How to Make Scavenger Hunts

Introduction

Ever since Joim created the Scavengers room, there have been hundreds, maybe even thousands, of hunts made. You're probably already familiar with what a "scavenger hunt" is: a set of three questions made for users to answer that becomes a race to see who can finish them the fastest. The hunts that are created for the room are essentially its lifeline, as without constant hunts being prepared for the users, the room can't thrive as it does today. So, you might be wondering: "How do the users in the Scavengers room keep making such difficult hunts?" I am here today to show you the answer to that question and to get you interested in making hunts for the users of the room. Who knows, maybe your hunts will become famous and be enjoyed by everyone who visits.

The Easy Hunt

These types of hunts are normally made when the users want a quick, easy hunt to get their brain working. Good sources for these hunts are the well-known sites, such as Bulbapedia, Serebii, and Smogon. The questions you make should be about things that people know offhand or things that take merely a quick Google search. They should not be overly thought-provoking or hard to find; just short, simple, and to the point. Another good question source is a major event that has happened recently, either on PS or in our lives, that everyone should know about. However, being the easiest, these hunts are over quickly, so you might want to consider having multiple ones ready. This is normally a good place to start off if you want to get into making hunts regularly.

The Practice Hunt

Normally, when an official hunt is about to start, a practice hunt is held beforehand to get new users accustomed to the commands of the race. These hunts are typically simple math questions to ensure that every single user knows the answers and are just completing it to familiarize themselves with completing a hunt. Veterans of the room also like to participate, just to see how fast they can complete the hunt compared to other experienced users. If you would like to make one of these hunts for the joy of seeing fellow users try to beat their personal record times, just think of some simple addition and subtraction problems, and you should be good to go.

The Seemingly Hard Hunt

These types of hunts are meant to throw users off. Like the name implies, these hunts seem hard at first glance, but can be found through some quick Internet searching. You normally want to make sure that it's not something that people would tend to know offhand and that requires some effort when searching. Some users like to add unnecessary details in the question to make the hunt seem a lot harder than it actually is, which makes people who are completing the hunt puzzled about where to start. These hunts take a moderate amount of time, because they aren't too easy or too hard.

The PS/Smogon Hunt

Pokémon Showdown! and Smogon hunts test your knowledge on the community. Normally, you want to think of an interesting bit of trivia about a certain popular user or ask a question about a recent event. The more detailed the question, the harder it will be for these types of hunts, as some users like to make questions about specific threads made years ago, so it can take quite a bit of searching.

The "Psywaves" Hunt

Psywaves hunts are normally very fun to create due to how heated the chat becomes when trying to figure them out. These hunts provide a nice spin on things, focusing on your sense of speech, so they can't be found anywhere on the Internet, making it fun to see if the users can figure them out. Instead of making hints about what the answer is, you should be focused on making hints composed of seperate parts, each of which are synonyms to certain words/sounds and all of which add up to sound out the name of the answer. A good way to go about making them is to decide on a word, break it up into multiple parts, and think of hints for each part of the word. The category of the answers should be specified at the beginning of the hunt, so it doesn't become unreasonably hard.

The Hard Hunt

The hardest types of hunts bring the users into a false sense of security when the question is actually much more difficult than it seems. These types of questions require you to find multiple sources about the topic and add all of the information you have found together. They can't be solved with a simple Google search, they require the user to really think about what sources they should use in order to approach the question effectively. You really want to focus on making every detail matter, making the general topic broad, and making sure that the users really have to think about how to approach it. These types of questions really bring the fun to the room with how much you really have to think to solve the problem, and add to the amount of rage that ensues in the chat. Once you can make these types of questions on a regular basis, you will have truly proven your mastery of creating hunts.

Submitting the Hunt

All staff members (% and up) can start hunts for users to participate in, so once you've made the hunt, the next step is to PM it to one of them. However, there is a certain format that the hunt should be submitted in so that the staff member can start the hunt as soon as possible. This is because staff members get PMs to start hunts constantly, so it's just to make their lives a bit easier.

The format to submit the hunt is:

/starthunt question 1, answer 1, question 2, answer 2, question 3, answer 3

Since commas separate the different questions and answers, be sure that there are no extra commas within the command.

Once you have thought of three questions that fall into one of these categories and have set it up in the correct format, just PM it to a room staff member, and it should be started shortly! Just remember to use common sense when making these hunts and not to make it too vague; otherwise, it will be difficult for users to complete it. All hunts are appreciated in the room, so good luck, and we hope to see you there soon!