It took 1 year and 28 days for me to hit Level 12 in Ingress. May 15th I hit L11. 107 days later I hit L12.

There are 16 levels in ingress. Level 8 is where you are finally able to play with the most powerful items. All levels above just let you hold more XM (energy), and increases the distance you can recharge a portal from. 16,000 XM capacity and 3,000 kilometers recharge range. Mostly, each level above 8 is just bragging rights though. It takes a lot of work to move up levels.

I read that 80% of folks who actively play are stuck at L11. The hurdle to 12 is tall.

Stats that matter:

* Walked 795 kilometers (493 miles) playing with the app open. Nobody really knows how this is actually calculated, some biking might fall under the count, but not driving. The game knows your speed and will lock if driving above 35 MPH as well
* placed 21K resonators (flags) and have destroyed 20K of them
* Linked 4.1K portals creating 2K three point fields
* Captured and destroyed 3K portals respectively
* visited 911 portals and 552 of them have been unique

Below are some screen shots of the achievements over the past couple days that all seemed to happen at once after 13 months of playing. The past two plus weeks I have been pushing really hard to get to this point. Many late nights in the Haymarket walking and playing to grind away at goals. I know it seems like just a game, but it has made my life fun. I have met so many great friends and folks through the adventure. The people who play are unique and so diverse. It is a team game and our local faction is very active in chats and we do awesome missions together. Alone I can only build a L5 portal. It takes 8 players to make a L8 portal.

This past Saturday I had made some decent fields and two players from the other team tore them down and then rebuilt the fields. The anchors are in my hood so I rolled out to tear theirs down and they pulled up next to me when I was attacking. We hung out and chatted for a good 20 minutes. I told them of my plan to go get my Translator badge in the haymarket and once I hit it I got congratulations from the opposing team over COMMS. That is pretty darn cool.

Saturday night I hit the Haymarket for the second late night in a row to glyph hack portals to get my translator medal. Glyph hacking is a mini game that has you trace shapes on the screen and it earns you bonus gear and glyph points. Depending on the level of the portal you earn 1-15 points per fully successful glyph hack. It is not easy and takes a lot of extra time. I hit 2,000 in mostly 4 & 8 point glyph hacks.

Having earned 5 of the 6 gold medals I went to bed knowing I could possibly get a gold the next day earning level 12.

Sunday morning I did my chores and planned some large fields. I wrote out my steps and headed out. Destroy Sawyer Snell, the baseball field at south 14th YMCA, Place anchor at the Silver spoke, New hope church, SW fire department, kill Pete at Lee’s chicken, the fire station on south Coddington, run to the Showmaker’s truck on west O to link it all up. Over 16K MU total.

I get home and collect data and screen shots. Chatting with the local community I get urged to head down to Sheldon Art Gallery to get the last few fields I need with the help of a good team friend, Jorm94. That is where I hit L12 by getting the gold mind control medal.

Monday night I headed out at 10:30 to get that 180th day of straight hacking medal. That is a half a year of being worried if I have hacked within the last 24 hours. So I made sure to hack every morning and night. No time to rest though. The top medal is onyx and it takes 360 days of hacking every 24 hours. The clock resets every time you hack, but it still counts days.

And finally…. I have been the leader cross faction wide across the entire cell for the last 3 days. That only counts mind units captured over all. They do not have to make it through the checkpoints that determine cell score. I am also #1 in the cell for counted mind units within my resistance faction.

Phew…. Oh yeah. Theresa played just enough to hit level 2 over the weekend. She really does not play, but she was along for some of my adventures this weekend and played a bit. She knows everything about the game and has no desire to play it at all.

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