Ingress Basics, Resources (Part 2)

In the first episode of this series I began my discussion of resources in Ingress by talking generally about resources. I attempted to give a categorisation and I came up with the following:

Ingress game resources fall into two categories, pro and anti portal.

In the next episode I'll focus on pro-portal resources as they should be your starting point to build up your inventory and progress in the game. I'll then move on to talk about anti-portal items.

First of all though, a slight digression…

Where do resources come from?

Resources come from portals. You obtain resources from portals through the process of hacking. (OK, you can get resources from codes but I'm not going to dwell on that).

This is the first thing you do in the game tutorial so you will be familiar with this process.

However, there are some aspects of hacking that may not be immediately apparent when you first start playing the game.

Hacking Portals

Rules and Consequences

You can hack any portal once you are in range. You are in range when the portal sits within your circle of influence on the scanner.

You can hack a portal once every 5 minutes

In my experience this is a flexible rule. I have found that hitting the Hack button a second or third time often yields further items before the recharge period kicks in (though you have to be quick).

Further, with new mods (which we'll look at in a later episode), you can reduce this cycle time.

A portal can be hacked 4 times before it burns out

So a complete hack of a portal will take 20 minutes. Again, this is not strictly true given the new portal mods that are coming online but this is the base rule.

A burnt out portal will take 4 hours to recharge

I think that this one is a hard and fast rule.

Higher level portals will provide better stuff

The level of a portal will determine generally the level of resources it will dispence. I say generally cause lower level portals can sometimes surprise you and give out higher level items. I think it also depends on your player level.

Enemy portals are less generous and will bite

Now we can talk about the consequences. Hacking a friendly portal has no cost (or at least a very low cost) in terms of XM. Enemy portals are not such an easy proposition.

Each hack of an enemy portal will cause a reaction. XM lightning will zap you and cause damage which will reduce your XM.

Also, the resources gained from hacking enemy portals are usually less than what would be gained from a friendly portal (although this is purely from my experience). Often you will get the dreaded 'Hack acquired no items' message.

Getting zapped… things to bear in mind…

Sometimes you don’t have much of a choice as to which portals you have to hack. In a city currently dominated by the opposition, you will have to get your supplies the hard way. So, what do you have to know to make the process easier (or at least less painful)?

Higher level portals will deliver a bigger shock

As a lower level player with a lower stock of XM, bear in mind that hacking a higher level enemy portal will cost you a considerable amount of XM.

Conclusion

So, putting aside the larger goal of gaining & holding territory for our faction, we need friendly portals as the easiest source of resources to continue the fight.

Remember, enemy portals are less generous and will bite so relying on them to maintain an inventory can become a real slog. Let's make things easier for ourselves, shall we? Once you have your friendly portal you want to do everything possible to hang on to it.

This is where our pro-portal resource items come in.