Slice of Chaotic Life

For weeks and weeks, the ionizing radiation of this planet’s star has destroyed my outer membrane faster than I could regenerate it, forcing me to cut down on Ingressing during daytime, which happens to be when I am in town with most of my portals. (On the bright side, I have 21 keys to the nearest portal here in Mandal…)

Today there was a thick cloud cover. It even began raining. Water and shade! I went to the city and hacked nearly all the portals, some of them repeatedly. There aren’t any blue ones left, but that’s OK. It means I won’t advance as fast, but it also means my faction is happy. And I get to improve my inventory.

There is a limit of 2000 items in the scanner inventory. That sounds like a lot, and it is: I did not reach the limit until around the time I hit level 5.  If you play in a town where there is a strong opposition, it will probably take much longer. Most of the inventory is XMP bursters (used to destroy opponent resonators and free the portals from their influence) and resonators (to bind the portals to your own faction). It takes 8 resonators to fully contain a portal, and there are limits to how many you can use of each level, so you always need to carry an assortment of these if you plan to capture portals. Bursters are only necessary if you run into opponent portals, but this usually happens at least occasionally even here, since the city is a communications hub and people visit for various reasons.

Luckily for us who don’t see that much action, it is possible to recycle inventory items and get a small amount of XM (energy) from them. This again can be used to hack more portals or recharge resonators.  Lately the inventory is full all the time, so I have recycled the lowest level items. Now that I am level 5 and can make level 4 portals, most of the items I get from hacking are level 4 and 5, with some level 3. There are still some portals left by my allies that have not change hands, and are level 5 or 6. These tend to give level 5 and sometimes level 6 items. So I have deleted everything below level 3, and am now replacing my level 3 items with 4 and 5.  I still need some level 3 resonators to capture portals (two of them per portal, more exactly) but there aren’t dozens of portals to capture so I don’t need hundreds of them.

One thing you just don’t do is recycle portal keys, as you can share them with other players who can then link to the portals from their hometown. But 21 and counting seems a bit excessive for a portal that is normally blocked by other links… We’ll see, but it won’t be the first thing I delete.

At least thanks to the weather, I was able to hack portals in the city, where I don’t have an excess of keys. I have a few more now, though. ^_^