Ingress: the 5 best tips

The augmented reality game Ingress turns the world around you into a science fiction adventure. We have the best tips for you that will make you even more successful in virtual geocaching.

Ingress tip 1: Get involved in your ingress community

Especially if you live in a larger city, there are probably numerous Ingress players in your area - some friends, others part of the opposing faction.

• At such collection points in particular there are usually many highly competitive portals. That is why a coordinated approach is crucial if you want to collect points for your faction.
• However, experienced players will be happy to help you, regardless of joint attack and defense actions, maybe raise you up or equip you.
• Especially if you use the Android version of Ingress, Google+ is a good choice, which can be connected directly to the game. Since a Google account is required for Ingress anyway, many local groups organize themselves via the social network.

Ingress Tip 2: Better rewards in Ingress through hacking mini-games

When it comes down to it, take your time hacking portals:

• If you hold the hack button down for a longer time, you can activate a mini-game with so-called glyphs, which will greatly improve your hack rewards depending on the strength of the portal and the increasing level of difficulty.
• If you don’t feel like it, it doesn’t mean that you’ll go empty-handed because portals always reward you. The mini-game brings weighty bonuses.
• Work your way up slowly from small portals. In this way you reduce the risk that the additional challenge will overwhelm and demotivate you.

Ingress tip 3: Study the card

If you are familiar with the community and active players in your area, dive into the second most important tool on your phone: the map.

• Of course, you can wander aimlessly through your city and discover, attack and defend portals at random here and there. But the wealth of information that you already have on your card also enables you to plan and pursue your goals properly.
• Perhaps you will discover weak points in the network of the opposing faction or, with just a few detours, you can connect the daily route to the office with portals that you would never have discovered otherwise.

Ingress tip 4: More portal keys thanks to drop hacking

In order to connect portals, you need suitable keys, which are very popular, but unfortunately only available to a limited extent:

• If you have a key for a specific portal in your luggage, you cannot get another if you hack the portal again.
• The solution: drop hacking. This means that you can use the "Drop" command to remove the key from your inventory - just before you start the hack. This gives you a chance to get a second one because the first one no longer blocks inventory.
• Then lift the other key over the card and you are one more key.
• But be careful: if you drop items, not only you can see and pick them up. So avoid drop hacking when there are opponents nearby.

Ingress tip 5: Double mind units for double area control

Ingress is about global mind control by building a network of portals:

• You get points, so-called Mind Units, for areas that you completely delimit with connected portals.
• If you want a particularly large number of them, make sure that you don't just connect particularly large areas. Network portals that are located in such a large area.
• This allows you to double your points, since you restrict certain areas both by extensive connections, as well as by a second, smaller and independent network in this area.

You haven't installed Ingress yet? Then download the app for Android or iOS. In another article we will show you how to quickly gain experience points in Ingress.