The Jarvis Shards really are a moving target, so this post won't be accurate for too long. There are some interesting things happening with the game because of the Shards. Shard #4 is being held in Malaysia to make a stand against...
Jarvis Shards
New York Resistance Boycott Jarvis Shards
Ingress, since the beginning, has been a very player driven game. Portals, aside from an initial set of libraries, fire stations, and other public landmarks, are submitted by users. When Niantic decided to reduce the mod slots available to a player per Portal to one, the players piped up and got it raised to two (not a huge victory in my opinion). But boycotts on new game mechanics, such as the Jarvis Shard boycott in New York, can be caused by players as well.
Jarvis Shards: Five Are Active!
If you have checked intel lately and zoomed out, you may have noticed there are a couple of new objects. As part of 13Magnus, Jarvis shards have been distributed worldwide. So, what do you do with these shards? and how do you move them? The goal for each team is to collect all shards at their goal Portal. The Resistance goal is a Buenos Aires Portal, named Pirámade de Mayo . The Enlightened goal is a San Francisco Portal, named Cupid's Span.
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!