What Happens When You Exceed 2,147,483,647 Life in MTG Arena?

[@thewildmage36]

You should've ulted ajani with negative life

[@treazon88]

Just finished the video and can't help but wonder what would have happened if you had hit your opponent unblocked after the damage counter turned negative...

[@xicufwm]

Yeah! Why DIDN'T they do that?

[@Bdawg71692]

I can't believe they didn't try that!

[@DaDunge]

Nothing happens. You can have negative power in magic, it happens a lot.

[@lcg3092]

if the token took no damage, is safe to assume neither would a player

[@cinderstar6634]

We need more “Breaking Arena” videos! These are the best!

[@spencerhansen2927]

The numbers on screen are probably 32 bit, but in background are probably 64 bit to save memroy when running the application

[@NathanJervis]

@@jonathantillian6528 Note that the way negative numbers are stored in memory (2's complement) handles subtracting from a negative and subtracting for a positive number the same way. So if the life total was a large 64 bit number that became displayed as a negative 32 bit number it'd also explain why attacking did 1 damage but didn't trigger a game loss. Also the logic being bypassed because it never went from positive to negative seems like a very finnicky and problematic way to handle it. There's ways to go to less than 0 life and not lose the game, and handling all those state transitions seems a lot harder than doing `if life < 0 and noPreventGameLossEffects then`

[@dascandy]

@@jonathantillian6528 The game looks to do its calculations for creature power as signed 32-bit ints, and the creature's power/toughness are stored as signed 32-bit ints, plus number of 1/1 counters as signed 32-bit ints. So its toughness is still positive, and no +1/+1 counters will ever make that negative, so no need to check those (... famous last words, yes). So the creature is calculated to then have negative power & toughness and deals no damage (because you don't do negative damage). I'm not 100% why it doesn't die after hitting a 1/1, but it might be that they only check the sign flipping on the life total before and after change to see if you died. And swapping your life total with its power, and then having its power be your old life total plus counters is ... broken, of course.

[@weskerwaldorf2824]

Hit like immediately pretending I understood what you were talking about.

[@AStonedLemon]

Gotta save up that sweet, sweet memroy!

[@cheesewizard8943]

Evra: has negative toughness Also Evra: I do not -control the speed at which lobsters- die

[@Galexyk]

Me: */is casually browsing KZbin/* This video: */shows up/* Me: what happens when you 𝙬𝙝𝙖𝙩

[@calebrobbins6406]

This is what I should be getting in my recommended videos.

[@ranmuke]

Apparently, having negative trillions of life doesn't lose you the game. I need to get back against those infinite damage things.

[@Luna-df3ny]

The game just doesnt show you these numbers, but they are correct in the background

[@cwinship]

Best comment.

[@TeDynef]

You would probably win if you respin the counter the other way around and then kill him

[@felipeluz5035]

Probably the game only checks if "life points" go from above 0 to below 0. So when it goes to negative from an overflow, it takes an alternate path to the negative (never going through 0, in a way). So the game doesn't notice you're dead. xD

[@DaDunge]

More likely the integer which checks your life total to see if you lose the game is a smaller one which does not recognize positive or negative numbers above or below +/-32.000.

[@DesolatorMagic]

Why is everyone asking for the decklist? There is no decklist in the traditional sense. 4x Evra, Halcyon Witness 4x Enhanced Surveilance for graveyard recycling 27-ish lands 4x Ajani for his ultimate of put +x counters where X is your life total 21 draw spells

[@cholland67]

Clear the mind would be better to keep shuffling graveyard back into your library

[@mehtheorc]

That was. An EPIC experiment @rtr. Izzet have you seen this guy? His name is Des, you should hire him.

[@zakd2124]

2.147 bil? That's a blue partyhat babyyyyy

[@noahklein9536]

Highest life I've ever gotten is over 4000 life and my opponent went down to -3000 something. Crazy

[@squeektheweek6949]

This reminds me when I was in middle school in computer class I had set the high score on every PC on mine cart or w/e that game was called (math game using simple machines) by going so far in the negative by spamming a failing combination it became the maximum positive number.

[@josephmoore286]

Many man yyears ago, in one game at a weekly tournament, I had a combo set up. Instead of gaining millions of life, I decided to tell my opponent I will just gain 500,000 life with my combo, or something like that. Next turn he destroyed my combo maker and did his own combo where he was doubling tokens. I then kept drawing crap from my deck while he beat my face in. I was sweating bullets. I eventually won the game with 93 life..... Lesson to learn: if you can gain as much life as you can, go with trillions.

[@hayato1886]

Me personally if someone gains "infinite" life, I won't scoop. There's always a chance you could win.

[@adamt8963]

*cue Axis of Mortality*

[@1123JGilbert]

Here's a great one for you Desolator... i was playing against infinite poly-raptor cancer vs. my cloner explore (yes also cancer, but it was fair becuase it was vs cancer) he got off his semi infinite combo leaving him with about 200 poly-raptors, but i had two 40/40 wildrgowth walkers... the game just said i lost because i couldnt respond in time to his semi-infinite combo(cant respond to abilities so it ate all my timeouts).. but i had a sleep in hand which would have tapped all his stupid dinos and given me the win since i had 210 life and he had 14. Would love to see this played out on arena, since in real life you just show them the sleep and the game is over. i played the whole 40 minute game out thinking i would have the win. I was almost literally vibrating with rage.

[@Ducktor]

Me, an entry level programer: Hmmmm maybe I should have an if statement check to see if a number is going to overflow, if so don't let it go higher. Fixed.

[@WalcomS7]

Now this is a good idea, I hope to see more of these kinds of videos because they're very interesting even if you don't play Arena.

[@y3tti627]

That was amazing do more of these or I will send dimir agents to your house to mildly inconvenience your day by stealing toilet paper and freezing the locks on all of the doors

[@x13warzone]

I hate when my opponent goes to 2 billion life then to the negatives and all. Anyone have good deck to stop this?

[@MoonMorslieb]

Mmmh... And one moment he block with Deathtouch 🤣🤣

[@sheabroderick8625]

Should do a boros version and fling a billion damage at your opponent

[@Zosh_]

Fling a billion negative damage

[@AsheTheFox]

You know the number is high when the finger has to come out.

[@DaDunge]

When I played magic with my friends in junior high we had a house rule which said that in a 2 player game you win if you reach +200 life. We have two cleric decks in onslught which both could generate 1 life for every cleric on the board so we needed a limiter to how long those games could get.

[@lukebeck4745]

There's a card that doubles your life total and never goes into the graveyard

[@main135s]

Unsure if it's in MTG Arena, but if you want to recreate this in the future, and Ageless Entity is in, just drop it, give it lifelink, and go in swinging against an indestructible creature. Ageless Entity gets as many +1/+1 counters as you get healed for. Which essentially means that every turn, it will double it's power, exponentially growing. Unless there were some ruling about lifelink not being considered healing that I don't know about, it SHOULD work.

[@minimalist8403]

Why would anyone dislike

[@DesolatorMagic]

Riiiiight?!

[@JoshCarpenterVO]

Isn't this a buffer overflow - i.e. potentially indicating a security flaw in their coding patterns. Not sure where else this might occur, but it needs to be addressed.

[@Biergartenparadoxon]

a bit late, but since it is unanswered: No it's an integer overflow. Other than a buffer overflow you can't inject stuff into the program. Only the resulting value isn't correct. Which still can be a security flaw in some contexts (eg imagine your bank account rolling over)

[@michaelmitchell338]

I have had over 1.5 quintillion life in a game of paper magic back around Urza’s Block.

[@redstonepro5412]

How ?

[@kdgbr]

@@redstonepro5412 there are many infinite combos in Magic, but as per the rules "infinite" doesn't actually exist in the game, you have to declare an arbitrarily high number. So yeah, just find whatever endless combo allows you to gain life and declare how high you want to go. Could be one hundred, one thousand, a million, whatever: in this case, 1.5 quintillion

[@haruhisuzumiya6650]

@@kdgbr 1.4 quintillion 1,400,000,000,000,000

[@stevekeenan9673]

That channel fireball would take out a gran prix

[@DesolatorMagic]

It would take out an entire moon lol

[@TetraTimboman]

MTGO, there's a few combos that still cause problems. Like Necrotic Ooze on the board, with Viridian Joiner (mana), Chameleon Colossus (pump), and Devoted Druid (untap) in the graveyard, you can get the Necrotic up to the max power and toughness easy BUT if you tap Necrotic for mana equal to power (Viridian Joiner's ability) after Necrotic is past 65536, then the game crashes because the mana is a 16 bit I think. Last time I checked anyway.

[@Cindershadow]

EPIC LEVEL, desolator is over 9000

[@blackmask1990]

What happens when u hit a player with that negative

[@cohencoughlin328]

Imagine one day being able to do thing on paper

[@chaselumsden2042]

Can't wait for the sequel: Is it possible to Divide by 0 in MTG Arena? Starting Mark Rosewater and with guest star Daniel Radcliffe as Desolator

[@djethanol256]

Im not gonna scroll through to see when this started but im currently at 8:38 and you might notice that the auto-pass blue button in the bottom left is slightly off-center. Just noticed it lol thought it was pretty great

[@RosieDuck]

ok i just discovered this video & channel and i'm wheeze-laughing, everything is made funnier by the fact that i have trouble reading numbers so i EXTRA cannot follow ANYTHING that's going on, you'ree laughing, opponent's laughing, I'M laughing, what IS mtga even man wow XD

[@delespinasse]

And what about if you exceed 9,223,372,036,854,775,807 of life? Because it is the 64 bits number. The problem here will be that you should stop pumping the creature to keep it with positive life, and them start to calculate the sum with a separate calculator, probably. Another problem is that you probably will need much more time to acheave it. :D

[@ariashellington1962]

You never got to Max life total. You had a number of +1/+1 counters on the creature equal to some number that, when added to Ajani's trigger made the number of +1/+1 counters exceed the Max for a signed 32 bit integer. So it had a negative nber of +1/+1 counters (which is probably why the state failed to check the toughness correctly). Then it re calculated your life total using the power of the creature, but with the fault that the number of positive counters was negative (but the game assumed it was positive since they're +1/+1 counters, causing the weird stuff). You never actually reached the life total buffer overflow though.

[@arzangofthebrothersoflightario]

Desolator is the best at finding exploits on Arena.I am glad to see that you are the first to have officially broken Arena.

[@DomcoRadlerLachtan]

It´s actually really important job, because the whole point of open Beta is to test the Arena before official launch.

[@lilacpilot3437]

He's not the first. The polraptor combo did that and I've seen a few others but this is definitely the most awesome

[@KBgamer2010]

Rhys the Redeemed and Helm of the Host are available on Arena right now I think you can guess the implications here (God-Eternal Rhonas army with 171,798,691,840 power each)

[@durant3248]

So like the first video I saw was the one testing settle the wreckage. I was amused but the video was funny. Today KZbin suggested this video. After somehow picking myself up off the floor (dying from laughter and fear that I would be dragged into the black hole for watching this video) I clicked on the subscribe button because obviously the things YOU do for science cannot be missed! Good job.

[@thelastwavepodcast6846]

This is the highest life i could find except mine last game. A guy did infinite land drops and scute swarm. Declaring he made 4,000,000,000 swarm. I had a creature, soul warden i believe. To gain 1 life for ea creature entering field. I said lets call it an even 1,000,000,000 but technically i woulda had 4bil life.

[@philipdaviddavies9478]

2147483648 = (2^32)/2 for 32 bit integers with negative life... So if you hit someone for -2147483648 would same issue occur?

[@blabik]

Afaik When you code in unity, you have to decide at the beginning that you want to be either 32-bit or 64-bit. Changing it later seems to be pain in the ass. There was lots of discussion about that in Heartstone subreddit about this. Yet Wotc still went for Unity knowing it has trouble with games like these, that are not mobile shit-games and actually use lots of resources.

[@agentmtg890]

You should explain how things are working to do what you are in video. Like combo interaction what cards do what together ect i know visual available thru game play but be great if you went step by step explaining how why it works.

[@differentting4215]

Wouldn’t this be easier with sunbond? Or does that not exist in this game. Is that even what it’s called? The one that gives +1/+1 for healing so life link just doubles their stats

[@lohdhshs]

This is the MTG equivalent of heart of the cards.

[@DaDunge]

My guess is it only checks for negative life totals against a smaller integer, it compares the larger bytes integer with a smaller one which does not recognize the larger one and thus you don't die. And neither does your creature.

[@geekworthy7938]

Just goes to show what crappy coders they have at Magic...and most places. Probably a bunch of coding boot camp newbs.

[@Wabinator]

its over 9000

[@foxw00d]

Destroying magicarena one bug at a time

[@nickst.pierre5598]

New rule to stop infinite life/damage combos, treat them like Mtg arena does and just have their life total become negative but not causing you to lose

[@djethanol256]

I wonder what would happen if you use fling while the creature has a negative power, do u gain that much life instead? 😂

[@wyhiobcarlile4879]

I think the rollover is continues so it records you are X levels above baseline so its basically just a visual bug for life and toughness but it breaks attack

[@geofastar]

I used to do this on NES jeopardy. If you went low enough you got a positive score.

[@CustodialDaniel]

Just a suggestion here, hear me out before you think I’m talking shit. I think this would be more appropriate for your Gaming Channel. Yes this is directly related to Magic but I personally, and I’d assume many of your other fans would agree, largely watch this channel’s videos for your opinions on relevant news or developments within the MTG community, and the evolution of MTG (set releases, spoilers, etc.) A video talking about glitches and how that affects everyone in MTG Arena is something we can all get behind but a 12 minute video dicking around with what is essentially an entirely hypothetical scenario doesn’t seem all that appropriate here. You could make the argument that if I don’t like it I shouldn’t watch it- and you’re right, I didn’t- but again I’m not trying to shit on you for stepping out of the box here. I subscribed to your Desolator Magic channel for news and your opinions on stuff. This video is for all intents and purposes pure gameplay and since you already have a dedicated channel for that, I feel it would be better featured there. And yes, you can upload whatever the hell you want wherever the hell you want. And there’s no sense in taking the video down now that it’s up- not that that would do anything anyways. That’s not my point. My point is, going forward, videos like this exploring hypothetical scenarios and having fun with MTG Arena would be better suited for your other channel as per my opinion and your own descriptions of what either channel’s content is meant to be. And if it’s only here because of the views then I guess I’ll just go fuck myself? Thanks for reading to the end Des, wish you all the best.

[@DesolatorMagic]

Bro, I built a bulletproof vest out of magic cards and shot them in my friend's backyard after teaching a dog how to play MTG and testing the electrical conductance of a foil. This is more back to normal for my channel than my recent content. Also my 2nd channel isn't monetized and this took 4x longer to make than a normal video and I need money.

[@CustodialDaniel]

DesolatorMagic Fair enough. I figured you’d completely discount my argument but at the very least I hope my comment put some things into perspective. Some insight into what I and many other people enjoy about your channel. Which could, y’know, help you make more money. At the end of the day I still wish ya the best and was only trying to help. Peace.

[@justinstolowski5622]

That is just insane crazy...

[@anthonyy6041]

This is by far the best FU deck I've ever seen!

[@isaacrobertson4374]

Thank you desolater, very cool

[@NovaCyn]

This is one reason using fixnum is superior to int for things that are not performance impacting :P

[@davetourle4250]

I got over 3 billion life, in a bot match using light of promise on a lifelink cat.

[@stevenbrooks2601]

Since when is platinum angel in mtga?

[@vi777x4]

Try to summon like 500 tokens.

[@grinchsimulated9946]

Eternity vessel + Vorel of the hull clade

[@lkledu2]

what should happen with lifelink when a creature has negative attack?

[@itsmejamesss]

I wonder what would happen if everdawn Champion gets hexproof, vigilance, indestuctible, flying, lifelink and trample and he got pumped to 10/10

[@saqvobase4301]

Decklist please, its... for a friend

[@Sebal007]

Heyho: It's possible that ui and log treat the value as signed int 32, but internal math(like deathchecks) use an unsigned int 32. So while you get a negative number displayed, the internal code still evaluates in positive numbers. As long as you don't hit 0 precisely, it will just keep rolling over and over.

[@shyumby]

high allert + faeburrow elder + soul mender + prismite and you had gain time why try to do logic things when mtg allows you to staight up go infinite

[@shyumby]

btw alternate different activated ability prevent you from making a draw

[@tmbocheeko]

What the absolute fuck was this lmaoooo

[@matushorvath]

Most likely the server uses 64-bit numbers internally, or possibly just arbitrary precision numbers. Just the UI is using 32-bit. I was hoping you would try to overflow the 64-bit number. Just double your life 32 times more. The UI would just continue to display garbage, but overflowing 64-bit numbers could possibly also crash the server :D

[@patrickseelye1485]

Should have hit your opponent with negative Evra

[@jozzyalthefool9273]

I feel like this was Evra's destiny.

[@LILOEVERYTHING]

I did this for the first time today. I got to -800 Million

[@amfekuber]

Great video! You guys were cracking me up

[@Yokaiiisama]

You should have ulted Ajani and see what happened.

[@DavBotsArcade]

Bahaha you know if that flipped just one more time it would have opened up the portal that sends Mark Rosewater back home.

[@KrowdesAlexander]

I don't know what is more hilarious; the wacked commentary, or the insane glitches in the game. Lol

[@drunkenmage6505]

I scoop if fighting a thousand year storm deck the last time I fought one he bricked so hard he stacked draw spells to the point were I lost because of the timer since it started timing me out for not hitting resolve fast enough after each copy that was being stacked even with auto pass on

[@JohnPaul-nb5iu]

Lol

[@Bibbedibabbedibu]

I really hate that. You can't even hit resolve before your timer starts moving. And passing the turn doesn't work either. I lost to a lifegain deck that way, because he had so many triggers every turn that I used up 2 timeouts on every one of his turns.

[@copsarebastards]

This would happen less if it didn't force you to go through the animation time each time. There should be a threshold like wjen there are more than x cards on the stack card animations are disabled or something

[@RiseInAfterlife]

It also breaks if you have 200+ Life and a flipped Azors Gateway. Or try to spawn 1000 Krenko No-Pants Goblins at once.

[@adamxue6096]

...And thus the good ol HS Lorewalker Cho + Divine Spirit goings have come to magic. Better yet, this one breaks way harder than just wtever minion dying due to having too much health. Such common things that happens on a daily basis, how could the Devs missed out on it.

[@Dirk.gbe03]

It is alive because of the +1 +1 counters

[@Themasterjtg]

The sad thing is that: if you tried to pull a trick like this in normal gameplay, as soon as you get past 100 HP, the other person would just quit. Or, be a try-hard and not let your meme-build go further beyond

[@panagiotisdavillas9786]

Ok now this IS FUCKING EPIC

[@jcreyes4869]

in my opinion, the values goes to null or negative then goes back positive , reason why you didn't lose the game cause you guess it already cos you broke the game or rather the state on which a player can win or lose is now broken since you can't lose by gaining life base I guess that's how MTG program it, this should also apply to the creature which shouldn't die when gaining values but when the values go negative was a result of over gaining not a result of directly minus towards that creature. This is my speculation I could be wrong.

[@kurtsloop2462]

I once played a guy in commander who would have to use a calculator to tally up his life. Eventually, everyone had a Sorin Markov and a few boardwipes to throw at him. He stopped.

[@NikolaiManning]

Look for the video Hyper Cancer the recancering. It really quickly crashes arena. There is also one with dinosaurs but I can't remember the names of the cards.

[@TheKirbyT]

Breaking the game is always a good video

[@elreydehappyweels]

how is called that deck? or what cards does it has?

[@dziewon2866]

That's science right there

[@teamawp-gamesfunforsome259]

Omg!!!! Areana has been bugging out on me bad.. I hasnt been letting me cast instants on my opponents turns resulting in game loss for me and/or bad blocks. Its done it atleast 4 times. And seems to happen after i rank up. I was in draft went gold3 to gold2. And then gave me a no lander into a 4 lands which i know is very common. And there was 3 more on top i conceded after it didnt let me cast my instant, take up arms. I lost my creature and drew my 8th land.

[@falconJB]

Someone needs to clean up their types.

[@kevlar8847]

if(life > 2147483647){set life 2147483647) ... done

[@DesolatorMagic]

You can't test for a value higher than the variable can hold so that wouldn't work.

[@samelol8149]

In the end you should have played the new evra when on negative life and then use the ability to swap. Your evra would have negative power and your life would be four. Maybe that way you could have died from combat

[@judjementine]

as a programmer i did indeed suspect this would happen cause the logic would be no one's going to be gaining that much life anyways and if they do then well have fun breaking the game.

[@allmightygod100]

ok, now you just needed to use that card that sets a persons life total to 10 and see what happens. does it let you reset all the way back down/up to 10 life? the people need to know. plz and thanks.

[@scaptal]

I guess that creatures don't die and game losses aren't handed out because you went to the negatives trough an overflow, I guess you have to come trough zero for you to lose (or for creatures to die) just a guess tough

[@alexisleftist778]

A rolled over interger typically behaves as a undefined number and it all depebds on how the game is counting the intergers

[@AidanWR]

I've actually lagged out of the game halfway through 32 evolution sage triggers. I was able to get back in though