Hi everyone!
It has been a while since I’ve been updating this blog. The reason why I’ve been away for so long is kind of silly, but I’m quite proud of my achievement . I’ve reached level 16 in Ingress.
What is Ingress?
Ingress is a GPS based multiplayer game where the player control portals which is usually something of a cultural significance like a museum, or a historical monument.
To be honest it’s a dumb game, but it’s so much fun as you explore different places. It brings out the inner Lara Croft in me when I visit places that I never thought existed.
It’s been about 15 months since I first started playing Ingress and at that time, I never thought that I’d ever reach level 8. But when I finally did, it was such a satisfying feeling that I could at last use level 8 items. I thought to myself, “Now that I’m level 8, I’ll just take a break and relax”.
But I find myself enjoying the game and eventually I found myself at level 15. Wow, how on earth did that happen?
In ingress, you level up by gaining points but once you reach past level 8, you need to have enough points as well as medals.
Two of the easiest medals in the list to reach is the recharger, and the guardian. But there are always guardian hunters in Rome who break them on purpose when they are close to 10 days before the unlocking. Personally I despise this sort of gameplay, as it’s such a jerk thing to do where these players break only these particular portals even more so when it’s the same bunch of people.
It used to be really hard to level up, but thanks to the new medals that ingress created not too long ago which made levelling up easier.
- Trekker (For walking)
- Sojourner (For daily hacks)
- Engineer (For putting in mods)
- Translator (For glyphing)
- Illuminator (For fielding)
- SpecOps (For completing missions)
- Recruiter (For recruiting and levelling new agents)
With the trekker, I levelled up instantly from level 12 to 14 last December when I got the platinum so I thought that I’d try to grow that to an Onyx. But then the Translator medal came out shortly. I found out that I was good at doing glyphs and taking advantage of the frequent farm events which gives you more points, in just two months I managed to get the onyx Translator, earning me a chance to reach the coveted level 16.
This is my score at this pont of writing. Heh heh heh
But it was agent-stats which changed the game play dynamics for me. Agent stats is an extremely useful site that predicts when you’ll level up as well as the closest medals you could reach by calculating based on the way you play.
When I first used it earlier this year, it said that I’d reach level 16 in the middle of August. The next few days, after I uploaded my stats, it changed to the First of August, which would make a nice birthday present. But the more I played and submitted, the shorter the prediction became and the more motivated I got.
My game play is very simple – to keep my neighbourhood blue. It’s surprisingly easy to gain a significant amount of points by doing only that :
- Glyphing enemy portals
- Destroying them
- Full deploying resonators
- Fielding
With about 12 portals within walking distance, you could potentially earn about 100k in a short amount of time.
Thanks to Agent stats, now that I visually see the progress that I’ve made, I think the way that I play has changed. When I first started playing, I was meek and didn’t want to attack too much as I didn’t want to upset anyone. But now I’m more diligent and aggressive. They attacked my neighbourhood? Good! Easy points for me. And then we’ll go break their portals as a revenge.
I try not to depend too much on my powerbank and play till my phone runs out of juice which is a good 2 – 3 hours which to me is nice amount of time to play without being overly laborious. Doing something for too long, even something that I enjoy, is too much work and kills the joy for me.
So in a day I try to aim for 200K, which is a decent amount of points. Comparing to about a year ago, I’m surprised at the speed that a lot of agents are levelling up. I know a lady player who went from level 1 – 11 in 3 months! But things are different since when I started playing a year ago compared to now.
A year ago my neighbourhood looked like this :
It’s not that easy levelling up with just this few portals.
And now it looks like this :
Earning a lot of points is literally just a stroll in the park for me.
The day when I reached 16
On the morning when I did my final 100k, I didn’t feel any different – it felt like any other normal day. But then the cheers started pouring in, from both faction and even from overseas was when I started to feel extremely motivated.
I did my regular rounds in the neighbourhood in the morning and then broke enemy portals on my way back home in the evening but stopped before my final few points before levelling up as I thought that it’ll be nice to do it live together with my faction members and share the happiness together.
As we were farming, it took just one final glyph to reach the pinnacle. It was such a nice feeling seeing all the congratulations exploding all over. I think I’m the first female player in Rome to reach it, which was my primary source of motivation. Not too long ago, resistant agent ‘Fiuggi’ reached 16, making her the first female player in Italy – if I knew about earlier, I would have tweaked my goals to try to beat her … heh heh heh 🙂
All in all, it was satisfying for me, especially that I did all that without a backpack account and without having to use any 3rd party software. I’m proof that it’s completely possible to play clean.
And that’s my journey to level 16. A year ago, never did I imagine that I’d ever reach this level. But looking back, there are lots of things that I never thought that I’d do like leaving everything I know and migrating to Rome, learning to drive and completing the marathon.
It’s been such an experience this past year and I’ve met a lot of interesting people and made friends long the way. I’ve grown a lot since then and I’ll keep these precious memories.
And now that that’s done, I now have the time for blogging and creating my cartoons more regularly. I’ve been neglecting them for far too long!
If you liked this post, you might enjoy other ingress posts such as :
Awesome! I just made A10 the other day. One day I will make it to A16 🙂
I wanted to play this but it wasn’t available on iPhone so I couldn’t get into it. I created an account on my tablet when it was still new but of course it want possible to do anything. I just looked and there’s an iPhone app. You may have just re-introduced me to a new addiction.