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 $F(t)$ 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!