What moment do you think you really starting playing Ingress? (Raccoon stories welcome!)

MXXWMXXW ✭✭✭

So when do you think Ingress stopped being a thing you had on your phone and you started to dive right into the portally world?

Was it a mission you just had to complete? An op that had you driving across the city at 3 AM? The time you went out to get just one portal and didn't get home for 18 hours? Keeping sojourner through terrible weather? Jumping into a car with strangers? Key transfers in an airport? An anomaly?

For me, it was definitely the raccoon poop.

Scrubbing raccoon poop out of my kayaks will always count as the first time I really started playing Ingress. For the years since I moved back to the West Coast, I meant to get out kayaking but found it much too easy to put off and put off until our resident raccoons had decided that the kayaks would make an excellent bathroom. 

I’d installed the game 5 months earlier, but had pretty much contained my play to the neighbourhood. However, the perma-BAF cholong our city with two untouchable anchors had finally motivated me to kayak the hour and half out to the third anchor. 

I have Ingress to thank for many, many other adventures, but, paddling in the December sunshine in a freshly cleaned kayak will always be a highlight.

Comments

  • Simple story really, but when I transitioned from playing this strange game on my commute to specifically going out and meeting people like @Sonechxeon to help me level up and then help to keep an area permently green for a couple years.

  • I would say the day they added Portal Submissions to IOS for the first time.

    My first smartphone was a gift in early 2014, and Ingress was one of the first apps I downloaded. When they added portal submissions to IOS (either late 2014 or early 2015, can't remember) it felt like the "exploration" factor was finally a reality.

    I almost quit when portal subs went on hiatus, but had too many friends in the community by then. Now I'm glad I stuck with it.

  • My first IFS was an eye opener.

  • The moment I realised the violence in the boarding house I lived in could result in several stab wounds was when I realised Ingress has a lot to give to not just myself, but others.

  • BarthaxBarthax ✭✭✭

    I accidentally got Platinum Guardian on my second-ever capped portal (very few players around me). I thought, "that's easy", I'll just repeat the same... Not having any real concept of the game (still after 90+ days) I didn't find a portal I could retain for sometime afterwards by which point I'd attained L8. Some weirdo (b4gm4n) kept messaging me in the game asking "are you in HO" - ****?! Long story short, didn't find out about badge requirements until L8 & didn't find a community in the game until half way to L9. However, by that point I was already walking 7km each day around L5 portals trying to gather enough Cubes to sustain 200+ portals in an attempt to get Black Guardian. :P

  • KorzhakKorzhak ✭✭✭✭✭

    Something, something, Cyril Sneer...

    When I found myself at a lighthouse in the middle of nowhere, at 3am in pouring rain, on a comm channel I didn't fully understand (mostly German/French), to build up a portal to allow a team to field over Belgium.

    And I didn't even get a layer out of it!

  • BarthaxBarthax ✭✭✭

    I accidentally got Platinum Guardian on my second-ever capped portal (very few players around me). I thought, "that's easy", I'll just repeat the same... Not having any real concept of the game (still after 90+ days) I didn't find a portal I could retain for sometime afterwards by which point I'd attained L8. Long story short, didn't find out about badge requirements until L8 & didn't realise there was a community in the game until half way to L9 (some weirdo, now good friend, kept messaging me in the game asking "are you in HO" - ****?!). However, by that point I was already walking 7km each day around 20 L5 portals to get enough Cubes to sustain the 200+ portals to get the Black Guardian.

  • naruh0d0naruh0d0 ✭✭✭

    My first XMA, that was a shonin series. Kind of mind-blowing.

  • PhaseolusVPhaseolusV ✭✭
    edited June 2019

    For me, probably February or maybe early March, 2017. I was a fairly new agent, I hadn't been invited to the best chats, yet. But a few weeks before I went to a dinner-and-learn event to learn about global shards.

    So one evening around bedtime I'm shuffling through my keys recharging a few, and... HOLY &#&$&# there's a shard at the Milwaukee lighthouse out in Lake Michigan!!!

    Looking at the intel map I see there's a battle going on a couple miles from home. Hell with bedtime, I'll just show up and do things. Turns out our battle was across the street from the local FBI office, and it further turns out they don't have a sense of humor about a dozen strange cars showing up at almost midnight and just sitting there... So we ignored the instructions from the dozen law enforcement cars to go home and we took the battle down the road a few blocks.

    I had a horde of ultrastrikes so I sat directly on the Bert's Beastie portal and plinked AXA shields off while my teammates blew up the ENL's resos. I was out of all the communication loops so I continued until my teammates started driving away.

    I think that's when I really felt like part of the team. The next day they invited me into a few more networks and I've been here ever since.

    Post edited by PhaseolusV on
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