A huge part of Ingress is visiting new places and this means you will find yourself traveling to play! This is very true if you are an anomaly junkie! Most carriers, at least in the United States, do not offer reasonable international plans. So, unless you want to restrict your play to your home country, you should do some planning before crossing the boarder.
Check Providers and Coverage
To be sure the SIM I bought would be useful I used OpenSignal to research different providers in the country I was visiting. OpenSignal gives detailed coverage information about most countries, allowing you to check specific cities and regions you will be visiting. It gives information such as 3G/4G download speeds, network reliability and detailed coverage maps. Most importantly, OpenSignal will tell you what bands the carrier uses for its coverage. This will allow you to choose a supported phone.
Coverage map for Mexico from OpenSignal.
Pick the right phone
There are a ton of phones out there and almost equally the same number of carriers. It may be the case, if you use AT&T or T-Mobile in the United States, that your phone already supports the bands required for other countries. Even though you have a "world" phone, which generally support GSM networks, it is best to check the bands supported by your chosen carrier. Also, note the type of SIM card that your chosen phone accepts, this will be important when purchasing the SIM. Currently, there are four sizes: full, mini, micro and nano.
Get a SIM
Based on the size need for your chosen phone, find a prepaid SIM online. Many of the prepaid options I found were data only, though some also have minutes attached as well in case you are into making phone calls. Looking online is a great bet, though many retailers in the country you are visiting are likely to sell prepaid SIM cards. If you accidentally buy a SIM your phone does not support there are SIM cutters that can be used to trim the SIM down to size. There are also SIM adapters, allowing you to use a smaller SIM.
I hope this will make it easy for anyone to travel and play! Meeting local agents is a great way to explore a new city. So, get out there and Ingress safely! Let me know if you have any great Ingress travel tips.
Its always fun to look at the change in areas over time. Below are a few statistics showing the number of L7/L8 portals for each faction in Seattle. Looking at the images and the statistics Seattle is far from being owned by a single faction. Both the Resistance and Enlightened are fighting hard, there is a lot of Portal churn! Enlightened agents seem to have an edge, but Resistance agents are close on their heels. Take a look at the gifs and statistics. If you are from Seattle, what is your opinion? Does either faction have the upperhand?
L4-L8 Portal over a week.
L8 Portals over a week.
There will be more of these posts for different cities. If you have a place you want considered, leave a comment! Als, leave any suggests for additional statistics or images you would like to see!
VRLA's are unstable and long distance links often fail.
Extends range by 7x, with 4 on a Portal 10.5x.
SITREP: Taiwan Enlightened claim Turtle Island.
No hacked video footage.
Currently, there are five active shards in the game. Each shard resides in a different location and is tied to a portal. Every hour the Jarvis shard jumps to another portal by randomly choosing a Portal link to move along. Supposedly, the jump is weighted against traveling down a link it has already used. The shards are not safe once they have reached goal, though I cannot confirm this.
For either faction to succeed an incredible amount of cooperation is required. At the time of writing, four of the five active shards reside in Europe and Asia. The goal Portals are located in North and South America. For a faction to succeed in moving these shards it will take cooperation across cities, countries and continents.
A couple of over arching strategies and notes come to mind:
Because a link is randomly chosen for movement, make links only in the direction you wish the shard to move.
Link to Portals you know your faction can control.
Start collaborating with neighboring cities and countries to make a plan, even if a shard is not nearby. Key sharing and coordination will be critical!
Very Rare Link Amps will be active at some point, it may be possible to link across larger areas (i.e. oceans).
If you run across any shards or Very Rare Link Amps, please post a link to a video or picture in the comments!
There are a few key changes to the scanner in this update. The changes seem to focus on slowing the game down. The new firing mode removes the ability to stack bursters and a flip card cool down keeps agents from spamming viruses. Read on to see all the changes in detail.
The best way to play Ingress is as a group and preferably with high level players. If you are only level one, you will quickly find as you level that the number resonators you can deploy per portal is restricted. You can deploy the following on a single portal: 8 L1, 4 L2-4, 2 L5-6, and 1 L7-8.
Early on, you should get involved in conversations in COMM. You can reply to a player in COMM simply by clicking their name. Another good way to look for players is checking nearby portals for user names. Recent updates have added the ability to long press a user name to get view a player profile or send them a message. Just a note, sending a message to player is public.
Speaking from experience, most of the communication and planning for operations between local players happens on other mediums, not COMMs. This includes hangouts, groupme and other chat clients. These systems are more secure and are kept invite only. To crack into the plotting and scheming, be active in COMM with players and try to meet them in person!
