out! A lot of stuff to catch up on - here are the high­lights, and boy, are they something be­cause:

We fi­nally have new CT’s!!! That’s right, the long (un­der­state­ment of the year) wait is fi­nally over. In April, Gilles ad­ded Frac­tional In­teg­ra­tion and Fractal Pat­terns into the game for us all, with FP be­ing the new fast­est CT to com­ple­tion, beat­ing EF by a mile (people have already com­pleted it).

These new the­or­ies presen­ted us with the first time in years we had to play the game without hy­per-op­tim­ized strats to work off from. The en­tire com­munity was scram­bling to find new strategies, where is the the­ory sim when you need it?

What’s more, all cus­tom the­or­ies got buffed by 4x, bring­ing the con­ver­sion rate from 0.1 to 0.4 (or 1.6 in EF’s case and 0.3 for FP). This in­stantly boos­ted every­one’s tau after the up­grade, and people who fo­cused more heav­ily on CT’s be­fore, were put ahead of oth­ers. With every­one’s R9 boos­ted, the time dif­fer­ences between people re­duced; the lead­er­board is ripe for new changes.

With these new CT’s came a strange glitch. It was pos­sible (and this happened to many people by ac­ci­dent) to get the 4x CT boost twice! This 16x CT boost ef­fect­ively maxed all CT’s in­stantly and the lead­er­board was filled with cheat­ers, who never de­lib­er­ately cheated?

If that was­n’t enough for you, we have an­other new thing this month: Ex­po­nen­tial Idle sea­sons are start­ing up! Every­one star­ted a new save and is com­pet­ing in a 2 month com­pet­i­tion to get the highest f(t). We’re about halfway through our first sea­son, and every­one is suf­fer­ingen­joy­ing play­ing through the start of the game again no please no more t5

And as for someone who did suf­fer through T5, we have a new ASC world re­cord, by none other than d4N­f6Bg51-0! And, un­be­liev­ably it was done with off­line pro­gress on, mean­ing d4 had to com­pete with a con­sist­ently act­ive save, in real time. Massive con­grat­u­la­tions to him for this amaz­ing achieve­ment!

Not only is d4 break­ing re­cords, he is also de­vel­op­ing new tools for us. He has cre­ated a new the­ory sim, that pro­jects your dis­tri­bu­tions into the fu­ture and shows you ex­actly what to push (it really likes T2 for some reason).

And you’re all caught up on the ma­jor news for the past 8 months.

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.

It’s been a while… let’s see how things have changed! In nine months, the rank­ings can change quite a lot. and with CTs boos­ted, people far be­hind can sud­denly find them­selves ahead. 30k ft has passed by, who came out on top!

First I want to high­light the top 1 play­ers in the 9 month hi­atus, it’s been so long that the top 1 spot has changed hand a couple times (and not just someone steal­ing it from play from a month, more than that). I have 2 play­ers to con­grat­u­late:

• birrel69 (Birrel)

This one is scary, rising up at un­think­able speeds, Birrel man­aged to snatch top 1 from Playspout. He’s turned his sights from d4 to Play, and forced him to cash in on his over­push­ing to keep him at bay. Can any­one stop this jug­ger­naut?

• Fi­nalUl­tima

Well it looks like there is someone who can stop him, and it’s not Play. It’s time to wel­come our new top player (more be­low)

Septem­ber 2024 Top 20 on the lead­er­board, their at the time the list was com­piled and their Dis­cord con­nec­tion (Dis­cord names in brack­ets are not their nick­names!), data col­lec­ted Septem­ber 30th:

1. (+14) Fi­nalul­tima (Fi­nalul­tima) - ee97953:

Wow, they are the highest riser i think any­one has seen on this lead­er­board

While they showed up a day be­fore the rank­ings they got into the Top 20 in “real” Dis­cord con­ver­sa­tions (after some months 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 he has more than closed the gap! An ab­so­lutely in­cred­ible feat mak­ing it all the way up here, it’s so strange to see Play not at the top.

Huge con­grat­u­la­tions Fi­nalul­tima, as our new front run­ner!

2. (+4) birrel69 (birrel) - ee97399:

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, it’s not like any­thing is forced and in the end it de­pends on how you play your save, so on you go! It’s been 9 months since the last up­date, and still, he re­fuses to di­vulge any­thing. His strategies seem to be work­ing though, be­cause he is on fire

After be­ing on the edge of the Top 10, he has turned on over­drive. Scary stuff, with no end in sight so far. He hit num­ber one for a while but has fallen to num­ber 2. Still go­ing strong, will he ever run out of steam?
at some point we gotta take him down from the lead­er­board cause this guy is way too hax

3. (-2) HeadedArt26 (Playspout) - ee97037:

If you ever looked at the re­cord sheet you should know him be­cause he’s lit­er­ally on top every­where there (well, ex­cept ap­par­ently 78/​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?

Well, it looks like he has slowed down. Un­able to keep up, he has fallen to third place. (Al­though, look­ing at the people ahead, can you really blame him?)

4. (-2) Vin­tage­Sur­fer­56606 (kinger55) - ee96523:

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 (no more tau up­dates it seems…) but he’s a force on the lead­er­board for sure. He cer­tainly figured out CTs and firmly planted him­self near the top

He’s still dis­tanced him­self from the rest of the com­pet­i­tion, and run­ning up against Play, it looks like the en­tire lead­er­board has fallen 2 places. Can he do the same for Play?

Well, it looks like he’s los­ing this race. Very slowly…

5. (+4) In­tel­lec­tu­al­Power­112 (NG­Z001) - ee96404:

Over a year ago he already had an hon­our­able men­tion. Afuro 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 we wer­en’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! He’s still on the climb, faster than ever, Wel­come to the Top 5! How much fur­ther can he go?

6. (new) Ei­jaRisen (?) - ee96319:

Wow, a new entry this far up. Just goes to show how long 9 months is.

I’ve never heard of them be­fore, but clearly they had some good CTs to shoot this far up. They seem to be on a steady rise, where they’ll go next, who knows?

7. (+11) Ab­soP­er­fKOR (?) - ee96275:

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.

Rising up 11 ranks, more un­known play­ers tak­ing to the top. Will they stop? Will they keep rising? All I know is +11 is one of the biggest rises that I’ve ever seen here (second only to Fi­nalUl­tima)

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

8. (-4) colinc719 (?) - ee95811:

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.

Just mak­ing it in between last news, It felt like it is only a mat­ter of time be­fore Top 3 is their spot, but the on­slaught of play­ers was too much. Just goes to show how strong the com­pet­i­tion is!

9. (new) It­s­Not­Me109 (?) - 95681:

2nd new per­son on this rank­ing in the top 10. It looks like the lead­er­board is really get­ting dis­rup­ted.

Again, no dis­cord pres­ence, so not much to say.

10. Up­Artz (?) - ee95547:

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!

And it seems they are here to stay. Des­pite the en­tire lead­er­board mov­ing around them, they stayed con­stant in Top 10 (thank god). Looks like this player is here to stay

11. (-6) Reck­on­Crew (Reck­on­Crew) - ee95543:

They have all their mes­sages on the server from a single day about 42 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^^

Well, it looks like he’s been los­ing more than gain­ing, as he falls out of the top 10 for this month (he is lit­er­ally 4 ft be­hind)

12. (new) Hep­haistôs (?) - ee95223:

Wel­come new player num­ber 3.

There’s only so many ways I can in­tro­duce an­other un­known. They’ve been lurk­ing down be­low the rank­ings for a while (searched them up on dis­cord and got an old lb where they were 58th)

13. (new) xtevenx3 (Xteven) - ee95223:

Just as I say that, we have new player num­ber 4.

Wel­come! And fi­nally someone on this dis­cord for once. Though his playstyle is self de­scribed as “full idle” he has still made his way onto the lead­er­board (makes me won­der what happened to every­one else). Re­gard­less, con­grats!

14. (+6) Melv0r (Melv0r) - ee95118:

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! And it looks like he can, rising up to top 6, that’s a strong con­tender if I’ve ever seen one!

15. (-7) d4N­f6Bg5 (d4N­f6Bg5) - ee94630:

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!

Not just con­tent with main lead­er­boards, he is prov­ing to be a force to be reckoned with in sea­sons, tak­ing an early lead! But there’s no such thing as a free lunch, on his main save, his act­ives are lag­ging be­hind, and his rank­ings are tak­ing the hit. Birrel has turned to other things, can d4 keep up this playstyle?

16. (new) drag­me­ho­menow (?) - ee94630:

An­other new player, barely scrap­ing into 16th (he was 17th the day be­fore I col­lec­ted data).

This brings our total up to 5! (That’s quite a lot).

17. (-3) Ara­mak­iSH (?) - ee94531:

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… they’ve fallen to 17th but noth­ing much more.

18. (new) SnaekySnacks (SnaekySnacks) - ee94481:

I write new, but he’s not ex­actly the new­est player here

Had a hard time not to think of sneaky but okay^^ Maybe the most act­ive per­son on the server [cita­tion needed]. Sadly, upon check­ing for cita­tions, this might not be so true any­more. You’re do­ing great though snek! Also known for his con­tri­bu­tions to the guide and an­swer­ing ques­tions seem­ingly every­where and everytime^^ Same goes for his own cus­tom the­ory idea (EF) which got im­ple­men­ted with the help of pea­nut and XLII.

Though he fell out of the top 20 last year, with the dis­rup­tion of the CT buff, this long time player is back in! Maybe top 10 is­n’t so far away after all

An­other thing, Snaeky has not up­dated lb so is not show­ing up as of now, but he did re­quest to be in this one so here he is!

19. (new) Iks2024 (?) - 94392:

This is where I ex­pect to see new play­ers lol. For the sixth and fi­nal time this rank­ing, Wel­come to top 20!

20. (-7) hot­ab1 (hotab) - ee94277:

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.

He seems to be able to keep it up. He’s slip­ping but not quite out yet!

With so many new play­ers en­ter­ing the list, some have to leave the list as well. Here are our fallen fel­lows from this month:

91. (-88) Eld­rail (AfuroZamurai) - ee87536:

Al­ways a bit dif­fi­cult to write about one­self^^ Don’t worry Afuro, I got you, for this fi­nal ap­pear­ance (Changes everything to 3rd per­son). Activ­ity here is more in phases but at least pretty reg­u­larly (so hope­fully dailyweekly), in the game he does like his idle the­or­ies (who could’ve guessed?).

Fa­vour­ite phrase: Time for act­ive the­or­ies I guess^^ (while not do­ing that un­til he sets him­self a chal­lenge). Also loves chess.

He 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. He’ll just 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 the #1 spot for real. Totally.

Well, it looks like the idle took its toll. Our (briefly) #1 spot has fallen, and it looks like this is go­ing to be the last we see of him. Thanks for writ­ing the news, Bye Afuro!

53. (-46) Gen­Er­a­tion­Na­tion (Gen) - ee89953:

With a heavy heart 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…

Well, the CT buff has not been kind to him, and it looks like this Jug­ger­naut is set­tling some­where other than the lead­er­board

31. (-20) some gib­ber­ish I won’t even try type­writ­ing[name may change any second] ax­o­lotl­gud (nubest) - ee93011:

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 it’s the cat emo­jis^^ Or the elab­or­ate strategies which are surely not act­ive be­cause nub only idles, sure.

For now though it looks like her ex­po­nen­tial idle jour­ney is slow­ing. She has left the server (after be­ing tricked into agree­ing to make a ri­dicu­lous CT) and her rank­ing is fall­ing. This may be the last we hear of nub :xexf:

423. (-411 oh god) Adam­H99 (nemesis) - ee69402:

Just when I thought -88 was bad.

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 :(

Sadly, I think he might have. With no up­dates in the past 9 months and no in­ter­ac­tion with the CT buff, it looks like this player is out for good

27. (-11) EdgeOf­Dreams (EdgeOf­Dreams) - ee93549:

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.

In May, he bid us all farewell in the dis­cord. It’s sad to see an­other player go.

49. (-32) ad­equateryan (ad­equate ryan) - ee90204:

Entered a few months ago. But who do we wel­come into our ranks? I have no idea as they are seem­ingly on the server but with a whop­ping 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! (well that did­n’t hap­pen)

So far only rise and no talk… Or no rise and no talk… Or no talk and fall… Or no talk, and a lot of fall, as we bid him farewell from the lead­er­board.

21. (-2) NeirinD (Neirin) - ee94260:

Third new entry, this is def­in­itely a re­cord. (Afuro said, not know­ing what was to come next news) While the lead­er­board name seems to be chan­ging quite of­ten, they have a server ac­count as well.

Not too many 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!
Well it does seem to be too slow for an exit. But at 21 he’s still hold­ing on, so we might see him again!

Now al­though there are a lot of people fall­ing out, I have some in­sider know­ledge that some of them are are not up­dat­ing, so al­though I haven’t in­cluded any­one that did­n’t spe­cific­ally re­quest (cause hid­ing your pro­gress is a valid strategy), they might not all be out!

1. (on iOS) neasi_cz (neasi) - ee96732:

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 too early to say that.

Well, he man­aged to do it, and would be #4 in the An­droid lb. Con­grats on reach­ing top 10! (and rep­res­ent­ing iOS play­ers).

I have to say: I’m root­ing for him!

2. (on iOS) アケローン川に住む入道坊主 (?) - ee94581:

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

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

I’m omit­ting most of the top iOS play­ers be­cause I haven’t seen them any­where be­fore, and the 16x CT glitch is still af­fect­ing the lead­er­board. Please reach out: SirChug­ger, Bobbleben or This is glitch (prob­ably a glitch tho lol) if you are ac­tu­ally at the top so we can wel­come you in

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):

156. Py­thonKo­ala (Py­thon’s Ko­ala) - ee83078:

Fi­nally, an hon­our­able men­tion.

This lead­er­board is all about cel­eb­rat­ing people with the highest f(t), those that have the greatest skill in all parts of the game. But, it takes ages to make up the huge time dif­fer­ences for new people.

But don’t worry, Ex­po­nen­tial Idle sea­sons elim­in­ates these time dif­fer­ences and gives new play­ers a chance to shine, and that new player is Py­thon’s Ko­ala. I’m gonna be hon­est, I’ve never heard of him be­fore this, but he is killing it, out­pa­cing seem­ingly every­one else on his quest to the top.

Top 20, watch out, he may be com­ing for you in the fu­ture!