The Resistance agent had succeeded in capturing my best portal and making it his own, but things probably did not go as he had planned. Early next morning, an Enlightened agent operating on his own took opportunity of the “missing link” to connect Flekkefjord to Lillehammer to Karlstad in Sweden. That was something that was very visible on a map of Scandinavia, and could not have been done if not for our useful but misguided visitor from the Resistance. Thank you!

On a more personal note, I not only got 10 Action Points for every time I recharged that portal trying to defend it; I also got points for each resonator I destroyed as I tore it down, then even more for each resonator when I rebuilt it in its original color. Of course, he also got AP when he grabbed it, but 8 is the highest level and has been since the beginning. From level 8 upward, you don’t really get any reward for your actions besides whatever you planned to use them for. At this point you are supposed to be a master of Ingress and work to further the goals of your faction, not for your personal growth, as it were.

Thanks to this fellow, I got a week’s worth of action points in a day, and came very close to level 5. I should be there tomorrow.

It was around 23 in the night when my scanner alarm went off. I took it at once, although lately it has always been messages from fellow agents of the Enlightenment. This time, however, someone was attacking my job portal, where I had the rare multi-hack as well as a few links. I suspected the reason was the link to it from Bergen, which basically cut a slice off the country. You cannot make links that cut through another link, so anyone in south-western Norway was barred from making large links or fields going outside that area.

It soon became clear that this was not a drive-by attack. The Resistance agent continued relentlessly after we both had used a good deal more XM than a scanner can hold, meaning we were both using from our precious storage of power cubes. I had not needed those for a long time and had a decent stack, considering how rare they are, and I was ready to spend them all. But I did not get the chance. It was painfully clear that my portal was dwindling rapidly while I recharged my scanner from power cubes. This meant the attacker had much larger powercubes than I, meaning again that he was much higher level. This was indeed the case. When he had razed my shields and resonators, he put up his own resonators, which went all the way to level 8. I was still level 4, so there was a despairingly large difference. I would have to reload twice as often as he, not counting that he started with 4000 more XM than me in the first place. That explained it. (There was also a 2% energy loss due the distance from Mandal to Kristiansand, but that was far less important than the level difference.)

I have fended off attacks before when the opponent was not willing to spend power cubes. That is a major step to take, these things don’t grow on trees. He also did not move on to other portals downtown, so it seems he was after this one specifically, probably because of that link from Bergen.

Normally there are Agents of both the Enlightenment and the Resistance in a city, so they will take turns trying to tear down each other’s resonators and put their own in place. You get AP – action points – for placing resonators, and a bit fewer for removing the competitor’s resonators. You get a bonus for completing a portal by placing the 8th resonator on it.

Since I live and work where there are rarely any Resistance agents, a more experienced Agent recommended that I let one of the resonators decays and then when it is gone, replace it. That way I get the resonator AP and the bonus for completing a portal. I tried this now in Mandal, and it works as advertised. The downside of this is that your portal becomes weaker to opponent attack, but this has so far not been a problem in Mandal. Kristiansand has had some visits from the Resistance, though. One of the Enlightenment agents recommended I decay 1 resonator on each of the portals here that have none of my equipment, so I can put a resonator of my own on them. The purpose of this is to get direct alarm in case of an attack, rather than the portal owner having to message me, which could waste precious seconds for us both.

One thing I discovered by the almost-cheating was that it was possible to recharge one resonator at a time (out of eight). I now recharge each resonator individually even if I recharge them all, except with remote charging where this option is not available. The downside is that it takes more XM to recharge individually, even if you recharge the same amount. The upside is that you get 10 AP for a recharge, whether it is of 1 resonator or 8. (It takes more recharges to fill up an entire portal, but not as many as when recharging individually. Perhaps half as many.) Anyway, I do this, but it is only 10 AP. Just hacking an opponent portal, without destroying anything, gives 100 AP for each time, ten times as much. So it is a very slow way to progress. Although if you let one resonator decay each day, and complete the portal again each day, you can get a more decent amount: 125 for placing a resonator, and 250 for completing the portal, 375 in total.

Met with agent @B3ll3rophon near my work portal, which he has upgraded. We exchanged keys, as is good and proper when an agent is passing through. I got one for the airport, which I don’t normally frequent, as well as another heat sink. Heat sinks are good for portals that rarely change hands and are a bit out of the way, so you want to stay and harvest them repeatedly before moving on to the next. They can also be combined with multi-hack for “farms” where you get as many items as possible in the shortest time possible.

I gave him 9 or 10 keys to my work portal. Since it has a rare multi-hack, I get new keys pretty much every day, sometimes more. The keys will be distributed to cities with a strong Enlightened faction, so they can block attempts to create large-scale fields by the Resistance. Even should the Resistance take over this portal, I should be able to get it back the next day, at least unless they recruit an agent in the same or a nearby building. ^_^ That is how we think, but of course nobody knows what the future brings.

The agent also pointed out a nearby potential portal, which I submitted at once to the Super-Ops for review. (That’s the folks at Niantic that decide where new portals will appear.) Later in the day, just before I took the commute bus home, I submitted a portal I found by myself. It happens too! ^_^

I came home and the sky clouded over, so I could keep harvesting the two nearest portals until my feet hurt, without getting a sunburn as well. So all in all it was a good day.

Buses from Mandal to Kristiansand are scarce on Sundays, and not least in the morning. I was not in the city until after 11:30. This still gave me time to visit almost every portal downtown, hack them at least once each and recharge their resonators individually for more AP. Agent @B3ll3rophon recommends I let 1 resonator decay on each of the portals so that I can replace it with one of my own. That way I will be alerted instantly of any attacks, same as with my own portals.

Over the course of the morning and early day, enough sunshine still managed to sift through the thin cloud cover that the land began to warm up, and this broke up the clouds. Around 2 PM the sunshine was too intense for my skin to keep up without sunblock, and I returned with the 2:15 bus. Of course, two and a half hours of hurrying around town is a decent work-out in its own right. Lately I start getting sleepy before midnight, or even at 11 PM, and I suspect this is because my body needs the delta-sleep to regenerate my body from the micro-tear-and-wear of rapid walking and the ionizing ultraviolet light of this planet’s star.

Today I took the bus to Grimstad. It takes an hour from Kristiansand and costs about $20 each way, so it is not something I would normally do. But the 10 portals in downtown Grimstad have been gray for a while now. Grimstad used to belong to the Resistance, and seemed to be the home base of their agent @andasil, who also for a while maintained a colony in Kristiansand, but he has gradually withdrawn and now even Grimstad is deserted. I hope he is OK, even if he is misguided enough to join the Resistance. ^_^ Hopefully he is just on vacation, and will be happy to see that I have not let his portals lie idle.

I stayed for a little under two hours. The weather there was cloudy, as it was also in Kristiansand when I passed through, so I did not need to worry overmuch about sunburn. I hacked the portals repeatedly (although the ones by the church, a bit out of the way, only got hacked twice). I got two keys for one portal and one for three others, so it could have been worse. Not enough to make fields though – I am keeping the keys to recharge for now.

On the way back, the bus stopped by the university, not far from the two recalcitrant portals that refused to give me keys on Monday and Thursday even though I burned them out. Today they had evidently changed their mind, for each of them coughed up a key on my first hack! Now I can recharge them remotely and not need to walk at my best speed for 20 minutes to get there and 20 minutes back. Well, of course none of us knows what the future brings, but that was the plan.

The clouds had retreated, unfortunately, and the ionizing radiation of this planet’s star is overwhelming the regenerative abilities of my epidermal cells. My face is getting hotter and redder for each day I venture outdoors. And by “face” I now also mean my big forehead, from which my fur has shamefully retreated over the last few years. But I came home to Mandal and found a third portal had gone online here. I claimed it FOR GREAT ENLIGHTENMENT!! so all in all it was a good day.

I installed the rare multihack mod on the portal outside my workplace. My scanner area sometimes drift far enough to hack it from my desk, but it is only a minute or two walking even if not.  Normally I can hack it 4 times early in the day, then it burns out. (You can only hack 4 times in 4 hours without a mod, but you can pace those as you wish, as long as they are at least 5 minutes apart.)

Now with the rare multi-hack, I can hack it 12 times in 4 hours. That amounts to once every 20 minutes. Now, hacking takes only a few seconds, so I could probably do that without interfering much with my work unless I have phone duty, which I rarely have due to my throat problems. But I haven’t set up a timer to remind me every 20 minutes, and as a result I actually never burned it out over the course of the workday. By the time I had hacked 12 times, it was already into the next 4-hour slot.

The nearby portal is owned by the Enlightenment, of course. We pretty much own the south coast at the moment, despite the occasional Resistance tourist. Actually it would have been nice to have a blue portal (I had one for a while) since I get 100 Action Points for hacking those, but no AP for hacking our own. On the other hand, friendly portals tend to give more loot. And of course, it is only friendly portals I can outfit with a mod such as this.

I sent a message to Agent @B3ll3rophon, begging him to throw a couple high-level resonators on the portal (he is level 7 or 8) so it could get up to my own level. That way I can get more level-appropriate loot. As mentioned, I can only raise a portal to level 3 when I am level 4.