Bonus cache terrain rating

[+barefootjeff]

I have an AL which is a 5km hike encompassing an elevation change of 160 metres from the car park down to sea level and back up again, in short if it was a regular cache it would have a terrain rating of 4 (as an aside, I don't understand why ALs don't have D/T ratings, but that's for another thread). The bonus cache for it, by contrast, is a walk of about 30 metres from parking and a short scramble up through light scrub from the track, so I gave it a terrain rating of 2. However I've just received a rather strongly-worded message from a recent finder (someone I know fairly well) who is adamant that the terrain rating of the bonus should be a combination of the rating for the AL plus the bonus cache.

 

Looking through the ALs I've completed, there are only a handful that have more challenging terrain for the AL compared to just the bonus, and for the majorty of those the terrain rating on the bonus appears to be just for the bonus cache. It's a very small sample, though, small enough to count on the fingers of one hand and have some left over, so it probably doesn't mean much.

 

For me, when I'm doing an AL with a bonus, I'll look in the AL description to see if there's anything I need to know about it before setting out,  so I wouldn't generally be looking at the bonus cache page for stuff about the AL's terrain. But because ALs don't appear on the website maps, often the only way I discover them is via their bonus caches, so perhaps that's an argument the other way, that the bonus cache page should encompass the AL as well.

 

Hence I'm sitting here confused, which is why I created this thread. I don't want those attempting the AL to think it's an easy hike based on the T2 rating of the bonus, but on the other hand, if I rated the bonus at T4, I'm concerned that might put people off attempting it if they thought it was going to be another tough hike on top of what they've just done for the AL. By the way, I did mention in the AL's description that it was a long steep hike that would have been T4 if ALs had ratings, but I had to temporarily remove that paragraph in order to add information about some track reconstruction that's currently going on, thanks to the stupid 1024 character limit in AL descriptions. Sheeze, I'm really starting to wish now that I'd done it as a multi with five virtual waypoints instead of an AL plus bonus, as it would have made it so much easier from an owner's perspective.

[+Max and 99]

43 minutes ago, barefootjeff said:

However I've just received a rather strongly-worded message from a recent finder (someone I know fairly well) who is adamant that the terrain rating of the bonus should be a combination of the rating for the AL plus the bonus cache.

 

In my area challenge caches are sometimes rated similarly, with the rating reflecting both finding the required cashes plus the challenge cache final itself. 

My first thought is to agree with the finder of your AL. 

You've presented a really good question! 

There are good arguments for either side, but I think as long as your bonus cache description adequately explains the T rating, it should reflect both the AL and the bonus.

Just my opinion.

Edited July 13, 2021 by Max and 99

[+Mausebiber]

Maybe the bonus can be rated like a mystery cache, it is very hard to get the coordinates for the bonus (from the last lab cache) so D-rating would be D3-D4, very easy to walk the short distance, so T-2.

 

I have seen bonus cache, where you can get the coordinates by either playing the AL or solve a puzzle, so you can find the bonus without playing the AL.

.

 

Edited July 13, 2021 by Mausebiber

[+thebruce0]

Yep, I'd rate the bonus T for the bonus T, and make the D rated for the AL and bonus, just like a challenge cache. Older challenges were a little more convoluted (like those 5/5 challenges in a 1/1 LPC), but today at least in my experience, most people are dedicating the T to the listing directly. If anything, you can note the expected D/T individually in both the AL and Bonus descriptions.

[Lynx Humble]

3 hours ago, thebruce0 said:

Yep, I'd rate the bonus T for the bonus T, and make the D rated for the AL and bonus, just like a challenge cache. Older challenges were a little more convoluted (like those 5/5 challenges in a 1/1 LPC), but today at least in my experience, most people are dedicating the T to the listing directly. If anything, you can note the expected D/T individually in both the AL and Bonus descriptions.

According to the guidelines for challenge caches the D is the difficulty to complete the challenge and T the actual one of the final cache.

 

Back on topic:

I would personally increase T but there also a good case to alternatively up the D.

[+dprovan]

I'm surprised you didn't put the bonus cache somewhere that would incorporate the terrain rating of the AL. That seems more your style.

 

But since you didn't, I understand your thinking, and I definitely object to someone giving you a bad time about your decision, yet I would, myself, reflect the terrain of the AL in the bonus cache since that terrain is, presumably, required to get the information to find the bonus cache. Not reflecting the terrain is, to my way of thinking, like having a multicache with all the same stages, but then rating the terrain based on the fact that the final is back at the starting point.

 

I wouldn't worry about people misinterpreting the rating on the bonus cache. After all, of course one of the first things you're going to say in the bonus cache description is that the terrain rating reflects the effort of completing the AL, not just the bonus cache. That's really no different than having a high difficulty on a puzzle cache even though the container itself is easy to find once you figure out where it is.

[+barefootjeff]

3 hours ago, dprovan said:

I'm surprised you didn't put the bonus cache somewhere that would incorporate the terrain rating of the AL. That seems more your style.

 

I wish I could have, but the AL itself is in a national park (pale green on the map with the locations numbered 1 to 5), with most of the surrounding area semi-rural residential. The only place nearby is in the narrow strip of public reserve (darker green) near the Marie Byles Lookout.

 

 

I could have lodged an application for a physical cache inside the national park but I don't have a contact for that park's ranger so it would have likely been a lengthy process and I didn't think it was worth the effort just for a bonus cache at the end of an AL that would be unlikely to get many visitors.

[+thebruce0]

12 hours ago, Lynx Humble said:

15 hours ago, thebruce0 said:

Yep, I'd rate the bonus T for the bonus T, and make the D rated for the AL and bonus, just like a challenge cache. Older challenges were a little more convoluted (like those 5/5 challenges in a 1/1 LPC), but today at least in my experience, most people are dedicating the T to the listing directly. If anything, you can note the expected D/T individually in both the AL and Bonus descriptions.

According to the guidelines for challenge caches the D is the difficulty to complete the challenge and T the actual one of the final cache.

 

Yes, that was my point. Like challenge caches - where the D is for the required challenge (and its container difficulty where relevant, such as camouflage difficulty) and the T is for the container terrain only (and not of the containers required to qualify) - the bonus would have D set to completion of the AL (and/or getting the required info to begin and complete the bonus, and potentially the D of the container where relevant, such as camouflage) and the T is for the bonus cache terrain itself, not including the terrain of the AL.

Still going by the basic idea that D/T ~ brain/braun, and the T is for only the container you're searching for directly.

 

In short:

Challenge D includes qualification difficulty and cache difficulty; Challenge T includes only cache terrain.

Bonus D includes AL difficulty and cache difficulty; Bonus T includes only cache terrain.