I’m level 9 now, almost to level 10. If you’re playing solo, it is hard/slow to level. If you join the G+ group for your faction in your area, and get hooked up with active local Hangout chats, it is a lot easier to level up, learn some of the local etiquette, and have more fun, too. It’s a blast to walk around a portal-dense area with a dozen players and smash & hack! On the other hand, if a hard core player starts making noises like the game is more important than real life, I’d advise shutting them down quickly. There are some sane, level-headed players in my area, and on my side of town, that won’t hesitate to back-up those of us that can’t be at every event.
As far as adding resos to portals that have already been claimed… if they’re in a high traffic area and already mid-level, probably safe, but if it is way off the beaten path, and has say one 8 and three 1s, it is probably because someone is trying to keep it from being noticed. (possible reasons include trying to get Guardian badge or saving it for a planned, coordinated operation)
Link Amps are mostly useless, unless a planned op includes a BAF (Big-ass field, like regional size), or you’re messing with someone (fill the Mod slots with useless mods… #HeExtends).
And yeah, portal level is sum of resos divided by 8.
Some more hints…
Heat sinks and Multi-hacks come in different rarity levels, which have different strengths of effect.
An unmodded portal will burn out for you if hacked 4 times in 4 hours, and once burned out, will take 4 hours from the time of the first hack to recover. This can be sidestepped by throwing on a heat sink - this will give the player that installed the HS another 4 hacks. This is helpful if you’ve gone out of the way to hack some keys and don’t want to wait f o r e v e r.
Throwing on a heat sink is also a way to immediately bypass the default 5 minute cool down period before you can hack again.
Those two are bonus effects… the intended purposes of Heat Sinks and Multi-hacks are as @e4tmyl33t stated.
Yeah, I’m still stuck at Level 4. I’d probably level faster if I got out of the house more and went downtown for a hack spree every once in a while, but I have no real reason to be down there otherwise and I can’t be arsed to leave the house just to hack portals.
I’ve been trying to use it as an excuse to get out of the house. Sometimes, that means war driving, but some spots have to be walked, which has helped me lose about 10 pounds in the last month or two!
w00t! Made L3 this morning after linking a smallish field. Now I need to go back & upgrade some resonators on those portals.
I’ve been primarily wardriving for my Ingressing, making stops on my commute to/from work.
Still trying to figure out when to fire at an enemy portal vs. a resonator on that portal vs. hacking that portal. It’s probably explained in Ingress 101 somewhere and I just haven’t bothered to look.
Wait, so…if I attack the portal, I’ll eventually destroy it completely?
Just trying to figure out the order of operations here. There’s a portal with a lone L8 resonator near home. I want to take the portal. Do I hack the portal, then attack the resonator? I can only hack it once every 5 minutes, and ain’t nobody got time for that.
Once you take out all the resonators on a portal, it falls back to neutral and can then be captured with your own resonators.
And yes, hack the portal first. Hacking an enemy portal nets you 100AP, though you do run the risk of the portal attacking you as if you were firing off XMP Bursters. It doesn’t damage the portal resonators at all, but you’ll get stuff (the same as if you hacked your own faction’s portal) plus the extra AP, and it also counts as a hack for the burnout period (so if it’s a portal they’re using for farming, it eats up one of their hacks within the cooldown time period)
Hacking/cool down/burnout is per player. If I hack a portal 4 times, anyone else can come hack it at the same time or right after.
@dakboy, congrats on L3! I agree with hacking before attacking, esp if the portal is a higher level - get the AP and some gear! When you attack, you destroy the resonators, but then the portal turns neutral (white/gray) and can be captured. The portal doesn’t get destroyed. Also, when you’re attacking, your XMP Bursters will have the most effect on items near the center of where it goes off. So, if you’re trying to take out the shields, to go the center of the portal. If you’re a L3 trying to take out a L8 reso, go stand on the reso. I don’t know how many L3 XMPs it will take, but bring plenty and be prepared to use a few power cubes, too.
A nice thing about power cubes is that you can use a cube that is a higher level than you are. Some XM will be wasted, as it will be more than your level can store, but better than having none at all.
And while it is on my mind, if the portal has Mods, like Shields and Turrets, try to use a couple Ultra Strikes on the center of the portal to blow off the Mods. If an XMP is like a grenade or bomb, with an expanding blast radius, an US is more like a shape charge, with all the power concentrated within only a couple meters. The animation is kinda cool, too.
Oh, they must’ve changed that then. I remember playing a while back and hack cooldowns were per portal, not per player. That makes things easier for groups, I suppose.
Kinda, yeah, but you don’t really aim, it just goes off wherever the scanner thinks you are. (so, depending on how much your phone drifts, it may not really be where you are )
You can be in the middle of wherever and fire off an XMP, just hold your finger on the scanner and slide up when the options pop up (but if there’s nothing inside the blast radius, it’s just for your own entertainment)
[Edit: I guess I don’t know how to make the screenshot appear, instead of the link… ugh
er, ok, nevermind]
AHA! This is what I was missing. I thought I was firing “at” the point my thumb was on (with the radius starting there), not just doing a radius blast around my current position.
ehh, ya, that sucks… it can be hard to not take it personally, but I try to see it as an opportunity to get more AP for taking it back!
With the “virus” infecting portals right now (makes them decay faster, and also kills higher level resos faster), it is kind of a chore to keep them recharged. But if you can find a portal that is off the beaten path, or even out in the middle of nowhere, it is worth the work to keep it charged. The Guardian badge requires you to keep a portal continuously, so it isn’t something you can just work harder at one weekend and gain a lot of ground on. Until you get to level 8, badges don’t really matter, but Guardian is one I would advise to start working on early. For the badges that matter (count towards higher levels), there are 5 steps: Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, Onyx. The days for Guardian levels are 3, 10, 20, 90, and 150. I have one portal at 73 days and it is nerve wracking.
Speaking of main street…
I had to run up to a little college town in the middle of nowhere east Texas (Nacogdoches aka Naconowhere) and blew through the local portals in my quest for unique captures and hacks. These are the responses I got from a couple of the local opposition…
[pikapp6 had sent me a few COMM messages earlier, while I was blowing up everything in sight.]
)
