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The Most Annoying, Long, Confusing And Weird Multi


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What would be kind of neat (and I'm sure someone's probably tried it before) is some sort of maze-like cache where each stage either has two or more sets of coordinates or a note saying something like "dead end". You'd have to find the one route that would get you from start to finish in the least steps, say five. Of course, if you're unlucky, you could end up hitting all 20.

 

Personally though, I wouldn't waste my time on a 20-stage multi where I knew I'd have to go through all 20 stages. I hate loking for film containers in the woods already. 20 would be unbearable.

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In my experience, overly complex multicaches form a disproportionate percentage of caches that are "temporarily disabled" for maintenance. The more stages you have, the greater the odds of a leaky, missing or plundered container. You'll need to respond to all the complaints saying "Stage 14 appears to be missing." Of course, Stage 14 will be the micro that's the farthest distance from the nearest parking. Unless you're willing to maintain such a monstrosity, don't place it.

 

A five-stage multi can be plenty evil. Opposite sides of a river, top and bottom of a mountain, alternating sides of a ridgeline, etc.

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Sounds cool. What about a multi-path multi? Maybe an easy way, and a hard way...

 

If you do decide to make this real long one, I'd be willing to donate some beanie babies maybe so that after they complete it, you could send em a prize, maybe make a special tag to put on the beanies that says that you've completed the biggest multi-2004 cache or something.

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Use a strong magnet and stick them to the very bottom of 20-30 dumpsters. When the dumpsters are emptied, the containers will stay behind. Then sit back and enjoy the logs that roll in.

 

The point of hiding a geocache should be to take someone to someplace special. Do you have 20-30 special places? A geocache should be fun. Would you find that level of tedium fun?

 

Just my 2 pennies....

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Okay, I'll bite. I'm not saying this is a good cache idea, but it would fulfill your criteria.

 

Use a combination of the maze idea and having each successive step be on the opposite side of a river (or top vs. bottom of a mountain, etc), but then have every other one be only about twenty feet apart.

 

Nothing is more annoying than having to pack everything up and trundle about for twenty minutes just to get back to a place you had been an hour earlier.

 

ie. cache one--east side of river two unpaved miles away from a decent crossing.

cache two--west side of river two unpaved miles away from a decent crossing.

cache three--east side of river about twenty or thirty feet away from cache one.

cache four--well, you get the idea

 

I also think you could achieve maximum annoyance by using the formula above but with the maze idea only being the first cache.

ie--cache one--has two sets of coordinates. The first set sends you way out of the way, but then you're done. That is the end goal. The SECOND set, however, takes you to cache two from the previous example (the one across the river) and sets you on a string of fifteen or twenty following that pattern only to get to the last one and find the DEAD END message. :D

 

You would have some people spend all day or even a couple of days getting to the end, and then they would have to post their logs next to someone talking about how it was a nice thirty minute cache and thanks for the quick jaunt. B) I mean, shame shame, what a naughty idea.

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Okay, I'll bite. I'm not saying this is a good cache idea, but it would fulfill your criteria.

 

Use a combination of the maze idea and having each successive step be on the opposite side of a river (or top vs. bottom of a mountain, etc), but then have every other one be only about twenty feet apart.

 

Nothing is more annoying than having to pack everything up and trundle about for twenty minutes just to get back to a place you had been an hour earlier.

 

ie. cache one--east side of river two unpaved miles away from a decent crossing.

cache two--west side of river two unpaved miles away from a decent crossing.

cache three--east side of river about twenty or thirty feet away from cache one.

cache four--well, you get the idea

 

I also think you could achieve maximum annoyance by using the formula above but with the maze idea only being the first cache.

ie--cache one--has two sets of coordinates. The first set sends you way out of the way, but then you're done. That is the end goal. The SECOND set, however, takes you to cache two from the previous example (the one across the river) and sets you on a string of fifteen or twenty following that pattern only to get to the last one and find the DEAD END message. B)

 

You would have some people spend all day or even a couple of days getting to the end, and then they would have to post their logs next to someone talking about how it was a nice thirty minute cache and thanks for the quick jaunt. :D I mean, shame shame, what a naughty idea.

I've suspected it all along, and this confirms it....there are some evil people in these forums!! B):DB)

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You put 3 sets of coordinates in each stage. Two bogus and one correct. Or you can make it so that if the person chooses correctly all the way, the hunt is no more than 3-5 stages. But if they choose wrong, it could be as many as 20. This would be a tough one to put together, but may be fun for some people

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You put 3 sets of coordinates in each stage. Two bogus and one correct. Or you can make it so that if the person chooses correctly all the way, the hunt is no more than 3-5 stages. But if they choose wrong, it could be as many as 20. This would be a tough one to put together, but may be fun for some people

I can see someone trying it and ending up in a bell tower with a .30-06......... :DB):DB)

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Hye,

 

I've been planning a HUGE (HUGE) multi cache. I've got 20-30 containers

painted-up in camo colours and I'm looking for ideas that could really piss off a geocacher trying to get to the end.

 

I've got some ideas but what do you think? Share ideas.

My question would be WHY?

Why would you want to piss off other geocachers?

This is suppose to be something fun to do after a stressful week of being pissed off at work.

You have the weekend for some challenging caching, not something that ends up being so aggrevating you wonder why you even bothered getting outta bed for..

 

Just my two cents, but I would much rather do one that brings about a surprisingly unusual conclusion.

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What would be kind of neat (and I'm sure someone's probably tried it before) is some sort of maze-like cache where each stage either has two or more sets of coordinates or a note saying something like "dead end". You'd have to find the one route that would get you from start to finish in the least steps, say five. Of course, if you're unlucky, you could end up hitting all 20.

 

Personally though, I wouldn't waste my time on a 20-stage multi where I knew I'd have to go through all 20 stages. I hate loking for film containers in the woods already. 20 would be unbearable.

We did something like that at our last cache bash. We had a puzzle cache on Lewsi and Clark trivia. The first coords were for a micro that had a question with 3 answers. If you answered correctly, you got the coords for the next step, otherwise, you got the coords for a mistake cache. Keep answering correctly and you move quickly to the end. It was fun to put together.

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You put 3 sets of coordinates in each stage. Two bogus and one correct.

I have a 2-stage cache which has a single-digit error in one of the coords for Pt. I. The erroneous coords are in a lake. The description asks to change one of the digits, and spells out the terrain in quite a bit more detail. The problem is, there are several valid solutions, all kind of neat destinations, all with identical containers hidden in the same way, but only one of them is the right one.

Got a single find since September (with log containing words such as "grueling" and "hellacious"), plus a few finds of "false leads". But given the amount of snow we've got this winter, and overall 4.5 star terrain rating, I think it's a pretty good rate.

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I had an idea for easter time where you would go to the woods and it would be the equivalent of an easter egg hunt. With all 20 of the eggs spread over about a 100x100 foot area. One of them would be right...the rest wrong but with some sort of clue as to what they need to find ("a fruit that does not rhyme", etc).

 

The problem with some of the ideas so far (3 bogus, 1 correct coords) is that annoying just to be annoying tends to p!$$ people off. If it is a completely random distinction between choices, then there's no way a person will ever feel they *could* get a leg up on the game...and so they become angry or depressed about the whole thing. Something like the Lewis/Clark trivia above or directing clues as I just added gives them a feeling of hope in the face of futility...and that's all they need to cling onto and feel like they were champions for facing the adversity.

 

:D

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We are working on one like ju66l3r mentioned... We want to use the plastic easter eggs you can buy that hold candy, etc. The idea is that each egg will contain a coordinate to the next leg of the hunt. When the final leg is reached, we were thinking about planting about 10 bogus eggs in the final location where 9 of them say "Nope, not this one!" or something like that. Then when Easter is over, we would just rename this to "Wild Goose Chase" cache and leave it there...

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My question would be WHY?

Why would you want to piss off other geocachers?

This is suppose to be something fun to do after a stressful week of being pissed off at work.

You have the weekend for some challenging caching, not something that ends up being so aggrevating you wonder why you even bothered getting outta bed for..

 

Let me say that again, I don't want to make cachers angry, this multi should represent a challenge. With random challenges and the occasional "out of the ordinary" cache locations.

 

 

It may take more than a weekend..... :D

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Hye,

 

I've been planning a HUGE (HUGE) multi cache. I've got 20-30 containers

painted-up in camo colours and I'm looking for ideas that could really piss off a geocacher trying to get to the end.

 

I've got some ideas but what do you think? Share ideas.

If you don't mind paying homage to another good idea gone bad, you can go hide three bricks with coordinates on them in an old brick yard that's filled with knee-high piles of bricks everywhere, similiar to The Claybanks cache in Massachusetts.

 

Just make sure the coordinates are 80 feet off for the first brick and you too can have a whole slew of pissed off cachers spending hours searching bricks only to log DNFs.

 

:D

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I dont like large multi caches, four or five parts is about the maximum I would do. Recently a ten part cache appeared in the listings close to me, your cache idea may not be so simple but this one only took me a little study then I omitted the first nine parts and went straight to the final part, found it and logged it.

I dont like being made to jump through too many hoops and will if I can go for the walk rather than be directed on what seems to me to be a pointless paper chase. I would rather exercise my body than my mind while caching.

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If you just want to make fellow cachers angry, just put a tub of night crawlers in the ammo can with the log (they actually melt in the heat!). Or put a micro inside an animal corpse. :D

 

Also, for a variation on the river theme, use alternating north and southbound rest areas on a highway. Make that a PAY highway. And if you're going to use dead end coordinates, don't put a capsule saying 'dead end'. Just keep them guessing as to whether or not they missed it.

 

All that said, I like a good, old fashioned 2-3 diff ammo can better than those micos. Tink-tink

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Instead of 20-30 stages, which will be an immediate turn off to most geocachers, why not use 5 to 10 stages and take great care in developing the plan, including codes, false leads, difficult hiding, and challenging terrain. We did an 8-stage multi recently that is working great (4.5 / 4.5). After three weeks, there are several local teams working on it, but just one finder. He spend 6.5 hrs hiking in the final search. Another poor soul left a log about falling into a swamp and various other nasty adventures. If you want to check it out, the name of the cache is COMBAT.

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Yah, I see your point. Still, do you have any ideas for annoying situations in a multi?

 

Ex: Geocacher finds one cache and coordinates inside point to the other side of the river they're at.

 

I'm not using film containers, but that could really get someone angry. Your maze idea is good. I'll try to work that in to the multi.

 

Thanks!

 

Perhaps you should try this one out then

 

Both Sides of the River

 

Or this one

Sooner or Later - A Maze

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Yah, I see your point. Still, do you have any ideas for annoying situations in a multi?

 

Ex: Geocacher finds one cache and coordinates inside point to the other side of the river they're at.

 

I'm not using film containers, but that could really get someone angry. Your maze idea is good. I'll try to work that in to the multi.

 

Thanks!

 

Perhaps you should try this one out then

 

Both Sides of the River

 

Or this one

Sooner or Later - A Maze

In the cache I referred to (COMBAT), it appears that the 8th stage is just 0.2 miles away from the 7th stage. However, there is no way to walk directly from stage 7 to 8, as one soon discovers. You have to hike back to the car (about 3 miles), drive down the road, park, hike another mile......etc.

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Perhaps you could hide 3 or 4 different multi-caches that are connected somehow. For example, you should to find something in the first one before going to the second one. I used the word should because it would be possible to find the second one without the help from the first one, but you would have a handy map or clue page. I wouldn't really be interested in any of these, however, but that's just because I'm too easily frustrated. A 20-30 step multi would drive me insane. It would probably be the only white cache in on its closest caches page. You should definately warn cachers on the cache page though, because I would be really frustrated if I went out expecting a 3-4 step multi and I was faced with the giant you are suggesting.

 

I like the Easter Egg idea. Those eggs really hold up. We have a giant egg hunt in my yard with 400+ plastic eggs each year. Every time a few eggs are not found, but they turn up months later in perfect condition, right where they were hidden. (This is excepting the ones with chocolate in them, but since there shouldn't be any food in Geocaches that isn't a factor). Is this idea up for borrowing/revising?

 

Edited to change ideas for more clarity.

Edited by Enspyer
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I have a one stop cache out that has ticked several people off.

 

The cache is about 100 feet off a gravel logging road.

About 10 miles from the asphalt.

You can stand on a side road and see the cache container.

On the other side of a 10 foot high Elk Proof fence.

To get the cache, you have to drive back 10 miles to the asphalt, 5 miles East to a USFS compound fence entrance and then about 11-12 miles back into the cache on dirt and mud roads. And hope to not get lost in the maze of roads.

 

I also have out a large projection only cache. 15 miles from front to back with 11 stops along the way.

 

logscaler.

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I've done one with two paths -- 6 stages on one path, and five on the other. Only ONE path is correct, the other is a dead end. (edit: this one is not mine, but one I completed! I can't claim one this good)

 

One of mine has you doing all kinds of math -- adding this, counting that, multiply by so-and-so... and if you get the coords right, you move about 30 feet. :bad:

Edited by joefrog
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Some evil ideas:

Have two containers at every spot. One has coordinates that take you to a dead end, the other has good coordintates that further you to the cache. We did a cache like this once and (lucky for us the steps were within a few hundred feet of each other) had a lot of fun.

We also completed the 12 Step Program. In which every step required math, wits or endurance. And usually some combo of the three.

Our Six Pack multi has one step that has been likened to following us on a shopping expedition as it takes you to all sorts of signs and makes you count the number of letters in the name to get the numbers for the coordinates of that step. None in a decent order. Just drive all over town to find your numbers. We were lucky they weren't asking for step coordinates backwhen that one was placed. I think Dean would have given up on it if he had had to submit them. :bad:

And finally- my Marcel's Cache takes you to 4 memorials in Missoula and then to a park that is directly across the river from the town of Lolo, but which is only accessable if you go back to Missoula and go in the really long way through a bunch of suburbs. That one is catching folks since they see it's proximity to our Lolo caches and just head our way! Very evil.

just some examples.

-Jennifer

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I have actually been working on a 10 cache multi. Once I started putting it on paper and thought about how *I* would feel about doing it I changed my mind.

 

Instead I have decided to have 9 traditional caches where each would contain a portion of the coord's needed to find the 10th cache.

 

This way I can take geocachers on the journey I had planned, but they get 10 finds instead of 1.

 

Does that make sense?

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