Any area I’ve cached, there have always been plently of caches that don’t require a TOTT – so no, you don’t need one, but it might come in handy, depending on what you want to find.

Around where I live, probably the most common TOTT is a long pole to get caches down from trees. Don’t exchange this for a ladder – a lot of the caches are up in thin spindly trees growing on uneven ground. They’re designed for you to get them with a pole, with both feet on the ground. You can buy golf ball retrievers for not too much money at a sporting goods store, these usually work well.

Other TOTTs I’ve seen are batteries for gadget caches or a UV flashlight. If you read the cache page, you should be able to get a sense of what you need. But every so often, a cache owner will get creative and make you use something you’ve never thought of before ;)

Had to check it out on Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=de.westnordost.streetcomplete

That looks pretty cool! Love that you can play it like a game as a team. I need to try this out

Yes, there were two others you could get – one at some low number of points, and another at 100 I believe

Yes! Beach clean-up are always a good time where I am. I’ve made some pretty strange garbage finds over the years – keeps things entertaining when you find microwaves, kiddie pools, toilets and more in the woods!

I did not know they offered free trials – that’s awesome, glad you are enjoying it so far!

Cute! Was the cache inside on of the little houses?

Got to get them hooked early on!

I found a nano cache inside of a padlock once. The part where the key would go was drilled out, and replaced with a tiny cache container. Took me ages, awesome find.

I’ve gotten Tim Hortons gift cards for FTF before, that was pretty nice. Pins are also always cool to find

This doesn’t see to be showing up across instances !geocaching@lemmy.world

For me, I started doing it alone and it kept me sane during Covid lockdown. After events started back up again, I met a bunch of people, and haven’t really solo cached since then

Yup, geocaching has definitely taken me pretty far off the beaten path in the past.

Entirely possible that there are premium geocaches in that area, which you’d have to pay to see. Or it could also be puzzle caches, which would show up in a different (but likely close by) spot on the map

There’s a website, geocaching.com – it’s free to make an account, and there is a world map showing where geocaches are hidden.

The easiest type (traditional caches) will just have a location on the map where you go to find the container. Some of the more difficult ones, you might have to solve a puzzle before you can find out where you need to go looking

It happened. I planned for it in 2020, but got very sick (probably Covid) that week. I have been waiting 8 years for this chance!

That’s a shame! Do you ever go to geocaching events? I find they get the most logs there, although I have spotted the odd one out in the wild

If I happen to have a spare container with me, usually I’ll replace a damaged one. IMO if you found the original and know where it was, that’s not the same as putting out a random throwdown for a missing cache.

If it’s a specially made container, I’d probably just log Needs Maintenance, but if you’re just replacing a pill bottle with something similar I would think it’s fair game. In any case definitely mention it in your log

Personally, I’ve paid for it the last few years. But Geocaching is my main hobby, so it’s easily a worthwhile investment.

I get being against subscriptions out of principle though. I cached for years without paying for it. In my area only about 1/3 of caches are premium only, but that might be completely different in another part of the world