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.

Awesome mission, awesome teamwork!

Because of where I live and the fact I'm virtually the only Enlightened agent in my area, I was contacted to ask to be a part of an awesome mission. This group was building an 18 layer mega-field with one of the main links going through the area where I live.

The issue is because I am virtually the only Enlightened agent, the Resistance (two agents in particular) really dominate the area. They constantly have their own 100K Mind Unit Mega field over the area and apparently they have virtually unlimited keys to the other remote portals. I take it out and minutes later it's back up. I actually got to the point of saying I'll just leave it up because it only gives them more points each time I destroy it when they put it back up.

This ended up being a pretty good strategy. Not only did it keep them from continuing to get massive AP and medals, it prevented not only them but other agents from throwing up other links and fields which could interfere with the mission, yet I could take out their fields with just taking out 3 nearby portals in my town.

The leader of the mission came to my town and briefed me on the mission. I just liked the thought of being part of a cool mission like this. Very similar to the mission I posted about much earlier. He then asked where I was on my Illuminator badge. I told him I was at gold. He then told me he'd save keys to the remote portals for me. After I take out the blocking field, I could try to meet him at the southern tip of the field and put up a final field. The first 17 layers were to be before the checkpoint. With me taking down the field immediately before the checkpoint and the southern tip being almost an hour away my field wouldn't be in the checkpoint if at all. It was very possible the remote anchors would be gone before I got down there. But I appreciated the opportunity and didn't expect it.

I made it down just in the nick of time and put up the 18th layer just as the Resistance agents were striking other layers in the area.

Here's a gif of the action:

Here's a screenshot of my field going up:

Here's a shot of the dog tag the organizer made for the dozen or so agents who participated.

My Ingress-aversary

Today is my Ingress-aversary!

One year ago today I received my invitation to play Ingress. Back then it was still very much the same game, but far few portals and the scanner functions are much more basic.

When I first started playing I was a lone wolf. just playing on my own where and when I could. Which wasn't much and there were only 2 portals in my town and no opposing players. I also played a little on my way to and from work, but really didn't pass too many portals. 

All that being said it took me a long time to level. I had just made Level 5 in June when I went to Disney, which was my first experience in a portal dense environment. For better or worse at that time it was all basically green, so there wasn't a lot of AP to be gained. 

Then in July I met up with our local Enlightened group. I went from a low Level 5 to 8 pretty quickly from there. While I was a fan of the game before, this is where I became addicted. The social aspect of this game is like no other. The teamwork, camaraderie and more make this game like no other and have kept my interest in the game high - even the fun banter with opposing players.

Thanks +NIA Ops for making +Ingress  and thanks to all of my friends I've met the last year playing. 

Happy Hacking!