Ingriess: 10 Things I Wish I’d Known When I Started Playing
I started playing just over 12 months ago, three days before Niantic’s birthday celebrations for the third year of the game ended. I reached level 4 by the end of November, 2015, and level 13 by the same time this year. I enjoy the game, and I’m fitter for it, but there are a few things I wish I’d known when I started:
The
Sojourner’s Medal
The sojourner’s badge is awarded for
hacking portals during consecutive 24-hour periods. Like all the other badges,
it has five levels, the highest being black, or onyx. If I’d known about the
sojourner’s badge when I started, I would have made it onyx by today. As it is,
I didn’t cotton on to this fact, until I’d spent my first 15 days hacking and
the badge lit up on the Agent’s screen… that took me almost two months, and I
still have 49 days to go.
The
Importance of Medals in General
In Ingris, you can level up by earning
points known as AP, right up until Level 8. After Level 8, you need a certain
number of badges as well as AP in
order to progress. You can find this information at: http://decodeingress.me/ingress-manual/leveling/.
Knowing this early is a good way to start playing in a way that helps you
achieve these before you need them, and reduces any stress involved in getting
there. Reduced stress is important for enjoying the game.
About
the DeCode Ingress and Ingress Support sites
These sites are very helpful in explaining
the game, and understanding how to play—even after you’ve been playing for a
while:
About
Missions
I’ll make no bones about it; I love the
missions. I didn’t understand at all how they worked, or how to find them, but,
when I did, they very quickly became a part of my regular walking routine.
Missions can be found on the scanner, by going into ‘Ops’, and then scrolling
through the options at the top, until you find the Missions tab. Opening that
will show you the missions closest to you. If you want to plan where to go
before you leave home, go to the Ingress intel map at www.ingress.com/intel, log in, and
highlight the area of the map you’re thinking of visiting. Click the ‘missions’
tab in the bottom right-hand corner and then click on the missions to see what
portals are involved. Oh, and there is a medal for the number of missions you
complete. Also, if you choose missions that only require hacking portals, they
are achievable even when you are at a low level. Missions that require linking,
fielding or capturing can be difficult to complete at low levels where you
might not have the firepower to take down a higher level portal.
About
Mission Series
Sometimes you’ll see a mission that has
numbers or Roman numerals as part of its title. The medals earned for these
missions sit beside each other and form a mosaic picture. They need to be done
in order for the picture to form properly, and you should only start them when
the next mission medal you earn will be at the start of a new line, otherwise
the picture won’t work properly. Knowing this means you won’t have to move
mission medals around until the picture works.
How
to Move Mission Medals
Basically – you can’t. The only way to
shift the position of a medal is to re-do the mission. As I discovered when I
found I’d started a series mission before the end of a line. I’ll blog about
that later.
About
Guardians and Guardian Hunters
There is a medal called the guardian medal.
You earn it by capturing and controlling a portal for a certain number of days.
To get to black, you have to keep that portal under your control for 180 days,
which is a very long time in Ingress terms. There are also players on the
opposing team who look for long-lived portals and capture them, while leaving
other, less long-lived portals in the area alone. I’m not sure why this
happens, but it does. Guardian is a badge that requires a certain amount of
skill by way of selecting a portal and maintaining it, and then you need a lot
of luck to keep it. It’s not a reflection on how well you play if you cannot
keep a portal until you earn the black medal. Remember, no one ‘owns’ or can
claim a portal as their own in Ingress, and it’s kinda obligatory for the other
team to capture as many portals as they can. If the portal you are a guardian
of is captured, just start again. Many players capture and maintain several
portals at once in an attempt to gain this badge.
It’s
Not Mean to Take the Opposition’s Portal
Don’t laugh, okay, but it took me while
before I stopped feeling guilty about capturing the other team’s portals. For a
while I just took on the grey ones, and then the other team helped me get over
the guilt, by taking them back. Now, I see it more like a game of chess. We all
make a move—sometimes we even remember to take turns. It’s fun, okay?
It’s
Okay to Build on Portals that Your Team has Already Captured
While it sometimes happens, you are not
likely to fry anyone else’s plans to field or link, if you use a portal you
haven’t captured yourself to field or link from. In fact, if you’re going to
play this game successfully, you kind of have to. It’s also okay to replace
resonators on a portal that’s been captured by another player, add modules to
protect it, and link it to as much as you can link it to. No one ‘owns’ a portal.
You are on a team. Helping that team earn points, or keep a portal longer, or
capture mind units is what you’re meant to be doing. So, get out there and do
it.
Recharging
The recharger medal is one of four medals
completely in your control. The other medals include: trekker, spec ops, and sojourner.
They’re not reliant on anything but your own efforts to achieve. Recharging can
be done using portal keys wherever you are at. By recharging as much as you
can, you not only make portals harder to capture, but you work towards the
black level of this badge at a steady rate.
And that’s it, for now. Time to move.
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