Ingress Quick Introduction and Leveling tips


Thanks to the game of Pokemon Go, the world of Ingress started to see an increase of players coming into the 2 factions as they were recommended by various news site to use as a referencing point + a good starting point to use to get used to the style of game as introduced by Niantic.

For those of you not familiar with the game, you can download in Google Play or the App Store for your android phone. Now there's a minimum requirement to the game so to some of the users with older phones that is slow or doesn't have GPS build into their devices, you would not be able to play the game. I've tried on my older iPhones and it doesn't work.

Here's some Tips to start off.

1. CHOOSE YOUR SIDES

Sign in and you'd be asked to choose a faction, I personally am in the RESISTANCE because there's a smaller number of players in RESMY and nothing gives a good challenge than being the underdog.  Right?

Once you're in the game, run through your OP menu so you know where is the inventory and so on and so forth. Also, a quick way to familiarize yourself with the game is to PLAY THE TUTORIAL MISSION. Get that over and done with, I did mine in 15minutes so it's not that long and it gives you an idea of how things works in the game.

You see the COMM panel at the bottom in the game? Use that, it is very useful for you to get in touch with some players that is closed to you, especially in your own faction, they will then guide you to the team's external pages/chat groups you can join and be part of. For Resistance Malaysia, you go to http://register.resmy.blue/ and follow the simple steps to get in.

2. GAME PLAY

Now that is sorted, the basic idea of the game is to Hack the various portals around you to gain weapons, resonators and so on but that is not all! Hacking also consist of a mini-game call GLYPH HACKING. To activate it, you hold down the HACK button long enough for the Glyph page to appear and follow the simple "drawing" when it appears. Getting the right GLYPH will give you bonus items as well as additional APs that you need to level up. (more on that later). Best way to remember the various glyph that comes in? Give each pattern a name you think it looks like it's just a matter of remembering those names. After awhile, it will become a breeze.


If you have enough weapons and is feeling dangerous, click and hold down on your opponent's Portal and you'd see more choices appear. Once you click on FIRE XMP, a new menu will appear with a list of weapons and power cubes, Power Cubes are your health potion so keep that in mind and know where it's at so you can flip across in quick succession to heal and also stay in the attack. Choose the weapon of choice and Hold Down on the FIRE button, you will see a shrinking ring appearing on your icon, release the fire button when the ring gets to the center (it gets a bit of practice but once you get it, you'd see the damage percentage goes up). For now, the additional damage inflected on the opposing portals is 20% extra when you get the ring to the center of your icon. Know the weapons you have in your arsenal and what they do and you won't waste much in your attacks. XMP Busters basically is used for destroying the enemy resonators, the Ultra Strikes are particularly useful for destroying the enemy shields (but effective only if you're directly in the middle of the Portal) and if you have ADA/JARVIS, that's a bonus and you'd best keep it to use in major battles.



To claim the portal, you just need to place your own resonators into the Neutral Portal and various other items will be made available, LINKING and FORMING field would be the next step but I would advise that you talk to some of the other players on the best strategies to do it. Certain location require certain series of planning and we've encountered situations where YOLO players even though from the same faction ruining the plan by linking across the path we want to take.

Now, how do we link? When you hack the portal, you might get a key to the portal, to link it to other portal, you would need to get to the next portal and link it from there. Combine 3 portals into a triangle of sort, gives you a Field, which accumulates up Mind Units, more layers in the field gives you more MU and that reflects in the huge numbers you see in the Intel page (below). That's where I'd encourage you to talk to the other players in your faction to understand and  create bigger fields to maximize the MUs collected. What we would call a BAF. 

3. GETTING TO LEVEL 8

The current record holder getting to Level 8 took just 3 days to do it. It took me 4 days (accumulated hours spend was about 20 hours of game play) and there are some that is still getting there after months playing the game. The best way to do it is work together with some of the senior players in the game, that's where knowing fellow players around you comes in handy. There are some public zones around us and by working together, you can level up in no time.


Utilize the INTEL PAGE by going to http://www.ingress.com/intel/, this is where you see an overall map of what's going on around the game. Across the globe as well as within the  region of play you are in.  This is a very useful page to check on before you plan your walkabouts as the game is not something you play indoor but need a bit of traveling. So want to maximize your trips? Plan ahead! Whether you are doing a solo grind or going out in a team. The page helps you to identify where certain portals of certain levels that you can tap/farm so you spend less time on the road.

Everything we do in the game gives us AP,  Action Points or Experience Points in other games helps you level up. A brief guide to what gives you what points:

AP awards – Lowest to Highest
  • One recharge press – 10 AP.
  • Upgrade a resonator – 65 AP.
  • Destroy a resonator – 75 AP
  • Deploy a resonator – 125 AP.
  • Deploy a mod – 125 AP.
  • Destroy a link – 187 AP.
  • Link two portals – 313 AP.
  • Destroy a control field – 750 AP.
  • Create a control field – 1250 AP.
  • Capture a portal – Extra 500 AP.
  • Put on the 8th resonator onto a portal - Extra 250 AP.

So do it right and you'd get a lot of points. And what we normally do to get fellow RES or ENL up to speed in terms of level is by having players with higher levels to come in and create the necessary scenarios for the lower level players to maximize on points. Example of what I feel would be a good scenario is a Level 8 and above player clearing the field of play, and lower level players just go in and capture, deploy the Res and Mods and start linking. Irregardless of whether you deploy R1 or R8s, you will still only get 125APs, so plan it well and you won't waste much.


Planting MODS, in Public Zone, I would usually just put in a common shield just to get the 125AP,  but in a strategic fight, best is you have an idea of what each mod is for. Because, there are a lot of mods:
  • Shields.   Green = common, purple = Rare, pink = very rare.   AXA shields are a sponsored item (AXA Insurance) and are super powerful.
  • Heat Sinks.   These reduce the time between hacks.   If a portal is burned out, they “reset” it as well, when placed as a mod.
  • Multi – Hacks.   These increase the number of hacks possible from a portal.    You still have to  wait between hacks.
  • Link Amps.    For you, these are useless.    For nearly everyone, they’re useless.
  • Softbank Link.    These items increase the number of links that you can make from one portal – from 8 to 16.   It also increases the portal defense.
  • Force Amps and Turrets.    These attack the greens when they attack your portal.    Best used in pairs, like one of each.    Only a short step up in usefulness from the Link Amp.

Once you get to a certain level (Level 4 for me), you might realize that the inventory is filling up and each users are only given 2000 slots, once that's field, you are basically maxed out. That's where you can look at the lower level inventories to either drop or recycle (recycling the items help restore your health!), for me, I try not to recycle the resonators even though I accumulated a lot of Level 1s but I will look at recycling the Level 1 XMPs because aside from using it to annoy the opposing team, it doesn't really do much damage to a higher level portal. So I only keep some in hand to "ring the bell" when I see a cluster of enemy portals but not wanting to destroy them. Why ring the bell? Some users kept their alert on so when their portal gets attacked, they received a notifcation, imagine while in bed, having a good night sleep and your phone goes off like a crazy person alerting you to portals being attacked.  It's a bit evil I know but then, it's all in good fun in disturbing the enemy, right?

The Levels and AP/XM capacity. 
Basically the amount of AP you need to get to the next level (info is only up to 8).


AP Req             XM Capacity
Level 1           0 3000
Level 2 10,000 4,000
Level 3 30,000 5,000
Level 4 70,000 6,000
Level 5 150,000 7,000
Level 6 300,000 8,000
Level 7 600,000 9,000
Level 8 1,200,000 10,000


4. LIFE AT 8 AND ABOVE

Now, once you get to 8, the challenge is totally different, the weapons are basically maxing out at 8 so it's more of your own personal adventure in leveling up while arming yourself with as much 8s as possible to use in battles.


Every week, the local teams will organize a mass farming session, when you are free, join those, it's a good time to know new friends and find the best spots to sit down and farm as much items out of the portals as possible.  Can never say enough is enough as every bit of weapons, shields and PC counts. Join in Ops and feel the adrenaline when you plan your own BAF or counter the ENL's BAF, last couple of days have seen a few such ops and   seeing how everyone works together is amazing  and you think that this is just a simple game that can be played alone.

Ingress Level Requirements Table 9 – 16
     Level       AP Req       Silver          Gold   Platinum      Black    
Level 9   2,400,000 4 1 0 0
Level 10 4,000,000 5 2 0 0
Level 11 6,000,000 6 4 0 0
Level 12 8,400,000 7 6 0 0
Level 13 12,000,000 n/a 7 1 0
Level 14 17,000,000 n/a n/a 2 0
Level 15 24,000,000 n/a n/a 3 0
Level 16 40,000,000 n/a n/a 4 2

As for what you get for being a higher level, the answer is, basically nothing as far as your everyday game play is concerned. Officially, you get a longer range for recharging portals (and a higher percentage of recharge for portals that are far away but still within range for lower levels). You also get a higher maximum XM capacity. However, there are no items above L8, including power cubes, so really the higher maximum is usable just once, until you start playing, and then, you’ll have to re-collect up XM to the maximum. Assuming that XM was around to collect in the first place, then you could have just filled up to your old maximum, deployed, attacked, built, recharged, or whatever, and then collected more XM as you played, making the max XM a minimal advantage.


5. OTHER TIPS

  • Try to build fields within fields, this way more fields will remain intact when they take down one of the fields portals. Remember you cannot link from a portal within a closed field, you will have to link from the edge-field portals.
  • You also get AP for installing mods and remote recharging portals with the portalkeys. Also you get AP when updated portal requests are approved. Or by replacing other players resonators.
  • Make your agent stats private. You can do this under OPS > Agent profile > make agent stats private.
  • Disable the sounds to save some battery life, and invest in a power bank to charge your device on the go.
  • Connect with other players, together you will achieve more with less resources. It is a social game after all.
  • If you claim a portal, deploy it fully! Your enemies will have more trouble claiming the portals back. and you can start linking.
  • Try hacking enemy portals before destroying them, you will get better items from higher level portals.

If you have any other tips you'd like to share that I might have left out, do share by commenting below. Until then, catch you at the next ANOMALY.

Michael Yip

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4 comments:

  1. "Sign in and you'd be asked to choose a faction, I personally am in the RESISTANCE because there's a smaller number of players in RESMY and nothing gives a good challenge than being the underdog. Right?"

    Are you sure Ress is the underdog? Last time i check, you got a whole platoon of army

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    1. Cause when I join, you guys are leading by a good margin. :) And being a noob, thought the MU score was the number of players. HAHA. So when seeing a bigger number, naturally selects the smaller numbers.

      Delete
  2. I follow your instruction on drawing glyphs, but your instruction is not clear. I ended drawing Ingress GO instead. Anyway, very good read! Keep it up!

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    Replies
    1. HAHA. Kurang Asam... I thought the process same wut. :p

      Delete