My Daughter Made Level 8!

My daughter hasn't been an active player for a while. She got hooked into Ingress when I told her about the anomalies and she wanted to participate. Tried as we may to get her to 8 before Darsana, we just couldn't get there.

Since Darsana she has played a little here and there, mainly coming out with me when I want a little help taking out a particular portal. A few weeks ago I was hitting a few targets of opportunity while running some errands with her and she said she was going to play. She told me she was now so close to 8 she wanted to make a push for it.

We began heading out a few times, unfortunately time wasn't on our side. My typical playing time is generally from 10:00 pm to 1:00 am and I wasn't going to keep her out that long, so we went out in 1 hr bursts. One of our local Resistance players even kept tabs on her progress (Mainly because it was his portals we were hitting.) One night he sent a message on the COMM saying he was waiting up for her to hit again and level up. It turned out to be a little while before we could go out again.

This past Friday night. I was loaded with nearly 1000 L8 XMPs and was ready to do some damage to the Resistance dominated areas. I on the intel map I found a nearby portal with dozens of links and many, many fields coming and going from it. I estimated that portal alone would give her the AP needed.

We headed out and that portal was number 1 on our list of targets. We get there and I drop a handful of L8 Ultra Strikes on the center of the portal to kill the shields and then tell her to spam it with XMPs. Well I see the portal is going down as the field starts to look weak. Then next think I know it is full blown recharged. The resistance was recharging on her, and by the look of it several people were recharging. So I decide to help and fire off a few L8 Xmps. When it started looking weak I would stop as not to steal the AP from her, but they were relentlessly recharging.

So I then decided to spam it with L8 Bursters. It starts to get weak again. I back off to let her take it out, but they brought it up again. I start spam bombing again. Between the two of us we got it down to 4 resonators. By this time we'd each used probably 100 XMPs. But I back off again and again they are able to keep it fully charged against her. So I start firing again and what do you know one of my XMP bursters took out 3 of their resonators and I got the over 28K AP. I went ahead and took out the last remaining resonator too, but let her claim and fully deploy to.

In hind sight I would have walked to reach resonator and fired Ultra Strike to more strategically taken them out, and save on Bursters, then once it was down to 3 have her do the same. Oh well live and learn.

We went out and she did level up later that night and we were out until 4 am (and the wife was not happy about that).

So I am happy to now have a second powerful player in my family to help me.

Catching Up - My Anomaly Experiences

In the time since I last regularly posted I participated in 2 anomalies Darsana & Persepolis.

Darsana:

Like I mentioned I wasn't completely dormant while not posting. November 2014 Virginia Beach was a satellite location for the Darsana Anomaly. Finally we had an anomaly in my general area. I was really excited about it and my excitement rubbed off on my daughter she decided she wanted to participate. We tried like mad to get her to a Level 8 before the anomaly, but just didn't make it.

November at the oceanfront area of Virginia Beach when scheduled it seemed like it would be great November generally is not too cold around here. Well we just happened to be hit with a spell of cold weather, add to that a cold breeze coming straight off the ocean. It ended up being pretty darn cold.

My daughter and I were assigned to a bike team where we could be deployed to any area needed for additional support quickly. I'm proud to say that my team did it's job well and we won each portal we fought over other than one, but we did win the volatile portals we were assigned to.

This was a great event I met a lot of great people and had fun. Unfortunately my faction did not win the satellite event. But we had a great time, met a lot of really cool people from all over and even met Joe Philley himself.

Here's my bike crew:

(Hey dude in the red jacket, stop eyeing my daughter :) )

Here's my daughter with Joe Philley:

Persepolis:

I was all set and ready to go to Persepolis in Washington D.C.. My sister lives inside the D.C. beltway and I was stoked my daughter and I had a place to crash it wasn't that far away and I had such a blast with Darsana I couldn't wait for this anomaly. The one thing I wanted to change was I was not going to be on a bike team again. I was not in shape for the amount of distance we had to travel and the speed needed. I was always at the back of the pack but I was there. 

Well life got in the way, and at the last minute I just couldn't make it. I was crushed. But all was not lost. I'd farmed really well and had stocked my daughter and I up with bookoo equipment. We were prepared. 

Luckily, I let some people know I wasn't going to be able to make it and gave away nearly all of both of our gear to people who were going. After I gave away a ton of good stuff a local player sent me a link to fill out what I'd donated and then I ended up with a Persepolis badge which was pretty cool since I was crushed that I couldn't make it.