Slice of Chaotic Life

Normally there are Agents of both the Enlightenment and the Resistance in a city, so they will take turns trying to tear down each other’s resonators and put their own in place. You get AP – action points – for placing resonators, and a bit fewer for removing the competitor’s resonators. You get a bonus for completing a portal by placing the 8th resonator on it.

Since I live and work where there are rarely any Resistance agents, a more experienced Agent recommended that I let one of the resonators decays and then when it is gone, replace it. That way I get the resonator AP and the bonus for completing a portal. I tried this now in Mandal, and it works as advertised. The downside of this is that your portal becomes weaker to opponent attack, but this has so far not been a problem in Mandal. Kristiansand has had some visits from the Resistance, though. One of the Enlightenment agents recommended I decay 1 resonator on each of the portals here that have none of my equipment, so I can put a resonator of my own on them. The purpose of this is to get direct alarm in case of an attack, rather than the portal owner having to message me, which could waste precious seconds for us both.

One thing I discovered by the almost-cheating was that it was possible to recharge one resonator at a time (out of eight). I now recharge each resonator individually even if I recharge them all, except with remote charging where this option is not available. The downside is that it takes more XM to recharge individually, even if you recharge the same amount. The upside is that you get 10 AP for a recharge, whether it is of 1 resonator or 8. (It takes more recharges to fill up an entire portal, but not as many as when recharging individually. Perhaps half as many.) Anyway, I do this, but it is only 10 AP. Just hacking an opponent portal, without destroying anything, gives 100 AP for each time, ten times as much. So it is a very slow way to progress. Although if you let one resonator decay each day, and complete the portal again each day, you can get a more decent amount: 125 for placing a resonator, and 250 for completing the portal, 375 in total.