Advent Incremental
December 6, 2022 9:39 PM   Subscribe

Advent Incremental is an advent calendar style incremental game by The Paper Pilot with new layers opening up each day leading up to Christmas.
posted by juv3nal (140 comments total) 11 users marked this as a favorite
 
OH NOOOO
posted by cortex at 9:42 PM on December 6, 2022 [7 favorites]


OH NOOOO
posted by Merus at 9:45 PM on December 6, 2022


...yeah, I'm not smart enough to do this, sigh. Looks like it's cool if you are, though.
posted by jenfullmoon at 10:34 PM on December 6, 2022 [1 favorite]


It appears to have a frustrating bug in Firefox where the trees/saplings count doesn't update.
posted by Merus at 10:39 PM on December 6, 2022 [9 favorites]


Hm, possibly that's why clicking on anything after opening the first box did nothing for me? Except I'm on Chrome on this computer, so... ???
posted by jenfullmoon at 10:55 PM on December 6, 2022


For what it's worth, I just restarted in an incognito window and after opening the first box I was able to click on the tree image that's revealed to open up the first section where there are things you can click to cut & plant trees. Do you maybe have some kind of javascript blocking going on?
posted by juv3nal at 11:01 PM on December 6, 2022


wait, is this part of the game too?
posted by not_on_display at 11:12 PM on December 6, 2022


I've been able to get up to the second part so far. Your tree cutting will pretty quickly outstrip your tree planting, so you may as well accept it if you're the kind of person who is going to let an idle game run in the background. (And yeah, it's very Javascript heavy, and you click on the icons in the calendar to open up that branch of gameplay. Also, it looks like they fixed the bug and I can see my trees and saplings update.)
posted by Merus at 12:04 AM on December 7, 2022


I'm not seeing the trees and saplings update on my end. I have a lot of blockers though. (That's the internet in 2022, sometimes sites just mysteriously break because you have to have so many blockers installed to avoid getting overwhelmed with ads, annoyances or your browser getting pwned. I have blockers for ads, crypto miners, image download preventers, Facebook tracking bugs, paywall overlays and cookie nags. TERRIFIC.)
posted by JHarris at 12:45 AM on December 7, 2022


I got up to day 4, which is a reset mechanic, and yeah, it breaks again. If I open the console I can see it's constantly pumping out errors, so I'm pretty sure it's a bug. (My tracker blockers say everything's clean and they're not seeing anything.)
posted by Merus at 12:53 AM on December 7, 2022 [1 favorite]


And it's not very usable on a phone. Which is probably for the best.
posted by How much is that froggie in the window at 1:04 AM on December 7, 2022 [1 favorite]


This is one of those LOGarithmic games isn't it
posted by pianissimo at 1:16 AM on December 7, 2022 [7 favorites]


I'm still having issues with the sapling/tree count not updating and the problem seems to be that when the auto planting/cutting are balanced to +0.0 per second each, the interface stops trying to update them - even if the production per second changes or manual production alters the numbers. It works ok if i get the auto-production unbalanced, reload, and make sure it stays unbalanced.
posted by polytope subirb enby-of-piano-dice at 5:25 AM on December 7, 2022 [1 favorite]


Yeah, it's buggy, but a cool idea. The innovation of having a new game to play each day (Wordle) has the advent calendar as a precedent.
posted by bitslayer at 5:33 AM on December 7, 2022


>It appears to have a frustrating bug in Firefox where the trees/saplings count doesn't update.
I'm having the same bug in chrome
posted by mrgoldenbrown at 5:41 AM on December 7, 2022


Same bug in Safari. Can't plant trees. I guess Xmas is cancelled this year.

Happy New Year everyone!
posted by SoberHighland at 5:48 AM on December 7, 2022 [1 favorite]


It appears to have a frustrating bug in Firefox where the trees/saplings count doesn't update.

Refreshing seemed to fix it for me.
(Edit, ah no, the bug reoccurs if production is balanced again, as noted up thread)
posted by Just this guy, y'know at 6:13 AM on December 7, 2022 [1 favorite]


I had to unblock the analytics script from "plausible.io" (just turned off ublock origin as that was the single blocked item) and that fixed the sapling & tree counts not showing. Dunno about later in the game.
posted by the antecedent of that pronoun at 7:27 AM on December 7, 2022


nah as others observed it still breaks after a bit.
posted by the antecedent of that pronoun at 7:40 AM on December 7, 2022 [3 favorites]


The equilibrium bug is definitely a thing, and it breaks the game in weird ways, yeah. As you progress it gets easier to not accidentally make automated cutting and planting even out perfectly, and so it stops being a weird everpresent issue, but since day 4 involves a prestige reset mechanic you're going back to zero again so it shows up again.

The good news is it doesn't seem to materially impact gameplay itself; you don't actually need to be swapping screens a bunch so you can just not worry about it for the most part, and refresh when you need to. But yeah, fight every perfectionist urge in your (my) body and don't quite level things out.
posted by cortex at 7:49 AM on December 7, 2022 [1 favorite]


What's Expand Forest do? Is it not useful until later? Will the UI show when forest size is the limiting factor?
posted by the antecedent of that pronoun at 8:14 AM on December 7, 2022


What's Expand Forest do? Is it not useful until later? Will the UI show when forest size is the limiting factor?

Expanding the forest increases the number of trees you have in "reserve" in case you are cutting down more trees than you plant. It allows you to have your have your average to exceed your equilibrium for a longer period of time before you have to manually plant more trees.
posted by parliboy at 8:21 AM on December 7, 2022


And in the near term, yeah, it's not all that useful; you're likely to get a lot more out of any 1000 logs or so as investment in automated cutting and planting than in expanding the forest.
posted by cortex at 8:22 AM on December 7, 2022


yeah, running into all the same problems over here. this is a great idea and emphatically my jam, but this is probably a better outcome for my social life.
posted by ZaphodB at 12:57 PM on December 7, 2022


Well, I've smelted a small military-industrial complex worth of metal ingots and I'm now caught up to day 7. Curious to see what tomorrow brings!
posted by cortex at 2:04 PM on December 7, 2022 [1 favorite]


Let's all stop for a second to thank them for offline progress.

Also OH NOOOOO
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 2:18 PM on December 7, 2022


On my iPad, I'm blocked from day 2; it shows the same options as day 1. This probably is helpful for my time management, though.
posted by Pronoiac at 2:46 PM on December 7, 2022


Welp since this morning I caught up to current day and it made me pause the game so now I have to pay attention to my real life again womp womp. It's been working ok on my phone (android/chrome) and any time it's gone weird just reloading the page fixes everything.
posted by phunniemee at 4:39 PM on December 7, 2022


> phunniemee: "Welp since this morning I caught up to current day and it made me pause the game so now I have to pay attention to my real life again womp womp."

FYI, catching up to and completing the current day will automatically put the game on pause... but you can go into options and unpause if you want. However, without knowing if the next day is gonna force a prestige or not nor what will carry over into the next prestige, I cannot tell if it's actually beneficial to unpause and make some numbers go up.
posted by mhum at 6:27 PM on December 7, 2022


Didn't know options was a thing! Thanks!

Someday they're going to make Clickers Anonymous and my crying family will beg me through tears to go and I will simply and steadfastly refuse.
posted by phunniemee at 7:02 PM on December 7, 2022 [2 favorites]


> I got up to day 4, which is a reset mechanic
> since day 4 involves a prestige reset mechanic

Wow. That's frustrating. I'm setting this down. Again. For real this time.


> What's Expand Forest do? Is it not useful until later? Will the UI show when forest size is the limiting factor?

It will mention it, yes, if cutting and planting aren't the bottlenecks.


> Someday they're going to make Clickers Anonymous

You could put an x on the calendar for each day you don't play, and try to not break the streak.
posted by Pronoiac at 2:50 AM on December 8, 2022 [2 favorites]


Ages ago I sketched out a design for a clicker game that starts you out as a rat in a skinner box with a lever to press for food.
posted by Just this guy, y'know at 3:27 AM on December 8, 2022


I've given up for now, but didn't find the reset too frustrating. It gets a lot quicker each time you do it (I just wish I didn't have to do it quite so often...stupid elves)
posted by pianissimo at 5:01 AM on December 8, 2022


You could put an x on the calendar for each day you don't play, and try to not break the streak.

lol get a load of this clown. Good luck trying to prestige linear time, my dude.
posted by phunniemee at 5:24 AM on December 8, 2022 [2 favorites]


OK what if you could recruit other folks who are ALSO not playing idle games, and add their ×es to yours?
posted by the antecedent of that pronoun at 6:23 AM on December 8, 2022 [2 favorites]


Wow. That's frustrating. I'm setting this down. Again. For real this time.

Oh, man, like: that's a reasonable and probably healthy response, but also prestige is such a central mechanic to idle design at this point that as someone with this particular sickness I'd be more annoyed and offended if the game didn't do that. Trading increasingly abbreviated repetition of the initial bits (because automation and scaling factors make it far less effortful and time-consuming) for a higher exponent on various growth curves is basically the engine that drives these terrible cars.
posted by cortex at 6:40 AM on December 8, 2022 [3 favorites]


Can you get logs to over +1k/s without coal and ash? How can you get to 10 coal and 5,000 ash without having 1k/s logs?
posted by ob1quixote at 7:57 AM on December 8, 2022


It's a clicker. The answer to how do I, or what should I, or what is best to...none of it matters. Just mash every button you can until the next button is available to mash. That's all. That's it. That's the big secret.

Clickers are fun for me because of the creativity of the what comes next piece, the storytelling (for lack of a better term). The gameplay is you just mash buttons. None of it matters.
posted by phunniemee at 8:05 AM on December 8, 2022 [2 favorites]


Can you get logs to over +1k/s without coal and ash? How can you get to 10 coal and 5,000 ash without having 1k/s logs?

It's worth noting that you don't need to be producing 1k/s logs to burn a thousand logs per second. You can let a surplus accumulate and then let a fire burn that surplus down to zero and accumulate some coal and ash that way. Rinse and repeat as needed.
posted by cortex at 8:19 AM on December 8, 2022 [1 favorite]


That's was what occurred to me immediately after posting, of course. It also seems like maybe fractional burns can happen? Because even with logs hovering under 100 the ash is ticking up onesy-twosy and coal creeps up as well.
posted by ob1quixote at 8:26 AM on December 8, 2022


You just know that there's gonna be a big burn-it-all-down prestige on the 23rd.
posted by saturday_morning at 9:58 AM on December 8, 2022 [3 favorites]


I am working on hiring elves but moving from trees to coal seems to be broken. I can refresh and pick one, but clicking on the other one doesn't work at all. Firefox.
posted by soelo at 12:00 PM on December 8, 2022


If you have a multitouch touchscreen, you can press multiple buttons at once. This is super useful if you're (say) both planting and cutting trees. It made short work of today's since it was short and fully manual...
posted by the antecedent of that pronoun at 12:33 PM on December 8, 2022 [1 favorite]


Oh man, wanted to love this so much. But the javascript errors are making this unplayable... my developer eyes weep when I look at the console. Oh well. I didn't need the extra distraction anyway, god knows I have enough already.
posted by cgg at 2:01 PM on December 8, 2022 [1 favorite]


I like this conceptually and I'm finding my browser copes a lot better with the site on desktop in widescreen with not too many of the tabs open at once, but what's really making me frustrated with this game is its problems with use of space. The decision to make the days self-contained means that you can only see the stockpile and gather rate of a resource in its own tab, but the automation prestiges mean that there's no reason besides resource trackers to have a tab open once it's fully automated. These semi-redundant tabs still take up the entire height of the screen and a third of its width, making navigation already cumbersome with only a third of the game unlocked. The game's convention of all information and flavour text pertaining to what a button does being contained within the button makes the more intricate buttons (elf training, bonfires, etc.) needlessly difficult to read.

I'm committed enough to continue with this but I'm dreading where it's going to go. I hope one of the days soon will unlock a central dashboard for resource counters and still-relevant manual production buttons.
posted by polytope subirb enby-of-piano-dice at 3:03 PM on December 8, 2022 [1 favorite]


what's really making me frustrated with this game is its problems with use of space

Yeah, as someone who hasn't run into the javascript errors others have been seeing this is the thing that bugs me the most.

Unrelated, it wasn't until today's layer unlocked that I realized I finished the previous day's layer without even buying the "efficient drills" upgrade. weird.
posted by juv3nal at 4:14 PM on December 8, 2022


The day four upgrades drastically minimize and then fully automate tree production
posted by Jacen at 7:23 PM on December 8, 2022


Y'all. Y'all. There are hotkeys.
c: Press the "Cut trees" button.
p: Press the "Plant trees" button.
...and many more, which can be found in the About button in the top right corner.
posted by ourobouros at 7:23 PM on December 8, 2022 [2 favorites]


Absolutely indispensable when you're doing cloth, which as far as I can tell doesn't yet have automation.

I liked the concept of today's phase, oil, and how there was a balance between coal, metal and drill speed that kept changing as your well went deeper and you bought new upgrades. Probably my favourite of the phases so far.
posted by Merus at 7:52 PM on December 8, 2022 [1 favorite]


ob1quixote: “Can you get logs to over +1k/s without coal and ash? How can you get to 10 coal and 5,000 ash without having 1k/s logs?”
For the record, what I did wrong was never reopen the foundation tab after training an elf. If you, y'know, don't do that, it's much easier.
posted by ob1quixote at 8:02 PM on December 8, 2022 [1 favorite]


Yeah, for the elf resets, I think the strategy is to pick up the auto-planter elf first, then the other two wood elves (chopper is certainly useful, but you'll find that in the coal phase forest size becomes far more pressing a concern), then the coal planter ones. You still need to go through the foundation phase but not being bottlenecked by paying for planters will mean you do advance a lot faster. When you have a few elves, you can get logs to 1k before you finish the foundation, which means you can use coal to boost yourself early; it's still worth finishing the foundation, though, as the bonus is very useful for coal phase.

And then once you have enough elves, you get to skip foundation phase entirely.
posted by Merus at 11:30 PM on December 8, 2022


It's only after racking up a few million barrels of oil from a massive borehole and balancing the quadrillions of tons of coal that's being burnt to extract whilst perpetually trying to plant more trees to keep up with the voracious cutters that I realise that maybe the industrialised commercialisation of christmas might be really quite bad.
posted by Just this guy, y'know at 1:53 AM on December 9, 2022 [7 favorites]


So I did some digging on the game's Discord, and I've come to an understanding of why the game seems like it's a little unpolished: they're apparently building it in real time. Day 10 doesn't exist yet.

It looks like they're only now investigating the errors a lot of us found on day 1.
posted by Merus at 2:41 AM on December 9, 2022 [3 favorites]


Y'all. Y'all. There are hotkeys.
Oh thank Rudolph. Now... imagine if the lengthy essays in tiny text on each button saw fit to include that information too.
posted by polytope subirb enby-of-piano-dice at 5:12 AM on December 9, 2022 [1 favorite]


If you are feeling bottlenecked by the rate at which you can smelt ingots .. umm .. there's a button right there that apparently does in bulk instantly. I am not sure if it's a bug, but I overlooked it for a long long time.
posted by the antecedent of that pronoun at 3:20 PM on December 9, 2022 [4 favorites]


Started a couple days ago and am now caught up. That first day 1-3 reset is rough, but judicious elf choices made all the rest of the resets pretty manageable. I really should have been using the sheep hot keys. Cloth felt the most annoying of the days.
posted by 3j0hn at 4:52 PM on December 9, 2022 [2 favorites]


I find myself a little annoyed that if you finish a day, you're done for the day. 12 hours of not earning coal?! I could have sandbagged plastic and be working towards my 12th elf!
posted by ob1quixote at 9:22 AM on December 10, 2022


I find myself a little annoyed that if you finish a day, you're done for the day. 12 hours of not earning coal?! I could have sandbagged plastic and be working towards my 12th elf!

You can unpause the game in the Options menu!
posted by saturday_morning at 10:19 AM on December 10, 2022 [2 favorites]


Yay! 12th Elf acquired!
posted by ob1quixote at 11:30 AM on December 10, 2022


Tw'elf
posted by Just this guy, y'know at 7:14 AM on December 11, 2022 [2 favorites]


I enjoyed playing this for the three days since it was posted here on Mefi, despite all the display bugs. Reloading the browser page always fixed them. But yesterday they broke the tabbing functionality, so that you can't open more than one "day" at a time, which of course is needed when you need to watch numbers on two different sections. This was confirmed on on at least two (very) different computing platforms.

Then today it seems the tabbing might be working again, although it seems to be tied to screen size, blah.

I hit a wall at day 5 or 6, I forget what. Frustrating! But I'm still slogging away ...
posted by intermod at 3:32 PM on December 11, 2022


Is it just me or is there no obvious way to level up the elves for today's task?
posted by pianissimo at 5:42 PM on December 11, 2022


It's not just you. I've been clicking the available buttons while keeping an eye on their experience levels and... nope. 0.0 experience points. Maybe this part of the game didn't get built in time?
posted by polytope subirb enby-of-piano-dice at 6:22 PM on December 11, 2022


They didn't click fast enough or train their elves to automate code!
posted by pianissimo at 7:32 PM on December 11, 2022


I had a look on the discord again. The game is broken, and their cunning strategy to lay out tracks just in front of the speeding train has reached its most likely outcome: they ran out of track. They don't know how to fix this bug.
posted by Merus at 7:53 PM on December 11, 2022 [5 favorites]


I just peeked on their discord and I think they're saying they'll be releasing the 12th and 13th together on the 13th.
We'll see if they manage it I guess.
posted by juv3nal at 12:19 AM on December 12, 2022


I like this game because it's turning out just like real Christmas: plans for a month of elaborate whimsical fun getting crushed by harsh logistical reality
posted by saturday_morning at 6:34 AM on December 12, 2022 [5 favorites]


Wait a minute... they're just making the game as they go? Bold move.
posted by mhum at 11:02 AM on December 12, 2022 [1 favorite]


Hmm...finished Day 12 (elf level-ups), but the game doesn't seem to be recognizing it. New bug?

If they were going to build it this way, I think they would have benefited from having a few easy outs planned. For instance, instead of rushing to fix Day 12, they just could have released a placeholder day like, "Mrs. Claus baked cookies for the whole workshop! Gain multiplied by 5 for the next 5 minutes," to buy some time. Not sure how much longer they'll be able to push this rickety contraption along.
posted by ourobouros at 5:55 AM on December 13, 2022 [3 favorites]


My elves managed to graduate from school, but the Dec 13 update is reading as NYI.
posted by saturday_morning at 8:29 AM on December 13, 2022 [1 favorite]


Has anyone built the 4th school in the Management tab? I've built 3 and seem to have all the required materials for the 4th but it's still showing it as grayed out.

Also, be aware that there are two things called Mining Drill, one in the Oil tab and one in the Metal tab. It doesn't really matter until once you start training elves and realize that there are two different elves giving bonuses to two different Mining Drills.
posted by mhum at 10:44 AM on December 13, 2022


> mhum: "Has anyone built the 4th school in the Management tab?"

Just checked out the Discord and it seems they haven't implemented those yet so they're just leaving the box grayed out for now.
posted by mhum at 11:18 AM on December 13, 2022


Oh lol, they just updated to allow purchasing the 4th school. This is quite an interesting experience playing a game while they're literally rolling out core game features.
posted by mhum at 1:50 PM on December 13, 2022 [1 favorite]


NGU Idle was like that for a long time
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 3:31 PM on December 13, 2022


Unfortunately buying peppermint has caused a bunch of crashes
posted by Just this guy, y'know at 3:35 PM on December 13, 2022 [1 favorite]


I was able to level the elves to 3 to complete Dec 12th, then when I tried to continue after that it locked up.
posted by juv3nal at 6:39 PM on December 13, 2022


Unfortunately buying peppermint has caused a bunch of crashes

I read this but assumed this was some candy level that I hadn't unlocked yet. I missed that Peppermint was the name of the 13th elf (available after some 4th level elf upgrades). And now when I try to reload the game, it just hangs. So don't do that. Note also that during some of the elf levelling up that other areas reset; one elf will silently reset all your dyes to 0, another makes the workshop active again. Read all the milestones carefully. And don't buy Peppermint.
posted by Superilla at 8:58 PM on December 13, 2022 [1 favorite]


Too late!

Well, perhaps Peppermint will --
Wow, Coal Drills now cost 0.26 metal ingots.
-- perhaps Peppermint will be unbroken in a few updates' time.
OK, I seem to have gotten through that bottleneck (and got ten times the Coal Drills than before), but that was quite a ride. Don't develop on the production branch, kids.
posted by polytope subirb enby-of-piano-dice at 9:28 PM on December 13, 2022 [1 favorite]


buying peppermint has caused a bunch of crashes

well, fuck. more fool me for not reading before leaving my own previous comment here.
posted by juv3nal at 12:00 AM on December 14, 2022


Does Peppermint show up in level 12 or back in 4?
posted by soelo at 9:11 AM on December 14, 2022


Does Peppermint show up in level 12 or back in 4?

Both. Peppermint starts showing up in the Level 12 school before you've even bought them back in Level 4. As soon as you buy them in Level 4 -- boom. Chaos, crashes, glitches, the end of all things. Sic transit gloria mundi.
posted by ourobouros at 10:01 AM on December 14, 2022


I'm very mad about Peppermint if you can't tell
posted by ourobouros at 10:02 AM on December 14, 2022


My computer had a little crisis when I bought Peppermint but I waited it out and gave lots of positive reinforcement and then it woke up and is behaving itself again.
posted by saturday_morning at 12:24 PM on December 14, 2022


I bought Peppermint this morning, it made everything cranky but eventually started working again. Workshop 400, bought school #5 and was well on the way to getting all my elves upgraded to their 5th level. Haven't touched the game since then since I've been working, but just went to take a look and now everything seems to be in a toilet. The whole page keeps crashing, never mind the other complications.

I joined discord for the first time in my life last night just so I could go have a look at what people are talking about on this thing, and it would appear the head game maker and all their game maker friends all have real jobs, where they work for a living not building this game, which is frankly just rude of them.
posted by phunniemee at 2:24 PM on December 14, 2022 [4 favorites]


Yeah you can wait out the peppermint thing, but then some of the stuff you unlock with school 5 will just break the game as far as I can tell. Even if it didn't do that, one of the level 5 elf unlocks is straight up worse (makes the workshop foundation % purchase more expensive).
posted by juv3nal at 4:24 PM on December 14, 2022 [1 favorite]


Even if it didn't do that, one of the level 5 elf unlocks is straight up worse (makes the workshop foundation % purchase more expensive)

I kept an eye on that one just as it unlocked; it does actually make them a lot cheaper.
posted by Merus at 3:49 AM on December 15, 2022


Ok, they finally did a smart thing and just let Day 13 be an extension of Day 12 instead of trying to release a whole bunch of new content. And Peppermint seems to have been wrangled.
posted by ourobouros at 4:07 AM on December 15, 2022 [2 favorites]


No autosave between days anymore 🚨
posted by phunniemee at 5:37 AM on December 15, 2022 [1 favorite]


There is an autosave toggle in the settings - not saying it works, but it is worth checking!
posted by soelo at 6:09 AM on December 15, 2022


Oh this seems to be running far smoother.
posted by Just this guy, y'know at 6:45 AM on December 15, 2022


W buys foundation pieces! (And much faster than clicking)
Even if the foundation tab is closed and out of sight.
posted by Just this guy, y'know at 7:20 AM on December 15, 2022


There is an autosave toggle in the settings - not saying it works, but it is worth checking!

Not anymore, that's what I'm saying.
posted by phunniemee at 7:26 AM on December 15, 2022


My computer fan has been running so much more quietly since Days 15 and 16 haven't appeared. Never has such a broken game grabbed my attention so tightly.
posted by BuddhaInABucket at 10:53 AM on December 16, 2022 [2 favorites]


wake up babe
dec 15 content just dropped
posted by saturday_morning at 6:58 AM on December 19, 2022 [1 favorite]


OH NOOOO
posted by ourobouros at 7:00 AM on December 19, 2022 [1 favorite]


Nice to have the missing resources highlighted no, but red on grey is not easy to read.
posted by soelo at 8:08 AM on December 19, 2022


Okay, does anyone have any advice on dyes? They seem to need a vaaaast number of logs and I feel like I’m missing something.
posted by exceptinsects at 10:36 AM on December 19, 2022


Never mind, I figured it out!!
posted by exceptinsects at 10:40 AM on December 19, 2022


Somehow my ingot production of woefully insufficient for upgrading elf schools. It's been days and I still don't have enough ingots for a 4th school!
posted by Bibliogeek at 11:26 AM on December 19, 2022


Do you have the auto-smelt turned on? I found that made a big difference.
posted by exceptinsects at 1:55 PM on December 19, 2022


If auto-smelt isn't going fast enough, try clicking the big gray button to manually smelt your excess ore. I didn't realize at first that I could do that, and it helped me catch up on my ingot needs.
posted by ourobouros at 2:18 PM on December 19, 2022


Definitely have auto-smelt on and occasionally manually smelting some, I just seem to be out of balance with smelting some how. I'm producing +679, 68,599/s (limited by smelting speed) which seems like it is probably a couple of orders of magnitude lower than it should be at this stage.

And now I feel like there are so many multipliers and such that I've lost track of that there is probably some dumb/simple thing that I've forgotten to upgrade that is hobbling me. Or I was so focused on oil production for a while that I neglected smelting.

I really hope they introduce a more condensed dashboard at some point so I can see all my relevant numbers without juggling a bunch of side-scrolling panes.
posted by Bibliogeek at 3:26 PM on December 19, 2022


A recent update made it so that collapsing all the panes puts the important numbers on the collapsed pane, although I think a dashboard would be an improvement.

There is a point where auto-smelting becomes more efficient than manually smelting. I haven't found any good reason to invest heavily into plastics, yet, above the amount required to complete previous days. Oil is throttled by your metal output, and the current content boundary is throttled ultimately by oil.
posted by Merus at 6:26 PM on December 19, 2022


Some things just take a (relatively) long time, but also one thing I'd check is if you have been conservative about buying max on some kind of producer because of its consumption of some other resource, by the time the game offers you an autobuyer for that producer, it is probably okay to let it max out.
posted by juv3nal at 6:27 PM on December 19, 2022


And now I feel like there are so many multipliers and such that I've lost track of that there is probably some dumb/simple thing that I've forgotten to upgrade that is hobbling me.

Oh yeah also the game will open up new upgrades in previously maxed out panels from time to time, so it's worth checking everything once in a while, and especially if you feel stuck.
posted by juv3nal at 6:30 PM on December 19, 2022


I haven't found any good reason to invest heavily into plastics, yet, above the amount required to complete previous days Plastics become important when you need to buy it's upgrades that boost the box and paper autobuys which help bring your Logs up into the Order of Magnitude necessary to get all the dyes for decorating.
posted by 3j0hn at 7:40 PM on December 19, 2022


Yes, look at the oil panel, some of those items will help with your smelting.
posted by exceptinsects at 10:33 PM on December 19, 2022


Oil wise, it's good to sometimes shut your extractors off because a bunch of things multiply by depth, and turning the extractors off for a few minutes can get you extremely good increases in drill depth.
posted by Just this guy, y'know at 3:46 AM on December 20, 2022


Whoof. Finally made it. I think I did forget the oil smelting existed, and missed the auto-smelter bonus on the oil burner and as such was under invested in them. I finally got the fifth school built, so hopefully I am in a better position going forward.
posted by Bibliogeek at 11:56 AM on December 20, 2022


The hotkeys added for dyes and letters were a significant help when it came to ribboning.
posted by Just this guy, y'know at 1:52 PM on December 20, 2022 [1 favorite]


My wood production on its own didn't keep up with today's demand, if you're in the same boat then try manually cutting logs.
posted by phunniemee at 7:52 AM on December 21, 2022 [2 favorites]


Finally caught up! It feels nice to be no longer languishing days behind!
posted by Bibliogeek at 2:38 PM on December 21, 2022


OMG. I have been playing this in the background and letting things run overnight to try and catch up. I finally catch up and no it tells me Dec 18 is "Not Ready". Does that mean the game isn't ready or I don't have something done to qualify to open day 18? All pervious days are complete.... I'm letting everything keep running in the background to stock up.

The only thing I can see that isn't "complete" is I have 2 elves (Carol and Tinsel) still working to get to level 5.... Is that what is keep me from opening day 18? If yes, maybe I'll prong for a classroom to increase XP gain, but if not, I'd rather keep the resources and let them run overnight.
posted by CoffeeHikeNapWine at 4:35 PM on December 21, 2022


The game isn't finished being built yet.

Warning about running it overnight, auto save is disabled once you've reached the end goal for the day.
posted by phunniemee at 4:37 PM on December 21, 2022 [1 favorite]


> CoffeeHikeNapWine: "Does that mean the game isn't ready or I don't have something done to qualify to open day 18? All pervious days are complete.... I'm letting everything keep running in the background to stock up."

From what I can tell, once you complete the most recent day that they've implemented in the game (for me right now, it's the Toys day for Dec. 17), the game is basically stuck until they implement the subsequent day. The way I think of it it is that offline progress is allowed to complete a day, but by disabling auto-saves after you've completed a day, they're not letting you bank up progress to get a head start on the next day. Probably a good choice given their... errr... unconventional development scheme of coding up the game at the same time that people are playing it. You can check if you're in this state just by going to the most recent day you've completed and seeing if it says "Toys Complete".
posted by mhum at 9:20 AM on December 22, 2022


Thank you, both! I will practice my patience and wait for Day 18 to unlock.
posted by CoffeeHikeNapWine at 10:31 AM on December 22, 2022


OMG, you guys. Day 18 just opened!
posted by CoffeeHikeNapWine at 11:53 AM on December 22, 2022 [1 favorite]


I am stuck on making ribbon number 6 because my oil levels are not going up fast enough, which delays my blue dye, which delays my purple dye. I need 10 million and have just over 9 million purple, but I've been stocking up on purple for 2 days. Am I wasting oil somewhere? My oil burner and smelters are using 0 oil. I have everything on auto buy except coal drills. I have all 18 elves at level 5.
posted by soelo at 12:32 PM on December 22, 2022


Soelo, I have auto buy coal drills turned on. I have auto buy small files off.

Open days that feed into oil and the use oil and play around turning things on/off and see how it affects the oil production. If you do not need plastic at the moment, setting your plastic machines to 0 will stop plastic creation from using up your oil. (Just remember to turn it back on later when you need plastic again.)
posted by CoffeeHikeNapWine at 12:47 PM on December 22, 2022


Plastic doesn't use any oil now, but I turned it off just in case.
posted by soelo at 12:51 PM on December 22, 2022


IF YOU ARE PLAYING ON MOBILE STOP RIGHT NOW!!!!


Ok. Whew. Go export your save and paste it into an email to yourself, then go open it up in a browser someplace with a real screen.

I've been playing this on my phone with no issues since the beginning, and Day 18 breaks that bad. Not only is the 18 mechanic unplayable on mobile, but the update also realizes the settings and other dialog windows so that you can't see anything anymore. I only had a tiny sliver of the export button visible.
posted by phunniemee at 1:01 PM on December 22, 2022 [1 favorite]


Day 18 is.. impressive given it's being coded kinda on the fly!
posted by Just this guy, y'know at 1:35 PM on December 22, 2022


Unfortunately, it also goes pretty quick once you realize there's an extra tab there, but maybe there'll be more interaction with it later.
posted by juv3nal at 4:43 PM on December 22, 2022


I thought the management, wrapping paper and ribbons would end up mattering more than they ended up mattering, too.

I don't know what governs your energy total; I found it difficult to build anything efficient enough at first, and then suddenly I got a higher max energy and could balance out my production.
posted by Merus at 8:03 PM on December 22, 2022


Energy capacity is increased by milestones for total # of toys. You get a bump at 1500 & then another at 6000.
posted by juv3nal at 11:03 PM on December 22, 2022


Oh also I think "Oil Fuel" if your on the 19th.
posted by juv3nal at 11:21 PM on December 22, 2022


Sawmills seem to be broken. They don't require inputs.
posted by Just this guy, y'know at 3:19 AM on December 23, 2022


Anyone figured out what you're supposed to do for day 20 yet? It take you to trees but nothing is there.
posted by CoffeeHikeNapWine at 7:49 AM on December 23, 2022


Day 20 is still showing as Not Ready for me.
posted by ourobouros at 9:49 AM on December 23, 2022


same
posted by Just this guy, y'know at 9:57 AM on December 23, 2022


Has anyone gotten their Workshop percentage above 1200? It looks like there's a milestone at 1400%, but I don't have the button to increase it anymore.

Edit: Of course I figured it out almost immediately after posting; it seems to be gated by something on Day 19. Not that it's indicated anywhere...
posted by sagc at 1:45 PM on December 23, 2022 [1 favorite]


This one (Day 21, wrapping presents) feels like it might take a while to complete. Or maybe I just need a much much more efficient factory layout.

I think this is the first one which I will just leave running for a bit and come back to later.
My next buyable is at 10,000,000 presents, and I'm currently making about a 1000 a second (so... a bit under 3 hours at this rate)
posted by Just this guy, y'know at 3:09 AM on December 24, 2022


The next two present buyables involve pouring all the intermediate items not used for presents into presents to increase efficiency, and then multiplying your present output by your ribbons. Remember ribbons? Turns out you want more than 20 after all!

To my surprise it turns out that the other days are also implemented; a fun one where you rebuild Santa's sleigh, a tedious one where you feed reindeer one at a time and can eventually sort of automate it, and one where you use your computing power to recalculate Santa's route.

I still haven't bought the dye upgrades in the workshop.
posted by Merus at 4:16 AM on December 24, 2022


Yeah that was the 10,000,000 one.
I redesigned a bit and got that one, and given I already had a lot of ribbon it went pretty quick from there.
posted by Just this guy, y'know at 4:26 AM on December 24, 2022


Uh-oh. so now it's Factory Idle, but janky (and also not happily stuffing its face into the idea of military equipment as the pinnacle of industry)?
posted by polytope subirb enby-of-piano-dice at 7:52 AM on December 24, 2022


And it's all done!

The gifts all packed, just in time!
posted by Just this guy, y'know at 1:13 AM on December 25, 2022 [1 favorite]


Thought I'd give this another go now that the game's completed and the early issues were ironed out. Day 18.... I spent two full days wondering how the hell to get enough logs for the wooden blocks before I noticed the factory tab! GRRRRRR! The developer dude needs to make that much, much, much more obvious!!
posted by cgg at 9:55 AM on December 27, 2022 [1 favorite]


Yay! I finished!

I loved the whole thing. I think my biggest bottleneck was getting enough metal.

I want to go back and play with setting up the factory.
posted by CoffeeHikeNapWine at 12:18 PM on December 27, 2022


I finished last night and it was pretty satisfying. It was challenging trying to keep track all of the amplifiers. I optimized my factory for present productions without noticing that I was collapsing my log production or often hit bottlenecks before remembering that I hadn't visited wrapping paper in a while.

While it was not the hardest, I also got a chuckle out of the Traveling Salesman day.
posted by 3j0hn at 11:10 AM on December 29, 2022 [2 favorites]


I am a little disappointed in the ending. Oh well, it was a fun journey
posted by Jacen at 12:53 PM on December 29, 2022


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