Geocaching Promotion: Hidden Creatures

Geocaching.com has announced another upcoming souvenir promotion! We started seeing hints a few weeks ago, and this week more details have emerged. The promotion is Hidden Creatures and looks to be a bit simpler than the last couple promotions. Unlike previous promotions, there are no Friend League points and no crazy algebraic equation based on cache type and favorite points used to calculate points. This promotion is pretty much as simple as you can get. Find a cache, earn a souvenir. The more caches you find, the more souvenirs you earn for your geocaching.com profile. That’s it.

In the past, these souvenir promotions have involved complicated formulas and points and friends. Remember Planetary Pursuit? Different cache types were worth different points, somehow insinuating that some were better/more difficult/more valuable than others. And of course, there were the “cheaters” who earned a gazillion points by “dipping” their trackables into a cache and then immediately retrieving it back.

GCHQ seems to really dumb this one down and go back to the roots of what geocaching is – finding and logging geocaches. I love the idea of this! After all, isn’t that what geocaching is really all about?

So let’s break it down. Find caches between June 27 and July 25 to earn souvenirs. Each cache ‘found it’ log or event ‘attended’ log is worth 1 points. These points accumulate over the month and earn you a virtual souvenir at milestones along the way, up to 100 points, for a total of 13 souvenirs. The souvenirs are based on mythical creatures from the forest to the stars. You’ll make your way around the imaginary world of these supernatural beings and start your magical collection.

The points and creature souvenirs are as follows:

1 – Bigfoot
3 – Fairy
5 – Unicorn
7 – Kraken
9 – Hippocamp
11 – Mermaid
15 – Sphinx
20 – Gryphon
25 – Phoenix
30 – Troll
35 – Yeti
50 – Dragon
100 – World Turtle

Basically, in order to earn all 13 souvenirs, you would need to find or attend 100 caches/events in four weeks. No need to check favorite points or cache type or plan out your finds using a spreadsheet and complicated formulas. (I may or may not have done that.) You literally just need to go out and find some caches!

So what do you think? Will you earn all 13 souvenirs? I’m certainly hoping to! I love these new promotions that GCHQ is implementing in an attempt to make the game a little more interesting.

Now I do have one small complaint. I really like the virtual souvenirs, but I wish they were a bit more manageable on your profile. They are listed alphabetically, and that’s it. There’s no way to sort them by date earned or promotion type or anything else. I’d like to view them by type – for example all the states together, the mega events together, etc. Or I’d like to view them by date earned, with the newest at the top. And I’d like the option to change this based on what I’m looking for. This seems like it should be pretty simple, and I’m hopeful that GCHQ might redesign the souvenirs in the future, especially as they award more and more. I’m already up to 138 souvenirs, and they’re a bit muddled down and difficult to make meaning of.

Let me know how you’re doing during the promotion! Without the Friend League, there’s no way (that I can find anyway) to spy on other cachers’ progress. You can view your own earned Hidden Creatures souvenirs here.

Keep me posted! Be sure to join the Facebook group, Adventures in Geocaching, and share all your adventures and stories.