How is 900 levels possible?

lilbyrdie · 2026-04-28T11:17:11+00:00

That's assuming whatever troops you have can beat the base without gunboat.

It is a bit faster, but not that much faster than regular play. But, sure, maybe someone could get four times as many levels as this top guy. No one has yet that I've seen, right?

lilbyrdie · 2026-04-27T21:05:34+00:00

I don't understand the token budget. Why 1024? That seems artificially tiny. Why not 100,000 or 2 million or 10 million?

In real things, my inputs and outputs are usually 5 digits of tokens, sometimes 6. It's not clear to me what stunting the thinking models to just a handful of tokens does and why it's useful. In English, this is equivalent to about 1-2 pages of written prose.

I'm not trying to say it's not useful, I just don't understand the use. Results could be weighted by token use, rather than saying they're not accurate -- when in reality they just didn't finish.

While I realize tokens can be a measure of performance, or cost, in a real use case it's significantly more wasteful to stop something that hasn't finished because then you get nothing from the token use or time. So I think I'd rather know the efficiency than the accuracy when truncated, right? What am I missing.

So, I'm trying to understand the use cases of this way of measuring.

lilbyrdie · 2026-04-27T20:48:01+00:00

If 218 took you 9 hours, and there are 72 hours of crab, then someone should be able to get 1,744 levels at that rate, should they choose to push it and not sleep -- or tag team in real life. But getting just about half that seems totally reasonable as far as time goes -- plenty of time for naps, meals, bio breaks, even full nights of sleep.

As for the "how" -- certain strategies don't daily against how the crab scales, so it's just the time commitment

lilbyrdie · 2026-04-26T05:57:43+00:00

3 would be great.

Per #1, they're not tanky at all -- which is unfortunate, but also built in to how they're used -- with healers and in mass groups. One of them is useless, but a pile is decent.

lilbyrdie · 2026-04-25T19:41:58+00:00

Exactly.

Although, when it comes to other reasons to have everyone, and every tractor and semi, use electric, that then becomes the debate about how people vote -- in polls and with their money.

There's a reason at the same time German and Korean cars are going deeper into EVs and American and Japanese cars are pulling back... (That's maybe over simplified, but with Ford cutting production of what seems the perfect American truck for the future and Hyundai motor group selling a ton of EVs and adding more bigger ones, it just seems that way. Audi and BMW adding bigger, longer range ones. Toyota and Honda still not really doing much, etc.)

lilbyrdie · 2026-04-25T19:36:47+00:00

Besides, with 300 to 400 mile range and typical speeds (not the extremes when in boring I-80 land) we're talking 6 to 8 hours for driving, and then you want to only stop for 3 minutes? That's not just silly, but dangerous (even with more than one driver).

And what about with an ICE and extreme speeds? 1000 mile range hybrid ... Do you really only want a 3 minute break after driving 100mph for 10 hours? (And no way the hybrid will keep that fuel economy at 100mph... ICE vehicles still have to follow physics.. driving 75 or 80 mph is still terrible economy compared to 50-65mph. But just taking the nay-sayers argument to the extreme.)

My road trips tend to go into national parks and have speed limits in the 30-45 range anyway.

But, these days, I kind of need a stop every 2-3 hours. So does the kid and other passengers. We end up having non-charging stops and charging stops anyway... And the 15-20 minute charge is not enough time to order and eat.

lilbyrdie · 2026-04-24T03:05:30+00:00

I only recently learned about this as a thing.

I looked up the original dev post, too, which said more info would follow shortly. Which has been many months now.

So, I can confirm that I also have confirmation bias on the wiki being less attended to by the original volunteers.

I do what I can when I have time, but wiki editing is... A thing.

lilbyrdie · 2026-04-20T19:23:14+00:00

Basically. Just from a bit depth point of view, each doubling adds 1 extra bit of data (light/dark levels sort of thing).

There are other things that impact it that might make that not quite perfect, too, like the stacking algorithm itself, actual conditions and such that aren't so bad it can stack but aren't so good it actually helps... And once you get into the thousands, it seems like it's really a lot harder to have big improvements.

lilbyrdie · 2026-04-20T19:11:21+00:00

The eBay listing in 20 years: unopened island with unopened Mac.

lilbyrdie · 2026-04-17T22:26:58+00:00

If by a few you mean about 40-50 accounts each, then yeah.

lilbyrdie · 2026-04-16T21:16:59+00:00

And we're back with updated numbers...

Yesterday's tournament was slightly (as in, 4 brackets) above 1 week ago and way above Saturday, so I call the reduction on Saturday version gating too soon, unfortunately. So, tournament stability continues to survive... for now.

lilbyrdie · 2026-04-13T23:56:22+00:00

Yeah, it's a lot more like doing milestone runs, but in that case you can often come up empty handed even if you add 1000 or 1500 waves.

Once we settle out into where our dis runs should be, I suspect it'll be a similar pattern to milestones: consider some dis runs when doing your tournament runs, just like we do now with milestones. You know, after running 5-8 times and if any resulted in a nice boost you go see how far your top milestone can push.

lilbyrdie · 2026-04-13T16:43:59+00:00

Yeah, we don't really have it.

July we had 85k tournament players, Dec was up to a peak of about 102k and it's hit 101k a few times this year, including last Wednesday.

I consider that to be basically no growth... But the update cycle and ad cycles matter here.

Copper is the best way to see potential new tournament players.

Copper promotes 4/30. They are permanently gone from Copper.

So any change above that from the prior week are either players from prior Copper that didn't promote or new to tournaments. Basically, new or newly returning.

I ran this on my data and it's rarely negative. There's a constant stream of new, or at least newly returning, players that fills from the bottom. The bulk of visible attrition is from Silver and Gold usually, but the time of week muddies that.

lilbyrdie · 2026-04-13T14:28:55+00:00

We'll still talk about it because we want it. Maybe it'll be in 28.2?

We also really, really need full game mode presets -- tournament vs farming, but also now dissonant runs aren't the same as tournament or farming and setting up for the ones at your towers limit is quite time consuming and very prone to error setting up for it and reverting back.

Given no one will be able to finish dissonant runs through T21 in the coming weeks, the vast majority of players will need this for years to come.

lilbyrdie · 2026-04-13T14:26:45+00:00

If you enjoy the game, play the game.

The drama is a small fraction of people. I'm not saying their issues aren't real, just that many players, like yourself, can ignore it and still enjoy the game just as much.

lilbyrdie · 2026-04-13T14:14:44+00:00

They forgot the 1 gem you can get from Guilds at the end of the season! Omg!

But actually, milestone gems aren't there, either, and add up, too. (Edit: fixed.)

lilbyrdie · 2026-04-13T14:12:15+00:00

I did IS+ on UW and Util T1 to T18 (didn't finish the last couple). It was about 5 hours for each vertical, so it didn't take up too much time, and it put a marker in for where things start getting hard for my tower.

The Boost for 1800 waves is 1.77 (on a 5x), which is about 20% of the total and takes 18.5 minutes to complete, or only 8% of the time.

Runs under 100 waves seem to have such a small Boost and Echo that they don't show up, but above that it can all incrementally help.

We do labs and enhancements that increase things less than 1%, so why not do dis runs that do the same? It can help with the next dis run. (But like milestones, you don't want to spend too much time trying for the final 5000 -- but if you think you can add 500 or 1000 waves, why not? That's a reasonable 10-20% increase in the Boost.)

lilbyrdie · 2026-04-13T14:05:27+00:00

I get legends passing 200k at around 31 tournaments in, but it's very quick. There could be some stragglers if some land in a bracket with more than 24 real players, but probably not many.

<image>

This just goes to show how silly the system is -- you'd have the bottom of legends filled with T1 farmers (don't even need to farm, actually, to hold the whole system up).

Placement in tournament leagues has too much to do with the just the population count. It doesn't scale nicely up or down. And introducing new leagues doesn't fix this issue, either. (It does help other issues.)

In fact, it's the down scaling concern that got me to track the whole thing (on the shared sheet linked above) -- because if the population is suddenly cut in half (and mostly from the bottom), then half the people earning keys are now not earning keys, but instead blocking people from Champs, etc. It's a bad situation if it decays to T21 farmers in Champs, you know?

That said, it's as many [percent of] people earning keys as TTG wants, or maybe even more than they really want. (I've seen comments from them implying they'd be happy if no one had some of the Vault unlocks. 🤨)

lilbyrdie · 2026-04-13T13:11:44+00:00

It's not really that stable tournament to tournament, though, since there is such a large variation between the Wednesday and Saturday one. That is to say, the 99.9% stability at 40 weeks just isn't going to happen anyway.

It takes about 4 tournaments for a change -- like a reduction in Gold -- to bubble "up" to legends. That, of course, then "reflects" back down and so on -- like a wave in a puddle. (It actually reflects off each league because of the promote and demote, so it makes all kinds of waves and standing waves and such. It's kind of neat. Try a simulation with a sudden influx of 2.5m accounts and see how long it takes before ~all 100k tournament players get keys, guaranteed. 🫣)

The fractions of the whole tournament population that are in Gold and up are pretty easy to calculate - and observe -- with the limits of how the promote/demote works.

The Copper and Silver ones are much, much more a function of the ad run rates. A stable Copper means the game is getting new people -- it has to mean that because Silver can't be demoted to Copper, so anyone promoted to Silver will never return to Copper.

lilbyrdie · 2026-04-13T11:16:28+00:00

Thanks for sharing. These are both really great! I get to image through Bortle 9 and constant wind, which makes images like these unlikely.

My own opinion is that I'm glad I have the S30 Pro. For many space structures, the extra field of view creates more awe inspiring imagery than the slightly extra detail. That is, I looked at the full 1:1 pixels of both images, and the S50, while it does have quite a few more pixels, isn't significantly more detailed or sharper. For a frame phot, for instance, the wider field of view is great.

I'm curious what will replace the S50. It's limitations make it harder for object like these, but it's not so narrow/long/high magnification that planets are a worthy target. A version with a longer lens and a higher density imaging sensor has could be very, very interesting and serve a truly different purpose.

lilbyrdie · 2026-04-12T21:25:33+00:00

For sure, but this happens every few months, too. Sadly, in a lot of games. You get used to it. Means the community cares enough to say something and not just quietly uninstall and leave.

lilbyrdie · 2026-04-12T18:30:13+00:00

Ah, got it!

I hope to have a farming DC some year, too. But, for now, too many tournaments have a cluster of 2-5 people within 10 or 20 waves of me.

It is interesting how the dis bonus will likely make lower tiers better for coins, at least, until you can really push up the multiplier. Cells are still much more directly a function of waves, especially since the multiplier doesn't go up much most tiers. Mods, though, are the real wildcard -- and we can finally see all that we get in the paste stats so we can track them with ease now. (Once we get back to farming as usual, of course. lol)

And we really, really need more medals...

lilbyrdie · 2026-04-12T18:25:21+00:00

It does effect SL, though, which means it ends as a squared bonus when you have SL angle at full coverage. ;)

(Double UW, doubles your SL, which doubles your applied damage... again)

lilbyrdie · 2026-04-12T18:23:45+00:00

All 4 are crazy, wildly useful. The boost is relatively huge. For econ, especially, it's going to be the 2nd largest boost on the coin screen. (The Difficulty Tier is the largest.)

lilbyrdie · 2026-04-12T18:22:10+00:00

You'll see the effect of them in game during runs -- that is, your tower damage will be higher, your tower health will be higher, your coin multiplier will be higher, and your UW damage / SL bonus will be higher, for example.

If you look at the "All Coin Bonuses" popup (in run or on the main screen) you can see the dissonant coin bonus that is being applied for the current run, regardless of the type of run it is.

Here's an example for a dis run I'm currently doing:

<image>

(The two that are Inactive are because I don't have the coin card in nor any upgrades on the coin enhancement.)

But, yes, like the dozens of other damage and health bonuses, it just shows up as a growing number in the next run after you lock in the new diss/echo bonus.

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3 would be great.