We had an agent traveling along the coast, supposedly acting as a courier bringing keys from one city to another. However, while he was on his way to here, I got a message that my link between Vigeland and Mandal was destroyed. I found that at the same time the allied agent  was traveling through Vigeland, a Resistance agent was grabbing portals there. Vigeland is a small place which would not by accident be visited by a Resistance and Enlightenment agent at the same time. When he reported his arrival in Kristiansand, I messaged him that there was now a Resistance agent in town, and did not meet up with him. He has made several attacks on portals in Kristiansand, now lately at 2 AM, and managed to capture a couple. If I recover from the current migraine or whatever it is, I hope to clean up after him. At least I found out before I could give him any of the keys.

It is not a big deal – for most of us (I hope) it is just a game. And he did not do all that much damage. But it is still not sportsmanlike, at the very least.

This morning before work it happened. I reclaimed a portal the Resistance family tour had taken, and claimed a recently activated portal not far from it. I linked up a tight cluster of portals. And suddenly I was level 6. This is good, but it doesn’t feel good. It makes things a lot more complicated.

Up until this morning, Ingress was simple: Submit everything, claim everything, deploy everything, hack everything, link everything, recharge everything. Now suddenly I no longer have the ability to create portals that yield XM objects of my own level. And portals only give keys if you don’t carry a key for that portals already (and sometimes not even then, but usually in a couple tries). Now, there is very little reason to hack one of my own portals. Yes, I could get a very rare multi-hack or heat sink or Jarvis virus, but the chance is well under 1%, probably more like 1 in 1000. Most likely I will get items that I have to recycle to make room in my inventory for the next hack. This will take a while to get used to, I suspect.

Portals to still hack: The remaining blue portals, while they last. This gives AP, and they are also my level this time. Higher-level portals left by visiting allies and not yet torn down by visiting Resistance members. That’s it, and it makes up only a few portals, scattered around town. Now I definitely regret reclaiming the Resistance portal by my workplace. It was high enough level that I could have gotten relevant XM objects from it, and I could have converted it with a Jarvis virus when it was about to fade to gray, then add multihack and stock up on good gear. Oh well, too late now. But if I make enough links to this portal, the Resistance will probably return for it.

Was in contact with my nearest ally, but he is reluctant to travel 30 kilometers, especially in the traffic congestion, to get to Kristiansand. I can get to his portals and upgrade them, which will get them to a level where we both can get level-appropriate gear. Will probably do that if I run out of guest portals. Hopefully that will take a while – there is a new guest coming tonight. He is short on high-level gear, but even replacing my 4 x level 4 resonators with 2 x 5 and 2 x 6 would be enough. He is just passing through and staying overnight though, so probably won’t venture far from the camp site.

It is OK. I will continue to harvest keys for the Enlightenment in other parts of the country to use. This is something that does not depend on level, so anyone can do it if they have the diligence. The goodwill earned by this will probably come back to me, if I and the game both stay up long enough. ^_^

Well, actually they probably managed to fit in a normal car. There were four Resistance members, or at least four accounts that I could see. One of them seemed to be a newbie, and they were probably doing it for him (or her, hard to say for sure). After they tore down a portal, the newbie got to build it first, then the others upgraded it. One of them was level 8, but they did not upgrade all the portals to the maximum.

It kind of irritated me that, despite my delusions of grandeur, the four of them still managed to tear down most of the portals they began on. Part of it was that I did not get the alert until they had already worked on the portal for a while, even though I was staring at the screen looking for the message. This really puts defenders at a disadvantage.

Their choice of targets seemed pretty random. And if I caught them in time and recharged heavily, they would just give up on a portal and drive elsewhere, to start again after a while. They had taken down two portals in Lillesand before they came to Kristiansand, then later they moved to Grimstad and took down a couple portals there, giving up on several others halfway through.  It seems a bit bizarre.  It looks as if they drove all the way here from somewhere so far east that I have not seen them in action before, then drove back after taking a few random portals.

I left work half an hour earlier than planned, and spent the next two and a half hours taking back most of the portals. I spared three, which are higher level. One of them was unfortunately reduced a bit in level when I took back some neighboring portals, but the other two are great. I get high-level loot and action points from hacking them, so I intend to keep them some days, unless there are more visitors.  I am also considering converting them to our faction using a Jarvis virus, but again, that only makes sense if there are no visitors from either faction.

After an hour’s commute home and an hour of food and rest, I felt surprisingly rested and ready for my 40-minute circuit here in Mandal, hacking and recharging the local portals. I have submitted a couple more but not got any answer yet.  That is not all bad – the more portals in a town, and especially if they are close together, the more tempting for raiders like those today.

Went to Grimstad again today, a town in the province east of here.

I have delayed this for a long time, partly because of the burning sun of the past month, partly because of my capricious digestion, and partly because traveling in Norway is expensive. But when my bus card between Mandal and Kristiansand expired, I replaced it with one for both of the provinces on the south coast of Norway. It was more expensive, but strangely not by much. And it feels good to just walk onto any bus and wave the card in front of the ticket machine on my way in.

The night saw thunder and lightning and hard rain; the morning was overcast, which was expected to last for much of the day. At least the lightning was gone where I was. I went to Kristiansand first, and had time to hack and recharge some portals before going on the next bus.

In Grimstad, all the ten portals downtown were claimed by my ally, who had put a level 1 resonator on each. I am not even asking where he got those from – I have long ago recycled my level 1 and 2 resonator and most of the level 3, even though I actually need some of those to make portals alone (as mentioned last time).  I upgraded every portal to level 4 and put shields on them. I did not link any of them though. They are in his territory, and if there is a newbie as well (and not just a tourist) linking is THE way to level up fast. If worse comes to worse and the blues retake the portals, they won’t get any AP from taking down links and fields (which is second only to building them). I admit that linking all those portals would have taken me quite a bit closer to level 6. But as mentioned yesterday, level 6 comes with its own problems. I prefer if all the Enlightened agents on the south coast can get there at near the same time, or at least the two of us who have been active here for a while.

UPDATE: 1 hour later

Well, two higher-level Enlightenment agents seem to have arrived shortly after I left and further upgraded the portals. One of them is level 8, the other probably level 6 (or else he is out of higher resonators, but in that case the other would probably have lent him some in order to build a stronger portal). They even linked some of the portals. I sincerely hope that was the level 6 doing, as action points are wasted at level 8 – it is the highest level.

They kindly left one of my level 5 resonators on each portal, so I’ll still get alerted if the portals are attacked. That, and they were probably only able to add 1 level 8, 1 level 7 and 4 level 6 resonators, which leaves two level 5 anyway.  Still, they could have replaced my level 5s with level 6 and my level 4 with level 5, it would have given them slightly more action points. Wise of them to not do that – if the portals are attacked while we are awake, there will now be four agents with ownership to them. If all of us have keys (and there has been a surge in portal key drops just lately) then it would be almost impossible for one or even two Resistance agents to take them down even if they stood on top of the portals.

The portals are now level 6, so if they have hacked them to the fullest, they should have a good supply of everything except level 8. Good job guys!

Our agent in Birkeland is back in action. He has rebuilt his home base and claimed all the portals in Grimstad, even if only symbolically. There also seems to be another, lower-level Enlightened agent in the area, as a portal east of Kristiansand has been filled with level 1 and 2 resonators. This is good news, obviously. The more agents, the higher portals we will be able to build eventually.

At level 5, I can supply myself with appropriate gear from level 4 portals; but at level 6, things start getting harder. You can have up to 4 resonators on one portal at level 2, 3 and 4; but at levels 5 and 6 you can only add two of each, and at 7 and 8 only 1.  My portals today are (2*3+4*4+2*5)=(6+16+10)=32/8 = 4 average. But starting next level they will be (4*4+2*5+2*6)=(16+10+12)=38/4=4 (truncated). You need a sum of 40 to get a level 5 portal and get appropriate loot from hacking. Level 6 resonators drop very rarely from level 4 portals, so claiming portals will bleed you of level 6 stuff. It can be lived with if you don’t have any opponents tearing down the portals, but this is not realistic in the long run. There will always be visitors.

The whole thing changes if you have an ally.  Even at level 5, an ally would be able to upgrade two of my level 4 resonators to level 5, taking the portal from 38 to 40 points, for an average of 5. That way we would both be able to harvest a reasonable amount of resonators and bursters. Unfortunately the thumbscrew tightens again at level 7.  At this point we both need to be level 7 for it to work. Two level 7 agents would be able to make (2*7+4*6+2*5)=(14+24+10)=48, for an average of 6.

If we ever reach level 8, we will need more people to even have a decent chance to get some lvl 8 gear from time to time. The two of us would just make (2*8+2*7+4*6)=(16+14+24)=54/8=6,75=6. So that would land us mostly level 6 gear, some level 7 and level 5, and rarely if ever any 8. However, if we could get a third agent to level 8, we would have (3*8+3*7+2*6)=(24+21+12)=57/8=7, which should be enough. Getting a pure level 8 portal is another matter, it would require 8 agents at level 8. This should not be necessary, unless there is something about high-level hacking that I don’t know, but it would help people build up a reserve of level 8 gear for a lean season, for instance when their allies are on vacation. ^_^

I managed to claim the portals in and near the park yesterday. This morning before going to the office, I went down to the harbor and claimed the new portals near there. I had a few portals there already, but it is a bit out of the way for me so I usually just remote recharge them. There is not much need for keys either, since they can’t be linked to from the north. Neither can those in the park, so I am not planning to stock up on keys from them … but I’d like to have at least one of each so I can remote recharge them.

There are still two unclaimed portals within walking distance, but on the east side of the river, so 10 minutes at best to walk from the closest active portal. I plan to get those tomorrow. The weather is overcast today for a change, but my body is worn down and I need some serious sleep to wind up the mortal coil!

Another agent discussed the situation of being alone Enlightened in a town, and the problem of getting adequate resonators. At level 5 I can easily make level 4 portals, and these will give drop an almost ideal mix of resonators, spanning the interval 3-4-5, with about half being level 4 and some more 5 than 3 (probably because it considers both the level of the portal and of the agent). The problem is if you start with only level 2 portals, they won’t drop the level 5 resonators you need, and rarely enough level 4. I still think it should be possible to work your way up by collecting level 3 and 4 resonators over time to make a level 3 portal, then farm it for level 4 and 5 resonators to make a level 4 portal. Once you have one of those, add multihack mods to it and farm it for hours, siccing your dog / parrot / grandma on anyone who approaches without warning. Or you could visit another town and hack high-level portals there. ^_^