Bounties, more properly Research Bounties, is a system that gives out daily tasks (called "grants" by the game) for the Agent to complete in return for resources. Each agent receives four tasks per day. Tasks refresh at midnight.

The Bounties screen can be accessed from the OPS menu.

Agents receive bonus 2000 AP for completing two tasks, and bonus 4000 AP for completing four tasks. Task rewards and bonus AP rewards must be claimed manually.

Grants

The grants seem to be picked from a fixed pool. Each task seems to always give the same reward, though Niantic also changes the grant pool from time to time.^[1]

List of known tasks and rewards

Task	Reward
Destroy 8 Resonators	1× Very Rare Multi-Hack, 16× L7 Ultra Strike
Drone Hack 1 Portal	2× Common Portal Shield, 3× L7 Resonator
Earn 17 Glyph Points	6× L7 Ultra Strike, 1× Force Amp
Recharge Portals with 16,000 XM	2× Common Portal Shield, 3× L7 Power Cube

Strategy

Bounties is a good source of resources and AP for the occasional player. Even for frequent players, the very copious amounts of L7 Ultra Strike awarded is useful. There might not even be enough heavily-modded enemy portals for you to use the Ultra Strikes on!

Stats

Bounties has its own section in the Agent Profile Stats. Two values are tracked: Research Bounties Completed, Research Days Completed.

Agent Ops

The Bounties button has replaced the Agent Ops button. Agent Ops was a feature that contains a list of Ops (Operations or tasks) that can be completed for bounties. These operations can be limited in time, requiring Agents to complete them in a certain time frame before they expire.^[2] In addition, an Agents active Hackstreak is shown at the top of the screen.

It was originally announced starting in July 2023, the Agent Ops feature will be used to assign Ops to Agents during Second Sunday. Completing these Ops will award the Agent a point for the Second Sunday badge. However, this has been postponed to Q4 2023 (October-December 2023).^[3]

In addition to the MZFPK Anomaly, which was playable globally via the "HexQuest" tasks^[4] , Niantic will be using this feature during the Ctrl Anomaly as part of the Ctrl Connected Ops so Agents can complete Ops and gain points for their faction^[5].

Niantic is working on revamping the Onboarding for new Agents using this system to better guide them during the first steps of their Agent career.^[6]

References