Below is a list of helpful tips for new agents:
- The fastest and best way to level up is with the help of higher level agents. Most agents are happy to help you. Reach out on comms and in your local faction community.
- XM is life. If you run out of XM, you can’t do anything until you get more. (You’ll know when this happens because your screen will become distorted and the words “Scanner disabled; Collect more XM” will appear.) Keep an eye on your reserves. Collect loose XM (the glowing dots on your scanner) by walking in range of it. Portals tend to have clusters of XM around them, so seek them out to replenish your reserves. You can also get XM by recycling items or using power cubes.
- The distance from the portal that a resonator is placed is important. While there are complicating factors, the farther away resonators are from the portal, the harder they’ll be to destroy.
- You don’t have to walk around the portal to place resonators; you can select any slot you wish. Only distance from the portal matters.
- Even though hacking a portal might give you higher level items, you can only use leveled items which are at your level or lower.
- Blast weapons (XMPs and ultra strikes) do more damage the closer they are fired to the target. For maximum damage to a single object, stand directly on it. To destroy resonators, stand on or close to as many resonators as you can. To strip mods from a portal, stand directly on the portal. Consider the blast radius of the weapon you’re firing.
- At lower levels, you don’t have the firepower to take down high-level enemy portals. Focus on capturing neutral portals, filling empty resonator slots, and creating links and control fields. If you have a friend who is a higher-level agent, you can have them take down enemy portals for you so that you can capture, build, link and field.
- Shield and link portals that are important to you; they will be much harder to destroy. You may also want to install a turret or force amp.
- If resonators from more than one enemy portal are in range of your XMP or ultra strike, you risk getting attacked by multiple portals at once, which can quickly drain your XM.
- Color can communicate information about things in the scanner and on the intel map. Things pertaining to the Enlightened faction are green, while Resistance-related things are blue. Non-leveled items will have a color that pertains to its rarity: light green for common, purple for rare, and light purple for very rare. Leveled items have a color associated with their level; they are (from level 1 to level 8): gold, orange, dark orange, red, pink, fuchsia, purple, and violet.
- Try not to get too attached to portals or get hung up on defending a portal. Ingress is not really oriented around individual portal defense, and many portals change hands regularly. In any case, if the enemy didn’t neutralize “your” portals, you couldn’t take them back and get more AP!
- Share the most sensitive information only with small groups of trusted agents. The faction comms are known to contain enemy moles. Communicate sensitive information directly with agents you know to be of your faction.
- Seasoned agents tend to throw around lingo that might be confusing to a new agent. See our glossary to get up to speed on Ingress-related terms.