How Chips, 番 fan (2^fan), +Mult, ×Mult and positional charms combine — and how far it could ever go.
Mirrors sparrow.html exactly: melds score as wholes (Chow 20 / Pong 40 / Kong 80), the base
multiplier is 2^fan (fan capped at 10 → ×1024), then gem & enhancement +Mult fold in, then charms apply left-to-right
(positional), then glass/prismatic ×Mult, then the boss chip-factor. final = ⌊chips × mult × cf⌋.
Each charm fires in its slot, left→right (top→bottom here). A +Mult charm above a ×Mult charm gets multiplied; below it doesn't. Reorder with ▲▼, toggle with the checkbox.
| Source | Type | Effect | When it shines |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pong Drummer 碰鼓 | +chips | +8 chips per Pong | Pong-heavy 碰碰糊 |
| Gems (4) 寶石 | +chips | Cinnabar/Lapis/Amber/Carnelian — +chips per Chow/Pong/Kong/group (stacks) | Chip economy — the planet axis #1 |
| Weathervane 風向標 | +mult | +0.5 Mult per wind tile | Wind hands |
| Scaling charms ⟳ | +mult, run-long | Abacus/Tally/Beads/Ledger — permanent +Mult per Pong/Chow/hand/Dragon | Grows all run (NEW) |
| Four Heavenly Kings 四大天王 | ×mult | ×2 if you HOLD all four winds in hand | Hold-in-hand build |
| 7788 七七八八 | ×mult | ×2 (≥2 held pairs), ×3 (≥3) | Hold-in-hand build |
| Big Three Dragons charm | ×mult | ×2 if 大三元 | Dragon build |
| Porcelain / Pearl tiles | ×mult | ×2 (瓷, 25% shatter) / ×1.5 (珠) per tile (post-charms) | Enhancement build |
| 2^fan (the engine) | base | Every 番 doubles the base mult (cap 40 — uncapped in practice) | Flush/limit hands |
| Hand Manuals (8) 秘笈 | +chips & +mult | Level a whole PATTERN forever: 清一色/碰碰糊/平糊/三元 + joke hands 雞糊/無舌頭/孤槓/斷么九 | The planet axis #2 |
Two leveling axes (≈12 planets): Gems (4) grow the Chips side per meld type, Hand Manuals (8) grow the Mult side per hand pattern — they never overlap. Sparrow also now has scaling charms (Abacus/Tally Sticks/Prayer Beads/Dragon Ledger — permanent +Mult per event, the "+0.2 forever" scaling pattern), and fan-disruption bosses (Old Fung caps fan, Grey Judge kills patterns).
A top-tier roguelite run scored 7.1439e2665. Sparrow computes in JS float64, which
maxes at ~1.8e308 — past that everything is Infinity. This sandbox computes in log-space
(so it can "represent" e2665) to show which levers would get you there. sim only — does not change the game
| Missing piece | Genre norm | Sparrow today | To add |
|---|---|---|---|
| Big-number type | break_infinity (mantissa/exp) | float64 → caps at 1.8e308 | Store score as {mant, exp}; fmtBig already shows sci |
| Uncapped exponential | ×Mult jokers compound freely | fan capped at 10 (×1024) | Raise/remove FAN_MULT_CAP |
| Multiplicative loop | retrigger × glass × seals × Baron held | ~6 charm slots, no deep loop | Retrigger engine + held-tile ×Mult |
Each ×Mult in a loop adds to the exponent: 10 charms at ×3 with 8 retriggers ≈ 3^(10×8) ≈ 1e38 just from the loop, on top of 2^fan. Uncap fan to ~120 and you clear e40+ easily; the rest is just having a number type that doesn't overflow.