I Managed To Reach Level 8 After Recursion Without Selecting A Team

When I reached level 16 after 5.5 years since beginning of my Ingress journey, I recursed right away so I can take some rest from the game. This resting period won't last long. Niantic announced their split as Niantic Spatial and before that, they done Global Wayfarer Challenge. Nothing out of ordinary until this point. What is out of ordinary is OPR Live Badge Reward. Before recursion, I made sure that my inventory is full(2500 items with C.O.R.E.) so I can start strong on recursion. However, OPR Live Badge Reward does contain Kinetic Capsules... And I don't have space for them. So I began to search how I can empty my inventory below the limit without selecting a team. First thing I discovered is we can actually access the inventory from Kinetic Capsule completion notification. That could be my way to do it. However, the game does not let you to burn or drop items because recursion prevents it. That didn't work, but, we can try something else: Key Capsules. We can easily deposit keys on Key Capsules so we can get inventory space back. Luckily, I had space on Key Capsules so I managed to clear my inventory. The plan is set, redeem individual code first, then global rewards one. But, Niantic announced they are going to distribute the codes at the end of April. Uh oh, my C.O.R.E. subscription renews before that. If I cancel it, +500 space will be gone and current item count is way above than 2000. If I didn't cancel it, I will receive C.O.R.E. item package which it can easily obleritate my item limit. Luckily, C.O.R.E. package does require logging in to appear so I can use codes on Intel. Redeeming codes and receiving C.O.R.E. package went smoothly and the operation successful. This is where our story ends.

Or does it?

There should more on this inventory access bug, right? Of course there should. So I kept working on searching some entry points. The first thing I thought is disconnecting the internet after logging in, we can enter the game and load up the inventory. Tested my first entry point and sure enough, I can easily and consistently access my inventory. One issue however, we can't take any actions, we have no internet. The second idea is using a slower connection, like 2G (Yes, 2G is still supported on my country). With 2G, I managed to achieve very good speed of 10KB/s, enough to confuse Scanner. While testing 2G connection, it loaded portals, fields, last actions, inventory, dronenet and even my profile, before the team selection screen appears. We can pretty much access anything.

With that, my goal is set. Reach level 8 without selecting a team. But how can I get 1.2M AP?

My first idea is capture portals to reach level 8 but I need to capture so many portals, with 2G connection. I did capture some portals to redeem Second Sunday medal but couldn't redeem the reward. The team selection screen do override controls of the dispatch screen so I cannot click anything on dispatch screen. We will return this Second Sunday incident. My second idea is gather portal scans to get the AP. However, I hit a major problem quickly. Using that slow connection does not load portal scanning before team selection screen. And even worse, if the team selection screen loaded while you are on the scan, you can't click anything. Without clicking, you can't save a scan too. We need someway find a workaround of it. While I was searching a workaround, a bug that changed the course of the goal happened. While I was waiting 2G to load my scanner, the team selection screen did appeared, BUT, it dissappeared after some couple frames. OH MY GOD I CAN PLAY THE GAME. The first thing I tried is redeeming Second Sunday reward, that didn't work. After that, I scanned some portals and gathered 15 scans before the scanner crashed for some reason. I managed to do the same bug near midnight but could't redeem Second Sunday on that time too. So long my Second Sunday silver medal.

After this bug happened, I start to realize what is causing the team selection screen appear on the screen. When this screen appears, I do hear some sound effects from dispatch menu. Yes, dispatch system does load the team selection screen. But how we can make dispatch screen go to the shadow real- I mean prevent from loading?

Dispatch system also takes some time to load on 2G connection so while testing some workarounds, I managed to do something: The dispatch system errored out. Yes, if the dispatch system fails to load, it throws an error. It goes something like: Failed to initialize the dispatch. There is two buttons too, "Retry" and "Exit". Pressing "Exit" prevents it to load again. Pressing "Retry" will load the team selection screen normally. Since the dispatch system failed to load, it does prevent the team selection screen to appear, right? OH YEAH BABY IT DOES! Discovering doing this bug with internet is switched off didn't take long. After we managed to error the dispatch screen, we simply press "Exit" and leave the dispatch screen, restore the fast internet and we are good to go. We can freely play the game.

In the end, I can wait the dispatch system to fail to load. As long as we didn't click "Retry" button, we can play the game normally. In some cases, the dispatch does load correctly as well without triggering the team selection screen but does not count anything you do (It did on my last push for level 8 but I don't know how it can be done).

By normally playing on 2xAP Tuesdays for 2 weeks with some Apex boosts, I managed to reach level 8, without selecting a team.