Ingress Cheats: Tips & Strategy Guide

They’re not coming, agent. They’re already here.

Ingress is a very unique game that was just released this week. It is a augmented reality game that utilizes your iPhone’s GPS to project a parallel version of our dear sweet Earth. Humankind’s future is at stake; you must join a side. Enlist in the Resistance to protect what’s left of human integrity, or join the ranks of the Enlightened to accept the new found alien energy. The choice is yours. We’ll help you get started with our Ingress cheats, tips and tricks strategy guide.

Get connected, agent. The world is yours to to explore with our Ingress cheats, tips and tricks strategy guide.

Since Ingress is a massive game, I’m going to do a run down on the basics of the game, since I personally feel like the game itself doesn’t do that well of a job teaching new players what to do. Without further ado!

First, let’s get your bearings!

The little triangle represents your current location. The yellow circle around you is your “scanner” range. When you move around in the real world with your iPhone, your triangle position will update accordingly.

Look around you. See those little glowing orbs? That’s Exotic Matter, or XM.

Ready for a nice walk? Let’s start with the basics. See the bar at the top, above your name? That’s your current XM reserve. Most actions in the game require a certain amount of XM. So how do you replenish it? Walk towards the XM floating around, of course! Once XM particles are detected within your scanner range, you’ll automatically scoop them up and refuel your XM.

Now that you know how to get XM, let’s start with the most basic action: hacking portals!

Pinch the map outward to zoom out and scope out your surroundings. Chances are you’re going to see this really big glowing crystal formation – that’s a portal! It will either be one of three colors: blue, green, or grey. When it’s owned by the Resistance, it’s blue, and green for the Enlightened. When it’s neutral, it’s grey. So, when you hack a portal, you’ll get some XM and useful items and weapons! You should hack whenever you can. When you hack a friendly or neutral portal, just sit back and reap the benefits. However, when you attempt to hack enemy portals, they will fight back! Enemy portals will begin to drain you of XM so as long as you’re in range of them, so once you start hacking them, immediately run away from the portal to save your XM.

Ouch! So how do we fight back?!

Glad you asked! Remember how I mentioned you get items and weapons from hacking? Those weapons are called XMPs, or “eXotic Matter Pulse”. If you tap your emblem at the top left, you’ll open the agent menu. You can swipe to the left to get to your inventory, where you can check up on all the items you’ve collected thus far. But anyways, if you’re within scanner range of a enemy portal, tap and hold on it to open the quick menu. Select FIRE, pick your weapon, and watch the fireworks! Not only does this destroy the enemy control of the portal, but now you can…

Commandeer that portal for your own faction!

When a portal is unclaimed, tap on it to bring up the portal menu. From there, tap on DEPLOY resonator. It’ll then ask you what level resonator you want to use; the higher level the more XM produced and the portal is harder to take down. Note that you can only place resonators up to your own personal agent level. Portals can have up to a maximum of eight resonators, so team up with nearby allies to strengthen your portals!

Cool! I’ve got my own portal! What’s the next step?

You’re in luck agent, because this next step is a doozy! There’s a process known as “linking,” where portals are linked together using large amounts of XM. To perform this, you must equip a portal with eight resonators, then recharge all resonators to maximum capacity by tapping the RECHARGE button. Recharging costs XM, so make sure you have some on hand! Once a portal is fully charged, you must hack it to obtain that portal’s unique Portal Key. With this in your inventory, move yourself to another portal that you want to link to. As with the original portal, you must equip this new one with eight resonators and fully charge them. In the portal menu, tap the LINK Button on the left, then select your original portal to link to. And volia! You have established a link. Do note that the higher level resonators you use, the farther the link can go. Also keep in mind that links cannot intersect, and they will shut down if their resonators run out of power or are attacked.

Wow, I made a big wall. Can we go bigger?

Indeed we can! The most valuable thing you can do for your team is to create “XM fields”. Fields are created by linking three portals together in a triangle formation. Once this happens a protective field will be established, protecting all of the human civilians inside. This is your main objective; the more humans protected, the better. Do note that I picked Resistance as my faction. The “big picture” objective, at least lore wise, may be different for the Enlightened. Either way, you want to aim for as many fields as you can.

Am I ready to go as an agent of my faction?

Almost! One last thing. For every meaningful action you do in Ingress, you will gain AP, or Access Points. This is Ingress’ equivalent of experience points; once you get enough AP you will level up and gain access to more powerful equipment.

That should cover the basics for playing Ingress. I hope this was an easy-to-read guide to starting out, and I hope you’re prepared for the real challenge, agent. Make sure to stick around though, because we’re going to get deeper with the game in the coming days. In the mean time, go ahead and leave your agent names and factions below in the comments suggestions to gather up some teammates! Best of luck to you, agent.