oops, got myself lost

Hi guys,

I'm pretty new to Second Life, and was still hanging out on Help Island (though probably was ready to leave there soon anyway...)

Anyway.. what happened was I was on the secondlife web site reading about things and got to the page about 'land for sale'. I clicked on one of the listings and clicked a link "Teleport to this location"... and it did.

So I'm no longer on Help Island... seems I can't get back there, which is fine I guess.. but I don't know what my next step after leaving Help Island would have been? (where would I have teleported or travelled to after Help Island)?

I want to go to at least that part so I can experience Second Life like any new player would, but now I'm on some random parcel somewhere in the game and not sure what to do next lol.

I did find my way into some area where they have cool cars for sale lol (saw a cool car, it's details told me to search for the maker, so I did and it teleported me there, which is nice)

But where should I go now? Again ideally I'd like to go wherever I would have been brought after Help Island.


Also, how do I find out about places people hang out at, I assume kind of like in real life where we have large cities? So far I've explored around while being lost and just found buildings or things that people have built, and bumped into some invisible walls that I can't go through.



Thanks
Nidania

That's OK, welcome to SL.

Open the search tab at the bottom of your screen, and go to the Places tab. Search for "Help Island Public" - it's just like Help Island, except it's the public access version. You might encounter residents being ... um, odd, there. But there are Mentors there to help you too. Pipe up and ask them anything!

welcome to Second Life.

actually, when you leave Help Island, you just go to 'wherever' in the game. so now it's simply time to fly and walk and teleport to different locations all over the grid.

you have a search, and you can type in a word that is interesting to you, and just teleport to some of the different places on the list to get an idea of the vast variety of creations in SL.

you can also open the map, click on any piece of land, and teleport to it. just explore around a little, and strike up conversations with friendly people as you go around. however, some people are not friendly, especially when you nose around in their provate homes, so be wary of that.

have fun and report back with your experiences.

i would say that a good first place to explore is "midnight reflections" because it is very pretty and calming, and then "greenies" because that is clever and cool. both places with hve people who should be relatively open to yacking with a noobie.

Probably Ahern. Be glad you took that TP. Be very glad.

Hello & welcome to SL

- well i know you could get to other help islands ie "help island 2"

- you could use search to explore secondlife, ie. type the name of a large RL city or country

- and if you want you could search for "sandbox" on the map-screen, to try building.
* "ivory tower" is one of the places in sl that provides much information for that



Enjoy !

.

You are doing fine. We all started just like you in that we didnt have a clue what to do or where to go. You did great using the search and thats the place to be to find things that interest you. Secondlife is a giant place with many talented REAL people. Some of the places i have seen are fantastic. The venues for some very talented musicians are too numerous to mention.

You also might check the events listing on this website for things that are happening. With the diversity of people and cultures you are sure to find your niche somewhere in here.

Check peoples profile picks for interesting places. I know I am always looking at profiles for places to visit that the person thinks is a cool place.

SL is one of the better places for exploration, even better than in real life. If you ever find yourself in a spot here all you need to do is hit the home button and your outta there. Makes me wish that we had the ability to teleport in RL.

Happy travels!

Nidania, try pressing ctrl-shift-H to go back to your home location. I'm interested to see where the system thinks your home is. Maybe it will send you back to help island. From what I recall when you are done with help island you go to this sign that says something like 'go to the mainland' and then it gives you a landmark to a random linden welcome area or infohub. So places like Bear, Ahern, Korea, Hangeul, Waterhead, Mauve, Hyles, etc.

Hello, Nidania. Welcome to SL and the Resident Answers forum.

Like has been said, when you leave Help Island you are pretty much booted out int the wide world anyway so you have missed nothing any other new resident will go through.

If you would like, you might try visiting "The Shelter" or "New Citizens Institute." They are very newbie friendly, can answer any questions and help you find some freebies to start your wardrobe.

And speaking of Freebies, "Sara Nerd's Freebie Paradise" is one of my favorite places to take new people. It's a good selection of skin, shapes, clothes, gadgets and what-not, plus they look good as well.

And finally ... you have already found one of the best places to ask questions. For the most part we are a friendly bunch, and if we don't know the answer we can at least point you in the direction to find it.

The "normal" exit from Help Island takes you to one of the Welcome Areas, like Ahearn or Waterhead.

As another poster said, don't feel you've missed anything by skipping the Welcome Area. Most of them are full of loud and annoying showoffs who can't find anything better to do with their Second Lives.

I too would be curious to know what the system thinks is your Home location, though. Back on Help Island? The place you tp'd to by mistake? Or a "nearby region" (probably a Welcome Area).

Aside from that experiment, use Search and the Map to find places to explore. Other resources include past threads on this forum (try a search here on "Favorite Places" and third party blogs and websites about SL. I especially like http://www.sl2go.com.

Thanks for all the helpful replies

I pressed ctrl-shift-h and ended up in some place called Hanja.

Is that a common place or perhaps near what that land for sale was?

I will play around with finding some of the interesting spots you guys mentioned to me when I get home later (I'm at work now).

When I find a place I like, how do I "bookmark" that place so I can easily teleport to it in the future?


Thanks again
Nidania

From the top menu: World > Create Landmark.

This will put a landmark (LM) in you inventory folder. Just double lick the landmark to go back there. By the way, you can rename your landmarks to something more meaningful if you like. They are not always very intuitive names.

wow thanks for mentioning that sl2go site, I can't wait to check out some of those places.

Is it accurate to describe second life as 'SIM City on steriods'? This is too cool, I can't believe the creations some peope have built.

Hi Nidania, welcome~!!

You've already got some great advice here so I can't add much accept to say just have fun. There's no particular rule to follow once you're in world....exploring is what it's all about.
Definitely create landmarks to places you like.....and another thing I do to find interesting places is simply go into search, places.....and type in some off the wall key word and just see what comes up. Words I've used.......haunted......steampunk.......monument.......pyramid......mexico....

Anyway......bottom line is to just have fun. If you always want to be able to log into the same starting point....you'll need to set a home location. Since you're new and don't rent or own land yet.....you can do this at one of the help island areas.....or any public linden area. All you have to do is go to the top menu 'world' and select 'set home location'. If it's grayed out...means ya can't set home there.

Also...if you just want some basic guidence.....IM me in world and I'll be happy to help and I can pass over some cool landmarks for you to explore as well. Cheers

SL is way more advanced then sim city......iSL residents actually created the entire thing from the ground up....and it's ever changing....it truly is an amazing world to explore.

Another vote for The Shelter and NCI. I crashed on OI and wasn't able to get back in because it was full. I ended up wandering into some very nice sims called Barcola and Sistiana. Eventually I found my way to some welcome areas nearby. But in SL, there really is no such thing as being lost... just enjoy the ride

The events search is also helpful. One of the great things about SL is the live music scene. You may want to find events where performers are playing live. Some people are semi-pro, some are really talented folks who just play for fun, some people are professionals. Louis Volare, Juel Resistance, Kim Seifert, Max Kleene, and so many others are really great.

You should also look at the places in the Showcase in search.

Hey, I saw her first. I was going to take her to Hard Alley and show her how poseballs work




Just KIDDING!!!

And for the first de-railment ... who is the "Yoko Ono" girl that has started singing with Max? Bless her heart, she trys but owww my ears. I hope this is not a permenant thing.

Hanja is another one of those noisy and annoying Welcome Areas. Once you get land of your own, or join a group that allows members to set their home positions to group land, you can stop logging in there. To do that, once you are on the appropriate land, select World/Set Home to Here.

For example, in my own early days, I joined the Calla Update Group (Callatropia is one of the larger hair stores). I then set my home position to Calla's island. Not that I knew what I was doing...I thought you could set your Home to anywhere. I just got lucky.

To bookmark a place you like, select World/Create Landmark Here. Close the resulting landmark window. You can find it again later in Inventory/Landmarks.

That's interesting. Whenever I come off of a Help Island it resets my home location to wherever I went first, so if I tp to my land, that's my home. TP to the Hangout, that's my home, etc. It doesn't reset me to a Welcome Area. I guess it knows I'm not new.

Nevertheless, Nidania, you aren't missing much. The Welcome Areas are not much to look at, and all that would have happened is you would have been dumped in a random one. You can look around for infohubs and find a nice quiet one you like and set your home there for now. I used Hanson for a long time. It has some traffic, but it's pretty tame. Kind of ugly. But you don't really need a fancy home. It's just a place to log in to before you go off and do other stuff. You've already gotten good advice on using Search. Just plug in whatever your interests are and see if you can find something that makes you curious. Or go freebie shopping to get a start on fixing up your avatar, or whatever you feel like.

Hi Nidania Welcome to SL and the forums.

What you need is Lucretia's New Residents Starter Kit - loads of useful information in that. I'll drop you one when I get in world later on.

I haven't seen as yet ... but may I point out that that Cylindrean Rudabega (sp?) lady has a voice that makes me want to poke my fingers through my speakers? Great song writer ... but a voice meant for pest control.

Hey thanks Deira!

I got an email saying that you sent me something, I'll retrieve it when I'm in-game next.


Is one reason people buy a premium account so they can buy land and have a place to put a lot of their "stuff"?

I read somewhere (I think) about storing inventory items in a box that I build.... I guess that is the purpose of having my own land, so I have somewhere to place my things so no one can take them?


Nidania

Nobody can take anything when it's in your inventory either, but you'll learn soon enough that unless you are very disciplined, your inventory can rapidly grow into a tangled disaster. A lot of people put extra inventory items in boxes and put them into their homes. I also think they do that to help with the issues with the asset server eating inventory items. I don't know if that's an issue still or not.

You need to be premium to own mainland. You can rent land without being premium. It's your choice what to do. If you are on the mainland, you can build whatever you want, but your neighbors can too, so you might end up next door to something hideous. Estate land often has covenants of some kind restricting what can be built there, so you will have a decent idea of what will be built next to you, but you'll be limited as well. Also, Estate land can be gone in an instant if the landlord decides to pull the plug. With owned mainland, Linden Lab is your landlord, and as long as you pay your tier, you'll be ok.

Personally, I like Mainland. I'm pretty easy going with my neighbors and I like a little gamble. That's my own opinion, though, and plenty of people have the exact opposite feeling. It's whatever works for you and makes you happy.

The system will pick the first mainland parcel as your Home location, in the OP's case, that random patch of land-for-sale.

I discovered this while mentoring on Help Islands, when I TP away it will always re-set my home as whichever location I TP to when I leave. I have to remember to TP home first, before going elsewhere.

Exact same experience here, but apparently, the OP's home was set to the WA in Hanja. It must distinguish between Mentors and newbies.

What I like is that message you get that says, "Now that you have arrived on the Mainland, you can visit such places as...and it picks a random landmark out of my landmark folders. It always picks the most horrible landmarks - the ones you just blindly were given by greeters when you showed up as a noob and started randomly wandering around

You can now enjoy visiting such places as "Satan's Inferno Electronika Dance Club and Free Sex Dungeon" WTF. You would think I would remember THAT place!

Hey, one out of two aint bad..

And did I read correctly.. you have land now? no more lawn chair somewhere in the ether?

Nidania, this might have been said before.. nut if you joint the Forum Group you can make the hangout your home location. Not sure if that is better than the places Trout mentioned tho..

.d