User:Ingress Medal Strategy/sandbox

Ingress Medal Strategy TunderProsum This is a post putting everything I and others have learned in pursuing medals in ingress. After level 8, you need medals to continue leveling up to 16, not just AP. For those interested in getting there, this post should highlight the easiest path to 16 for you. For the masochists, it’ll highlight the hardest medals in the game. With the addition of new medals over the past 3 years, the strategy has changed. This post is current as of November 30, 2015. Before I dive in, your circumstances and preferences affect the relative ease of medals. I’ve written this for what I feel is relevant for most players, but I am undoubtedly biased by my own experiences. I started playing a small German village of just 900 people. For context, the closest Starbucks was an hours drive through farmland. I’m currently living and working in Sydney, a city of 5ish million people in Australia. I’ve never driven to play ingress, I enjoy walking, but in the village I rode a bike to get around too. I’m conscious of rural play vs. city play. For this guide, I’ll assume you have access to a decent city and its portals, but I will mention rural tactics when necessary. I’m not an old veteran, I haven’t even been playing for a month, but will hit level 12 tomorrow. I’m a professional financial analyst and make a living modelling and finding the most efficient paths to a goal for the businesses I advise and acquire. I like to break the journey to 16 up into the following three questions: •	In what order will my first 7 Golds be? •	In what order will my first 4 Platinums be? •	In what order will my first 2 Blacks be? I’ll be using these questions for structure and listing medals in descending order from easiest to more difficult. As always, this is dependant on your own circumstances and preferences for gameplay, so don’t get too agro if your opinion is different. I’m open to learning something. As an aside, I’d consider most of these gold medals to also be your first silver medals, though the order would move around a little and silver quickly becomes a moot point. First 7 Gold Medals •	Guardian Rural or city, a 20 day Guardian could be argued as the easiest gold in the game. You have to wait 20 days for it, but in regards to actually effort exerted, it could be as little as the 5 seconds of throwing a resonator. Even if you're living in an area of scrapers/bots, they’re almost certainly not going to bother with a new player and a 20 day guardian. You could find somewhere a little out of the way, but you’d be surprised how easy it is to hit 20 days accidentally in plain site. •	Spec Ops I started late on spec ops, I didn’t like the idea of missions telling me where to go and what to do. But now I enjoy the “guided tours” of my city. If you wanted to push hard, it’s entirely possible to get 100 missions and your gold spec ops on your first day of play (in a decent city). 100 missions is only about 600 hacks, compare that to 30,000 for gold Hacker. I ignored Spec Ops at first, a lot for others do too, but there’s a reason it was one of the world's first black medals. •	Recharger Don’t forget to recharge. If you’re holding 100+ keys of your own faction, burning excess cubes and items to recharge dump will make this one of your first gold medals. Safely in the top 3 easy golds. •	Translator I enjoy the minigame of memory that is glyph hacking, if you do too and glyph hack often, this gold will come early on. It was 3rd for me but could be 4th after spec ops if you pursue that. Inventory management is a little tricky during times of increased drops, but normally, glyph hacking keeps you perfectly fueled for playing Ingress. •	Pioneer Because the game lacks a functionality to show you what you’ve capped, you might want to do some planning. I printed out a black and white google map of my city and coloured off an area after a day of active capping. I won’t be pushing this to platinum, so a little record keeping for a quick 1000 unique caps was over really fast. For the rural guys, this will take a couple weekends in your closest city, but don’t write it off. It is a relatively simple gold and a little record keeping will keep your sanity. If you live in an area dominated by your own team, you do start to hate your own team though... •	Explorer Like Pioneer, just twice as many hacks compared to caps. At least you don’t need to bring down enemy portals or wait for the enemy to cap something that is currently held by your team. Like Pioneer, I pursued this actively only to gold. The jump to Platinum is 5x, the largest in the game and finding uniques gets harder the more you play. Easy gold, not so easy platinum and black. •	Trekker I love this medal, it just happens without any effort and is a great record of the benefits of this game to your cynical friends. It will be one of the last on this list of seven, but nonetheless an easy gold that will just happen in the background. Trekker was one of the world first blacks for a reason. Honourable Mention Sojourner Arguably easier than guardian since it’s only dependent on you, no one can interrupt your Sojourner like they can Guardian. Arguably harder though since the time periods are much longer than Guardian and actually require effort each day. I’ll get this to gold just for cleanliness, but I’m already starting to hate Sojourner. It’s turning a game into a chore for me and I look forward to when I forget about it one day. First 4 Platinum •	Spec Ops With active play, Spec Ops is arguably the first gold anyone could achieve. Strangely the jump from gold to platinum is only 2x, the smallest in the game. Spec Ops Platinum is safely one of the easiest platinums. Rural guys and small city slickers might need a weekend or two somewhere else, but this is a fast Platinum. •	Recharger Recharger would probably win a vote for overall, easiest medal in the game across all levels. Spec Ops can be done much faster, but you need to actively pursue unique missions. Recharger just happens as your burn off XM, no matter how you play. Just keep enough keys to dump your XM, try to never let yourself cap out on XM and you’ll breeze this to platinum, probably before you even need it. •	Translator For those that enjoy glyphing, this platinum will be one of their first four as it’s only 3.3x what was required for an easy gold. •	Trekker It’ll happen. Just play. Honourable Mentions Guardian, I really enjoy the search for my own guardian candidates but guardian hunting and the involvement of scrapers/bots/spoofers is safely the ugliest side of this game. I’d encourage any player to assume they won’t get guardian any further than gold. Treat Guardian as a nice surprise, because at the end of the day, it’s out of your control. If there’s a scraper/bot/spoofer in range, you’re gone. Sojourner, I’ll hate this medal way too much by the time platinum is close. Can’t wait for the day I forget to hack. But at 180 days, if it’s your thing, this is one of the easier platinums. First Two Blacks •	Recharger For the same reasons as gold and platinum, this will almost certainly be your first black if you remember to recharge. You’ll probably get it before you need it. •	Translator/Spec Ops Which goes first depends on your play preferences and circumstances. Pending a lucky guardian, one of these two will probably be the second black you get. Hardest medals in the game •	Engineer •	Connector •	Mind Controller If you have any of these at Platinum+, you’re the definition of dedicated. These medals are difficult golds and the multiples up to platinum and black are some of the largest in the game. To my knowledge, engineer and connector still haven't gone black anywhere in the world. Commentors show below that my source is out of date and in fact engineer and connector have gone black. Side note 1 - Recruiter Awful medal that should be thrown into the abyss with Seer. Side note 2 - Illuminator Some people will have noticed I didn’t include Illuminator at all, even as one of the easy golds. I don’t think it is an easy medal. I’ve lived in rural areas, I’ve lived in a dense city of 5ish million. This medal is difficult relative to the ones I’ve highlighted as the easy 7. I think there are two pathways to this medal. You either live in a very specific geography like inland Australia/America: places where there is a decent size city/town surrounded by nothingness and you actually have a chance of soloing this medal in a reasonable time period without getting blocked. Or, you have the special circumstance of being involved in a large operation. I don’t have access to either of those pathways. Germany, like much of Europe, is littered with too many blocking villages/towns to throw anything worth any decent MU. Large sprawling coastal cities like Sydney get blocked by the density along the coast. You have to throw over Sydney from thousands of kilometers away and out to remote islands to have a chance. In any case, you have a rare/lucky set of circumstances and are willing to burn fuel (or jet fuel) to achieve this as one of the first gold/platinum/black. Moreover, this medal has only gotten harder as more and more people play. If you have it, congratulations, but I’d argue for most newer players today and specifically one in my circumstances with my preferences, there are way lower hanging fruit. (I've poo-pooed Illuminator a lot here but, as has been repeated a lot, this is circumstance dependent. One commentor pointed out in their part of the world missions are hard to come by but a helpful group of teammates will facilitate your trip to black illuminator quickly) Side note 3 - AP Simple rule is that you’ll be constrained by AP through to level 8, then you're constrained by medals until level 13 (1 plat, 7 gold), the final run from 14-16 is AP constrained again despite the difficulty of chasing platinums and blacks. Collin Williams did a nice summary for AP grinding. The TLDR is to nuke dense/weak opposition fields and re-field yourself.