Newbie as they get (again)

[+Red Soup]

I cached a million years ago then became very ill and had to stop. I am finally getting better and want to start again and have found that my GPS is now nothing more than a useless brick. The company is offering me a trade in, my Magellan explorist 210 for and explorist 610 and a several hundreds dollars off the full price but I have just learned about this new aspect of the game and I an curious to know if I can play it if I go ahead and do this trade in. There are many other factors I plan on looking at before I chose my new Gps but I want to know about this one too!

Thanks or taking the time to help out a returning cacher

 

Red Soup

[Ranger Fox]

I'd recommend using a smartphone for playing Wherigo. As for GPS receivers, only Garmin's Colorado (discontinued) and Oregon lines have player applications. I heard someone is trying to load a player onto a Magellan, but don't know the current status of this project.

 

If things behind the scenes proceed as I want, a smartphone will be the way to go. You can choose iOS or Android, and we might see a player for the new Blackberry.

 

As for a GPS receiver handheld unit, I'd suggest looking for one with a UI you agree most with. While it's true you can use a cell phone to find many geocaches, cell phones still cannot compare to the accuracy of a handheld GPS receiver. I met a pair of caches in December while I was with friends out in one of the gamelands in my state. Finding caches with their cell phone (one of the iPhones) just wasn't as accurate or fast as my GPSr. (I use a Garmin 60CSx to route and find, a Garmin Colorado to maintain the field notes, and my iPhone 4S to pull satellite photos the rare times I need to see an area before I get there. The 60CSx passed 300,000 miles on its odometer yesterday, by the way. For Wherigo, I use the Colorado, iPhone 4S, and an Asus Transformer 300. I got the Asus in January, so I haven't had a chance to play a cartridge with it yet; I'm the only one who has ever made a cartridge in my area.)

 

Welcome back to the game! Feel free to ask whatever questions you need to get started with Wherigo.

[+Red Soup]

I'd recommend using a smartphone for playing Wherigo.

 

I admit that I really haven't taken the time to figure out what the game really consists of but I know myself well enough that I don't like being left out. Now just by chance my husband ordered me a new phone which arrived today it is a Samsung Galaxy Q, Is this model going tho work with the game? Thanks for the hand holding!

Cheers!

JennieGee of Red Soup

[Ranger Fox]

From the pictures I looked up on that model, it looks to have an Android OS, and every smartphone these days has a GPS chip inside. If the phone has a place for a micro SD card, go ahead and get one of those. Any capacity should be fine. The WhereYouGo app prefers looking within the expandable media card for the cartridges.

 

And you said you "haven't taken the time to figure out what the game really consists of". Here's a very brief summary: Wherigo is about location-based experiences. The experiences differ: you could play a character in a story, take a tour of a town, learn about history, play an arcade-like game, or whatever else the author has in mind. Each experience is contained in a file, called a cartridge (an acknowledgement to retro gaming). You'll need to download these files from the Wherigo web site and copy them to your smartphone (as well as download the WhereYouGo app from the Google Play store). Most cartridges have a designated starting location, though there are some are termed "play anywhere", which can be played anywhere in the world (e.g. Battleship and Whack-A-Lackey). If a cartridge comes with instructions, make sure you read them. And, finally, about zones: 99.9% of all Wherigo cartridges are zone-based. You can think of zones as locations, areas on a map (some are square, others have different shapes as defined by their author). Usually, to make anything happen in the game, you have to visit a zone. Most will be visible on your screen (they're called locations when playing, zones when building the cartridge), but some might not--again, it depends on the cartridge's author and what you're doing, so I can't be more specific. If you see a zone, walk over to it. If nothing happens, chances are there characters or items with which you can interact might appear on your Wherigo Player's main game screen. Just keep looking at that screen and investigate anything you see.

 

You did a multi-cache four years ago. Think of Wherigo as the ultimate multi-cache, where you're taking part in a story or being led around to different places. Whereas geocaching is about finding something, Wherigo can be about interaction with either virtual elements within the game or noticing what's around you and providing that as input to the game. At times, a well-crafted experience might have you find some props for the game hidden in real life. For instance, you could end up finding a notebook hidden in the real world that belongs to a character in the story. Only by looking through the notebook (you need to hide it back in the cache when you're done) will you be able to discover where you need to go. Things like that can be accomplished with Wherigo.

[Ranger Fox]

In my last reply, I should probably have referred you to my What is Wherigo? topic. It has most everything you'd need to know to get started.