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XM (eXotic Matter) can be found everywhere in the Ingress game. Once this XM is captured/eaten by a player, how much time will it take to regenerate and can be captured by the same player (or another player) ?

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2 Answers

up vote 8 down vote accepted

There are 2 types of XM found:

  1. Portal XM - XM thrown out of portals
  2. Human XM - XM thrown out of humans.*

Now my observations on XM generation, no hard info sources:

  • portal XM is generated pretty fast, after I cleared the portal of XM, it has new XM in about 10-15 minutes
  • XM is being constantly produced by portals and humans*
  • XM is being accumulated and after certain level no more XM is produced
  • XM regenerates the best when no player is around (it's almost like "watched pot never boils")
  • I believe several times XM was generated near the portal and consumed by me directly
  • I believe XM is user independent and can/will be consumed by any player, probably on first in first gets basis

* Conspiracy theory: I noticed that Human XM is being almost randomly distributed over the map, but when you compare it with human traffic in the same area it almost perfectly simulates it. It is not clear to me where the niantic lab takes this info, maybe they get some info from other google services, like mobile maps, gmail etc and place XM there where the most people go.

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Not clear what would happens if two players will turn on ingress in the middle of XM field simultaneously. Which one will get XM, is it location proximity based? – BanditoBunny Dec 10 '12 at 12:24
2  
If your theory on human xm is close to right, I'd expect it just comes from traffic congestion information you already see in google maps. I noticed it generates less before 6am, but more around rush hours, and always along roads, never in the middle of parks that are actually heavily foot-trafficked. – dlamblin Dec 11 '12 at 4:35
That is true. I take a lot of public transport in the city and they also know how busy subway stations are. – BanditoBunny Dec 11 '12 at 9:33
Is it just me, or do cellular provider stores (Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, etc) also generate a lot of human XM? – rwyland Jan 7 at 6:28
This observation confirms the conspiracy theory :-) – BanditoBunny Jan 7 at 11:25
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up vote 3 down vote

In addition to the above; just tested yesterday: If two players simultaneously gather the same XM (i.e. gathered before the cache updates), they both get it. So it helps to go around in groups!

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How big is the window of opportunity? – kotekzot Jan 31 at 1:49
We have noticed that too, it is probably related to the network latency of both players. – BanditoBunny Feb 22 at 18:44

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