The Opinionated Ingress Toronto Resistance Tactical Field Manual

Compiled by kwogger with contributions from nexussix1976 and fetterlock

This is a short manual to augment the basic manual available at Ingress Field Guide. Its purpose is to give a general set of tactics, tips, and recommendations on how to play Ingress effectively based on the collective experiences of the Toronto Resistance. Recommended reading for new agents and skimming for old agents.


Table of Contents


Getting Started as a Low Level

For those of you who are not at L4+ yet, attacking enemy portals with XMP Bursters is going to be very difficult given the state of the game right now. Instead, you should be hacking friendly and enemy portals, and build as many links and fields as you can. Talk to higher level players and team up for a power leveling run, with the many players in the game now, we would be happy to help you power level up to L4 so you can start doing some heavy duty damage.

Linking Portals

Shorter links are preferred to long links as short links tend to be easier to maintain due to the proximity of the portals allowing local agents to keep them charged. Short links also help minimize cutting off other agents' potential links.

You get more AP for building links and fields than the enemy gets bringing them down, so its a good idea to form many links if you are trying to power level. If you have multiple ways of linking up portals, try to keep the number of links per portal low so that when the portal is attacked, the enemy gets less AP.

When linking, your scanner will show available keys that you can link to. If you have more than one key for a portal, that portal will appear multiple times. For higher level agents (say, L4+), if you are planning to hold a bunch of portals long term, it is a good idea to keep at least one copy of each key on hand in case remote recharging is required. If you plan to hold an area, you should usually only link to a portal only if you have two or more keys for that portal. Note that this will slow down your leveling a bit as you collect the initial set of keys for the portals, but it may be worth it to be able to help defend the portal when you are not in the area.

Building Fields

Lately, fields have started to decay really quickly. That means you should build fields whenever you have the chance as early as possible. The enemy will get less AP taking down the field, and if they take too long to respond, there won't be a field for them to take down thus denying them the AP. Of course, that means you should attack portals with fields as early as feasible to ensure you at least get the AP for taking down the field.

Attacking Portals

Agents below L4 will find it difficult to attack any portals at all as L1-L3 XMP Bursters do very little damage. Coupled with the lost XM reserves of a low level player, low level agents should generally avoid attacking any portals with resonators above L2 and instead concentrate on leveling by linking portals and building fields.

When attacking a portal, it is important to attack while standing directly on top of a resonator on the scanner (or as close as possible to the resonator) to ensure maximum damage to the resonator. Target the highest level resonators first, as the faster the high level resonators go down, the less XM drain you will experience. Team up with fellow agents if at all possible, a second person drastically decreases the time it takes to bring down a portal. Note that standing close to or on top of a portal when attack does not affect the damage you do to resonators. Your XMP Bursters are directly attacking the resonators of a portal, not the portal itself.

It may be difficult sometimes for your scanner to get a decent lock on your location, especially when there are many object blocking the sky, such as skyscrapers downtown. You may try the following to get a better location lock, though getting a good lock on some of the more trickier portals is more of a lock than a science.

  • Turn off GPS. The device will default to using Wi-Fi and network location.
  • Turn on Wi-Fi. You don't have to be connected to a Wi-Fi network, just the internet via your data plan. The device will use the Wi-Fi networks it can see in the area to attempt to determine your location. Do note that if your device has a GPS lock that it will ignore the results of the Wi-Fi location.

If you are only attacking a single portal, a common (but XM heavy) tactic is to gradually lower the energy on all resonators instead of killing them one at a time, followed by rapidly taking all resonators down at once. This prevents a message from being dispatched to the enemy agent who placed the resonator on the portal and thus alerting the enemy. In practice, such a tactic can be time consuming, and there are no guarantees an enemy may not glance at their portal remotely and spot your attack. Worse, an enemy may be in the area and notice your efforts. Due to the heavy XM cost, avoid this tactic if you plan to attack more than one portal in the area. The enemy will be alerted to your presence when you bring down the portal, and you would be low on XM while the enemy may be converging on you. It would be more effective in such an instance to hit portals as hard and fast as possible to take down as many portals as possible before the enemy can form a coherent response.

If an enemy starts placing down new resonators while you are attacking, walk away, regardless of how low level the resonators are. As you gain more AP for placing down resonators than destroying resonators, you are only helping the enemy obtain AP faster. Unless you can take down the entire portal with a single blow with a high level XMP Burster and deploy resonators immediately to capture it (a rare occurrence), do not keep engaging the enemy.

When attacking a portal (especially portals with high level resonators), the portal may attack back and drain your XM. If you stand far enough away from the portal, you may be able to attack the resonators without the portal draining your XM. This has led to the tactic of the agent standing far away from the portal and firing XMP Bursters from extreme range to avoid being drained of XM. This tactic should be avoided completely due to its high usage of XMP Bursters. The community is collectively running low on XMP Bursters and XM is readily available whereas XMP Bursters require heavy farming to amass. The portal will regenerate the XM around it fairly quickly over time, so, either run/bike/drive around or grab a drink nearby.

Defending Portals

As noted above, if you notice an enemy agent destroying resonators near you, the optimal defensive tactic is not to recharge the resonators but to place new ones. New resonators will have full energy, and more importantly, will yield you more AP for you than the enemy gets for knocking them down. Placing down low level resonators may goad the enemy into continuing their attack on the portal, netting you more AP. Keeping a small stockpile of 100s of low level resonators (L1-3) will ensure you can pretty much hold a portal against most attacks by a few simultaneous opponents.

If the enemy is slowly lowering every resonator's energy uniformly, you can selectively recharge resonators by using the "Upgrade" button (only accessible when you're near the portal, not accessible remotely).

If you are not near a portal that's being attack but you have a key, recharging can help at least drain through an enemy's XMP Bursters and if you're lucky, drain an enemy's XM reserves so they cannot attack. This can be especially effective if you are near an area with lots of XM around. Be careful not to completely drain your own reserves of XM if you are planning to head to the portal to defend it as you'll need some XM to deploy resonators. While recharging resonators can yield you AP, it is a rather minute amount and thus is not a recommended way of leveling.

Recharging while on a moving vehicle (with someone else driving of course!) can also be effective by keeping your XM reserves topped up, but be advised that recharging is difficult if your scanner keeps recording you moving as it may trigger a server state refresh repeatedly and stop your recharge. Do note that it may take a bit of time for your scanner to obtain an update of the portal's state, so wait until the "Fetching sever state" message disappears when you are loading a portal's status remotely to ensure you are observing the portal in its current state.

Placing Resonators

Resonators should usually be placed as far apart as possible. This can be accomplished by standing as far away from the portal as possible while still being in range of the portal (roughly 35 m). You do not have to deploy resonators with the "Deploy" button, you can use the "Upgrade" button to pick the specific level of resonator to deploy in the direction desired. Note that you have to deploy all 8 resonators before you can upgrade any deployed resonators. As for where to place your high level resonators around a portal, either drop them where it's hardest for enemy agents to attack (you should know which direction those resonators are from your attack) or keep them as spread out as possible.

L1-L5 resonators are fairly common and thus you should not hesitate to deploy them and upgrade portals put up by fellow agent with them (you even get AP now for doing it!). Pretty much every friendly portal in the city should have all L4 resonators, and the majority should have L5s. If you run low, ask around as many higher level agents will be more than happy to off load a big supply to you. We also have regular item swapping meets where you can restock your inventory if you are running low. Do not hesitate to upgrade resonators up to L5! We really do have a major excess of L5 (and lower) resonators.

Farming Items

Hack as may portals as you possibly can! Amassing a huge inventory of items (and sharing those items) is important to keep up both our offensive and defensive efforts. Higher level portals will yield high level items, and hacking friendly portals tend to yield more items. Hacking enemy portals will drain your XM a bit but give you 100 AP. Due to the XM drain and the lower yield of items, it's generally a better idea to destroy the enemy portal and capture it for yourself if you can, but if you can't, hack away.

The cooldown between hacks is 5 minutes per portal. You will burn out a portal if you hack it 4 times within 4 hours. Burning out a portal has no negative effects other than the fact that further hacking by you in that time will not yield any extra items, so, you should hack a portal until it burns out if you can. The 4 hour counter starts with your first hack, and will reset 4 hours after your initial hack. For example, the following is an example of a typical set of hacks against a portal.

8:15 am  - First hack on portal
8:55 am  - Portal burns out
12:10 pm - Portal still burnt out
12:15 pm - I can hack!

Using this 4 hour burnt out time, you can time your farming runs to maximize the number of hacks you make against portals.

While farming, you will inevitably use up some XM and collect it from the area around portals. However, there will tend to be a lot of excess XM still lying in the area. Consider going through the keys you have on hand and recharge any portals that have resonators that are not at 100% energy while you are traveling from one portal to another. As resonator energy slowly degrade over time, this will help maintain portals so that the enemy would not have an easy target. You may even get lucky and catch an enemy agent in the middle of taking down a portal, at which point you can recharge remotely with the excess XM in the area to frustrate or even foil their efforts. As noted in the Defending Portal section, it may take a short period of time for the scanner to load the remote portal's state so wait until the "Fetching server state" message disappears on your scanner when checking up on portals remotely.

Swapping Items

Do not drop a big stash of items without a fellow agent already in the area to pick up the items. Enemy agents may be in the area and spot your drops, getting to the items before friendly agents can pick those items up. Items will also disappear after 12 hours of being dropped. In general, swap items only when you are meeting a fellow agent, and in areas away from portals; especially portals that are highly contested or trafficked. Remember to ensure that the scanner shows both of you in the same general area before you start swapping items.

The inventory limit is currently set to 2000 items. Portal keys are the most important items you can obtain due to its rarity and importance to building links and fields. If you have an excess of portal keys (say, for portals in your "home" area) you should try and distribute to other agents so that they can help recharge if necessary during an enemy attack. XMP Bursters above L2 are invaluable, and there are plenty of people willing to take them off your hands should you have any excess. Low level resonators are great for portal defense, but can be off-loaded to fellow lower level agents of necessary. Due to its rarity, high level XMP Bursters and Resonators (L6-8) should generally be hoarded, even if you can't use them (hand them to high level agents if you can). Portal shields are always useful, and should be deployed if you can as they will always yield AP when deployed, as well as help defend a portal.

L5 Resonators occupy the special distinction of being a bit of a nuisance to high level agents as they occupy inventory space, yet are the weakest of the high level resonators. Therefore, L5 Resonators should be handed out like candy on Halloween to any agent that can use them.

Intelligence

A comprehensive record on enemy agents have been compiled and can be accessed via the Google+ Community. It is important to help keep the document up to date with information such as the general main operating areas/portals of enemy agents, their current level, and their usual mode of transportation. This will help other agents plan attacks and prioritize portals to take and avoid.

Communication

Ingress is an extremely social game. You must work together with fellow agents to play effectively. Even a L8 agent can only put up a L5 portal. Coordinate with other agents via the in-game chat, Google+ Community, and Google+ Messenger. Group chats in Google+ Messenger can be particularly effective in coordinating the defense of a region, as well as offensive operations. Form defensive teams of people to maintain an area, as well as small strike teams of agents to attack enemy strongholds.

Keep your chats in game secure by sending the message to Faction only (tap the "Faction" text at the top when communicating) unless you want to taunt the enemy team. Feel free to broadcast false intelligence though. Taunting the other team and mild smack talk is of course encouraged.

However, the in-game chat is generally acknowleged to be badly compromised, so, if you are planning an operation (or anything in advance), do it over something more secure such as Google+ Messenger so that the details are not leaked to the enemy team. The in-game chat is still useful for notifications of on-going attacks from the enemy team, as presumably the other team is aware of their own operations.

We will gather a lot of intelligence on enemy agents over time. Common courtesy is to not use their real names over the in-game chat, or to post up personal data.

Conduct

Spoofing your location is cheating, and we will kick you out of the community if you do.

There are many portals in locations which you may not be legally or safely access. Don't climb fences or trespass into private property, getting into trouble with the law over a game really ain't worth it. Not to mention it'll make life hard for subsequent agents in the area.

Mentoring and Leveling

Particular emphasis must be given to the mentoring of low level players by high level players. As the game requires a high degree of teamwork to play effectively, it is in everyone's interest to help level lower level players as quickly as possible. A typical mentoring team-up consists of one high level (say, L6+) player and a low level player (L1-L3). The high level player will take down enemy resonators, and the low level player will capture the portal, fill the portal with resonators, and perform any linking and field building available while the high level player will upgrade the low level player's deployed resonators. Due to the current lackluster state of the game's tutorial and manual, new players tend to require direct mentoring to maintain an interest in the game and to become effective players.

The importance of our outreach to new players cannot be overstated, as recruiting new players and helping them level up is one of the only ways for us to maintain a distinct advantage over the enemy.

Battery Life

Ingress drinks your device's battery life like a fish drinks water. The main things that usually drain your battery life are the GPS radio, Wi-Fi radio, and phone screen, which unfortunately are all on (possibly with the exception of the Wi-Fi radio) when you are playing Ingress. Here is a list of possible ways to increase your device's endurance while playing Ingress.

  • If you have a tablet, use the tablet to run Ingress and tether to your phone via Bluetooth. You may also try tethering with Wi-Fi, however, Wi-Fi tethering usually drains faster than Bluetooth, and savvy enemy agents may spot your Wi-Fi hotspot in the area and be tipped off to your presence.
  • Obtain an external battery. Something like this 7000 mAh battery would give you over five hours of active Ingress playing with the screen, GPS and Wi-Fi on the entire time.
  • Turn off your phone when running between portals. This will limit the XM you would otherwise be obtaining while traveling between portals, and prevent you from receiving real-time intelligence, but when your battery is low, this can help drag out a few more minutes of Ingress.
  • Lower your screen brightness. Fairly obvious, but should be noted nonetheless that since the screen is what will drain your battery the most, reducing its power drain can help stretch your battery life.

Commonly Used Acronyms

To speed up communications, the community have started using the following acronyms.

Ingress Specific Acronyms

  • A# = Agent and level
  • P# = Portal and level
  • B# = Burster and level
  • X# = Burster and level
  • R# = Resonator and level

Location Acronyms

  • BTS = Bell Trinity Square
  • BWV = Bloor West Village
  • KJ = King & John
  • KR = Kingston Road (@ Midland)
  • LV = Liberty Village
  • MP = Miliken Park
  • NY = North York
  • QP = Queen's Park
  • TEC = Toronto Eaton Centre
  • TD = TD Centre
  • TJ = The Junction (Keele and Dundas W)
  • TPL = One of the many Toronto Public Library portals.
  • YU = York University
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