Ingress Report: Exercise, Levelling, and Building Blobby

Why Ingress?

By now, you pretty much know how much I hate just going outside, enjoying the beautiful (or not-so-beautiful) weather and scenery, and just… walking. Being raised to understand that anything that does not lead directly towards achieving a livelihood is a colossal waste of time, I have a lot of trouble justifying just going for a walk.

Sure, in my head I understand the health benefits, the lower blood sugar, the lower blood pressure, the easier maintenance of a healthier weight, lower stress, reduction of back pain, reduction of the likelihood of a back injury recurring, greater creativity, and greater productivity, but the actual doing? Well, that always seems like I’m not doing anything. So call me human. The thing is, it’s easier to get motivated if I make it fun, so I go outside and play.

How do I justify playing? Well, walking is something I have to do… Trust me, there’s logic in there somewhere, but whatever works, right?

This time, I returned to a walking routine when I got too stressed and tired to write, and wasn’t achieving anything at my desk. I was also grouchy, and couldn’t sleep, and I realised I’d taken a break out of the walking routine for almost two weeks. Something my body didn’t appreciate. The goal is an hour a day, followed by 10,000 steps if I have the time. Either way, the hour is the minimum.

This Week’s Goals

Since I was about 780,000 AP off levelling, I bribed myself with a patch of densely packed portals in a local suburban centre, and the promise of a hefty session of micro-fielding. 260,000 AP later, and I’d managed to work my way out of the centre and start filling in the periphery. I have to admit, while the initial bribe was AP, the most fun I have with Ingress is creating little blue triangles in the ephemera, and then turning the intel map into a colouring guide. The aim, this week, was to get to L15 and see how much of the local suburban centre I could ‘colour in’ before the greens came along and took it all down, again.

How It All Went Down:

Day one saw the centre of the blob, all blued up and ready for expansion. 260,000+ AP in total, with approximately 90,000 from taking down the existing green fields, and 170,000 from bluing up the portals and reinstalling the fields. Day 2 would see it grow.

The best laid plans of mice and men, and all that.

The next morning, the fields were still up when I got on the bus to expand my patch of blue, but they were almost all down by the time I arrived, with the portals left strangely white. Yes! I got to do it all again. 190,000 AP later, and I had started expanding the blob.

The third day, the fields stayed up overnight, and another of the local blues started expanding the blob, as well. Now, it really was starting to become fun. I might not see my local team mates a lot, but I like knowing they’re around, and I really like it when they come and add to something I’m doing - or when I get to build on something of theirs. It makes me feel like I’m part of the team, instead of just knowing the team is out there... somewhere…

The third day, I was able to expand my little patch of blue even further, taking out one of the local green L8 portals. There was a second one, nearby, but it would have broken my pattern to take it out before I was ready to field from it, so I left it. A lot more walking occurred in a shorter amount of time, but less AP was earned – only around 85,000. Still, that’s not a bad day’s work. To celebrate, I got off the bus early and took down a field from one of my local walk routes; it had been annoying me all week, but I’d been saving my blasters and power cubes. With what I’d hacked in the last few days, this was no longer a problem – although my resource limits were.

That evening, I had another green take down the core of my blob – logical, given the amount of AP stored there; a third nibbled at the edges; and a fourth took out the local walk portal – also logical as it never stays up long. Why they didn’t bother re-fielding or capturing it, I’m not sure. They’re often weird that way. There were also a couple of ripples by a fifth, but nothing a bit of recharging didn’t fix.

By this stage, I was rapt! I had been wondering what I was going to do to get the final 160,000 AP I needed for levelling, and had mapped out contingencies to extend my blob just a little further into one of the local parks. This is not a hardship; it’s a lovely park. But the weather was looking to storm, so I was worried. If the core of the blob I’d been working on all week stayed down until I could get to it on the fourth day, I’d have a good chance of dodging the bad weather. Otherwise I was going to be one soggy blue by the end of it.

Next morning started off okay. Another local blue took back a half dozen portals at the core of the blob. Awesome! I could build from there. I had Real-Life Adulting to do in the morning, so I broke the routine I’d had of getting into that suburban centre just after 09:00, and went to a completely different burb, instead.

This ended up being a good thing. Those greens had obviously caught on, and were waiting. Now, maybe they weren’t waiting for me to rock up, so they could stop me bluing up the interior, again. Maybe it was just a coincidence they were in the area at all, but I’d never have gotten the fielding done that I needed to do, while they were there, and they’d taken down the baseline I’d planned for the next phase, so I’d have some serious re-jinking to do, if they were anywhere around, and looking to make life difficult.

I’m pretty sure you’re not supposed to cheer when your portals start crashing, or laugh, but that was my first reaction – followed by a certain amount of worry that my unwittingly helpful opponents would still be there when I arrived later in the day. This was going to get interesting. Those pesky greens weren’t making it easy. They were making building Blobby downright difficult! Even if the AP was pretty good, and I had most of the keys to get the core back up quickly, expansion was going to have to wait another day. Still, maybe I’d level before I had to call it quits for the afternoon. Family commitments will always trump the game, so I had a pretty tight schedule to keep.

By the time I got there, the greens had taken down almost all my team-mate’s repair job, and seriously dented what was left. It took me just under an hour to set things to rights, and even then, I think I missed a couple of spots on the periphery. Result: One urban centre all blue... again! Newly greened portals, links and fields cleaned up and returned to their proper colour, and 176, 148 AP later and not only had I managed to scrape through to Level 15, but Blobby’s core was back up again.

For the third time this week.

I wonder how long it will take them to take it down…

Addendum:

Two hours, apparently.

For half.

Busy little devils, those greens…

Poor Blobby.

Next time, I’ll try to remember pictures. The fluidity of this game is quite fascinating to watch.