Ingress: The Google ARG

Yay, now level three and have nabbed a bunch of neutral portals and converted two portals from Enlightened to Resistance port and made two fields.
Looks like having an enemy hotbed nearby is very helpful.

I finally hit level three on the way to work. To link portals they need 8 resonators right?

manta173 wrote:

I finally hit level three on the way to work. To link portals they need 8 resonators right?

This looks to be the case.

I've hit level four and have been invited to our local Resistance G+ crew. I've also stirred up the Enlightened nest south of me with the help of another Resistance member (we havent met or interacted, just tag teamed a bunch of portals creating sizeable fields in my area).

Still enjoying it, but mostly from an exercise point of view, its gotten me out of the house on my bicycle a lot in just two days.

Was thinking while I was out walking my dog, that it might kinda fun to take a day or two and travel around the island and submit some of the cool sights to see here. This would accomplish two things: one, it would make more portals on Sado (the ones here aren't even at places that are very interesting...4 are clustered around a single shine and 1 is at a boring statue); two, it would give any Ingress players that happen to visit some places to see.

Luckily, my work these days are taking me past the cluster of 4 portals mentioned above. So I can hack them a couple times a day, which should help with leveling. Was looking on the mainland at the city that I take the ferry to when I leave Sado, and there aren't too many portals there either, though the ones that are there are Resistance, so I can try and flip those the next time I'm over there.

This is a pretty cool game, even with the dearth of portals around me.

Maybe I'm on my own with this, but I would love it if this game had player classes, or at least skill trees, where you could focus on offensive/defensive traits with your experience points.

checkm-8 wrote:

I have 10 beta keys to give away. Just PM me. If you can get to level 5 before mid-December you get a special badge that indicates you were a participant in the beta. I've been in the beta program since last year and...I'm only level 2. Time to get crackin!

I did get crackin and I'm currently 147,907 out of a necessary 150,000 for level 5. Not sure if I have today to mop up the rest (with a snow storm coming in too) but it would suck if I missed it by so little.

Dr_Awkward wrote:
checkm-8 wrote:

I have 10 beta keys to give away. Just PM me. If you can get to level 5 before mid-December you get a special badge that indicates you were a participant in the beta. I've been in the beta program since last year and...I'm only level 2. Time to get crackin!

I did get crackin and I'm currently 147,907 out of a necessary 150,000 for level 5. Not sure if I have today to mop up the rest (with a snow storm coming in too) but it would suck if I missed it by so little.

Deadline is 11:59pm PST tomorrow! You can do it!

Heh, thanks for the info. I'll try. There's a snowstorm coming though so we'll see.

Cruised through this on my way home from dinner in the city with friends tonight:

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/foBEl4Z.jpg)

It's about 4km south of my house and I'd heard about our 'little' farm, but this is nuts, they're all level 8 portals. Need to do a walk through and load up on gear. I've hit level 5 and I'm totally hooked.

Make sure you cycle through those 'farms' multiple times until you get the portal burned out message, great way to fill up the inventory. You can always recycle un-needed items for xm which can be used to remote recharge portals under your control.

I made level 5 around noon today and I'll be happy to get my founders badge. Where I live in CT easily 85 to 90% of the portals are enemy controlled. I don't mind.

Going out for a walk in a little while. It's not so bad living and working next to two massive farms... you can't lose no matter who controls them.

troubleshot wrote:
manta173 wrote:

I finally hit level three on the way to work. To link portals they need 8 resonators right?

This looks to be the case.

I've hit level four and have been invited to our local Resistance G+ crew. I've also stirred up the Enlightened nest south of me with the help of another Resistance member (we havent met or interacted, just tag teamed a bunch of portals creating sizeable fields in my area).

Still enjoying it, but mostly from an exercise point of view, its gotten me out of the house on my bicycle a lot in just two days.

I've lost 20 pounds over the last year, and I attribute a lot of it to walking at least a couple miles every day playing Ingress. I'm a couple thousand AP shy of 5 million, almost all of it on foot. I take a train to work, and every morning and every night I take a loop around town on the way to and from the train station farming an/or blowing stuff up.

I had a nice stroll around the park today.

IMAGE(http://i1124.photobucket.com/albums/l573/fieldsofclover/Screenshot_2013-12-15-17-05-59_zpsc0a78069.png)

So I tried playing again and was having fun, until I got a text from Verizon that I had hit my data cap again... I don't know what I'm doing wrong here, but I am still barely level 3 and I think I'm done. I do most of my portals through driving as I don't live near any good walking places. I think the data downloaded is significantly higher than a gps map would be as I use that all the time and never have an issue. I wish I had an app to tell me how much data each other app was using.

The game has to sync your inventory with the server pretty much any time you do anything, plus the map data, plus portal and XM status for everything within a kilometer of you. It will chew through a smaller data plan pretty fast.

Edit: there should be a data usage section in your settings... scroll down and there's a breakout. I've spent about 43mb on the game since Friday. Dwarfed by my tethering, but still my greediest single program.

Settings -> Usage gives how much data each app is using on my phone; don't know if that is standard for all Androids though.

That said, I just looked at my phone and Ingress is showing 17.43 Mb while Maps shows 7.71 Mb for the month. Couldn't tell you which one I use most. Neither are near the top of my usage list.

(if you're playing while driving you'll use more data in the same amount of time, too)

Ok... I'm an idiot and didn't know about that option... 17 MB does not make a dent in my 6 gig plan... time to talk to the wife as I haven't hit a gig this month... lol

Gotcha... you said Verizon so I was assuming they were charging you $5/mb.

Yeah, its not much of a data hog (but I bought an external battery today because boy does it suck the juice).
I've been using Ingress pretty heavily for a week and its only at 35meg.

Got a coffee with a couple neighborhood peeps yesterday... There are six L5-L8 players who work or live in our farmable downtown mile (it's not usually a green mile anymore), so we're going to try to resurrect a group lunch crawl every week or two.

Heh. Hit level 2 when 3 of the 6 available portals here on Sado went neutral. Was able to capture them and create a couple of control fields. Last week I submitted applications for about 6 or so new portals near where I live. Hopefully those will go live over the next month or so.

The app drains battery from my 2 year old Galaxy S2 like crazy. Couldn't imagine using it while doing a run or something. Phone would be dead after 30 mins of use.

Well, it is out for iOS today, for free. I picked it up, and will see how much use I can get out of it where I am. Downtown, where I work, it pretty filled up with L6 and L7 portals. Luckily, where I live is pretty empty, so i will be able to capture some portals and make some control fields.

I hope you enjoy it. Where I live and work there is very little to hack into. I don't get many opportunities to get out to snag portals from those Enlightened scum.

With the higher level portals you can still install defenses and punp up the power to them. Hack them for resources as well.

On another note, I found this book in the Google Play store. For $3 I bought it.
https://play.google.com/store/books/...

IMAGE(https://encrypted.google.com/books/images/frontcover/Y-XHsMlaocsC?fife=w300-rw)

Be careful which side you pick. I started playing yesterday and of the 31 portals I've come across, almost every single was owned by the opposing faction, level 7+, and modded to the gills. I feel like I'm wasting time even trying.

ruhk wrote:

Be careful which side you pick. I started playing yesterday and of the 31 portals I've come across, almost every single was owned by the opposing faction, level 7+, and modded to the gills. I feel like I'm wasting time even trying.

Short of asking someone who already plays to show you the map there's no way to know about that before you choose.

In terms of advancement, you're better off having enemy portals than all friendly. Hacking a friendly nets you 0 AP while a hack on an enemy controlled one is +100.

I netted almost 2000 AP just with a couple enemy portals and one captuer of an unclaimed portal near my work.
just under 4000 to get my next level.
IMAGE(https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-sHWV_VTmqV4/U8XGZgeBPZI/AAAAAAAAn7k/xOU9E4FIZkI/w506-h864/profile_20140715_192845_0.png)

Elycion wrote:

In terms of advancement, you're better off having enemy portals than all friendly. Hacking a friendly nets you 0 AP while a hack on an enemy controlled one is +100.

Oh, I'm gaining items/keys and leveling up, but it doesn't seem like I'm actually accomplishing anything. It feels like I wandered into a battlefield three days after the war and started throwing pebbles at the victor's castle.