10/05/2026 - Thank you: the server is funded for a year!
Hi geocachers!
I want to start this note with one word: thank you. A little over a month ago, the shop opened, and next to the first milestone I wrote “that would already be amazing”. On 1 October, you knocked down the second one: the server and development costs are funded for a whole year.
The rest follows a more familiar format: the new features, rebalances and fixes that have arrived since the release of the Reviewer expansion.
Enjoy the read, and happy hunting!
Thank you, from the bottom of my heart
The figures, as shown on the Funding page on 5 October:
25 supporters, 3 of whom preferred to stay anonymous.
51 purchases, for 33 Legendary Packs, 14 full finish bundles, 7 single finishes, 2 Shiny Packs and 1 Standard Pack.
The first milestone in 51 minutes, no less!
The shop opened on Friday 28 August at 8:30 pm. By 9:21 pm, the €60 of the first milestone had been reached: the geocoins.io domain name was paid for a year. Watching the bar fill up that fast, live, was impressive. By midnight, the pot was already past €220, almost four times that first goal.
The second milestone in one month
The second milestone was meant to cover the server and development for a year. Next to it, I had written “we are allowed to dream”. On Thursday 1 October at 6:14 am, the pot went past that milestone, one month after the shop opened, almost to the day.
A free game, with no advertising, and that will stay that way, whose server is paid for a year by its own players: it is incredible, and it is the finest recognition I could hope for the hours spent on it. Your nicknames are shown on the supporters' wall of the Funding page, except for those who chose to stay anonymous.
What your money made possible
The money is there to keep the game running, that was the promise. This month, it first went into strengthening the infrastructure. This is invisible work: no new button, no new geocoin. But it is what makes the game respond when you tap “Join”.
The server's capacity has doubled. The server is the computer that runs the rounds, the database, the market and the leaderboards, day and night. The more of you play at the same time, the harder it works. With twice the capacity, it keeps some headroom for busy evenings and events, without slowing down.
A new anti-DDoS protection with Cloudflare. A DDoS attack (for “distributed denial of service”) is when thousands of computers, often hacked without their owners knowing, all send fake visits to a website at the same time until it is overwhelmed. Picture a crowd packing the entrance of a shop without ever buying anything: the real customers can no longer get in. Cloudflare now stands in front of the site like a bouncer. It recognises this artificial traffic and turns it away before it reaches us, while real players walk through without noticing a thing.
Both of these services cost money, and they are paid for thanks to you.
What is new
1. The leaderboard is now played day by day
Since 10 September, the monthly leaderboard works as a cascade, on three levels.
The day: from Thursday to Sunday, your achievement progress fills the daily leaderboard. At midnight (Paris time), your rank converts into weekly points: 100 for first place, 95 for second, and so on down to 1 point for every player ranked beyond 100th.
The week: it now runs from Thursday to Sunday. On Monday, your weekly rank converts into monthly points, with the same scale as before.
The month: it adds up its weeks and closes as soon as the last one is settled. A month-end window then shows every ranked player their rank, the podium and their prize.
😴 Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday are rest days: your achievements keep progressing, but nothing feeds the leaderboard, and the screen shows the results of the week that just ended.
2. Two new achievements
Winner of the Day: finish a day in the top 50, the top 20, the top 3, then in first place.
365-Day Calendar: every date of the year on which you collect at least one geocoin, in any way at all (round, Training, pack, market, forge, Holding Vault…), ticks a box. Tiers at 7, 90, 180 then 365 dates. No need to play every single day: a missed date can be caught up the following year. The achievement's page shows your calendar for the year, box by box.
3. Autumn has arrived
From 23 September until 20 December, 8 season geocoins are in the game: Autumn, Foraging, Autumn Leaves and Splash as commons; Autumn Wildlife, Pumpkin Patch and Chestnuts by the Fire as rares; and Halloween as an epic.
4. A released geocoin finds a taker
When a winner gives up their geocoin, it no longer disappears: it goes to the next player on the waitlist, and the round waits until it finds a taker (45 seconds at most). An “Awarding the geocoin” screen shows the whole round, live, who is deciding, who is waiting, and in what position.
5. A more comfortable Holding Vault
The vault choice is timed, and the window tells you what will happen if you do not click. Players waiting in line see their position in the queue, then the outcome.
Vault full? Renting a slot is offered during the question, in the banner, rather than once the geocoin is won, when only a few seconds are left to decide.
New option in your profile, “Holding Vault” section: don't offer the vault for a geocoin less precious than the ones already in it. The geocoin then goes for glory, with its forge points, and stays available to the other players. Shinies are always offered.
6. Quests
Quests have moved into your profile, and a window shows you the day's quests on your first visit, with a reminder of your free replacement. The draw never gives you two quests of the same type on the same day anymore, and the weekly gold quest can finally be replaced, thanks to two new gold quests.
7. Notifications
In your profile settings, the “Notifications” section lets you receive on your device the same announcements as the Discord bot: legendary coming up, legendary won, achievements, what's new. You choose feed by feed, and device by device.
8. The shop in euros, dollars or pounds
Prices are shown in your country's currency (€, $ or £), and a selector lets you switch.
9. Collection, geocoin pages and forge
The collection and the forge workshop can be filtered by expansion. The collection also flags the geocoins that can be forged, and a tribute can be found by its GC code.
A tribute's page shows the country of the cache, and its full story can be read without leaving the game.
The forge workshop can be sorted and filtered (all, still to do, already done), and shows each geocoin in full size.
The geocoin of the daily offer opens its page: you know what is on offer before you claim it.
10. Learning while playing
In Training and in Rookie PvP, a hint tells you where to find the answer: the list of rarities, the geocaching guidelines, or a button that opens the page of the geocoin in question directly, without leaving the game. The Rookie PvP bubble also tells you what makes this mode easier (simpler questions, bots taking part) and when you will move up to Elite.
11. On your phone
The whole interface has grown wherever your finger lands: the “Join” button goes from 47 × 29 to 62 × 41 pixels, the tabs, the bottom bar and the header are bigger, and the text is easier to read. Long nicknames are shortened instead of cutting off the amounts.
Rebalances
Achievement multiplier: capped at x3, and the points granted by the multiplier drop from 20 to 5, so that the score keeps reflecting the state of a real collection.
Loyal: the streak now follows the calendar. Any geocoin collected during the day keeps it going (round, Training, pack, market, forge, Holding Vault, patronage), not just a round win. Streaks have been recalculated on this basis, without lowering a single one.
For Glory: a geocoin you win that never reaches your collection (vault refused, given up, voucher expired) now counts as a glory, even when your daily forge points cap has been reached. Glory quests progress in that case too.
Rookie PvP: questions there are drawn from the easiest ones, ranked according to the answers actually given in the game.
Monthly prizes: players ranked from 11th to 20th place now receive 250 Golds.
Fixes
September, the first ranked month, waited until 1 October to hand out its prizes and crown its Master of the Month, even though its last week had ended on the 27th. A month now closes as soon as its last week is settled.
An error while reading profiles could reset the Loyal streak to 1.
A released geocoin could go down the waitlist twice, and be awarded twice.
The announcement of a Rookie PvP round could show up for Elite players.
Replacing a geocoin in the Holding Vault often gave you the forge points instead, for lack of time: opening the selection now grants 5 extra seconds.
The vault window could freeze its countdown, or refuse to close.
“My listings” kept listings that had been sold overnight, and beyond 1,000 listings, the market could show some of them twice.
The leaderboard crashed on a player wearing a finish.
Dazzling: a shiny that comes out of a pack finally counts.
The Enter key could send your answer in a different mode from the one you were playing.
A prize given up at the Holding Vault still showed its author as the winner.
On iPhone, tapping “Join” after answering with the keyboard could switch between light and dark theme.
On phones, you can select and copy text again.
The “Forgot your password?” link correctly leads to the form.
Several players behind the same internet box could get blocked by “Too many tries”: the quota is now counted per player.
“Czech Republic” and “Czechia” are now both accepted, in all four languages.
Thank you again to each and every one of you: to those who gave, to those who play every day, and to those who report bugs on Discord. A good share of the fixes above come from your messages. See you in the game and on Discord!
