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Resonators are the central item of Ingress, enabling agents to capture Portals and use them to form Control Fields.

Deploying a Resonator on a Portal captures it, aligns it to a faction, determines its level, affects the amount of Exotic Matter it drops, enables Linking and Fielding, earns Access Points, and causes the agent to receive notifications when the Portal is attacked.

Up to eight Resonators can be deployed on a single Portal. Higher-level Resonators have deployment restrictions that limit how many a single agent can place. Because Links require both Portals to contain eight Resonators, agents must carry a variety of Resonators to create Control Fields.

Resonators are the most common items received from Hacking. Community studies estimate that approximately 1.5 Resonators are received from every item roll.

Deployment and Upgrading

Resonator
Level
Coloration Agent

Limit

XM Provided
to Portal
Recycle
Value
L1 L1 8 1,000 XM 20 XM
L2 L2 4 1,500 XM 40 XM
L3 L3 4 2,000 XM 60 XM
L4 L4 4 2,500 XM 80 XM
L5 L5 2 3,000 XM 100 XM
L6 L6 2 4,000 XM 120 XM
L7 L7 1 5,000 XM 140 XM
L8 L8 1 6,000 XM 160 XM

An agent can deploy a Resonator on a Portal if all of these conditions are met:

  • The agent's level is equal to or greater than the Resonator's level
  • The number of Resonators of its level already deployed on the Portal and owned by the agent is below the agent limit
  • The Portal has an open Resonator slot or the Portal already contains a Resonator of lower level than the new Resonator

Deploying a Resonator places it onto the game map in one of the eight cardinal and ordinal directions. The Resonator will be placed at the same distance from the Portal as the agent deployed it.

Agents can simply tap "Deploy" from the Deploy menu to drop a Resonator as close to himself or herself as possible, or manually select one of the eight slots to deploy into. The northernmost slot is indicated by a red circle.

To upgrade a Resonator, all eight slots must be filled and the target Resonator must be manually selected. The Scanner will attempt to select the next-highest level Resonator from the agent's Inventory, but any Resonator of a higher level than the target can be used to upgrade.

Effect on Portal Level

A Portal's Level is the average level of its Resonators, rounded down. This means that higher-level Portals require the cooperation of multiple agents.

A single agent can build a Level 5 Portal by placing 1 L8, 1 L7, 2 L6, 2 L5, and 2 L4 Resonators. At least two are required to build a L6 portal, three are needed to build a L7 portal, and eight agents are required to construct a L8 portal.

XM and Combat

In the Ingress lore, Resonators contain structured Exotic Matter that power the attached Portal. This XM is depleted by enemy attacks and decays by 15% of the Resonator's capacity every 24 hours.

Attacking a Resonator with an XMP Burster or Ultra Strike reduces the amount of XM it contains. The weapon's base damage, minus Mitigation and range penalties and multiplied by the attack's charge bonus, is subtracted from the affected Resonators. The Portal will occasionally counterattack and drain an amount of XM from the attacker proportional to its Level.

When a Resonator's XM total drops below 20% of its maximum, called the critical level, its Portal can no longer support new Links. If every Resonator on the Portal is critical, all Links attached to the Portal will be broken. When a Resonator's XM is completely depleted, it's destroyed.

Agents can replenish a Resonator's XM by recharging it. This can be performed locally by standing within range of the Portal, or remotely through the corresponding Portal Key Portal Key. Recharging is one-to-one - each XM going into a Resonator must come out of the agent's XM tank.

Every 20 minutes, a Portal emits 20% of its total XM in the 40m radius surrounding it. This loose XM can be picked up by agents of either faction.

A maxed-out L8 portal contains 48,000 XM.

Strategy

The creation of high-level Portals requires multiple agents. Agents must seek out and coordinate with allies nearby, or enemies will destroy low-level Portals before allies can increase their level.

Because the level of a Portal determines the average level of Resonators it will drop, agents must Hack a diverse set of Portals to obtain a variety of differently-leveled Resonators. A popular trick used by agents who enjoy building Fields is to deploy 1 L8, 1 L7, 2 L6, and 1 L5 Resonator on a Portal, then Glyph Hack the new L4 Portal to obtain the L5 and 2 L4 Resonators required to finish it.

This also implies that if an agent is cut off from L8 Portals for a significant length of time, his or her ability to 'bump' Portals to L7 or L8 with a L8 Resonator will be constrained. The savvy Agent carefully considers his or her future access to high-level Portals when determining how he or she will deploy and stockpile L8 Resonators.

Many agents prefer to deploy 1 L8, 1 L7, and 2 L6 on unclaimed Portals. This enables another friendly Agent to add the same configuration and bump it to L6, or simply Glyph Hack it as-is to obtain enough Resonators to complete and Link it.

The 650 AP reward for capturing a Portal is substantial, and agents often deploy a single Resonator on an unclaimed Portal to earn it. If the agent is unsure if the Portal will be upgraded others or used to complete a Field, he or she will intentionally avoid filling the other seven slots to conserve resources. Agents may also do this to obtain the Liberator medal. Alternately, he or she may fill it out with low-level Resonators if he or she believes friendly agents will soon Link to it.

For maximum AP gain or to obtain the Builder medal, two agents can alternate upgrading each other's Resonators. The first agent deploys eight L1's. The second upgrades four of them with L2's. The first upgrades the L2's to L3's. The second agent can now upgrade the remaining L1's to L2's and continues the cycle.

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