wplace.md

wplace is an online r/place-like whose gimmick is that the canvas is a map of the globe, with each pixel running about 50 feet or so (at the equator at least. Due to the Mercator projection, the resolution gets finer the closer to the poles you are).

what's really nice about wplace as compared to other place likes is:

• the canvas is, for all practical purposes, infinite
• you get a big budget of 30 pixels to start, and recharge one pixel every 30s, instead of one-and-exactly-one every hour

you start with 30 charges, which lets you paint 30 pixels. you get 1 charge back every 30 seconds, or all 30 charges back in 15 minutes. each pixel placed earns you XP towards the next level. if the painting guide overlay i'm using is accurate, the level formula is:

each level you earn gets you +2 max charges. so at level 2 you'll have 32, and level 3 you'll have 34, etc.

in addition to the leveling system, there is also the droplet system. each pixel placed gets you 1 droplet, and you also get 500 droplets on level-up.

you can spend the droplets on 3 things:

• for 500 droplets, you can increase your max charges by 5.
• also for 500 droplets, you can refill exactly 30 charges, once.
• for 20,000 droplets, you can get a country flag. painting in countries where you own the flag "recover[s] 10% of the charges spent."
• you can also add a 16x16 profile picture for 20,000 droplets but we're trying to pixelmaxx here

so, with all that in mind, what's the optimal way to spend pixels? my first naïve assumption was to simply always go for max charges. after all, every 30 seconds earns you a pixel, and if your reserve is full, that 30 seconds is wasted. no matter what, you can't make the 86,400 seconds == 2880 pixels come any faster -- all you can do is make sure you lose as few of those as possible. i wound up dumping all my droplets into reserve capacity; i'm almost at 300 now, which takes 2.5 hours to fill up. that's enough to be able to handle tasks of daily living / work / meals etc. and still be able to check in to dump pixels with very little "wasted" time, at least while awake. most of the gains i foresaw from there was "reclaiming" slept time, since i'm not demolishing my sleep schedule to click pixels faster. getting up to 8 hours = 960 capacity would take a while but would pretty much ensure i would clock in all possible pixels out of the day.

then i reread that flag description. if "recover 10% of charges spent painting" works the way it does in my head, then every 100 pixels painted gives you back 10 charges. in theory, you could immediately paint these 10 pixels and get 1 more back, which means the true buff is 11.111%, or 1/9. this means that getting a flag is actually quite good, since this means you are effectively getting about 1.111 pixels every 30s instead of 1! (or, about 3200 per day.)

so which is better? spending 20,000 droplets to get +11%? or spending 20,000 droplets to get +200 capacity? honestly, this depends on your current capacity, your daily pixel output, and how much you sleep. let's do the napkin math.

let's assume during waking hours you're able to hit 90% "efficiency" -- that is, 90% of that time is spent with the buffer recharging and not wasting earned pixels while full. if you sleep 8 hours, that's 12 hours awake, or about 1920 * 0.9 ~= 1700 pixels. you can add one full buffer's worth of pixels to that total, assuming you empty it right before you go to bed, and once again right as you wake up. supposing you've been playing a while and you've amassed 200 max charges:

so, should you get more charges, or get a flag? 11.111% of that figure is +214 pixels per day. that is technically better than the +200 you would have gotten if you had just dumped it all into max capacity (remember: you get one free buffer's worth of pixels for sleeping), but not really by much.

these stats might change depending on your life circumstances. i only sleep about 7.5 hours and thanks to my job being flexible, i can pretty much hit close to 100% efficiency. i currently have a buffer of 280, so plugging all those numbers in, getting a flag would get me +240 -- almost certainly worth it.

meanwhile, if you sleep more (read: are a teenager) or don't have consistent regular access to your computer or phone (read: have a real job), then no, the 20k droplets are better spent dumped into max charge upgrades.

aside 1: once you've accumulated enough charge upgrades to earn pixels the entire time you're asleep (again: 960, for 8 hours of sleep), it won't meaningfully change your total pixel output. by my napkin math, you'll have placed around 40,000 pixels at that point. by then, you can probably start just getting the paint charges, since you can think of those as buying 15 minutes of time, and (assuming you're playing close to peak efficiency) you'll be getting approximately 3,300 droplets per day. spending all your droplets on charges means you won't be able to upgrade any more, but that's an extra 220 pixels per day

aside 2: it should also at least be noted that any boost to your pixels placed is also boost to your droplets earned, so you can get a bit of a snowball effect going at the beginning if you play your cards right.

most of your droplets earned won't be because of the 1 droplet per pixel placed, but because of the massive +500 droplets on level up. in fact, level-up droplets will remain the majority of your droplets earned until you've placed around 100,000 pixels, by which time you'll be close to level 200.

aside 2: from a game design perspective, it is nice how a brand-new player gets to place 1 pixel every 30 seconds and a souped-up, maxed-out-on-upgrades player spending all of their free droplets on recharges gets to place... about 1.1875 pixels every 30 seconds. it means that nobody gets to snowball so hard they out-pace anybody else. however, i can forsee in the long run this incentivizing alts/bots, since even adding one alternative account doubles your pixel placing rate.

pupdate 1:

i got enough points to buy the flag, and learned that it works exactly like i expected it to. on placing pixels, 10% of your spent charges are returned to you, for a 11.111% total increase. i also learned you can de-equip the flag after and keep the benefits, so i don't have to look like a total weenie with an american flag on my profile