🎮 Basics
⚪ Cell
The circular blob you control in the game. Your cell grows by eating food dots and other smaller cells. In Agar.io and Expanding Land, you start as a tiny cell and try to become the biggest on the server.
⚖️ Mass
The size/weight of your cell, displayed as a number. Higher mass = bigger cell. You gain mass by eating food, other players, or viruses (if big enough). You lose mass from natural decay over time — about 0.8% every 4 seconds in standard Agar.io rules.
🟢 Food / Pellets
Small colored dots scattered across the map. Eating them gives you a small amount of mass (usually 1 per pellet). They respawn continuously, so there's always something to eat — especially useful in the early game when you're too small to eat other players.
🏆 Leaderboard
The ranked list of the top players by mass, shown in the top-right corner. Getting on the leaderboard makes you a target — every ambitious player will come hunting for you. In Expanding Land, the leaderboard updates in real time across all 1024 players.
🔄 Spawn
The act of entering the game as a new cell. When you spawn, you start with a small amount of mass at a random position on the map. After dying, you can respawn immediately with a new cell.
⌨️ Controls & Keys
✂️ Split (Space)
Press Space to split your cell into two halves. One half shoots forward at high speed — use this to catch smaller players who think they're out of range. You can split up to 16 times (creating 16 cell fragments). Split cells merge back together after a cooldown timer.
🟡 W (Eject Mass)
Press W to eject a small blob of mass in the direction of your cursor. Uses: feeding teammates, shooting viruses (7 W presses = virus shot), baiting traps, or reducing your size to move faster. Each W press costs about 15-16 mass but the ejected blob is slightly smaller due to mass loss.
👁️ Spectate
Watch the game without playing. In Expanding Land, there are 200+ spectator slots with a free-roam camera — you can fly around the entire map and watch any player. Great for learning techniques from experienced players.
⚙️ Game Mechanics
🟢 Virus
The spiky green circles on the map. If you're bigger than a virus and touch it, you pop — your cell splits into many small pieces. If you're smaller, you can hide behind or inside a virus for protection. You can also shoot viruses at enemies by pressing W 7 times into a virus to launch a new one in that direction.
🔗 Merge / Recombine
After splitting, your cell fragments will eventually merge back into one cell. The merge timer depends on your total mass — bigger cells take longer to merge. During the merge cooldown, your cells will overlap but not combine. Once the timer expires, they snap together.
📉 Decay
All cells lose mass over time. This is called decay, and it prevents any player from growing infinitely large. The decay rate in standard Agar.io and Expanding Land is about 0.8% of your mass every 4 seconds. Bigger cells decay faster in absolute terms — a 10,000 mass cell loses ~80 mass per tick, while a 100 mass cell loses less than 1.
👻 Ghost Cells
In Expanding Land, when you die your cells briefly appear as transparent "ghost cells" showing exactly where you were eaten. This helps you understand what happened and learn from your death — was it a split kill? A virus pop? A teammate feeding?
🗺️ Map / Arena
The playing field where all cells exist. In Agar.io, the map is a fixed size. In Expanding Land, the map dynamically scales from ¼× to 4× based on the number of active players — more players means a bigger arena, fewer players means a tighter map that keeps the action dense.
🎯 Advanced Techniques
🎯 Tricksplit
An advanced move where you split multiple times in rapid succession (double or triple split) to reach a target that seems too far away. By splitting your already-split cells, each piece shoots forward with momentum, extending your effective range far beyond a single split. Requires precise timing and cursor positioning.
💥 Popsplit
A technique where you intentionally eat a virus to split into many pieces, then immediately split again to eat a nearby enemy. The idea is that your many small cells from the virus pop + your split momentum lets you engulf an enemy who thought they were safe. High risk, high reward — you need enough mass to survive the pop.
🪤 Bait-and-Switch
A strategy where you use a small piece of your split cell as bait. The enemy chases your small piece, not realizing your larger piece is positioned to split-eat them when they commit. Works best when you have 2 cells of different sizes.
🔫 Cannon / Self-Feed
Rapidly pressing W to transfer mass from one of your cells to another. When you have two split cells, you can W from your smaller cell into your larger one to make it big enough to eat a nearby target. Also called "self-feeding" because you're feeding yourself across your own cells.
🚀 Virus Shot
Pressing W into a virus 7 times launches a new virus in that direction. Use this offensively to pop large enemies, or defensively to create cover. Each W press into a virus costs mass, so 7 presses = about 100-110 mass total. The launched virus flies in a straight line until it stops.
➡️ Line Split
Splitting in a straight line toward your target to maximize the distance your split cell travels. By positioning your cursor far away in a straight line from both your cell and the target, your split piece gets maximum velocity. Essential for long-range kills.
🧠 Strategy & Concepts
🤝 Teaming
Two or more players cooperating to dominate the server. Teammates feed each other mass (W), coordinate virus attacks, and protect each other. Teaming is controversial — some consider it unfair in free-for-all modes. Expanding Land has an anti-teaming system that applies mass decay penalties to players who team excessively.
⚖️ Anti-Teaming
A system that penalizes players for excessive teaming behavior. In Expanding Land, anti-teaming uses a discrete event-based penalty system — each action (virus pop, split, W press) creates a separate penalty event with its own lifespan. When your total penalty exceeds the threshold (2.8%/4s), you lose extra mass. Each event expires independently — newer actions don't extend older ones.
📱 Multiboxing
Playing with multiple browser tabs or accounts simultaneously, controlling several cells at once. In Expanding Land, multiboxing is allowed but regulated — each player can run up to 4 accounts. This gives skilled players the ability to multibox strategically while keeping the game fair.
🤖 Bots
Automated AI players controlled by scripts, not real humans. Bots are common in many IO games and often fill servers to make them seem more populated. Expanding Land has a strict no-bots policy — every cell is a real person. Automated play is detected and blocked.
🧱 Corner Trap
Trapping a player in the corner of the map where they can't escape. The map border blocks movement, so if you're big enough and position yourself between an enemy and the corner, they have nowhere to go. One of the most reliable kill methods for experienced players.
🎮 Solo / FFA
FFA stands for Free-For-All — a game mode where every player is on their own. No teams, no allies. Expanding Land's main mode is FFA with up to 1024 real players per arena. Solo play rewards individual skill: positioning, timing, and technique matter more than having teammates.
🐢 Slow Play
A patient strategy where you avoid splitting unless you have a guaranteed kill. Instead of chasing every target, you grow by eating food and waiting for enemies to make mistakes. Slow players often survive longer and build up consistent mass. Especially effective in high-player-count arenas like Expanding Land.
👥 Community & Mods
🧩 Mod / Extension
A browser extension that enhances the game with extra features: custom skins, minimap, zoom controls, macros, and more. Popular mods for Agar.io and Expanding Land include Legend Mod, Delta, and Agar2.
🎨 Skin
A custom image displayed on your cell instead of the default color. Skins can be country flags, memes, logos, or custom artwork. In Agar.io, most skins require payment. In Expanding Land, skins are free through mod extensions like Legend Mod.
🏰 Clan
A group of players who play together, usually identified by a shared tag in their name (e.g., [LC] for Legend Clan). Clans often have their own Discord servers, practice sessions, and internal rankings.
🖥️ Private Server
A game server run independently from the official Agar.io servers. Private servers can have custom rules, higher player limits, and different features. Expanding Land is a private server built from scratch in C, supporting up to 1024 players per arena.
🌍 Expanding Land Terms
🗺️ Dynamic Map
Expanding Land's map automatically resizes based on the number of active players. More players = bigger map. Fewer players = smaller map. The map scales from ¼× to 4× of the standard size, keeping player density consistent regardless of how many people are online.
⚠️ Danger Zone
When the Expanding Land map is contracting (shrinking), the outer ring becomes the "danger zone." Players with cells in this area receive anti-team penalty points (+0.4%/sec). The danger zone encourages players to move toward the center as the map shrinks, preventing edge-camping.
📊 Session Stats
After dying in Expanding Land, you see your session statistics: time alive, highest mass reached, food eaten, and players eaten. These stats help you track your improvement over time and compare performance across sessions.
🔒 Coordinate Scrambling
An anti-cheat feature in Expanding Land where the server sends different coordinate offsets to each player. This makes it impossible for cheat tools to read other players' exact positions from the network packets — each player's view is encoded differently.
🔐 WSS / TLS
Encrypted WebSocket connections used by Expanding Land. All data between your browser and the game server is encrypted using TLS (the same technology that secures online banking). This prevents packet sniffing and man-in-the-middle attacks.