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The Squad (
Values)
The photo is me hitting Level 7 on
Wall Street. Look at the mess I created!
First let's start with what is out there. There are some great sites that give you
Ingress tips.
Ingress Tips
Ingress Tips (2)
Ingress FAQ
Ingress Bootcamp
My tips are with
NYC on my mind. Even in NYC
Manhattan has so many Portals and "Farms" compared to the outer boroughs. So my tips might not be universally applicable.
(1) Get An External Battery
The game is a major drain on the battery, and you are going to be easily frustrated if you don't get an External Battery. I got my 10,000
mAH battery for $40 on
Amazon, the best thing I bought since I bought my
Nexus 4! And
Nokia gave me a 2,000 mAH External Battery for free for attending a Nokia event during
Social Media Week 2013. Go Nokia! 10,000 plus 2,000 plus 2,000 on my phone, and I am good for an entire day if need be! And for me this is not just about the game. I am a power user. My smartphone is my mobile office, my personal assistant. I don't like my personal assistant going to sleep or - worse - going into a coma. This tip on the External Battery came to me by way of a fellow Ingress player I bumped into in
Union Square. Hello slomar! His real name is Omar.
(2) Put In The Hours
Especially during the early stages it might feel like you are making slow progress. But moving from Level 6 to Level 7 took me less time than moving from Level 1 to Level 2. This game is a lot of perspiration. It makes you walk! During the early stages you want to hack as many Portals as you can. Hacking friendly Portals is a great way to collect ammo.
(3) Know The Numbers
- Establish a control field 1250 AP
- Destroy a control field 750 AP
- Capturing a portal (place the first resonator) 500 AP
- Link two portals 313 AP
- Complete a portal (place the eighth resonator) 250 AP
- Destroy a link 187 AP
- Apply a portal shield 150 AP
- Place a resonator (new resonator) 125 AP
- Hack a portal (Enemy) 100 AP
- Destroy a resonator 75 AP
- Upgrading an existing resonator owned by another agent 65 AP
- Resonators discharge 10% of their maximum XM daily and must be recharged if they are to persist. Recharging can be done either by being within range of the portal or by using a portal key to access the portal remotely.
- Resonators are destroyed when their XM reaches 0.
- You can only have 2,000 ammo items at a time. That's a lot unless you are high level and have been hacking a long time.
| Level | AP Required | Max XM | Burster Damage | Burster Range | Resonator HP | Portal Range |
| 1 | 0 | 3,000 | 150 | 42 | 1,000 | 160 m |
| 2 | 10,000 | 4,000 | 300 | 48 | 1,500 | 2.56 km |
| 3 | 30,000 | 5,000 | 500 | 58 | 2,000 | 12.96 km |
| 4 | 70,000 | 6,000 | 900 | 72 | 2,500 | 40.96 km |
| 5 | 150,000 | 7,000 | 1,200 | 90 | 3,000 | 100 km |
| 6 | 300,000 | 8,000 | 1,500 | 112 | 4,000 | 207 km |
| 7 | 600,000 | 9,000 | 1,800 | 138 | 5,000 | 384 km |
| 8 | 1,200,000 | 10,000 | 2,700 | 168 | 6,000 | 655 km |
I have not memorized them. All these numbers are in an
Evernote file on my phone for quick references.
(4) Use The Map
That is how you know where the Farms are, where the Portals are. If you are low on ammo and need to hack friendly Portals for a few hours, go to
the map. If it is time to find a cluster of enemy Portals, go to the map. The map changes as Portals switch from one side to another. (
IITC)
(5) Farms Help You Level Up Fast
The top farms in Manhattan are:
- Battery Park + Wall Street.
- Madison Square Park
- Washington Square Park
- Rockefeller Center
Other good ones are: City Hall, Union Square, Bryant Park, Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), 7th Avenue from Macy's to Times Square, Times Square itself, Columbus Circle, the Apple Store on 5th Avenue.
There are a few others that look good on the map that I have not explored yet.
The formula is how many Portal hacks are you managing in an hour. If you are walking a block to hack one Portal, that is not the best use of your time. So stick to the big Farms to level up fast.
Open parks are more GPS friendly than places like Wall Street and Rockefeller Center. Tall buildings seem to confuse satellites. The upside is when your GPS goes haywire, you are collecting XM from places you have not been, you are hacking Portals that are far from you!
Update: September 9, 2013: By now, Greater Jackson Heights is the top place in Queens for leveling up, and also one of the top citywide.
Update: October 22, 2013: By now, East Village along Houston has emerged the top farm in the city. It is no longer Battery Park. Derpdom.
(6) Hack A Portal Four Times In A Row
You are much more likely to create Links and Fields. This is also why a Farm works better. You start with the first Portal, by the time you have hacked the final Portal on that Farm chances are the first Portal is ready for hacking again, since it has been past four minutes. A second or third hack might get you a Portal Key.
During the early Levels you create any Link you can. But later you want to get strategic about it. Remember the goal is to create Fields. It's best to Link short distance Portals with no Portals in between. You are doing well when creating one Link is giving you two Fields at once!
Update: October 20, 2013 Now you get a key each time you hack a portal if you don't have a key for it already. That makes the game way more fun, since linking and fielding is my favorite part of the game. Leveling up is now faster as well.
(7) Strategic Hacking
Bursters are scarce. So once you hit a certain Level, make a point to only go after Links and Fields. A great use of Bursters is to sit in the middle of a large Farm with many enemy Fields and take over. You earn APs like anything. This tip came to me by way of an "enemy" Player (derp) who had 4,000,000 points to my 400,000 who I bumped into in Madison Square Park. He happened to be an engineer at Google. He started in December, I got my start on February 1. He said I had wasted so many Bursters trying to take over one Portal. I should have instead used them to destroy a Field or two.
Destroying a Portal that is supporting two Fields is a great idea. You get a flood of APs.
Submit
Portal suggestions. It is just like sharing a picture from your phone to Facebook. The process takes months apparently. And the ones I submitted have not showed up yet, but they will and I will be ready for them at Level 8.
(8) It Adds Up
Low level Resonators are useful to fill up Resonator slots once you capture a Portal. Every Resonator you add and every Portal you complete brings you points. The tortoise won the race, remember?
(9) It's The Resonator, Stupid
"You aren't attacking the Portal, but the Resonators. Stand right on top of every resonator when attacking for maximum effect. It currently should take ~32 L1 XMP Bursters to destroy a L1 Portal's Resonators. You do ~15% damage to a Resonator when you are standing directly on top of it. If you are not, the damage falls off to 5% or 1% very quickly. .... if you wait for decay and hit them right before expiring, then even L8 Resonators could be destroyed easily. ..... .... Anecdotal evidence suggests a major difference between standing within a meter of a resonator vs 5m away and only a minor difference between 10m and 15m away. .... ... If you don't have enough ammo don't even start a fight, it would be just a waste of xmp and your time."
(10) Socialize
The number one reason I started playing this game was to meet new people. I fire up Ingress, but then I also fire up my
HDR Camera+ app, and my
Highlight and
Sonar apps. If I am going to be walking around this beautiful city like a mad man, I am going to take some pictures along the way. I am also going to expand my personal network.
It is not hard to spot other Ingress players. Their phone screen gives it away. Say hello.
Update: June 6, 2013
(11) Resonator Placement: Spread Them Out
When you capture a portal, stand as far away as you possibly can and then deploy. That way you spread out the resonators and it becomes just a little harder for an enemy agent to take them down.
Update: June 30, 2013
(12) Make Portal Submissions
Start making
portals submissions as soon as you start playing the game: when you are a Level 1 agent, during your very first week. Do not wait. Portal submissions take weeks to go through anyways. You should have about 20 portals that you can walk over to any time. And so submit 50 with that in mind. This is also the top advice I have for all Level 8 agents I know. Don't just chase portals, make them come to you as well. Build a home territory. Churches, sculptures, arts, artifacts, murals, paintings are a good bet. Aim to build portal clusters. Dense clusters are good for gaining a lot of AP fast.
Build a home territory. A home territory is one where the majority of portals are your submissions.
Update: October 21, 2013
(13) The Ultimate Challenge: Team Building
It is my belief that is the final challenge in this game. You could work to build your neighborhood team, or a citywide team with slightly different values, or perhaps a global team. You could join an existing team and carve out space for your own team building within, or you could launch a brand new team of your own.
You can play this game solo just fine, and even as a team member you will engage in a ton of solo action, but this game is meant to be a social game.
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