The Quest For R10

Saturday morning.

I had 3,718,054 AP's and the required badges for R10 in Ingress.

I needed just under 300k  and had two days to do it (my goal is to level up by Sunday each time I get near the next level).  It could be done but I was short of time on Saturday and my buddy Wayne wanted to perform some person  revenge attacks instead of focusing on points or actions that would get both of us upgraded badges.  That was okay,  I still had a few hours Sunday morning.

We drove up to a local shopping center to take out a couple of weak anchor portals (portal used to anchor several links and/or fields) worth 5k each.  Once we were done with that, we headed to Murphy to clean up on a nice link anchor field near the high school and a public park.  That took a little longer because we also completed a mission while we were there.  At this point we were at about 50k points each so we boogied over to do the revenge attack(s) Wayne wanted to carry out against his neighbor, a mid level toad. You know him as Hockey Man.  Personally I did not want to hit him but Wayne had his heart set on it so we did.

That was pretty anti-climactic (no surprise) so I ushered him over to a place in Plano that had several links completely undefended (tadpoles set them up, I think) where we dispatched them quickly.  At this point it was about time to return Wayne back home (I was driving this week) so we started to head back, stopping only  at a few weak and tempting targets on the way back.  Once I got him back home I completed 1-2 missions in Allen and then headed home.

Sunday morning.

I had 3,838,895 AP's and the required badges for R10.  I had gotten over 120k points without breaking a sweat the day before.

I got up and decided to walk our new-ish dog (15 months old but had never been trained so she is a handful.  A coon hound/beagle handful who loves to chase rabbits) at the park across the street, the same park the hockey family defends with a passion.  While walking the pooch, I hack all the portals to get a little gear and a small amount of points.  It was about halfway into my first lap I noticed one of the portals was a weakly defended anchor portal, so I used the few L4, L5, and L6 XMP's I had to bring it down.  I only had a 3- 5 of each so it took them all to bring it down.  Once down, I threw a few token L5,L6, and L7 resonators and basic shields on it (I had a ton to spare) and continued my walk.  On the next lap  I noticed I could link up a few of the friendly portals that had not been reclaimed by the Hockey Family.  This should have told me something but I did not really pay it any mind.  So I took a few minutes and created a few small fields, just for the points and went back home.

My wife was almost ready to head out to church and I had a small list of chores I need to complete before I did anything else. So once I washed, dried and put away the dishes, cleaned and portioned off the fruit,  and had my breakfast, I was free to play a little more.

My plan was to get to R10 before lunch, when I would be meeting my wife so  I looked at any high point targets and found several in the city so I went after them.  As I took out more and more targets, I inched closer to that magical 4,000,000 AP mark.  I was just 15k away when I went back to the shopping center Wayne and I were at the day before and started attacking portals.  It was not time at all before I hit the 4 million AP mark,so I headed back home.

On the way home I looked at the Hockey Family maintained park and saw all the portals I haphazardly worked on were now green.  I looked at the level and noticed they looked weak.  Then I looked at the defenses and they were completely non-existent!   Hockey family set up several anchor link portals worth 30-40k points completely undefended!  I could not resist the low hanging fruit so I hit just those portals with the last of my lower powered XMP's (L5 and L6...I was out of L7's) and went home.  I finished the weekend at 4.040,476 AP's.  I think I need to thank Hockey Family for all the points.

Seeing all the poorly defended portals made me think that just maybe the Hockey Family is a little low on gear. It happens when you cannot get out and farm sometimes.  Mods may be common, but you have to hack a lot of friendly's to get them.  I don't get the impression they farm much, but I could be wrong.  I guess we will see.  Maybe they will get some donations like I did a few weeks ago.

Anyhoo...later that Sunday,Wayne called me up to discuss if the Hockey Family had been cheating or not (at this point, I do not care...build all you want, I will just tear it all back down...that is all part of the game, right?) and we watched in real time as the son took out a couple of portals that had no real value.  It did not appear he was cheating at all.

After that I gave Wayne some intel on how he could make a large field with little effort so he followed my advice and was rewarded with a couple of thousand AP's for his trouble.

It was a productive weekend.  I have a big hurdle to clear (I need 1 more gold to get to R11, not to mention the 2 million additional AP's to get to that level) but getting to 10 feels good.  I just need to continue to do more of the same:  Selective link assassination.  Hack everything.  Upgrade friendly portals with better resonators and mods.  Link and field when appropriate.  Reclaim any weak/undefended portals when I can.  Recharge resonators of any friendly portal I come across.  And continue doing it.

I made it to work today 4,053,434 AP's, a gain of almost 13k AP's that I picked up hacking and linking along the route to work.

Six Million Points?  I got this.