INGRESS

[SiliconAlley_Sam]

Right... and is there any way to create a portal so that there's a few more of them within walking distance of home?

[SiliconAlley_Sam]

Na, it's fine (so long as you don't flip a portal to the opposite faction, but don't worry about that right now). Just work through the tutorial, hack portals and look for white ones to capture.

 

Right! Thanks

[Garacesh]

Apparently, no, not on the iOS one yet.

 

Portal backlog is freaking huge, though. I've got portal submissions from January onwards not responded yet (I have ~50 in limbo)

[SiliconAlley_Sam]

That's a shame!

 

Right, well I'm sure you'll hear from me on this tomorrow once I've had chance to poke around my local portal. Have a feeling this is probably going to take far more time than I have to invest in it but we shall see!

[AlfaTech]

Can't you 'Submit Portal' on the iOS version by long pressing a location on the scanner then? I know that there is currently a 4-6 month waiting list for them to be accepted, I've just had 8 accepted that I submitted back in March.

[Garacesh]

Buddies in my hangouts have said no, but I don't have an iOS device so I can't check first-hand.

Could you please do a bit of a test for us, @SiliconAlley_Sam? On the 'roaming' screen (i.e. the one with the map, not your inventory) long-press on a blank area and options should come up (such as FIRE XMP).. Is "NEW PORTAL" there?

[SiliconAlley_Sam]

Buddies in my hangouts have said no, but I don't have an iOS device so I can't check first-hand.

Could you please do a bit of a test for us, @SiliconAlley_Sam? On the 'roaming' screen (i.e. the one with the map, not your inventory) long-press on a blank area and options should come up (such as FIRE XMP).. Is "NEW PORTAL" there?

 

Just Navigate and Fire XMP.

 

I now have a full green bar having collected lots of blue dots on my stroll for lunch.

[Garacesh]

Just Navigate and Fire XMP.

 

I now have a full green bar having collected lots of blue dots on my stroll for lunch.

Looks like you can't submit portals then

Those blue dots (white dots for us, I guess maybe it's to do with the screen) are XM (Exotic Matter). XM is basically your power source for anything. You need XM to:

 

Fire XMP weaponry

Use 'flip cards' (JARVIS Virus and ADA Refractor)

Place Resonators

Place Portal Mods

Hack Portals*

 

I believe you don't need XM to link portals. XM can be gained from collecting stray XM which flits about randomly, and also is 'spewed out' from portals every (I think) 20 minutes. You can also recycle items in your inventory, and use Power Cubes. Power Cubes are basically single-use 'XM Batteries' (You get much more XM from using a power cube, but you can recycle them if you just want to get rid)

 

* If you hack a friendly portal, it still costs XM, but doesn't give you AP (Access Points, basically Ingress' version of EXP) and doesn't attack back. Hacking an enemy portal will grant you 100 AP, but the portal will attack you if you're close enough (a portals counter-attack range and damage increases with its level), on top of the XM cost to hack a portal. A portal will also attack you if you use an XMP to damage its resonators. Your XMP's will never damage resonators aligned with your faction.

Edited July 14, 2014 by Garacesh

[SiliconAlley_Sam]

I'm hoping all of this will start to make more sense once I'm doing it!

[Garacesh]

It sounds like a lot, but if you have any questions, just ask here and I'll do my best to answer (and I'm sure @AlfaTech will, too)

Failing that (or if you just want to spread your questions around to look less newby ) you can ask people on the scanner or hangouts for advice. In my experience, people are more than happy to take people under their wing (a few of us Greens have even shown Smurfs the ropes and given them advice and encouragement) so you'll be set in no time. Just devote a couple of hours to it across the week and you'll pick up everything easy

[SiliconAlley_Sam]

Thanks guys

[AlfaTech]

No problem.

[SiliconAlley_Sam]

Been a bit underwhelmed so far but I think it's probably because all I can do within walking distance is hack friendly portals and I'm too busy to jump in a car to do anything more meaningful. Still really like the concept though.

[AlfaTech]

The servers seem pretty busy with the new intake, been experiencing problems especially at peak-times with ghost links/field remaining after portals have been destoryed and not being able to link across them (it takes about 5-10min for them to clear at times). Unfortunately and rather typically the area is now swarming with loads of new smurflets, hardly any new ENL around here, if any at all. We have a smurfestation, we're absolutely overun with 'em!

[SiliconAlley_Sam]

Wish I had some enemy action, everything here is already green for miles around!

[AlfaTech]

Yeah everything around here is green for miles too thankfully the smurfs give me something to do from time to time. Just gonna head out and make a 14,000 mind unit (mu) field just for fun.

[Garacesh]

You gotta make action. If they won't come to you, take the fight to them. We did last night Went and downed their L8 farms and brought them back up in the name of the Enlightned! 17 of us in total showed up, which was a decent outcome when you consider a lot of people are already prepped for Dublin and won't need to farm or won't want to spend money.

 

Sam, have you gotten 'in' with the local crowd yet? You'll find things to do if you can make the time and the friends.#

 

Yeah everything around here is green for miles too thankfully the smurfs give me something to do from time to time. Just gonna head out and make a 14,000 mind unit (mu) field just for fun.

Gief. Nao.

My biggest field is only 1.8k 3.8k

Edited July 25, 2014 by Garacesh

[AlfaTech]

Gief. Nao.

My biggest field is only 1.8k 3.8k

 

Well I'm pretty rural down here so I fill the gaps in between the urban areas My largest field was 38,589 mu, and I'm currently holding up 59,360 mu with all my fields combined - I seem to be the only ENL adding to the score in our cell. lol You're right tho @Garacesh maybe I need to go back out there and wreck some smurf fields again.

[SiliconAlley_Sam]

Yeah I think that's my main issue to be honest. I just don't have the time to make stuff happen. My last free weekend was in mid June and I don't have another one now until September so unless it's somewhere I can walk to on my lunch break or after work there isn't really anything I can do!

[AlfaTech]

My mate is in Jersey at the moment and he's just made a lovely field across the channel using two of my anchor portals down in Dorset I did have to take a 2+ hour drive to rebuild one of them on Saturday, but it's all gud. I also made a set of fields this morning totalling about 55,000 mu Game on!

[Garacesh]

Two hours? Is that it?

 

We took a 4-hour detour on the way back from Glasgow just to take out a link that bisected the UK. Didn't help that we'd all been a little hearty at the hotel bar last night, and everyone was feeling a bit queasy in the morning (even the little one, who obviously hadn't had any alcohol, so we blame the hotel sausages)

 

Keeled over at the side of the road, riding the chunder dragon.. Rob goes "Oh, hang on a minute!", walks ~20m up the road and submits a new portal. Priorities

[AlfaTech]

Well no, it 'should' have been a 2 hour drive, but I left at 6 and got to my destination portal at 10. I got a little distracted on the way.

 

How you guys coping with the 3rd a day decay rate up there?

[Garacesh]

Making no difference here. Decay rates are supposed to be for getting newbies levelled up pretty quickly, but when the local smurfs see us throwing fields around and always come and smash it anyway, so it makes no difference.

Managed to ninja some unique captures from it though, portals I'm usually too late to bring back up. So that's nice.

[smithe]

So, I'm thinking of downloading ingress but I'm not sure if it is for me, any ideas?

[Garacesh]

Did you sign up here just to ask about Ingress? O.o There'd be much better places to go than a tech forum that just happens to have a thread on it. I'd personally direct you to Ingress to learn more.

 

As for advice, get it. It's free. If you don't like it, uninstall it.