Recurse Like A Maniac - Level 1 to Level 16 in 3H 46M
Operation Recurse Like a Maniac
Scope: To Recurse in Ingress Prime and level up from L1 to L16 as fast as possible
Official Time: 3 hours 46 minutes - Saturday, November 14th, 2020 11:06-14:52 CST
Planners: Maniac15, GBUManny, DerteeBlooBerd, fl00d
Support Team: Musiedlak93, GBUManny, DerteeBlooBerd, fl00d, Vicious1016, Coolbluewaters, Redfox1701
Plan: Use an AP field machine set up in Stevens Point, Wisconsin USA. The hinge anchor was set up at the Family Church on the southside of Stevens Point along with 15 spine portals linked through downtown and into Mead Park. Utilizing the portals on the University of Wisconsin Stevens Point campus, I would follow a 70 portal loop throwing to the hinge anchor and spine repeatedly. The number of portals on the chosen campus loop would, in theory, prevent me from overtaking my inoculation. Each throw cycle generated 16 links and 29 fields while only utilizing 1 SBUL and 1 Jarvis.
Preparation: The decision to find a suitable area to complete this was difficult. We spent days looking at the intel map debating which areas had the best spine and number of portals. We wanted an area where the portal density was high enough affording easy walking deployment, yet far enough away from any potential disruption from Resistance or Enlightened agents. This was no easy task, but Stevens Point seemed to be the best option.
Key Farming: Three days over two trips on May 9th, 2020 and September 28-29, 2020 and a bunch of quantum capsules were needed to farm the 7328 keys needed to meet the minimum AP to reach level 16. But wait! A new item was introduced that would change everything! APEX. With the confirmation that the Apex would stack onto double AP events resulting in 4x AP, we could effectively cut the needed items in half. This meant instead of running the machine 458 times we only needed to run it a minimum of 229 times.
Gear Farming: The absurd number of Softbanks and Jarvis Virus were the most difficult items to collect and farm. Many of the needed items were donated after an anomaly win in Madison, Wisconsin USA in July 2019 from the bounty received by agents at the restocking portals. The rest was due to the generosity of many local agents sharing their gear. After nearly two years we finally obtained enough.
Date: Originally, we planned to complete this during one of the two weekends of the yearly anniversary badge double AP event. 2020 threw a wrench in that as it has with many other things. It seems that the EOS protocol had replaced the yearly two week double AP. Looking at the EOS schedule, the only duration of double AP across all actions was Phase 1 happening November 9th through November 17th. This only allowed one weekend to complete the task.
Go Time: Recurse! Thus came the day to make it all happen. Enlisting the help of Musiedlak93, GBUManny, DerteeBlooBerd, fl00d, Vicious1016, and Coolbluewaters we met in Stevens Point and organized our gear for drops. I originally had a plan to screen record the entire process but phone space was limited. Finding Redfox1701, we were able to set up an intel map recording of the entire process.
Links to YouTube videos will be in the comments down below.
Execution: With the guidance of Musiedlak93, we were able to navigate a good route through the campus that allowed us to use most of the portals available (and not run into trees while staring at my phone). Levels 1 through 8 were completed in under 6 minutes. Keeping a close eye on my inventory I gave a signal to Musiedlak93 when it was time to drop capsules for me. The support agents were centrally located within the loop, so when I needed a drop someone was always close to restock whatever I needed. After three and a half laps and only 3 hours and 46 minutes the moment was finally achieved: The return to level 16.
Obstacles: The biggest threat to the entire operation was Wisconsin mother nature in November. Watching the forecast in the weeks to come we saw rain and it snowed in the days just prior. Like true Wisconsinites we bundled up and gritted it out. Quickly into the first lap I made a critical mistake of using a portal twice. As many know, using a portal twice means I cannot virus that portal a second time for another hour. A quick decision to purchase a battle beacon saved the day. Because the battle beacon flips the portal regardless of inoculation, all I had to do was wait for the initial battle beacon timer. This happened two more times along the way. The original plan was tested for speed and it was determined that 70 portals in the loop would be sufficient enough to not have to worry about inoculation. Finding our groove and moving quickly through the campus we were on the brink of having to wait for inoculation timers. We called an audible and added a section of portals slightly off the loop. Near the end of lap 3 I was getting low on resonators. Turns out the support team didn't have any more capsules. Somewhere along the line we didn't calculate enough extra resonators due to loss from ghost links. A quick decision was made by the support team to farm a set of L1 and L2 portals. Frackers went off and away they went to gather resonators. Just after the start of lap 4 I had less than 10 of each level 1 and 2 resonators. I made the call to the support team to run resonators over to me. Great teamwork and communication lead to no time wasted!
Day of Temperature: 40° F and dropping rapidly
Rain: Light drizzle began midway though lap 2, then sporadic heavy bouts of rain fell throughout lap 3 and the final lap
Wind: 10-15mph
Statistics:
Time: 3 hours 46 minutes
1943 Resonators Deployed
3819 Links Created
6745 Fields Created
249 SBUL used
8 Apex used
9 KM walked
40098518 AP Gained
7 Friendships Strengthened
1 World Record Achieved
Comments
Posting links to YouTube screen recordings as Maniac15 is prevented from posting links.
Screen recording of Recursion to L9
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4CtgtUZmhQ&feature=youtu.be
Screen recording of hitting L16
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNHFhcYCLbk&feature=youtu.be
Screen recording of Intel
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3SX0hDp15o&feature=youtu.be
Nice job dude!
My view of the operation. Keys everywhere! 😎
Insane! Nice work!
Crazy !
Did you pick them up at the end or just leave them?
Was and honor and privilege to be a part of Maniac15 speed recurse.
After party.
I left them as a temporary monument to the accomplishment. If anyone happened upon them, I wanted them to think, "What on God's green flat earth happened here?"
This is very impressive! Excellent job!
Congrats on your 10 million AP.
Congratulations on your achievement! 3 hours 46 minutes sounds fantastic. Professional planning, proactive chance seizing, accurate execution and laudable collaboration.
A stark contrast to few rarely-Prime-opening agents who whined at first that Niantic should not organize EOS and launch the individual badge as planned (in some cases it's just because he/she does not want to go out to do something at all but still wants the badge) and afterwards grumbled that EOS offers no substantial contents and activities and thus is nothing to them...I personally would not judge whether it's substantial but obviously 2X AP, APEX (many of which are complimentary) and ability to deploy 4 mods makes it an ideal time for agents like OP's team to do something impressive with less man-days needed in the game.
Nice Job! Impressive for sure
Congrats!
I always love the anniversary events for enabling agents to push themselves - whether it's an agent reaching l16 for the first time, or something remarkable like this. Well done!
Great job!
Okay, hold the phone. Every single time there is a thread on here talking about features or other items, you are the very first person to constantly chime in saying that we can't have those features because people aren't paying for Ingress and aren't buying items from the store.
So here we have a dedicated agent who put tons of time and effort into planning this recursion, including using Apex from the store, and what do you do? You immediately take a steaming dump on it by saying it's not a valid record because the agent in question only earned 10M AP in your eyes.
So which is it, bront? Are boosts valid modifiers that we should be using to support Ingress? Or are they cheap hacks that somehow undermine the very real planning, farming, and coordinating that agents on the ground are doing? Because you can't have it both ways.
(And this is to say nothing of the Niantic-issued double AP bonus going on right now on top of that, which you're also dismissing.)
Congrats. This is a new level of mean-spiritedness, even for you.
Congratulations Maniac!!!!!
100% a case of too big an "OGnis". But yeah, totally agree. Guy just likes to play whatever side the OP isn't on.
Good catch.
Easily solved:
Because you can't have it both ways.
You can make 40 million AP. You can plan out how to make 10 million AP.
But you can't claim that someone beat a record because they made 10 million AP compared to people making 40 million AP.
You can't have it both ways.
Either they completely an impressive new category of record, or they didn't compete on the same playing field with people who made 40 million AP straight out.
If you're going to claim you "beat" people who made 40 million AP without any Apex or Double AP, you have to do it with no Apex or Double AP.
You can't have it both ways.
A jet ski is a 'legitimate' means of water travel. You don't see Ian Thorpe on one in the Olympics.
Nor do you see Jeremy Poret diving into the water to swim.
Different conditions = different records.
Alternative examples:
100m vs Marathon
Velodrome vs Tour de France
Le Mans vs Bathurst 1000
And you don't have to be a rude know-it-all and ****-**** all over an achievement someone is proud of because YOU, and only you, don't think it's cool or that you feel doesn't fit inside whatever "rules" system in your head. Like seriously, learn to read a room and just shut up once in awhile, the "facts" don't always matter. I'm getting tired of opening up threads and channels and seeing you trying to force point after point after point at people long after they've grown sick of you. You're not the King of Ingress, you don't work for Niantic, and you certainly don't speak for everyone who plays.
@Maniac15, congrats on your achievement, I think it's really cool.
LOL the double down
@Perringaiden Use that energy to go put some categories and rules on www.speedrun.com or something less nit-picky.
@Maniac15 impressive, congratulations on the well planned & executed run.
Don't mind @Perringaiden it seems he can be a bit of handful at times. Sometimes I think he takes Ingress and the people who play it way to seriously.
I personally am impressed with the team effort. That is a LOT of work required to gather people and game items to crank out 40M AP in such a short time ! Good to hear the 4X AP made the work easier. If the game allows it, I consider it an "official" record. Why work harder when you can work smarter ?
We all know how NIA have handled things in the past. Sometimes really great, sometimes not so much. If they didn't want to you take advantage of the small double AP window and the use of the relatively new Apex item they could have just disabled them during the event.
As it is they announced this years annual event and had to quickly dilute it, due to community pressure. So good on your for doing something noteworthy !
LOL, haters going to hate. The game gave him 40 million AP, not 10. The proof is in the scanner. He's a smart guy & picked the right time to gain AP.
@Maniac15 congrats bro 😀
Frankly speaking I couldn't imagine that there would be foul fault-finders, grouches or killjoys in threads like this but....
Oh dear, following your logic, if not under all same circumstances including weather, temperature, number of team members, phone models, etc...then you would and could only say that previous record was not beaten because of your theory:
Different conditions = different records.
Very funny. How could you ignore those conditions when your eyes' only for APEX and 2X AP?
ALL CONDITIONS MATTER!!! Heh!
Speedrunning games has always escalated with new strats and leveraging new shortcut findings. The dynamic and persistent nature of an AR game is just a new category. There is no timer when you start the game, only when you recurse. There are 2 entire TEAMS of agents to aid a run (required in fact --for the farming), or sabotage it. The real world is a far more evil RNG than any run in any game without the "R" in AR.
These are interesting times.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speedrun#Strategies
Now I'm waiting for the 100% leaderboard.
Just recently, I got to lvl 16 (for the first time) after 5 years of playing casually. What you've done here is quite impressive. Congrats!
Well done!