setting up my own home

Hello

I have only 'basic' membership and that is all I want. I aim to keep my SL and RL totally separate, and do not intend to put any 'real' money into SL. (This is why I'm always broke).

I cannot 'buy' my own land, but would like to be able to set up a temporary (free) home when I login, outfitting it with a few sticks of furniture I've bought, where I can invite friends for a cosy chat and a game of Mah Jong (smiles).

I know about sandboxes, but they have a nasty habit of being very public, and although I can 'build' there things keep getting sent back to my 'lost & found'.

Is there a way of setting up a free, private, temporary home ?

Thanks as always

..kisses..

FH

There are lots of lovely houses available to rent, and you don't need premium membership. You can rez your own stuff there and invite your friends.

OK, they are not free, but some are as cheap as 150L/week. That's hardly "real" money.

go to a sandbox and rez a platform at altitude.

Take a look on xstreetsl for the ez magic chair, it is exactly what you need and it is free

You don't have a lot of options for free.

There are some inexpensive rentals out there.

You can rez something in a sandbox very high. If you have a security orb, you can even set it to 20m or so, and have a little privacy.

Each sandbox has a different return time set. I bet you could find one with a 2 or 3 hour return. That will give you a place for a little while.

Or you can do the unethical thing, and squat. Find some stranger's underdeveloped land with build enabled, rez, and hope they don't show up before you clean up after yourself.

Personally, I'd bite the bullet and find a small rental. Sandboxes have their own problems, and squatting wouldn't feel right.

I think some sandboxes have reverted to set times for clearance, like they used to, rather than a rolling 3 or 5 hour limit after an object is rezzed. You need to watch for that.

There are no free homes in SL. Using a sandbox isn't a home. Squatting is using what someone else is paying for, without their permission, so it can hardly be considered as free - it's not free to use.

The way to have to the home you describe is to pay for it (rent it), but you'd need to come up with the rent every week or month, however small it is.

Another possibility is to find a friend who allows you to use a piece of land for free.

Mouse World will have spare land soon™

It's the end of days...I agree with Phil.

Completely free? No. Doesn't exist, in SL. Not unless you make friends with someone, and they grant you use of part of their land, just because they like your company.

Everything you see is being paid for by someone. Paid for with real money, up front, and every month. They aren't paying for those resources so some stranger can use them.

My advice would be to find a small "apartment" to rent. They start as cheap as L$50 per week. That's less than 20 cents a week in US Dollars. If you can't afford that much, then you should be doing better things with your time than wasting it in SL, like getting a part-time job in the Real World.

Hi Flutterby. I understand your desire not to sink RL money into SL. Unfortunately, nothing is free, so if you want a house and a place to put it, you are going to need some land. As people have already said, a rental is a good way to go for someone who wants to keep a basic membership, so the issue for you will be how to pay for a rental without depositing some cash into SL. There are a number of ways, but most of the ones that actually make reasonable money require some time and skill. They are also a lot of fun, though.

I suggest taking some classes. NCI and a few other outfits offer excellent classes in building, scripting, etc. In my experience, building is a lot like playing golf. You can go out on a Sunday afternoon and have a pretty good time playing golf if you have mastered the basic skills - almost anyone can do that much. If you practice really hard, you might even impress a few people. But there are very few Tiger Woods'. It's just a matter of what you want to do. If you get good enough to sell a few things and turn a little profit, you should be able to afford a rental. Building is free. Uploading textures is 10L, but that's pretty cheap.

Let me also suggest there that there are a lot of cool places to hang out and have a cup of tea, pint of beer, picnic, game of chess/mahjong/backgammon, etc. with friends. I have had many a peaceful game of chess in a certain tavern.

Usually these have been built and made public by generous sim owners, but most people seem to prefer to hang out in the malls and clubs or on their private land, so these lovely places are usually quiet and empty. Which is just fine with me!

Before I continue, I have to say...I take a dim view of those who refuse to invest a single penny of RL cash in SL. If everyone were like you, the economy here would collapse. It is also insulting to those of us who have made substantial investments, and helped out newbies in the hope that they'll go on to become contributing citizens. I realize that there are a few people who have absolutely no money to spare - but then again, I know people who are very poor in RL but still buy a few bucks worth of Lindens. I also know people who can invest little or no RL cash but work hard at SL jobs such as DJing or building, to afford their land here while contributing to the community.

For less than the cost of one movie ticket, you can get a decent sized rental plot for a month. For less than $4 US per month, you can rent a 512 plot with 117 prims on a private estate.

However, if you insist on being a leech, Trilegy Corporation has 2 sims of free land for building. Every 2 weeks the land is cleared and it's open for rezzing for a few hours. You'll have to put up with griefers, drama, and ugly builds, but hey, you get what you pay for!