Recursion is Ingress’s prestige mechanic. On an agent’s first trip to level 16, they must unlock badges and earn AP (action points / access points / agent points). After recursing to level 1, an agent retains their badges and only needs to re-earn enough AP to progress back through the levels to level 16. This post-recursion return to level 16 typically takes a few months to a year, but it can be done in a day.
The AP requirement to reach level 16 is 40 million. https://ingress.fandom.com/wiki/Access_Level
Making fields is the quickest way to gain AP
https://ingress.fandom.com/wiki/Access_Points
In the early days of Ingress, before you could throw links under fields, the best way to get a lot of fields quickly was to get a row of portals and an anchor and throw the fields largest first. The first link you threw was to the anchor, no fields created with that link. The second link created one field and all subsequent links created two fields. Even with linking under fields, this is likely the most fields you can get without multiple agents (and without having to travel to the anchor and the first of 25 spine portals before throwing the other 24 links).
| SBUL | Agents | Links | Fields | ||
| 0 | 1 | 8 | 13 | ||
| 1 | 1 | 16 | 29 | ||
| 2 | 1 | 24 | 45 | ||
| 3 | 2 | 32 | 61 | ||
| 4 | 2 | 40 | 77 |
I wasn’t able to find 23 portals in a row with a 24th for an anchor without covering a giant area, so for a while I didn’t use SoftBank Ultra Links and just threw 13 fields at a time, virused that portal and moved on to the next portal. Pretty slow way to gain AP. For a while, I did a variation with 3 8-portal fields and two SoftBanks. That was a little faster but since I had 3 different anchors, I was getting 39 fields instead of the 45 I’d get with one big field. And it took up enough real estate that agents from the other team came to break up the party within an hour or so.
By throwing from the inside, the same amount of AP can be obtained as a giant 24 portal field (one anchor, 23 portal spine) in a much smaller space. Here’s what it looks like in theory:
From the center of the field (big circle in the middle), you link to A, B and C in any order. The first link won’t create any fields. The second link creates one field. The third link creates two fields. After links have thrown to the outer ABC layer, links are thrown to DEF in any order. Each of these links creates 2 fields by splitting the AB triangle, the BC triangle and the AC triangle. After those links are thrown, throw links to GHIJKL in any order. Each of those creates two fields by splitting the triangles created in the previous step. Finally, throw all the remaining links in any order to split all of the triangles created in the previous step.
The first link is 0 fields, the second link is 1 field and all remaining links (as long as they’re done outside in) create 2 fields. 45 fields from 24 links in a much more compact space (more compact than 23 in a row plus an anchor they all link to).
Agent Chestnut made this cool animation of the linking order.
In reality, it’s a little less pretty. I found an area with enough portals, but there’s higher portal density on one end than the other. So instead of 4 tiers (ABC, DEF, G to L, M to X), there are 5 tiers on one side and 3 tiers on the other.
Using Very Rare Battle Beacons and viruses to throw the field as many times as possible, how much time and how much gear is required to get 40 million AP?
Here’s the breakdown on the AP for using a battle beacon to throw the field 5 times.
| Deploy resonators | 125 x 40 | 5000 |
| Capture portal | 675 x 5 | 3375 |
| Deploy final resonator | 250 x 5 | 1250 |
| Apply mod | 125 x 10 | 1250 |
| Destroy mod | 80 x 10 | 800 |
| Links | 313 x 24 x 5 | 37560 |
| Fields | 1250 x 45 x 5 | 281250 |
| Destroy resonators | 75 x 40 | 3000 |
| Deploy beacon | 500 | |
| Use Apex | 1000 / 2 | 500 |
| TOTAL | 334,485 |
Well, really, since we’re claiming the “Use Apex” bonus, it would be twice that, 668,970.
So 60 battle beacons are be required, 15 hours, to get to 40 million. It can be done in a very long day. But if done on the Ingress First Saturday with double AP, it can be done with 30 battle beacons in 7.5 hours. 7.5 hours of continuous battle beacon, no time to farm keys or resonators.
Gear required in advance
- 30 battle beacons
- 15 APEX
- 300 SBUL
- 1200 level 1 resonators
- 3600 keys (150 of each)
Another requirement is to not run out of portals to throw from. After the battle beacon expires, there’s a victory emblem and faction beacon displayed over the portal for 4 hours. During that time, a battle beacon cannot be deployed.
So during the 12 hours of double AP on a First Saturday (11.5 hours to be done by 7:30 to start the 4 hour recursion timer and recurse again before midnight), each portal can be used twice. So 15 portals are required with a clear line of sight to the 24 portals.
Fortunately, my field has 20 portals to throw from.
Even more AP?
Since a link can only create two fields, the absolute maximum number of fields from 24 links isn’t 45. It’s 48. Consider if we added two more portals to the field, a couple more inner tier-5 portals. Then each time we threw the field, we would start by throwing in from A and B (or any two of the outer portals) and then go to the center to throw out 24, creating 48 fields from the center for 49 altogether. The issue is that each round of the battle beacon is only 3 minutes, so I’d need two helpers willing to stand around for 8 hours to do it this way. There’s no way I could travel out to two of the outer portals and get back in to the center and throw 24 links within 3 minutes.
A couple frienemy agents did a doodle in my play box that suggests another alternative.
By making the outer tier a circle instead of a triangle, the field is A LOT smaller. That wouldn’t get you 45 fields in 24 throws from the inside, but MAYBE you could run or bike to the outside and throw enough links in to get back in time to throw 24 links out within 3 minutes. I still doubt that it’s doable with just one agent linking.
3 times in one day?
Niantic announced that Apex will produce 8x AP between 8 am and 8 pm on January 3rd. This makes it possible to recurse 3 times that day. (Though I hit some snags and only got 2.)
| 6 – 8 am | Prepare the outer field and recurse |
| 8:00 – 11:45 | 15 battle beacons |
| 11:45 – 3:45 | Recursion timer then recurse |
| 3:45 – 7:30 | 15 battle beacons |
| 7:30 – 11:30 | Recursion timer then recurse |
Field Planning
The field planning was done on the stock intel web page (without the IITC plug in). The intel web page allows sharing links but errors out with the number of links needed to describe the outer fields, so I sent myself an email with the details:
1st link, 0 fields
2nd link, 1 field
3rd-24 link, 2 fields
so… 24 links and 45 fieldsCenter
0. Lawn Art https://intel.ingress.com/intel?ll=33.733764,-118.000792&z=18&pll=33.733435,-118.0030843 links in first tier
1. Pacific Plaza Fountain https://intel.ingress.com/intel?ll=33.733724,-118.000328&z=16&pll=33.734538,-117.994533
2. GTG Burger Mural https://intel.ingress.com/intel?ll=33.733724,-118.000328&z=16&pll=33.729461,-118.006262
3. Hermosa Vista Playground https://intel.ingress.com/intel?ll=33.733724,-118.000328&z=16&pll=33.738574,-118.0073516 links total, tier 2
4. (1,2) In Memory OFC Kathy S Johnson https://intel.ingress.com/intel?ll=33.731831,-118.000921&z=17&pll=33.731561,-118.002622
5. (2,3) Gwc Math and Science building https://intel.ingress.com/intel?ll=33.731428,-118.004525&z=17&pll=33.732606,-118.005308
6. (1,3) Vans Curbside and Mural https://intel.ingress.com/intel?ll=33.735765,-118.001041&z=17&pll=33.735364,-117.9986511 links total, tier 3
South
7. (2,4) Frank and Gertrude Doyle School of Nursing https://intel.ingress.com/intel?ll=33.730868,-118.003917&z=17&pll=33.731484,-118.004265
8. (1,4) Old World Globe https://intel.ingress.com/intel?ll=33.734023,-117.996097&z=21&pll=33.734046,-117.995993
North
9. (1,6) Old World Village Fountain Couple https://intel.ingress.com/intel?ll=33.735028,-117.996875&z=21&pll=33.73505,-117.997255
10. (3,6) Baseball Player Statue https://intel.ingress.com/intel?ll=33.736956,-118.001452&z=17&pll=33.73619,-118.003875
West
11. (3,5) GWC: Marilyn Dorfman Bench https://intel.ingress.com/intel?ll=33.734264,-118.006458&z=17&pll=33.733875,-118.00538419 links total, tier 4
South
12. (4,7) CJTC Honor Wall https://intel.ingress.com/intel?ll=33.732,-118.004915&z=18&pll=33.731747,-118.003459
13. (4,8) Goldenwest College Mason Stone https://intel.ingress.com/intel?ll=33.732473,-118.002559&z=20&pll=33.732196,-118.002626West
14. (5,11) GWC Library https://intel.ingress.com/intel?ll=33.733295,-118.004443&z=19&pll=33.733075,-118.005232
15. (3,11) The Green House https://intel.ingress.com/intel?ll=33.73404,-118.004202&z=19&pll=33.73423,-118.005283North
16. (1,9) Mural “Der Bucherwurm” https://intel.ingress.com/intel?ll=33.734853,-117.996657&z=21&pll=33.734919,-117.996722
17. (6,9) Berlin Man https://intel.ingress.com/intel?ll=33.735092,-117.998022&z=20&pll=33.73511,-117.997558
18. (6,10) Glenn Parker Mural https://intel.ingress.com/intel?ll=33.734555,-118.001208&z=18&pll=33.73513,-118.003068
19. (3,10) GWC: Fred Hoover Field https://intel.ingress.com/intel?ll=33.736366,-118.003965&z=18&pll=33.736114,-118.00469224 links total, tier 5
South
20. (7,12) Madeline and Barry Cohen https://intel.ingress.com/intel?ll=33.732286,-118.001264&z=18&pll=33.731968,-118.003665
21. (4,12) Alumni Pillar of Acheivement https://intel.ingress.com/intel?ll=33.732464,-118.001189&z=18&pll=33.732117,-118.003089
22. (8,13) Kathleen M Yoakum Memorial https://intel.ingress.com/intel?ll=33.733011,-118.001306&z=19&pll=33.732625,-118.001543North
23. (1,16) Welcome to Old World Village https://intel.ingress.com/intel?ll=33.734417,-117.996333&z=19&pll=33.734682,-117.995895
24. (9,16) Angel Mural https://intel.ingress.com/intel?ll=33.734823,-117.997339&z=19&pll=33.734861,-117.997432
Whenever I had to build or rebuild the outer fields, I used this as a guide. What portals does this link to? What portals link to it?
The first time I attempted to throw the field, I was switching back and forth between the Ingress app and my email app to figure out which links to throw next. That was slow and cumbersome, so I wrote out a cheat sheet on the back of an envelope:
Pacific Plaza Fountain
GTG Burger Mural
Hermosa Vista Playground
In memory of OFC Kathy Johnson
GWC Math and Science Building
Vans Curbside and Mural
Frank and Gertrude Doyle School of Nursing
DORFMAN (full caps and with a different ink color because I missed this one the first time)
Old World Globe
Old World Village Fountain Couple
Baseball Player Statue
CJTC Honor Wall
Goldenwest College Mason Stone
GWC Library
The Green House
Mural ‘Der Bucherwurm’
Berlin Man
Glen Parker Pillar
GWC Fred Hoover Field
Madeline & Barry Cohen
Alumni Pillar of Achievement
Kathleen M Youkum
Welcome to Old World Village
Angel Mural
At first I threw these in the order listed, but I soon realized that order within a tier doesn’t matter. With enough practice it became muscle memory: scroll to the end and throw to Pacific Plaza Fountain. Scroll back to get Hermosa Vista and GTG. Vans will be nearby. Then either “in memory of math and science” or “math and science in memory of Marilyn Dorfman” depending on the portal being thrown from. (The order of the portals is sorted by distance from the source portal, not by distance from where you’re standing. So even if you don’t move and throw from one portal then another, the order might change.) Link to Dorfman, Baseball and Frank then scroll all the way to the end and link to globe. After globe, it’s always fountain couple then bookworm. After that. scroll back to the beginning throwing in batches to all the portals that aren’t one of the last 5. Finally, link to that last tier.
After I stopped confusing Frank with Fred and Alumni Pillar with Honor Wall, it was super fast to throw all the links so instead of scrambling to get it done in 3 minutes, I was waiting for 3 minutes – managing inventory, recharging portals.
Before I’d even considered recursing twice in a day, I had become very proficient at throwing these fields.
Inventory Management
I’m in the “backpack accounts are cheating” camp so I kept all the keys and resonators for the op in capsules on the ground. The first thing I did was an experiment to see how long items on the ground last. I dropped a level 1 burster on the ground and it lasted a day so I figured that the current time limit is 24 hours.
On my birthday, December 23rd, 11 days before the op, I lost 500 resos and 1200 keys. I had picked up and dropped all the capsules at around 6 pm and they were gone at 9 am. Either I was wrong about 24 hours (probably) or someone scooped them up (maybe). I was just dropping them at home, next to two major roads and a dozen portals, so I switched to touching them within 12 hours and keeping them someplace with no nearby portals (a 10 minute drive from home, so an hour a day driving back and forth to keep them alive).
I discovered that capsules can lose their names while on the ground. This was a bigger problem than keeping keys separate from resos because of the way I stored the keys. Rather than put 4 of each key in each capsule and having 4 extras, I put 25 of each key in 6 capsules. My key lockers held the first 25 of each and the capsules were named “25-50”, “50-75”, “75-100”, “100-125” and “125-150.” This meant that on the day of the op, I could grab a pile of capsules and have enough keys for 5 battle beacons.
My secret stash spot a couple km from the nearest portal. Resos in the top left pile. KCaps are ready because they’re full of level 1 resos (shadow inventory!)
It rained all week. Monday through Thursday, I farmed 25 keys from each portal.
Op Sec
As mentioned above a couple of agents started using the area to make “AP wheels.” I had the choice of blowing their stuff up a couple times a day and hoping that they’d give up on the area eventually or letting them in on the plan. I chose the latter. I shared an early version of this page with them and asked them if they’d let me do it. They agreed to a short term truce. I left their AP wheels alone leading up to the op and they gave me the 8x AP day.
Another agent, the one responsible for the green background in most of my scanner screenshots, changed his fielding in the weeks leading up to the op so that he was taking out the east anchor and linking through. So I also reached out to him and he also agreed to let me have the field for one day. He also told a couple of other agents likely to interfere about the plan.
The Big Day
The morning of the big day went well. I made a couple mistakes and had to use one more battle beacon than planned to get to 16, but it was done at 11:37, only 7 minutes behind schedule. I took a 4 hour lunch break at the IFS meetup in San Juan Capistrano and returned to a speed locked scanner. While I was trying to top off the 24 portals, I saw that some of them were missing resonators. At 3:15 and agent had attacked some of the portals on the east side of the field. So I drove there and my scanner was no longer speed locked, so I made the repairs and returned to the center to start the first battle beacon of the afternoon. A few portals in, I was at level 11, another agent popped resonators off the east side of the field. At that point, I determined there wasn’t enough time to repair and return and still get to level 16 before 8:00, so I called it.
Ruh Roh!
Solo Op?
In a sense it was a solo op in that I was the only one farming keys, muling gear, throwing links, planning. But I absolutely could not have done it by myself. In addition to the enlightened agents who agreed to a truce so I could throw the fields, agents from both factions provided me with SBUL and empty capsules – gear that would have taken me years to collect on my own.
Thanks for gear and/or not blowing up the field and/or not throwing blocking links goes out to: gkhiker, JeanZillo, ScoutZillo, indyjones2010, slar, Dozer187, StarlessKnight, targotrigaranus, Chestnut, ErrorGirl, pneumbreon (home delivery of SBUL!), and certainly other agents I’m forgetting about who gifted soft banks at Thirsty Third Saturday meetups.
Thanks for providing as many soft banks as everyone else combined to MariusLestat.
And for getting me to stop using old school virus only AP engines and start using battle beacons AND to throw from the inside, a special thanks to SpineyNorman. His two tier ring field led me to contemplate, “what if the outside were a triangle?” He also gets the blame for suggesting I try to do it twice in one day and attend IFS in the middle. My initial reaction to the 8x AP announcement was “cool, I’ll only need half the keys.” 🤣
Updates
A couple days later I realized I’d done some bad battlefield math and could actually have recursed three times that day if I’d kept going. I was sure I was behind schedule in the first half because of mistakes:
- At one point I was low on XM and a junk mod went down instead of a soft bank
- The link carousel jumped a couple times and I linked to a different portal than I was intending to
- A couple times I encountered a portal that should have been linked in a previous tier and was somehow missed
So I was convinced I was behind schedule and my brain compensated by making me believe I had to recurse by 3:30 to hit 16 by 7:45 (rather than recurse by 3:45 to hit 16 by 7:30). So when the east end of the field was attacked again, I really did have enough time to go fix it and keep going.
The reason I could make mistakes and still be ahead of schedule was because the schedule assumed that I was starting a battle beacon every 15 minutes. But there’s no flip at the end of the last measurement, so I was virusing the field at the start of the last measurement and moving to the next portal. This gave me an extra three minutes of leeway per battle beacon that I wasn’t accounting for.
No idea if they used a similar wacky field, but an agent did recurse three times that day.
Gordon Ludlow . com 