• What do I do…?

    November 10, 2013 Author: MattWPBS
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    Step 1: download and install the Ingress app from the Google Play store:

    At the moment it’s Android only, but iPhone is meant to be coming in 2014 some time. 

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    Step 2: open it up, pick a username and then select “Enlightened” when you’re given the faction option.

    The Enlightened – green, we think using tech to improve the world is A Good Thing. 

    The Resistance – blue, want to keep things the same and don’t like tech. *cough* Tories *cough*. 

    IngressOpenBeta

     

    Step 3: complete the training missions in the app, shouldn’t take you too long.

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    Step 4: it gets complicated (again)…

    Now’s the point where we get to general hints and tips. A lot of stuff you’ll figure out as you play, and this will probably be out of date before long when Niantic change things.

    • Hack everything – if you’re new and need AP, this will be great for you. If you’ve been playing for a while, you never know when you’ll get a virus/very rare mod/etc.
    • Stand as far away from the portal as possible when deploying resonators – this makes it harder for opposition players to destroy them
    • Submit new portals – it means you’ll have more to hack, it’ll get you AP, it’ll get you more keys to link stuff.

  • What is Ingress?

    November 10, 2013 Author: MattWPBS
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    Good question. It’s one with a few different answers.

     

    The Mechanics

    To put it simply, Ingress is a massive multiplayer online geo-location based augmented reality real time social role playing mobile game. In other words, it’s not simple to describe, and there’s not really too much like it. Let’s give it a shot though.

    The game’s run by Niantic, who are a start up within Google.

    There’s two factions – the Enlightened (green, want to use tech/power to improve things) and the Resistance (blue, want to keep the status quo, sound like anyone?). Everyone belongs to one of these.

    All around the world there are portals – you can think of these as control points, power sources and gear dispensers. They can be captured by either side using resonators, and the opposition’s resonators can be destroyed using bursters. Mods can be put on the portals to change how they behave.

    You can link different portals together, and when you make a triangle with three links you get a control field. The control fields all sum up to the faction’s global score.

    That’s the really top line summary about how the mechanics of the game works.

     

    The Back Story

    Okay, bear in mind that the game went live in beta in November 2012, and has had a lot of player and Niantic driven events since then. So this is really, really, really basic.

    There’s extradimensional aliens called Shapers. They’re responsible for useful stuff called XM (exotic matter) flowing into our dimension at portals. The Enlightened want to use this power and tech to advance the human race (hence the Enlightened). The Resistance don’t want to, think everything’s very nice just how it is thank you, and would like everybody to get off their lawn. For all that, they still use the XM to power up resonators on portals, fire bursters, etc. Slightly hypocritical take on things from them.

    If you’re into the story side of things, you’re probably best off going to the Niantic site and clicking about.

     

     

     

    nb: In reality, most of the Resistance are perfectly nice people. Just a bit misguided, and liable to put a different spin on the two factions. 😉