On 13th February, Geocaching.com released a cryptic teaser across their social media, that had lots of us guessing what they were up to. All was revealed last week when Planetary Pursuits and the opportunity to earn 10 souvenirs was announced. Once again, the Friends League that was established during last year’s summer souvenir promotion will be used and points must be collected to earn each souvenir. The initial launch of the Friends League led to some confusion, and the explainer blog post I wrote seemed to help some people make sense of what they needed to do. So I’ve pored over the FAQ and put together my own explainer guide for you 🙂
A Theme on Another Planet
Last summer we had pirates, this time around, we have planets, or more specifically, planetary pursuits! Each of our solar system’s nine planets* is assigned a souvenir, with a tenth ‘bonus’ souvenir for those who earn all nine planets. Souvenirs can be earned between Monday, 19th March and Sunday, 8th April, so there is plenty of time to plan out how you’ll collect the points you need.
- Is Pluto a planet? According to NASA, it’s a dwarf planet, so… I guess? 😀
Points Win Planets
Souvenirs are earned by accumulating points, which are gathered by finding geocaches, attending events or dropping off trackables. Different activities earn a different number of points, but the nice thing about the scoring methodology is that you can avoid certain cache types if you really don’t like them, and still collect enough points to earn your souvenirs.
| Souvenirs | Points needed |
| Planetary Pursuit: Earth | 5 points |
| Planetary Pursuit: Venus | 10 points |
| Planetary Pursuit: Mercury | 20 points |
| Planetary Pursuit: Mars | 40 points |
| Planetary Pursuit: Jupiter | 65 points |
| Planetary Pursuit: Saturn | 100 points |
| Planetary Pursuit: Uranus | 200 points |
| Planetary Pursuit: Neptune | 300 points |
| Planetary Pursuit: Pluto | 500 points |
| Official Space Explorer | Earned automatically upon collecting all other souvenirs above |
*Remember: you need to earn these points yourself, on your own geocaching account. Points accumulated by friends in your Friends League will not count towards your total
How Many Points Do I Need to Collect?
Different cache types equal a different number of points, and helping move trackables along will also earn points. The Friends League will keep a running total of how many points you’ve earned. Finding just one traditional cache will get you your first souvenir. However, the subsequent souvenirs become more and more difficult to earn, as the points go up all the way to 500.
| Action | Point value |
| Log a Found it on any geocache (Traditional, Virtual, Webcam, Wherigo) | 5 |
| Log a Found it on a Multi-Cache or Letterbox Hybrid | 10 |
| Log a Found it on a Mystery Cache or EarthCache | 15 |
| Log a Found it on a geocache with 10 or more Favorite points | 15 |
| Attend any event | 15 |
| Drop off trackable | 4 |
* Note that each action cannot be combined to earn more points. For example, if you find a mystery cache that has more than 10 favourite points, you will earn 15 points in total. I have verified this with Geocaching HQ directly, as it was not clear from the FAQ.
Engage the Friends League, but not necessarily your friends
To see how you are doing with your points-gathering, the Friends League that was created last year to coincide with the summer souvenir promotion, will act as a sort of ‘scoreboard’ this time around. Don’t worry if you don’t have lots of friends in your league, because only points collected by your individual geocaching account will matter for your overall score.
The Friends League will reset at midday (UTC) on 9th April, so it’s important that all your online logs are done by this time to ensure they ‘count’ for the promotion. If you log a cache after this time, even if you backdate it, it will not count towards earning your souvenirs.
Don’t Forget…
To ‘activate’ your Friends League by visiting it here. If you want to host your own planetary pursuits event, remember that listings must be in the queue at least two weeks before the event date.
So, that’s it! What do you think of the latest souvenir promotion? Do you think you’ll be able to collect the required points for all 10 souvenirs?
Happy Caching!
Sarah
© 2018 | Sarah McLarkey | All Rights Reserved
I totally overlooked ‘Log a Found it on a geocache with 10 or more Favorite points’ giving us 15 points, it will get me to rethink those 5 point caches.
I think that was added, because I did not see that there before either.
Yes, I have already planned out a couple of weekends that should have my points total. My cache event is already published at an observatory. I am a list kinda gal and planner…:)
Thank you for the clear and precise explination. I like this promotion. It will be easy to get some of the souvenirs, and a challenge that will require me to do some planning to get all of the souvenirs.
If my first log entry at the start of the promotion is a multi cache or letterbox hybrid, will I automatically get both of the first two souvenirs?
Yes 🙂
Thanks for the explanation. To “activate” the Friends League do you simply need to visit it? I don’t see any button on my Friends League page to “activate” it.
Exactly: you just need to click on the link and ‘visit’. Then it’s active!
If you log a find and drop a TB in the same cache, do you score 19 or the max per log of 15 points?
Logging trackables and logging caches are separate so this would earn 19 points yes.
I have two events close enough to get on the 19th, not to shabby a start.
Cachers in Mid Wales UK can gain points AND cache the Solar System with our Welsh Solar System Series (inc Pluto! ) all set to scale across the beautiful Cambrian Mountains ….40 miles as the crow flies! …but we drove over 500 over 2 weekends to plan & set it! 😉 Apparently there are only 2 SS series that are set to scale …ours and one in the USA …ours uses 1 AU = 1 mile
Very cool! Do you have a GC code for one of them so I can take a look?
I know at least three scale solar system models in Sweden. The biggest permanent in the world uses Globen in Stockholm as the Sun (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweden_Solar_System) 300 km from Sun to Pluto.
Then there is one in (and outside of) Kumla (6 km from Sun to Pluto, so kind of “smallish”)
Another one I have seen in Vadstena, but that is just 1:3 500 000 000 so the distance to Pluto would be about one mile.
I am looking forward to this. It’s going to make me really push myself because I want all the souvenirs.
Thank you for the brief but informative explanation. I didn’t have it in me to try to figure it out on my own. Since you made it sound so easy, I will give it a try
Se eu apenas conseguir a pontuaçao na recta final do jogo, posso logar todas as caches encontradas no mesmo dia por exemplo e ganho os souvenirs a que corresponde .
A bit of geochat at an event this morning concerning dropping off trackables. If you drop off six trackables do you get 24 points or is 15 the maximum you can get? Just wondered if you know.
I haven’t tried dropping any, but based on the last challenge where you had to collect points, I would say trackables are scored completely separately so you should get 4 points for each you drop PLUS whatever the cache itself is worth!
Ive logged today’s caches which takes my total to 292 but For some reason I have not received the Uranus souvenir. What has happened?
There’s a delay on the souvenirs appearing – I had to wait overnight for the two I earned yesterday. I guess it’s down to sheer volume!
Ranae Schoeninger
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[…] we were making the long – and sometimes arduous – trek through the solar system in pursuit of planets, but the new souvenir promotion from Geocaching.com has just been announced and it’s only […]