After Lost Lands 2026 (September 18–20 at Legend Valley in Thornville, Ohio), we asked Totem owners who brought their Compasses one simple question: how did it actually go?
111 of you answered, in detail. Here’s everything you told us. That includes the stats we’re proud of, the ones we’re not, and what we’re doing about the second group.
If you’re new here: the Totem Compass is a screen-free wearable that helps you find your friends without relying on cell service. You Bond your Compass with your friends’ Compasses (a Bond is the connection between two Totems), then hold it flat and follow the light to your person.
The Totem community at Lost Lands 2026. All photos in this article by Shady Shotz.
Lost Lands 2026 Survey Results at a Glance
- 82% of people who got separated from their group said their Totem helped them find friends when they had no idea where those friends were.
- 72% said Totem led them back to their friends almost every time or most of the time.
- 68% said Totem saved them at least an hour over the weekend, and 15% said it saved them four hours or more.
- 64% agreed that because of Totem, they spent more time enjoying Lost Lands and less time searching for their friends.
- 87% of people who used their Totem during the weekend’s two evacuations said it led them back to their group almost every time or most of the time.
- 94% used the Totem Compass App to get ready for the festival, and 92% of people who used the app at Lost Lands found it helpful.
- 60% were stopped by someone asking about their Totem. (Hi, new friends. 👋)
The full breakdown is further down. First, the story behind the numbers.
Who Took the Survey
We sent the Lost Lands 2026 Feedback Survey to Totem customers after the festival and collected 111 responses between September 23 and October 10, 2026.
- 51% were at their first Lost Lands.
- 57% bought their Totems specifically for Lost Lands 2026, and 52% were using a Totem for the first time.
- 43% brought three or four Totems in their group, and 23% brought five or more.
- 69% camped on-site, and 93% used their Totems on at least two days.
One honest caveat before we go further: these are Totem owners who chose to answer a survey from Totem. That’s not a random sample of Lost Lands, and people with strong feelings in either direction are more likely to reply. We’re sharing every result anyway, not just the flattering ones.
When Legend Valley Flooded: Totem During the Lost Lands Evacuations
Lost Lands 2026 was a rough one weather-wise. Legend Valley got roughly three times its normal rainfall for the time of year, and severe weather forced two evacuations: Saturday afternoon and Sunday night. Picture a festival crowd of up to 50,000 people moving at once, in the mud, with cell service that was practically nonexistent.
That’s the exact moment Totem is built for, and it’s where the survey results were strongest. 46 respondents (41%) used their Totem during the evacuations. Of those:
- 91% said it helped them find friends when they had no idea where those friends were.
- 87% said it led them back almost every time or most of the time.
- They rated their overall experience 4.3 out of 5 on average, higher than the survey as a whole.
In their own words:
“Helped us a lot during the evacuations because we were split. Especially on the last day which was super scary.”
“I got split up from my friend during the evacuation so being able to look at where they were on the map helped tremendously.”
“This was my first LL, so losing my boyfriend during the horrible muddy Sunday was scary! It brought so much safety and reassurance.”
One respondent told us that SOS Mode helped their group look after a member with epilepsy who needed help getting back to camp. We’re grateful it helped. We also want to be clear: SOS alerts your Bonded friends. It isn’t a replacement for festival medical staff or emergency services, so always get help from them too.
What People Loved: The Freedom to Sidequest
When we asked for your favorite part of using Totem at Lost Lands, one word came up again and again: sidequest. Go get food. Catch the set your friends skipped. Wander off. Come back whenever you want.
“Being able to sidequest at any point and not worry about having service on my phone to find my friends after.”
“I liked how I didn’t need to think about finding my friends.”
“Just knowing we’d never be lost was a breath of fresh air.”
A few stories stood out:
- One group flew in from overseas with “varying levels of English proficiency” and used Totems as a communication-free way to split up and still regroup in time for Excision’s set at the end of the night.
- A group of 16 shared five Totems, passing them to whoever was splitting off and always leaving at least one with the main group.
- One respondent wrote that their friend, “who has a difficulty seeing and has zero sense of direction,” used her Totem to walk straight back into the group on her own.
That last one matters a lot to us. People with low vision have told us that following a bright light is much easier than spotting a face in a crowd. It’s one of the reasons accessibility is on our radar well beyond festivals.
Returning Totem Owners Noticed the Difference
53 respondents had used a Totem at an earlier festival, so we asked how Lost Lands compared. 66% said it performed better (24 said “much better”), 15% said about the same, and 19% said it was worse.
“I bought 2 totems when pre orders first opened. Admittedly I wanted them to work but a combo of initial operator error and just not enough totems in the early yrs made them less reliable than I would’ve liked. 2026 lost lands changed all that! Will be recommending it every chance I get now.”
“The totems are already so much better than last year, and I think they’ll get to a 10 soon!”
That second point about more Totems is real. The Unity Mesh Network™ gets stronger as more Compasses join it, because every Totem can relay messages for the people around it. An estimated 5,000+ Compasses were in use at Lost Lands 2026, and the network set records for hops (35), messages carried (330,000+), and distance (1.58 km).
What Didn’t Work, and What We’re Doing About It
Now the part most companies would leave out. Not everyone had a great weekend: 8% said Totem rarely or never led them back, and 7% rated their experience 1 or 2 out of 5. We read every one of those responses, and they told us a lot. Here are the biggest themes.
Staying Connected to the App and to Your Bonds
The biggest theme was connection. 57% said their Totem disconnected from the app at least a few times, and some of you had Bonds drop and had to re-Bond during the weekend. When you’re counting on your Compass with no cell service, that’s a real problem, and we understand the frustration.
Accuracy Hiccups and Stale Locations
A smaller group saw their Compass point the wrong way, or lock onto where a friend used to be.
“When it worked, it was accurate within about 30ft and got me right where I needed to be! … 2-3 times it locked onto positions where my friend used to be, or completely lost them and showed no position.”
The Learning Curve Is Real
One in three respondents didn’t know the difference between a solid light and a slowly pulsing light before they used their Totem, and 26% followed a pulsing light at least once. That matters, because a pulsing light means your Totem isn’t currently getting location updates from that friend.
“If you don’t 100% remember what pulsing, or solid, or a color means, you can be lost. Especially if I’m giving it to a friend to use.”
Features were easy to miss, too. 28% didn’t know the interactive Lost Lands map existed in the app, and more than half never noticed the Totem team members you could find on the in-app map.
What We’re Doing About It
The biggest change is behind the scenes. Our engineering team has rebuilt how we test firmware before it ships:
- 52 Totems tested at once, up from 8. Every unit keeps its own high-resolution log of communication, timing, memory, and phone connection, so we can see exactly what each Totem, its firmware, and the Totem Compass App were doing at the same moment.
- A full-stack review, from the radio up to the app. Our engineers work with an AI auditor across the whole codebase, so when a log shows something odd, we can trace it to the exact line that caused it, usually the same day.
- Every fix gets proven before it ships. Fixes are re-tested in batches of ten repeats before they go anywhere near your Compass.
The audit is already paying off. For example, we rewrote the Auto-Calibration logic in a more efficient form, cutting CPU usage by about 5% and freeing up memory.
We also built something new: a Unity Mesh Network™ simulator powered by real data from our festival deployments, including Lost Lands. Instead of only analyzing each event after the fact, we can now test changes to how the network filters and prioritizes messages before they ever reach your Compass. Improvements from the simulator are already underway for our next software release.
That’s how we catch the kind of bugs that eight units on a bench would never show us, and it’s the foundation for every release from here. We’re also making clearer how-to guides, starting with the tips below, because nobody should need to memorize a manual to find their friends.
4 Tips From the Survey for Your Next Festival
A lot of the frustrations above have the same handful of fixes. Here’s what the Lost Lands data taught us:
- Update every Totem before you leave home. 90% of respondents updated before the festival, and the ones who had to update on-site told us it was the most stressful part of their weekend. Follow the Software Update Guide while you still have good Wi-Fi.
- Bond before the festival, or Bond remotely. 69% of respondents Bonded in person before the festival. If someone in your group is arriving separately, the Totem Compass App’s Bond With Me link (or QR code) lets you Bond without being in the same place. Only about 1 in 10 respondents used it, and at least one didn’t know it existed until they took the survey. Here’s how Bonding works.
- Learn the lights. A solid light means your Totem knows where your friend is. A slowly pulsing light means it isn’t getting updates from them right now, so follow it with caution. The How It Works page walks through all of it.
- Open the app before you need it. At partner festivals like Lost Lands, the Totem Compass App can include an interactive festival map, and at Lost Lands you could find Totem team members on that map and add one as a Bond if you needed help.
The Full Lost Lands 2026 Survey Results
All percentages are out of 111 responses unless noted.
| Question | Result |
|---|---|
| Totem helped find friends when they had no idea where they were | 77% yes · 17% no · 5% never lost each other (82% yes among people who got separated) |
| How successful was Totem at leading you back? | 39% almost every time · 33% most of the time · 20% about half the time · 5% rarely · 3% never |
| Time Totem saved over the weekend | 32% under 1 hour · 53% 1–3 hours · 10% 4–6 hours · 5% more than 6 hours |
| “Because of Totem, I spent more time enjoying Lost Lands and less time searching for my friends.” | 32% strongly agree · 32% agree · 27% neutral · 9% disagree or strongly disagree |
| Overall experience (1–5) | 39% gave 5 · 30% gave 4 · 24% gave 3 · 7% gave 1 or 2 · average 3.96 |
| How likely are you to recommend Totem to a friend? (0–10) | 45% gave 9 or 10 · average 7.7 |
| Returning owners: compared to past festivals (53 people) | 66% better · 15% about the same · 19% worse |
| Used Totem during the evacuations | 41% (46 people); of those, 87% said it led them back almost every time or most of the time |
| How easy was Bonding? | 41% very easy · 36% somewhat easy · 14% neutral · 9% somewhat difficult |
| Understood solid vs. pulsing lights before using | 67% yes · 33% no |
| Totem disconnected from the app unexpectedly | 16% never · 8% once · 35% a few times · 22% frequently · 19% not sure |
| Someone approached them to ask about their Totem | 60% yes |
Why We Published All of This
We could have pulled the best five quotes and called it a day. But if you’re deciding whether to trust a little glowing Compass with finding your people, you deserve the whole picture: most of our users found their friends faster and worried less, a meaningful minority hit real problems, and we know what we need to fix.
And we’ll keep asking. Every festival survey goes straight to the people writing the next firmware release.
Get Your Group Set Up Before Your Next Festival
More than 65,000 people in 80 countries now use Totem to find their people. If your crew is next, the Totem Compass Bundle builder is the way to do it. It lets you customize the best Bundle for your group size, for up to eight people, and the bigger the group, the lower the price per person.
Nobody has to front the whole bill, either. At checkout, you can split the payment with friends using Paysquad, so everyone chips in their share directly.
Less time searching. More time together. 🫶
Already have your Totems? Update to the latest software before your next adventure.
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