INGRESS.BUZZ

Field notes // unofficial

Codex // resonance ranked

The unofficial rules

Written by players, for players. Do not confuse them with the official terms. Numbering shifts as the community votes.

The idea of a numbered, slightly sacred list of field etiquette comes from The Rules kept by Velominati for cycling. We took that format as inspiration and wrote a different set for Ingress. Their rules stay theirs; these were contributed by agents.

Rule #0

Follow The Rules

An agent must follow the rules unless it is inconvenient or they just don't want to.

Rule #1

GPS Spoofing

▲ 310 ▼ 2
GPS spoofing is the most destructive form of cheating in the game. Anyone caught doing this should be reported to Niantic and hopefully be banned from the game.
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Rule #2

That Portal Is Not Yours!

▲ 266 ▼ 10
A portal is never YOUR portal, you may hold it, you may care for it, but it's never yours. Don't get upset when another player wishes to spend time with that portal too.
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Rule #3

This Is Not Pokemon GO

▲ 233 ▼ 13
Any agent who is asked if they are playing Pokemon, should (a) Be ashamed of their poor spycraft at being mistaken for an apokealypse zombie, and (b) Explain that Ingress is the real AR game, Pokemon Go is just the simplified version for children.
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Rule #4

Accounts

▲ 214 ▼ 15
One IGN. One team. One device at a time. It is in the ToS we all agreed to when starting.
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Rule #5

The Tell Tale Guardian

▲ 174 ▼ 7
If you have a guardian portal over 20 days old, you do not speak of said portal or even think about it. You nonchalantly recharge it, paying it not special attention. Doing otherwise is guaranteed to result in losing it.

As a caveat to this, a player should never ask another player about their guardians as it may force them to break this rule.
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Rule #6

Play Socially

▲ 152 ▼ 2
Ingress can be at its best when played socially. You are encouraged to reach out and connect with other agents. However, when planning to meet a stranger for the first time, do so in a safe setting.
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Rule #7

Get Over It

▲ 156 ▼ 12
If you lose your guardian at 89 days GOI! If you lose your guardian at 149 days GOI! Forget to hack for a day GOI! Someone takes down your megafield within 5 minutes of it going up GOI!
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Rule #9

Opposition Team Meet-ups

▲ 149 ▼ 9
If you become aware that agents from the opposing team are having a gathering, do all that you can to crash said event.

If your team is having the gathering, do not begrudge opposing team crashers. It is your own fault for not being stealthy enough.
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Rule #10

Directions

▲ 134 ▼ 2
Portals should always be used when giving directions to other agents, but remember that non-agents will not understand such directions.
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Rule #11

Detours

▲ 130 ▼ 13
A detour is limited to no more than 5 hours! Getting milk can lead to a detour, but you are expected back home within the 5 hour limit. Anything longer than 5 hours is a planned mission. Rule #47 (Missions)
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Rule #12

Out of Area Experiences.

▲ 115 ▼ 3
When travelling or visiting a new area, always introduce yourself in faction COMMS. If you are visiting an area with fewer agents and portals than your usual haunts, it is courteous to share capsules of level 8 gear and to upgrade as many portals as possible. If you are from a remote area, it is courteous to share extra keys of your most remote and hard to access portals.
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Rule #13

One More Portal

▲ 110 ▼ 1
There is always one more portal to destroy, link, field, or capture. You must accept this fact. You can and should spend as much time as possible getting one more portal!
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Rule #15

Farm Location

▲ 105 ▼ 12
Farms are decided not by the proximity to dense portals groups, but by how much food, coffee and alcoholic beverages can be consumed whilst still maintaining range to as many portals as possible.
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Rule #16

Couch And Desk Portals

▲ 86 ▼ 1
If a player from your team has a home or work portal it is your responsibility to detour as often as possible to upgrade this portal, just as it is their responsibility to give you gear as often as you ask for it. If you know of a couch or desk portal used by the opposing team then it's your responsibility to detour and pineapple Rule #33 (The Pineapple/Campfire) the portal before work for work portals or after work for home portals as often as possible.
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Rule #17

The Game Paradox

▲ 84 ▼ 6
The biggest question that plagues the minds of both ADA and Jarvis: after 90 days are you playing the game, or is the game playing you?
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Rule #18

Recruiting Agents

▲ 77 ▼ 0
If you encounter a person who is playing a different augmented reality game, these are likely agents who have yet to discover ingress. It is your responsibility to recruit them to your faction.
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Rule #19

The Key Paradox

▲ 69 ▼ 0
The more import your need of a key, the more unlikely it is that the portal will yield one. Conversely, when you don't need a key and just do a fast drive-by hack, you are guaranteed to acquire a key
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Rule #20

Video Calls In Hangouts

▲ 71 ▼ 7
Any player interrupting a group chat in Hangouts by initiating a video call, either by accident or deliberately will be obliged to buy one round of drinks at the next faction meet.
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Rule #21

Late Night Comms Trolling

▲ 71 ▼ 6
The most suitable time to COMMS troll the opposition is when you're recharging from home, sitting in front of the fire, with a glass of scotch in hand, whilst they are out on a cold and wet night.
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Rule #23

The New Level 1

▲ 79 ▼ 13
Since the introduction of levels 9 - 16, level 8 will forever be known as the New Level 1. When a player achieves the New Level 1, you should congratulate them of achieving the New Level 1 and refer them to the rules.
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Rule #24

Shit Talking In Comms

▲ 70 ▼ 5
A core aspect of ingress is interfaction rivalry, as such friendly banter can be expected in all comms. However, never forget that if you start talking shit, players will reply in the same manner.
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Rule #25

Ingress Is A Verb

▲ 61 ▼ 0
One does not merely walk and play Ingress they Footgress! If you're in a car your Cargressing, If on a plane its Planegress, train is Traingress, bus is Busgress and on a bike is Bikegress.
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Rule #26

Douche Links

▲ 65 ▼ 7
Douche links can be both highly annoying and highly amusing, depending on context. Douche links that just block an area from being properly fielded, but are otherwise uninteresting, can be annoying. Douche links that cut through the heart of area that normally has no hope of working, bringing both teams fields to a standstill, can be amusing.
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Rule #28

Introductions

▲ 54 ▼ 2
New introductions should always be done by holding your devices screen towards the new player you wish to meet. This both establishes that you're playing the same game and it also establishes what team your play for. Then introduce yourself and follow the Rule #36 (Introduce Yourself) procedures.
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Rule #29

Spycraft

▲ 53 ▼ 4
Ingress players should take great care to ensure non players remain unaware that there is a game being played in their vicinity. It should be taken as a matter of great embarrassment if someone asks if you are playing Rule #3 (This Is Not Pokemon GO)
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Rule #30

Harden The F#%k Up

▲ 56 ▼ 6
You're a secret agent, you carry all sorts of special gear to complete your missions faster and better than your opponents. There will be no complaining about blisters, no stopping for snacks, no complaints about the weather.
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Rule #31

Adventures

▲ 51 ▼ 0
A adventure is any ingress activity that exceeds a Detour Rule #11 (Detours) (5 hours) and a Mission Rule #47 (Missions) (12 hours) and typically requires overnight lodgings somewhere. These are often reserved for the hardest and most experienced players, and can often lead to whole states being fielded by a mere handful of players working on an adventure together.
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Rule #32

Stealing Fields

▲ 51 ▼ 2
When Ingressing in close proximity to another agent of the same faction, take care not to throw links that create fields from their work-in-progress. If possible, introduce yourself per Rule #28 (Introductions) and coordinate any further activities.
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Rule #33

The Pineapple/Campfire

▲ 50 ▼ 2
To pineapple a portal, first destroy it, then stand on top of the portal and deploying level 1 resonators on it, before installing 4 useless mods (link amps) then finally it should be flipped to the opposing faction. The term pineapple comes from the look on the scanner from all the yellow resonators and the green crown on top. The term camp fire comes from the look of a blue portal with the resonators appearing as rocks around a campfire and the blue appearing as fire.
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Rule #34

The Crapsule

▲ 51 ▼ 6
To be counted as a crapsule, a capsule must contain a minimum of 5 media and or link amps and no other useful objects. A crapsule needs to be dropped somewhere where a player of the other team is likely to find it.
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Rule #35

Respect your adversary

▲ 45 ▼ 1
Respect your adversary. There is no game without an adversary. Players are human beings and do not necessarily transform into aliens when they join a faction, just occasionally.
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Rule #36

Introduce Yourself

▲ 46 ▼ 6
Always introduce yourself to other players, be it your faction or the opposing faction. Introduce yourself and ask if you may join the group. The silent joiner is viewed as a the scourge of the earth. Conversely, the joiner who can't stop talking should be dropped from the group at first opportunity!
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Rule #39

Power Levelling

▲ 37 ▼ 1
Power Levelling a new player is only really accomplished by getting them to The New Level 1 Rule #23 (The New Level 1) as soon as possible. 200K AP is a good start, 400K AP is impressive, but 1.2M AP in a day is what real Power Levelling is about!
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Rule #42

Accidental Fields

▲ 41 ▼ 11
If you create a field by accident when throwing a link, you must immediately say BINGO (or the local equivalent) in all COMMS. If a player asks why, you should simply refer them to the rules.
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Rule #43

Street Battle

▲ 34 ▼ 0
If you happen to come across a player of the opposite faction and you are defending your portal or attacking theirs, at least look up from your phone one second to wave at them. This can be done in a very sarcastic way, if you are winning the battle, or in a very convincing way, to show that you won't leave this portal any time soon. In the end, the one that has to leave because they are out of weapons or have to go will always lose.
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Rule #44

The First Rule of Farming

▲ 47 ▼ 15
If a portal has four very rare hacking mods (heat sinks and/or multi hacks), it is most likely a portal for collecting gear from. It will usually NOT be for anchoring large fields. As such please carefully consider if you really need to destroy it. Flipping the portal with a virus might well be a better option.
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Rule #46

Fielding Plan

▲ 32 ▼ 0
If you first fully deploy an area without linking, somebody will always douche link, and ruin your fielding plan.
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Rule #47

Missions

▲ 32 ▼ 3
Missions are not badges in the game, they are any continuous ingressing exceeding 5 hours. These are a Mission, to single handedly field the town, to wipe the other team from a suburb, these are missions! Note: Missions are limited to no more then 12 hours, for anything exceeding 12 hours please see Rule #31 (Adventures)
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Rule #48

The Second Rule Of Farming

▲ 38 ▼ 8
You do not put Shields, Link Amps, Force Amps, or Turrets on a farming portal. Conversely, if your group of portals contains any of those mods it is not a farm.
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Rule #52

The Ingress Backstory

▲ 48 ▼ 22
No one knows the purpose of the Ingress backstory. Any agent over level 8 who caught watching media or reading the backstory should be reminded that this is a game of Green vs Blue.
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Rule #55

The Use Of iPhones

▲ 60 ▼ 37
Any user discovered to be playing on an iPhone, needs to immediately say it is a work supplied phone and they would prefer to use Android.
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Rule #57

Remote Town

▲ 43 ▼ 19
If you are visiting a remote town that seems to have only one or two active players, and you stumble across a level 7 or 8 portal, it's really, really rude to kill that portal. City players have no idea how hard it is to make a level 7 portal in a town with a very limited number of agents. Use a virus. It's what they're for.
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Rule #58

Guardianship Etiquette

▲ 23 ▼ 1
If an agent comes across a portal belonging to their own faction during a fielding OP where by that portals links are blocking the OP, it is proper etiquette to faction COMM the current owner for permission to flip. Offering an upgraded rebuild is a sign of good faith. Given the time constrained nature of a large fielding OP if this correspondence happens during travel the portal owner has only 10 minutes to comply before waiving complaints that it was his or her guardian. Conversely if the guardian portal happens to be inside a well maintained farm and correspondence was made with the recharging team then all rights to complaint from the portal owner are waived as per Rule #5 (The Tell Tale Guardian) .
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Rule #59

Play Fair

▲ 25 ▼ 3
As mentioned in the TOS: Do not extract, scrape, or index the Services or Content (including information about users or game play). You wouldn't use a chess computer to help you when playing a tournament? So refrain from using any tools that record player actions in ingress.
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Rule #60

The Joke Humor Field

▲ 21 ▼ 1
If an agent knows of an area that houses a majority of opposition agents, and there is no need to clear blocking links, it is the agents responsibility to throw a joke/humor field over them for amusement purposes. One should watch the opposing side scramble to drop the aforementioned field. The more opposition agents under the field, the better the joke. The more difficult it is for the opposition to drop the field, the better the humor.
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Rule #61

Death To The Spammers

▲ 23 ▼ 0
When a new player opens comms and all they see is spammers trying to sell high level gear is is bound to taint their experience of the game. It also gives that impression that cheating is a normal part of the game.
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Rule #62

BAFs

▲ 23 ▼ 1
A BAF is a Big Ass Field. To be considered a BAF it needs to cover at least a medium sized City.
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Rule #64

Sportsmanship

▲ 22 ▼ 0
Consider yourself a team with your fellow agents. Be a sporting. Work together and coordinate. Do so, in order to face the other team as a whole, and not "this particular agent" from the others side.
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Rule #65

Megafields

▲ 22 ▼ 0
A megafield is a really large field that is usually larger than a Rule #62 (BAFs) . They should be visible on Ingress Intel when fully zoomed out. It is considered most impressive if the links are shown as curves.
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Rule #67

Always Use Abbreviations

▲ 19 ▼ 1
Agents are too lazy to use full names when referring to items within the game and are encouraged to shorten terms as much as possible to confuse/inform other agents of terms. Examples include: Lubes = Lawson Cubes Pubes = Power Cubes
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Rule #69

Attribution Of Blame

▲ 36 ▼ 21
If something goes wrong, it is by definition always Alan's fault. It is the responsibility of all players to remind Alan of this. If you do not know Alan, you should blame Musto.
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Rule #71

Mine!

▲ 16 ▼ 1
If you and another agent are rushing to a portal to capture it, it is the duty of the agent who captures it to say: 'mine'.
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Rule #73

Glyph Codes

▲ 13 ▼ 0
Too hard to remember all the glyph codes?, just simplify and use your mother tongue language to remember it. Especially if English is not your first language, and you can't find option of your language in the game.
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Rule #75

Take the heat

▲ 13 ▼ 0
If you can't take the heat in Comm from time to time, don't make yourself a name amongst the opposite team by making it a habit taking down level 8 portals, sofa portals, farms or big fields.
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Rule #77

Silence Is Golden

▲ 10 ▼ 0
If the other faction is Trolling a fellow team-member and your fellow team-member is not responding, do not come to their defense. A valid response to Trolls is to ignore the Trolls. By responding to the Trolls, you weaken your teammate's silence.
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Rule #78

The other team has a better idea where your guardian is

▲ 9 ▼ 0
Rule #58 (Guardianship Etiquette) So you open your scanner and you notice your guardian stats are going up. You have no idea which portal is doing it, you might not even have a key. Sometime later someone on the other team contacts you on comms after tickling your guardian with a l1 burster. Hes trying to make you sweat. You respond with "THATS my guardian portal! Thanks!". You meet several members of the opposition, all who have claimed to have hunted your guardian, none of which you knew existed.
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Rule #79

Expect the worst

▲ 5 ▼ 0
When you see an enemy player who is also notorious for taking down portals in comm, get in a fighting stance and brace yourself. If they don't introduce themselves, expect them to drop you right there and take your portal. Rule #28 (Introductions)
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Rule #81

The other team always cheats

▲ 7 ▼ 10
Remember, everyone on your side is a saintly vision of purity. Anyone in the other team who captures any portal or has thrown any link has done so by cheating. When in a group you are obliged to moan as loudly as possible about how all the members of the other team are so dastardly and underhanded.
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