Every time I start a game, especially one I like, I try to dive in as deep as I can to figure out how to get the maximum benefits, for the least effort. Frankly, I try to play anything smart. Because in reality, I don't always have the time hardcore players tend to have.
So, for those not wanting the long version, here is a summary, and you can dive more deeply into the details further down the post.
(note: I'll be expanding on this in time, but this is the basics in as semi-short a version as I can give right now.)
Basics
- Do the tutorial missions. It's a great way to learn the absolute basics of the game and highly worth paying attention to.
- Get to know your Ingress Community.
- I can't tell you how important this is. They'll help you level, give you gear, and help push you up to the big bad level 8 where you can be just as effective in the game as anyone else. For the most part. You'll typically find your communities on Google+ and using the Hangout's messaging app.
- Use the Ingress Community Directory
- If that does work, try doing a Google search of "Ingress " and your town/city/county/state/or country. But probably not all at the same time.
- Learn how to use www.ingress.com/intel. It gives you a map of all the portals.
- Hack for Gear
- All gear is obtained in Ingress by Hacking. So hack your heart out.
- Hack, hack, and hack some more.
- Hack your enemy faction portals for more AP. Hacking your own portals gives no AP so you won't level (unless you glyph hack).
- You'll need all the resonators you can get your hands on early on in the game.
- Learn to Glyph Hack.
- Basically just hold your Hack button for a couple seconds. And now you're glyph hacking. It gives more gear and more AP (regardless who's faction portal you're hacking)
- Find areas with LOTS of portals really close together. Then keep an eye on it for the next point.
- You'll find that these areas "flip", aka get attacked by your enemy faction. So you have ample opportunity to deploy, link, and field.
- Learn to Farm portal keys!
- Drop all your keys to a portal, then hack the portal. Pick your keys back up that are on the ground.
- Field, Field, and Field some more.
- Fielding gives the most AP. Make as many small fields as you can fit into any space.
- Know that:
- You can't criss-cross links. Meaning if a link, blue or green, line is cutting off a link you want to make, you won't be able to create the link.
- You can't create links if you're already inside a field. So if the portal you want to create a link with is inside of a blue or green cloud (field), you won't be able to create the link.
- There are a few other situations, but Ingress is pretty much right every time it deny's your ability to link. Learning what can kill your ability to create links will help you better plan the links you make and the fields you make from them.
- Creating a field around your local McDonald's restaurant is worth just as much AP as if you created a field over all of North America. They vary on total MU's, but that's a different topic.
- Below level 8, dropping large fields is a huge waste of time and doesn't get you any closer to level 8 then dropping one small field. Avoid large fields when you're intent on leveling.
- Resonator Usage
- You can only use Resonators that are equal to your Agent level or less. So if you're level one and have a few level two resonators, you'll have to wait until you are a level two agent to use those level two resonators.
- Double down on deploying Resonators.
- As level two or higher agent, you can deploy all level 1 resonators on a portal. Then upgrade them all to level 2. then upgrade 4 of those to level 3, and so on. This helps if you can get your hands on a TON of Resonators.
- Use your Mods (but not the good ones).
- Always drop 2 mods on a portal. You get AP for it. But don't use the following mods until you're higher level and have a better understanding of the game.
- Axa Shield
- Multi Hack
- Ingress Speed Limit
- Ingress kind of has a speed limit. 35-37 mph. You can do any action in Ingress under that speed (get a driver!).
- The only thing that is not true about that is collecting XM. You can collect XM at any speed. So if you're out of XM, just leave Ingress open and running while your charging it in your car. You're XM bar will fill up pretty quick again.
- Speed Lock
- This occurs when you try to take an action going over the Ingress Speed Limit. You'll find your hacks return a message saying, "Hack acquired no items.". This means you're speed locked. Pull over, close the game, reopen it, wait a bit, the speed lock will eventually go away (usually only a few minutes).
- You also will find you cannot recharge portals when you are exceeding the Ingress Speed limit.
- You also will find that your Bursters give a message "Missed all resonators" when you're exceeding the speed limit (or if you just happen to fire off when no portals or resonators are around to attack).
Fastest Leveling from 1 to 8
- Link and Field.
- Note the comments in the Basics section on fielding. Fielding is the best AP you get. So make sure to get lots of keys to areas you frequently visit that have a lot of portals.
- Fully Deploy
- This means that you'll want to fill all available resonator slots on a portal. The first resonator to go on a neutral portal is worth 625 AP. The next 6 resonators will be worth 125 AP each. The last resonator is worth 325 AP. It's the next best AP in the game next to Fielding.
- Learn to Glyph Hack, and Glyph Hack the enemy.
- Hacking an Enemy Portal? 100AP. Glyph Hacking any portal and getting one Glyph right? 50AP bonus. Glyph hacking any portal and getting all Glyph's right? %extra AP bonus based on how fast you do it. So if you're new to Glyph hacking, try to Glyph hack everything but try to nail any of the portals that are under level 6. You can easily pull 300 AP+ per enemy portal you Glyph Hack. Best part? You don't need any gear or break your walking pace. Just keep rolling on. :)
- Simply put: Glyph hacking your portal can get you an easy 200+ AP. Glyph hacking an enemy portal can get you an easy 300+ AP. So why not spam hack the enemy?
- Find lots of portals that are bunched together.
- This will let you do points 1 and 2 above the fastest. Making it even easier to farm AP. You're looking for about 3+ portals per every block you walk (or more which does exist in some places). If you're in a city environment or a super rural environment, where your "blocks" are a quarter mile or longer, then you're probably looking for 5+ portals per block you walk.
- Which brings us back to get to know your community.
- Your local community you will find on Google+ and using the Hangout's messenger application. They will be able to help you find the best places to go as well as help you with keeping your resonators full as you work through areas trying to level up. They can also help destroy tough areas where you can then deploy your heart out and link and field till you're blue in the face. Community is key in Ingress. So don't lurk in the shadows... ya creeper. ;p
- Skip Recharging till level 7 or 8 (controversial)
- It's my opinion that when your level 6 and lower, you need to save every Power Cube you get for attacking and deploying resonators. Recharging Portals (powering up beat up resonators) eats your power cubes like no ones business. Which I found would stall my game play. If I don't have XM, I can't do ANYTHING in the game. Power Cubes are portable XM batteries. Except they're only a one time use thing. So you have to farm Power Cubes like any other gear. But they drop a lot slower than Resonators and Bursters. At level 7+ you'll find you start stock piling Power Cubes. You need less power cubes to fight, and you have a bigger XM pool to deploy resonators and link portals with. Meaning you can deploy and link more before moving to a new area and gaining XM just laying on the ground. So in my opinion: Don't recharge. Just focus on getting to level 8.
- DISCLAIMER!!! Once you're level 8, recharge your heart out! No one likes a level 8+ player who doesn't recharge the farm in which they use to keep a healthy supply of super good gear. On top of that, the Recharger badge is one of the easiest to get so it's one most recommend you go for first to help you get to level 10+. So once you're level 8, go crazy with the recharging!
Break down by Level Range
Levels 1-2:
- Link and Field. All you need is XM and Key's and it's the greatest source of AP in the game. See Basics #8 above for farming keys. This is critical. Also see point #9 on Fielding.
- Glyph hack everything if you have the patience. Bonus here, all you need is XM. Easiest thing to get in the game.
- Deploy every and any resonator you have. It doesn't matter where or how. Just deploy them.
- Deploy every mod you have except key mods. See Basics #11 above.
- Link everything, but keep them short links.
- Find the bulky, condensed portal areas. See "Fastest Leveling from 1 to 8" point #4 for more details.
Levels 3-5:
- Same as levels 1-2. However at this point, if you find your self in an area that is constantly fought over but is never heavily built up, blow it up. You're looking for areas where there are few to no Mods deployed, definitely want to avoid anything that shielded (will be a huge gear and time killer for you). Combat at this point is highly debatable. I actually did very little combat at these levels just because how time consuming it was with very little reward.
- Same as levels 1-2 and 3-4. Except now you you want to find enemy fields to. This now becomes the fastest AP you can build. Though not as plentiful as fielding and linking it self. When you kill an Enemy field you get a chunk of the AP that was given to create the field. So find places where the enemy levels up. And blast their fields and reso's to dust. Great fast AP. Keep in mind. Level 6 is when this becomes a viable option, so it's the only reason why I say try this at level 6. If your areas are heavily defended, don't bother attacking. Again it will be a huge waste of gear and time. At level 7, you start rocking things. You can take out Common (green) Shields pretty easily as well as Rare Shields.
Combat
From levels 1 through 5, combat can be exciting and frustrating. For example, if you hit a portal that has Very Rare Shields or Axa Shields, you'll most likely burn all your Power Cubes long before you kill the portal. They're just that tough. Conversely, you may find a batch of weak portals. And even at level 3 you might be able to blow the snot out of them which is loads of fun! So in this Combat section I want to give you some tips on becoming effective in combat as soon as possible.
- Press and Hold
- When you first start playing, you might find your self going into your inventory and clicking Use on your Bursters and Ultra Strikes.
- Instead of doing that, when you're looking at the map, press and hold the screen. You'll get a pop up menu with the option to Fire Bursters.
- You can fire both Bursters and Ultra Strikes this way. No need to go into your inventory at all.
- Range Matters:
- How close or how far you are from an enemy portal before you start attacking makes all the difference in the world. From levels 1-3 you may not notice much on heavily link or shielded portals. You'll be seeing a lot of 1% damage against your targets at that level. But as you level up and use stronger gear, you'll quickly notice that being very far from the portal when you attack it yields far less damage than being right on top of the portal.
- To be more specific: You deal more damage the closer you are to your target. Your target isn't really the portal. It's the resonators. So if you stand on top of a resonator, you'll do the maximum damage available.
- Look before you leap.
- Especially at lower levels it's critical that you look at a portals Mods before you attack it. You can find yourself completely out of gear just so you can smack yourself in the forehead because you didn't realize the portal had an Very Rare Shield or an Axa Shield.
- Hold.... Hold... HOOOOLD!!!!..... FIRE!
- By holding the Fire button down for a second or two, you'll see the ring around your cursor (you, the little arrow), grow and shrink. When that ring is at it's smallest and tightest around your cursor, let go of the fire button. You can gain up to 20% additional damage! Very helpful at lower levels.
- Note: You can hold the fire button down forever and watch that circle grow and shrink. At first you may need to watch it for several seconds to get the timing. Over time, you'll want to get the .75 second button hold to hit 20% bonus damage technique down.
- No, I don't know if it's really .75 seconds... just feels like it to me.. pft...
- Ultra Strikes - Technique, technique, technique.
- Ultra strikes are basically the Bombs and Artillery for ingress. Except they have absolutely no range (well, a very very tiny range of effect).
- You don't get a lot of Ultra Strikes. So the recommendation is only use them to knock off shields. Other mods fly off with Bursters, but more on that in a moment.
- Ultra Strikes are one of the only things in Ingress that has a true technique. Before veterans flame me, I mean simply in the use of gear during combat specifically.
- Ultra Strikes primary usage is to blow mods, especially shields, off of portals. So when a portal is beefed up with defense, use your ultra strikes. Doesn't matter which ultra strikes you use. I tend to start with my lowest level first just to burn them out and save my bigger ultra strikes for the tougher shields.
- HOW TO USE THESE!!!
- The key to Ultra Strikes is to stand directly on top of the portal and then fire your ultra strikes.
- In this instance, your target is actually the portal it self. And when you here people say stand directly on top of the portal, they mean it. If you cursor isn't fully overlapping the portal (zoom in to be sure), you may reduce the effectiveness by half or more. This is the technique.
- Bursters
- Where Ultra Strikes are your bombs, Bursters are your bullets. Except... with a much bigger blast radius... hmm... Stick with me, this is still true even if it's not.
- Bursters come a dime a dozen. You'll get more Bursters than any other gear in the game. However you'll also use more Bursters than any other gear in the game. This is where bullets come into play. You may use 50 ultra strikes on a busy night. But you'll use 500-1000 Bursters on a busy night.
- Bursters are just fine if there any other mods other than Sheilds on a portal. Though at level 7 and 8, you'll find most players don't bother killing Common Shields with Ultra Strikes. They just use bursters and it's just fine. They save their Ultra Strikes for Very Rare Shields and Axa Shields.
- Higher level Bursters do more damage.
- Higher level Bursters have a bigger blast radius.
- Higher level Bursters have a greater chance at knocking off mods than lower level bursters.
- Learn your Mod's!
- Imagine if you didn't know the difference between attacking a Billy Goat with a sling shot as opposed to attacking a Tank with a sling shot. You're bound to hate life when you run into that Tank.
- The most important mods to learn early on is Shields. Which are stronger, which are weaker. When you look at a portal, if the shield mods are green, they're Common, the weakest. For the color challenged, the Rare Shield (rs), Very Rare Shield (vrs), and Axa Shields (axa) can look very much the same.
- Before attacking a portal, again, make sure to check the mods.
