If you still think Ingress is a very difficult game for real nerds, then this text is for you. Do you like walks? Sai-fi? City quests? Do you have an iOS or Android smartphone? Are you looking for an excuse to get out of the house and meet new friends? Did you answer at least one question in the affirmative? This means you have to read the text. Put the device on charge, make sure that you have a mobile Internet connection and get ready for a real adventure!

INTRODUCTION

Exactly two years, along with the real and game virtual worlds, there is one of the thin lines in which both of these worlds are quite harmoniously mixed. Such facets are called "augmented reality" or "augmented reality", meaning that  there is much more behind the visible things. Now you have installed the application - and the smartphone or tablet in your hand has turned into a special device - a “scanner”. Looking through it at the graffiti on the wall or at the city sculpture, you will see the energy oozing from them, called “exomatter”. Perhaps next to you you will see (not through a device, but with your own eyes) a person looking either at his smartphone or at you. Blue or green? He thinks. Or maybe you find yourself in a huge field of one of two colors, covering the whole city ... Yes, baby, this is Ingress.

In short and pretty, Ingress is a semi-real MMORPG in the world of smartphones and tablets. It appeared as a fusion of city quests, children's team competitions like “Cossack robbers”, world conspiracy theory, fantastic dystopias and gambling. It took root, becoming a whole culture, dividing the inhabitants of the globe into two factions, but at the same time rallying them for the sake of one goal - to play and fight endlessly. It can be boldly and not without exaggeration to say that Ingress is more than a game. This is a real lifestyle.

PLOT

Imagine that when the CERN experiment was launched at the Large Hadron Collider, something happened that was not expected - some interdimensional energy was released, which was immediately dubbed Exotic Matter, in our opinion -  exomatter  or “ExEm”. This energy began to accumulate, as it turned out, in places of manifestation of art or science, i.e. evidence of human development: monuments, museums, libraries, even post offices. Such XM clusters became known as “ portals “. And for a reason - it turned out that the portals allow representatives of the alien race - the Shapers - to enter our world. They say that it was the Shapers who influenced the development of mankind: they controlled the minds of such outstanding people as Mendeleev or Mozart (not in vain, many ideas came to them “in their dreams”), they moved progress further and further, pursuing only one known goal for them. Now the Shapers have decided that the world is ready to rise to a new level. But people have their own opinion on this matter, or rather, even two.

Enlightened ( Enlightened  )  , fraction "green" - believe that the Shapers must continue to move the progress of mankind, so help them. There are many arguments that people are always afraid of the new, but it is good. Didn't aliens help the most ancient people build pyramids or the first observatories? Maybe Shapers generally created people ..?
Resistance ( Resistance  )  , a fraction of the "blue" - are convinced that the Shapers turn people in developed, but no individual consciousness exists. They believe that the goal of aliens is to create an army of people with a collective mind, like ants. Resistance agents are confident that humanity will cope with its progress and art on its own.

GAMEPLAY

In fact, the gameplay of both factions is no different.

It looks like this:

1. You need to be in time for certain temporary checkpoints to earn more points than the enemy faction.

2. To earn points, you need to create fields by connecting three portals of the same color (of your chosen faction).

3. To connect portals, you need to capture them correctly.

Basic gameplay actions:
Hacking the portal ( hack  ,  "hack"  )  - carried out in relation to the portal of any faction, and even neutral, ie. - not captured. The only purpose of the hack is to farm items. To "hack" the portal, you need to be within the range of the scanner marked with a yellow circle. When you hack someone else's portal, you also get +100 XP for it. The higher the level of the portal, the higher the level and items that can be obtained from it, but they will not drop higher than your level + one more on top.
Portals have a  cooldown  - this is usually 5 minutes, if special items are not installed on it (you can read about such items, MODs later). During this time, the portal “cools down” and breaking it is impossible.
An important life hack! If you do not just tap, but hold down the hack  button  , then a mini-game for memorizing glyphs will open. Depending on the level of the portals, you will be asked to repeat from one to five glyphs, behind which mysterious messages may be hidden - probably from the Shapers themselves. Correctly repeated glyphs add bonus items to you!

Installation of resonators, deploy of the portal ( deploy  )  - for the portal to function at full capacity, 8 resonators must be installed on it. Resonators are just such things, without the full number of which a portal cannot be connected to other portals. Of course, you can only deploy a neutral portal (this is called  capture portal), or add resonators of your own, in which there are less than 8. Resonators of the 1st level, one person can put all 8 on the portal, 2nd, 3rd and 4th - four pieces, 5th and 6 th for 2, but the steepest "cuts" - 7 and 8, one player can put only one piece at a time. This is because Ingress is a team game. The first and last resonators give the most XP. If you went to swing with a friend, and you don't have many resonators in your inventory, then ask him to let you put the first and the last (unless he himself needs to swing - be tolerant! :))
Important life hack! - it is desirable to deploy the portal at the maximum distance. The further you are from the portal, the further your resonators will be installed, and the more difficult it will be for the enemy to blow them up (more on that later). Deploy the portal, stand so that it is at the very edge of your yellow circle.
You can also replace weak resonators with stronger ones, i.e. higher level.
If you want more nerdiness, then.

Link, connecting portals ( link  )  - the main goal of the game is not to capture portals, but to connect them in filled triangles ( control field  ). To connect two portals to each other, you need to stand within an attainable distance of one portal and have a  key from the one with which you want to connect it. Portal Keys drop when they are hacked with approximately 80% chance. You will see the link button in the portal profile, in the center of the resonator diagram. Naturally, it becomes active only when all 8 of them are installed. The game may ask you to link all reachable portals that you have keys to, but link wisely. The link should not cross other links, so you should not connect two portals across the entire city if you do not plan to complete the construction of the field. Otherwise, you will ruin the game for others (this is also called "shitty"). Usually, if you have a key to the portal, for example, "Sun fountain", then hacking this fountain a second time, the key will not fall out. But if you want to link two portals near you to the "Fountain", and thereby create a field, that is another life hack  : standing near the fountain, throw away the key (the Drop button in the key window), hack the portal again, and when you get the second key, pick up the one that was thrown away. Voila! Now you can link 2 portals to the Sun Fountain without running back and forth! You are gorgeous!

Recharge of resonators (speech,  recharge  )  - is needed to maintain the life of the resonators, and therefore the portals. Resonators consume exactly 25% of the charge per day, in addition, their charge is destroyed by enemy attacks. You can charge both a pack of resonators, and each one separately - naturally, you spend XM on this from your "health" scale. It even gives a bit of the experience that newbies need. To recharge a portal, you need to stand in its radius, but you can also recharge portals from a distance if you have the keys to them. True, the further the target is from you, the more XM will be consumed.
And finally - the most fun.

Attack of enemy portals  ! I do not advise, of course, to beat portals at the first levels - unless in a company with strong players, that is, to finish off enemy resonators to gain experience. Everything is simple here - the higher your level, the higher the level of bombs that you can use (Xmp Burster, in the common people “boosters”). Just go into your inventory, select "booster" and press Fire. And now a very  important life hack  : on the screen where you see portals, and at the bottom, scroll through boosters in your inventory, hold down the Fire button. You will see exomatter bubbling around you, narrowing and expanding the ring. So, when it has narrowed as much as possible, release the button. This makes it possible to increase the attack power of the booster up to + 20%.

You can see all the current world portals, links and fields here at this link. This function is not available on mobile devices, therefore, on long-distance raids, it is good to take a compact ultrabook with you in your bag. the rest you will learn along the way - about achievements, about events, and so on. The main thing in Ingress is to play in a team, which you can find in COMM or by calling your friends. In a team, you can create real masterpieces from the fields, walk around the city at night and drive a whole crowd to neighboring cities to exchange keys. There are also many romantic stories about Ingress players - especially interesting cases of love relationships between representatives of different factions :)

A bit of terminology and jargon of the Russian-language Ingress: A
farm  is a large group of portals in one place. It's called so because people go there to hack and collect items. The most valuable, of course, are the "eighth farms" - there are the most powerful portals.
Res  is a resonator.
Boost  , booster - Xmp Burster. “Vadik, are you going to the raid? Not? Well, at least throw the boosts in the window ”.
Uporin  - the mood to play Ingress, for example, until 3:00 am or to break loose and go to another city to link.
Home  - portals that can be reached from home.
Apnut  - raise the level of the portal by delivering high resonators to it. "Eights, give me home if you walk past."
Flip - repaint the portal with a virus (read about it another time!)
Shitlink  is an ill-conceived linking that spoils the subsequent tactical game. # ylinkuykakdurak
Zelenka  is a dismissive name for enlight resists.
Blue  is a disparaging name for resists by enlays.
Since Ingress came out on Apple devices a few months ago, there has been a lot of fresh blood in the game. Namely today, it is all the more good to start playing - until the 15th, there is an event in honor of the two years of the game, during which for each action you are given 2 times more experience.

In the next article I will tell you how the Kiev Enlight lives, how we met Lina Molotova in Moscow, and in general how the girls lived to see this life.
Whichever faction you choose, we will be glad to see you among the agents of the Niantic Project! Let the game begin!

and long live Enlightment!

Starting from level 7 (and sometimes even earlier), Ingress agents begin to lack inventory (mods, boosters, ultra-strikes) and here glyphs come to the rescue

Ingress glyphs are mysterious symbols that have their own style and name (and sometimes even several names).