CM Simpson: Writer & Gamer

Badges? I hear you ask. You keep banging on about badges. What’s so important about them? Well, up until Level 8, you advance on the AP (or experience) you earn, and that’s all you need to move from one level to another, BUT once you hit Level 9, you’re going to have to have badges to show that you’ve earned the right to advance to the next level. Think of it as having proof that you know what you’re doing. Wait! What? Where do I find out about this? Well, you can look at your scanner. When you hit Level 8, you will notice a line just above your medals. It will have something like: LVL 9 Req: (picture of a blank silver badge) 0/4 (picture of a blank gold badge) 0/1. Take a look at the screen shot below; I used it to show a Spec Ops badge last week, but you can see the requirements listed just below the agent insignia, and above the badges. From the looks of it, Agent LittleBlackDuck has all the badges needed to get to Level 12, but needs almost 400,000 AP. ...

On e of the main reasons I started playing Ingress was because I needed to work up some extra incentive for exercising—yuh know, because better health just wasn’t enough… Anyway, the missions in Ingress have given me a reason to travel distances I wouldn’t usually have travelled, and to visit places I wouldn’t have visited. They’ve helped me orient to new locations, and learn new bus routes, and they’ve given me a reason to get out besides having to do so because it’s good for me. What are missions, you ask? Well, missions are a series of portals grouped together that you have to visit and take a specific action at. Every portal is linked to a real-world location, and every action is taken through the scanner. Once the scanner logs that the action has been taken, it’s ticked off the list. When all the tasks have been completed, you’re awarded a mission medal to mark the fact you’ve completed that mission. Is there an agent badge linked to missions? Yes, the Spec Ops ...