Next Ordinal Level is at ψ(Ω^(Ω^2+ω))

September 12, 2020 1:06 PM

Ordinal Markup is a game where you increment ordinal numbers a lot. By clicking. Or idling.

How to play (featuring spoilers)
Recommended video (VSauce)
Alternative version with slower ordinals and more literal numbers (and even more clicking)

Previously. ω^Previously. ω^ω^Previously.

posted by polytope subirb enby-of-piano-dice (48 comments total)

I've only glanced at this, but the part of the instructions where you just wait and stuff happens reminds of http://progressquest.com/, which is my favorite to watch idly.
posted by WacoKid at 1:35 PM on September 12, 2020

I'm still recovering from spending a weekend ± infinite eternities as a dark goddess. I'll have to skip this one.
posted by glonous keming at 1:53 PM on September 12, 2020 [1 favorite]

Enough
posted by runehog at 2:08 PM on September 12, 2020 [2 favorites]

This is the first incremental I'd bothered hacking with out of impatience, clicking the "Increase Ordinal" button 200 times/sec (why yes, I do hear fan noise). Most of the hilarity comes from having to drum on any other button in order to get it to react, the Ordinal Points racing past all the while. I doubt I'll dig into it any deeper than this, though; so far I've reached Ordinal Level 9 and there really hasn't been any elaboration in the game mechanic.
posted by ardgedee at 4:24 PM on September 12, 2020

I don't like that when you factor shift it wipes out everything else. Any time spent after the next factor shift is affordable is wasted. There should be some kind of carry-over if you're past the factor shift price, even if that has to be reduced by some percentage for balance reasons.
posted by vibratory manner of working at 4:34 PM on September 12, 2020

Factor shifts seem pointlessly expensive at first, but the speedup is very noticeable once you reach Factor 3, and the cost of re-escalating the autoclickers hurts less.
posted by ardgedee at 4:54 PM on September 12, 2020

Yeah I just got onto shift 4, and it's starting to zip along. I'm interested to see what happens after my base goes to 1
posted by vibratory manner of working at 5:35 PM on September 12, 2020 [1 favorite]

That’s when your entire screen becomes a row of 10^10^10^10 ones.
posted by polytope subirb enby-of-piano-dice at 5:40 PM on September 12, 2020

I'm playing on a phone, and it took me about half an hour before I realized that you need to scroll down in the Factors menu in order to see the option to buy Factor Shifts. Before I saw that, I assumed it was a hidden option that would only be revealed once I made enough progress, so I spent all that time painstakingly mashing the buttons and slowly buying autoclickers. Hopefully I can save someone else from that fate.

Also, maybe I'm just playing this wrong, but I'm finding the Factor Shift phase of the game to be pretty tedious. You obviously want to buy the next Factor Shift at the first opportunity, which means you will never want to buy anything more expensive. Anything cheaper than that is either so cheap that there's no serious harm in buying it, or has effects so negligible that there's no serious harm in not buying it (e.g. another autoclicker when you already have 60). (Yes, it is worth buying 10 autoclickers if you have 60, but then most of those fall into the category of being so cheap you might as well buy them.) Thus, there are no interesting choices to be made, and the whole game devolves into waiting for minutes at a time until you can buy the next thing.
posted by J.K. Seazer at 6:18 PM on September 12, 2020 [1 favorite]

haha shift 5 goes brrrrrrrrr
posted by vibratory manner of working at 6:24 PM on September 12, 2020 [3 favorites]

Any idea why the Ordinal and the Ordinal Points seem to work in base 4(-ish) once they reach exponential values, but the Ordinal Points are interpreted as decimal when copied into the points stash?

For example: The Ordinal Points increment 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, ... until they reach exponential scale, at which time they increment 1.0000e6, 1.0001e6, ... 1.3333e6, 2.0000e7, ... and later the exponent begins incrementing the same way: 3.3332e23, 3.3333e23, 1.0000e30, 1.0001e30, ... When these points are copied to the points stash, they're handled as literal decimal rather than converted from base4 to base10.
posted by ardgedee at 6:51 PM on September 12, 2020

Spoiler:

It has to do with "the base decreases by 1." Each Factor Shift decreases the base.

posted by reventlov at 7:18 PM on September 12, 2020

I realised after a while that clicking beyond the minimum (e.g. not stopping as soon as I had 100 points) would quickly get many more points as the accumulation of points accelerates while they are not "marked up". This happened because I had left this running while doing mandatory corporate training courses in another tab, as switching back to the auto-clicking progression of something I don't really understand and will gain nothing from still felt more useful than listening to the aforementioned training courses.

Maybe that's the real game here? Find some other activity this helps you get through? Could this be the answer to lockdown-induced boredom?
posted by pulposus at 7:28 PM on September 12, 2020

Oh no I broke through to the next phase and now there's actually decisions to be made
posted by vibratory manner of working at 12:06 AM on September 13, 2020

Indeed, I've discovered that what I said above about how "there are no interesting choices to be made, and the whole game devolves into waiting for minutes at a time until you can buy the next thing" was quite naive. Not only are there choices to be made, but the challenge is how to make it so that you only have to wait minutes at a time, as opposed to hours or even days.
posted by J.K. Seazer at 12:18 AM on September 13, 2020

I chose... poorly
posted by vibratory manner of working at 12:48 AM on September 13, 2020

You can unlock "Challenges" if you have enough available resources to "buy" it, but it does not actually cost anything.
posted by reventlov at 1:46 AM on September 13, 2020

> Spoiler:

Okay, I'm embarrassed to have seen that and not made the connection. Mystery resolved.
posted by ardgedee at 7:01 AM on September 13, 2020

I'll take 'Lessons Learned The Hard Way' for 1.000e32, Alex.
A: Don't forget to do this in order to complete a Challenge.
Q: What is, 'Markup the OP?'
posted by Revvy at 10:40 AM on September 13, 2020 [1 favorite]

I like this a lot. The fact that the pre-markup accumulator goes more efficient than after you bank it, and later on the extra factors both reward actual idling, rather than standard clickers, where you can edge out a little bit faster results if you click back frequently to buy stuff absolutely as early as you can. This means I am not sacrificing any game efficiency by going out and getting a burrito, which is exactly what I'm going to do right now.
posted by aubilenon at 11:57 AM on September 13, 2020 [2 favorites]

I've done a huge amount of kitchen prep today and I've occasionally clicked back and forth to this to update. Currently sitting at (4) with 1.26e32 for the cost of my autoclickers and my factors at 7,6,5,3,3,2. This part is a slog - but at least I only need to count to 3....
posted by Nanukthedog at 1:49 PM on September 13, 2020

I left it running all day while I was out. Note to anyone who is at factor shift 6--for whatever reason, it wouldn't let me upgrade on clicking it. I had to use the keyboard shortcut 'S' to progress.
posted by Room 101 at 4:06 PM on September 13, 2020

I've noticed that the game can get so busy auto-clicking certain buttons that the browser doesn't have remaining bandwidth to notice you clicking other buttons.
posted by ardgedee at 4:15 PM on September 13, 2020

Here's a few formulas and rules of thumb for the Tier 1 phase of the game (where you're working with standard numbers):

* To estimate the number of autoclickers you can buy, take the difference between the exponent of your OP and the exponent of the cost of your next autoclicker, and multiply by 3. For example, if you have about 1e33 OP and your next autoclicker costs about 1e30, you can expect to buy about 9 autoclickers. Adjust accordingly if the significand is high; so, if the next autoclicker costs 9e30, you can probably only buy 6 or 7 autoclickers.
* If your base is b, the significand of your pre-markup OP is s, and you need to increase the exponent of your OP k times in order to reach your goal, then the amount of progress you have made, expressed as a proportion out of 1, is s/b^k. (Remember that "increasing your exponent k times" is usually not the same as "increasing your exponent by k".)
* If you've been waiting long enough that you've built up a significant Dynamic Factor (like 2.0), you should only markup in order to make major purchases, like a Factor Shift or a huge speedup (like 50% or more). The reason for this is because it's usually not worth it to markup and lose your progress to speed up something else, unless you're prepared to wait even longer than you already did before (possibly even multiple times longer). For example, if you give up a DF of 2.0, then wait 2000 seconds to build a DF of 5.0, the average contribution from DF is only 3/4 as much compared to not giving up the DF and waiting 2000 seconds to build up to 6.0. Therefore, that choice would only be worthwhile if you made other purchases that increased your speed by 1/3, but once you're at the point where you're seriously considering waiting 2000 seconds, you usually can't make such purchases anymore.
posted by J.K. Seazer at 9:18 PM on September 13, 2020

I had trouble with button clicking, but I found that it always accepts my clicks if I click on the edge of the button, past where the text label ends. No idea why, but finding that saved me a lot of frustration.
posted by vibratory manner of working at 12:28 AM on September 14, 2020

I'm really enjoying the optimization cycle of the Boosts and Challenges. Pick a combination, run through to the part where you're out of things to buy and check the time estimate, go back to 1 if you think you can do better.
posted by vibratory manner of working at 12:30 AM on September 14, 2020 [1 favorite]

I took on Challenge 2 too early and it's going to need two more days to complete. Spent last evening trying to goose it into a better rate before deciding eff it, it's a good opportunity for a breather anyway. I'll poke at it again on Wednesday.
posted by ardgedee at 10:12 AM on September 14, 2020

Far be it from me to discourage you from taking a break, but so far (I just unlocked the "Extend Incrementy" upgrade and I've cleared Challenge 2 twice) I've always been able to find something to do that only required a few hours of waiting at most.
posted by J.K. Seazer at 10:29 AM on September 14, 2020

On a computer, once you've got a button selected after clicking, you can hold enter and let the key autorepeat do the heavy lifting :)
posted by Marticus at 3:47 PM on September 14, 2020 [3 favorites]

That is true, but window.setInterval(clickTheButton,5); is much faster ;)
posted by ardgedee at 4:55 PM on September 14, 2020

It's really only useful after a markup before you get the auto clickers. It's not going to compete with 500,000/s that its doing at around O18.
posted by Marticus at 5:25 PM on September 14, 2020

If you think that's fast, wait until you're approaching Ordinal Level 100
posted by ardgedee at 6:33 PM on September 14, 2020

Any tips on what's I should do next?

I've done 3/3 challege 1, and 2/3 challenge 2. I've got 91 boosters.

The next round of challenge 2 seems to be a few days, and challege 3 is unworkably long still, although I just afford one of the third-row booster upgrades that affect the base. Going for the next Factor Boost is going to take most of a day.

I feel like I'm missing some combination that would make challenge 2 or 3 much faster, but I can't quite find it.
posted by vibratory manner of working at 6:53 PM on September 14, 2020

The third Challenge 2 is infeasible at that stage IIRC. I think either Challenge 3 or 4 should be doable at that point; I don't remember which. Also, make sure to get all the incrementy upgrades you can afford.
posted by J.K. Seazer at 8:28 PM on September 14, 2020

Aha!

I didn't look at challenge 4 after I bounced of 3. 4 looks doable. Thanks!
posted by vibratory manner of working at 8:35 PM on September 14, 2020

Sadly reloading save games seems to break the higher functions. Collapse disappears but retains the settings, so I got stuck in the 4th omega challenge and can't seem to exit.
posted by Marticus at 3:40 PM on September 15, 2020

Yeah it looks like it breaks something when I get my singularity up to around 700.
Managed to unlock everything except the 1000 function upgrade ("Good Luck" ?) and i think my incrementy only maxed out somewhere well below the incrementiverse target.
posted by Marticus at 10:08 PM on September 15, 2020

Wow, how did you get that far, Marticus? I seem to have hit a wall over here. I have 171 boosters (i.e. 18 Factor Boosts) and three manifolds, and I've beaten Challenges 1, 2, and 4 three times, Challenge 3 twice, and Challenge 5 once. I couldn't find any way to complete Challenges 3 and 5 that didn't take multiple days, and Challenges 6 and 7 seem completely infeasible at the moment, so I'm in the middle of earning Factor Boosts. They're still taking me a long time, though; the 19th Factor Boost took about 16 hours, and the 20th is going to take about 24.
posted by J.K. Seazer at 1:36 AM on September 16, 2020

Aha, I just figured out my mistake! Challenge 6 actually is feasible.

Spoiler:

It seems impossible at first glance because, even with the "Dynamic factor decreases 1.00e299 times slower" upgrade, it decreases faster than it increases and quickly pegs to 0. But the key thing to note is in the Dynamic Factor description where it says that "Dynamic Factors reset on markups". So, for about a tenth of a second after you markup, the Dynamic Factor is positive, so you can get OP from Tier 1 automation.

posted by J.K. Seazer at 6:02 PM on September 16, 2020 [1 favorite]

Is there any way to speed up bulk boosting? I'm at a point where I have not enough booster points for incrementy, many options for things to do, but they are all days-long.
posted by ardgedee at 6:31 AM on September 17, 2020

Okay, never mind. I hadn't realized I could refund all the boosters, use them to qualify for Incrementy, and then re-buy all the boosters I had just refunded. [forehead -> desk]
posted by ardgedee at 12:55 PM on September 17, 2020

> I've done 3/3 challege 1, and 2/3 challenge 2. I've got 91 boosters. The next round of challenge 2 seems to be a few days, and challege 3 is unworkably long still, although I just afford one of the third-row booster upgrades that affect the base.

> I think either Challenge 3 or 4 should be doable at that point; I don't remember which.

Y'all are losing me. I've got 105 boosters, 3/3 challenge , 2/3 challenge 2. The next factor boost will take over 6 days. Completing 3/3 challenge 2 will take over a hundred days; any other challenge will take longer than the heat death of the universe. What am I missing for challenge 2 to merely take "a few days"? Or, y'know, make any other decision feasible?
posted by ardgedee at 4:58 PM on September 18, 2020

I don't think you can beat the third Challenge 2 yet, but you should be able to beat Challenge 4. Make sure to use the "base is always 5" upgrade.

Have you gotten any of the incrementy upgrades yet? If you haven't, those upgrades will speed up your Tier 2 automation, so even if right now it looks like it will take 6 days, you might be able to reduce it to a reasonable time.

Also, when you go for factor boosts, are you remembering to get the "Each factor is twice as powerful", "max all autoclicker", "markup autoclicker", "boosters boost", "gain 20 OP per second", and "three free factors" upgrades (and no other upgrades)? I sometimes forget to get the "three free factors" upgrade and get baffled that tasks are taking way too long to complete.
posted by J.K. Seazer at 7:49 PM on September 18, 2020

If you get really stuck, there's a very complete guide available here: https://ordinal-markup.fandom.com/wiki/Guide

It has a table with the order you should do the challenges, and what booster build is best. Spoiler warning, obviously.
posted by vibratory manner of working at 9:36 PM on September 18, 2020

Thanks for the clues, both of you! I thought I had tried all combinations of boosts with challenges 2, 3, and 4, but I missed the one you mention. That was lame of me. I keep incrementy up to date as much as possible, but with everything optimized it's topping out around 7e15. I'll take a look at the guide now. I completed 1/3 of challenge 4 and that got the next boost goal down to 2 days, which still seems long-ish so I'm going to see what I can do about that.
posted by ardgedee at 5:49 AM on September 19, 2020

Did everyone else spend the weekend playing this game? I reached the "Collapse" layer of the game, and I've found that incrementy has become my major limiting resource. Many challenges are infeasible or take much too long without the extended incrementy upgrades, so I spend a significant fraction of my time just waiting to buy them, not even going for a specific factor boost. The official instructions on incrementy are really vague, so I looked it up on the wiki that vibratory manner of working linked above. That was a lot more helpful, if rather spoilery, but it still confused me because it says that the base rate of incrementy production is "game.ord/1e270", but it doesn't explain what "game.ord" is. I looked at the Github project, and it seems that game.ord is simply the numerical value corresponding to your current ordinal.

This explains why incrementy usually grows roughly quadratically. Your incrementy growth rate is proportional to your current ordinal, and your ordinal usually grows at a roughly constant rate, because non-constant factors multiplying Tier 2 automation (in particular, the incrementy multiplier itself) usually grow very slowly. So, if your incrementy growth rate is approximately ct at time t, then your approximate incrementy will be the integral of that, or 0.5*ct^2 (assuming you haven't bought anything or changed your growth rate in the meantime).

This also explains why incrementy tasks become relatively harder later in the game when you have stronger Tier 2 automation. If a task requires reaching an ordinal with value x, then the time required to reach that value is roughly x/c, so increasing Tier 2 automation (that is, increasing c) by a factor of k reduces the time required by a factor of k. However, if a task requires reaching y incrementy, then the time required to reach that value is roughly sqrt(2y/c), so the same increase to c only reduces the time required by a factor of sqrt(k).
posted by J.K. Seazer at 3:05 PM on September 22, 2020 [2 favorites]

One of the things I was able to figure out on my own: early in the middle game, remember to *not* mark any challenge complete until after you check the Incrementy tab, because otherwise you end up flushing away incrementy points that could have bought you some buffs. Now that I'm at the point where incrementy buffs cost 1e21 and up, I doubt that's going to be a problem any more, but it definitely helped when I was grinding the first couple challenges.
posted by ardgedee at 4:53 PM on September 22, 2020

I did my first collapse a day or two ago and am almost done with my second. That first sluggish milestone upgrade is super timesaving.
posted by bassooner at 11:18 AM on September 25, 2020