Three steps, then you are playing
This is the whole of what you need. Everything else on this site is detail for specific ground.
Step 1
Read the listing before you read the map
Every cache has two numbers that matter more than its location. The difficulty rating tells you how hard the hide is to spot once you are standing on the right spot. The terrain rating tells you how hard it is to get to that spot at all. A difficulty 1 terrain 5 is an easy find at the top of a mountain. A difficulty 5 terrain 1 is a puzzle you can solve from a bus stop. Pick the ones that match the afternoon you actually have.
- Read the last ten logs, not just the last one. A run of Did Not Find logs means something.
- Check the size field. Micro means a container the size of a film canister; there is no room for a pen.
- Look at the published date. Older caches are often in better-considered places.
- Read the hint only after you have searched for ten minutes. It is written to be a nudge, not a spoiler.
Step 2
Take the kit the terrain rating asks for
The commonest reason people have a bad day is not the cache, it is the walk. Terrain 3 and above means the ground is genuinely rough somewhere: bog, loose rock, steep grass, or all three. Terrain 5 in Britain almost always means navigation as well as steepness, which means a paper map and a compass, because phone batteries die in the cold and screens stop working in the wet.
- Boots with an edge, not trainers. Wet limestone and wet granite both punish smooth soles.
- A pen. Roughly one cache in three has no writing implement in it, whatever the listing claims.
- Water and one more layer than the valley forecast suggests.
- A head torch if there is any chance the search runs long.
- Something to trade, if you are doing a cache large enough to hold swaps. Trade up or trade even.
Step 3
Log it properly, including the failures
Sign the paper logbook, then log online. Put the container back exactly as you found it, with the same camo, the same covering stones and the same orientation; a cache replaced badly is a cache that gets found by someone who is not playing. If you did not find it, log a Did Not Find. Those logs are the single most useful thing you can leave for the person who placed it, and for the next person who comes looking.
- Sign the paper logbook even if you intend to log online only.
- Replace the camo and the covering stones as you found them.
- Log a Did Not Find if you searched and did not find it. It is not a failure, it is data.
- Never post a photograph showing the hiding place. It spoils the cache for everyone after you.
What nobody tells you first
Roughly one in three logs on a well-established cache is a Did Not Find, and that is normal. Caches go missing, get buried by leaves, move a metre when a hedge is cut, or sit under snow for four months. A DNF is not a verdict on you; it is information for the owner and for the next person.
The other thing is that the terrain rating is honest and the difficulty rating is not always. Plenty of difficulty-2 caches are in places that would be difficulty-4 if the owner had judged the ground rather than the hide. Read the terrain rating, then read the last ten logs, then decide.