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This just started happening to me. For a long while I was getting something pretty much every time I hacked a portal. Tonight I'm frequently getting the message "Hack acquired no items.". Sometimes it's happened 3 portals in a row. Is there something that triggers this, or is it just really bad luck tonight?

Hack acquired no items

mmrobins
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  • Same thing, it happened also before, but not as frequent as now – BanditoBunny Dec 12 '12 at 08:14
  • This might be a bug, happened to me recently. But it reverted back to "normal" the next day. – Sentry Mar 17 '13 at 19:00
  • I also fail to fetch items which were dropped near me (even when they collection is said to be successful, they're not found in the inventory), my AP doesn't increase even when I'm told some event gave me some AP, I seem to fail at recharging resonators even when the game says I did it correctly, and so on. Same issue? – Nemo Aug 18 '16 at 18:17
  • (By the way, the issue disappeared for me after lasting some 48 hours. Might be a coincidence, but I was back to normal as soon as I hit the next waypoint of a long mission which I had started earlier.) – Nemo Aug 22 '16 at 11:43

7 Answers7

9

As far as I know when you hack a portal there is a certain probability that you get nothing. As well as there is a probability to get a good loot.

My observations:

  • Hacking enemy portals has a much higher "no item" probability, my estimates would be around 50%
  • Hacking the same portal several times in a row, significantly increases the "no item" probability. I had an opportunity to hack the same portal 5 times within 30 minutes (this by the way causes burn out) 2 days in a row, usually at least 2 of later trying (3-5) did not bring me any items except sometimes a portal key.
  • Portal key has a different "acquire" probability than items
  • I believe if while hacking you jump out of the portal's reach you also get a "no items" message, but I have to test this to confirm
Nemo
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BanditoBunny
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  • All those observations seem consistent with what I was experiencing. There's a lot more enemy portals where I am, so it's hard to tell about the balance, but I definitely got this on both friendly and enemy portals. It does seem like there's a portal fatigue of some sort beyond the burnout, but that's totally anecdotal. I'm moving out of range of the portal while waiting for the hack to finish more often too, but often when I do I get good stuff too. I hadn't noticed the key thing, but think I already have keys for all the portals I've been hacking. – mmrobins Dec 12 '12 at 17:09
7

They are doing this to combat location spoofing. If your GPS is glitchy or jumps around, this can happen. If the anti-cheat measures set in you will not be able to do any action (hack, deploy, recharge, link, etc.) for a while.

ce4
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webhax
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    @Ullallulloo: This looks like an answer to me. Maybe not a great answer, and without any references I have no idea whether it's a correct one, but it's still an answer. – Ilmari Karonen Mar 17 '13 at 20:30
  • @IlmariKaronen: Okay, sorry, nevermind. :x – Ullallulloo Mar 18 '13 at 02:01
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    I found the suspension time to be 30 minutes. Always happens to me when I'm commuting and the train's mobile wifi access point warps me to a station 200km away or so. Google should really detect such mobile APs and don't record them in their location database. – ce4 Oct 17 '13 at 08:07
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    It can also happen if you simply travel faster between portals than you're supposed to. I'm not sure what the exact speed is and Niantic is not telling obviously. – Matthias Urlichs Oct 17 '13 at 10:20
  • Is this true as of v1.106? «GPS is jittery/jumps around: GPS accuracy largely depends on the device you're using and your signal/connection strength. If you're having trouble with GPS drift, launch Ingress and touch OPS > DEVICE > Location smoothing, and touch TOGGLE. In general, we're constantly working to improve GPS accuracy and stability.» says https://support.ingress.com/hc/en-us/articles/207008408-Known-issues – Nemo Aug 18 '16 at 18:18
6

Speed limit.

I get this message on trains when it reaches a certain speed. Then I can't hack, attack, deploy, recharge, drop... and so on. I guess this is to prevent car drivers from playing dangerously.

Once the speed drops under that limit, something Iike 1 minute is required to regain abilities.

Montag451
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Vincent
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1

This happens when you're trying to hack above a certain speed. It is a safety feature to discourage people from trying to focus on hacks while they are speeding down the road.

If you come to a stop, you will be able to hack the portal. Even if it originally told you the hack acquired no items. You can immediately hack it again, provided you aren't moving excess of a certain speed.

LAvindar
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There is 1 portal in my town that always has the no items when quick hacking, at least 9/10 times you go past it. But if you glyph hack it you get some wonderful stuff. And this isn't just me it does it to, it seems pretty much everybody who tries it gets the same results

joe
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0

As far as I know, this message appears when the game server is overloaded/busy.

What you do is try, and try, and try again, until you get items or until you get the "cooldown active" message.

Because I have received this message over eight times from a portal within a fifteen minute span, I will say that "Hack acquired no items" do not count towards your number of hacks allowed before the portal burns out. However, I cannot confirm whether "hacking unsuccessful. cooldown active" does.

William C
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-3

This usually happens when your network connection is a little unstable.

Frank
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Bart Reader
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  • «Strong Wi-Fi or network connection» is required says https://support.ingress.com/hc/en-us/articles/206715378-Supported-devices , but not clear what would be "strong" enough (latency? bandwidth? packet loss? continuity? other?) and what the consequences are if it's not – Nemo Aug 18 '16 at 18:18