Questions from a new, aspiring land/homeowner

After renting for the past year or so, I want to try buying my own bit of land somewhere in SL and put my "second home" on it.

For several different reasons, I want to put my home up in the sky rather than on the land itself and am also leaning toward buying Mainland property rather than from a private estate.

I've already done quite a bit of research on land types, tier costs, prim allowances, and such, and believe I now understand what I need to know as far as those things go. But beyond that, I feel utterly "lost" on my next few steps and hope some of you can help.

For instance...

1) When I start to search for a plot of land to buy, are there any options available to show me search results based on how "low-lag" an area might be, or to show me only "flat, residential" types of areas? Other than using Search to find these types of land, are there better ways to find a good piece of land to purchase that would meet these kinds of conditions?

2) If my house will be up in the sky instead of on the land itself, do I even need to be concerned about the things asked in the previous question? Also, are there limits on how high up I can place the house?

3) Also, as I have several alts, I would like for each of them to be able to set the house as their *home-location* when they're signed in. What is the best way to go about arranging that? Should I create a "group" that only I and my alts would belong to and then buy the land for that group? Or is there a better/easier way to go about this?

4) Are there any other bits of advice or suggestions I should bear in mind to avoid getting ripped-off or otherwise taken advantage of when I go to search for both the land as well as for a house itself? (I have very limited building experience, so would probably be looking for a pre-fab or asking someone to build it for me).

Thank you all in advance for any help or suggestions with my questions!

There is no zoning on Mainland, you could be in a residential area one day and lagged out by a club the next. There's also no good way to search the listings by terrain. You can search by sq.m. though.

If you're set on mainland, you might try http://ninjaland.net - they have listings with photos. If you're still open to estate, tons of us have web listings, including:

http://listings.solacebeach.com (mine)
http://azureislands.com/
http://www.eworldmauritius.com/fantasyland/

Low lag is something you can't search for.

Terrain is probably unimportant if you intend to live in the sky.

As for your alts, spend L$100, create a group, invite your alts to the group and then deed the land to your group and you can set permissions there for who can build or not.

1) There is nothing to give a lag indicator and it can change day to day based on who does what on the nearby land and on what LL is doing with the servers.

2) Going high up is going to reduce lag cause by textures, if there are no horrid ones nearby, but I am not sure about other types of lag.

3) I **think** you have to do this thru a group, deeding the land to a group, have everyone join the group and let group members set home to the land.



ETA: If you already have the alts at premium, have them all donate their free 512 tier to tier to the group. If the alts are not premium and you can afford the upfront yearly or quarterly fee, make them premium and donate their tier. With the L$300 stipend that each premium gets each week, in the long run it is cheaper to pay LL premium fees than increased tier fees.

Max build height = 4096. The horizon disappears much lower ... below 1000 somewhere?

You will avoid a lot of lag living in the air, mostly 'cause you will generally be 'seeing' only your build, if you place your skybox where there is no one else's.

The group will own the parcel and all items on it should be set to that group. However, for convenience sake, it is sometimes handy to have ONE alt own all the stuff. That way, when you want to move away from somebody else's new skybox, "Select only my objects" can make that easy.
.

Answers below.

1) You can only search in the land sales tab by price or size of lot and also mature or PG. And mainland or estate. If you want phrases, you might try searching with those phrases in Places search tab, since I have seen land sales come up in there before. But, you will have to weed through a lot of ads either way.

2) No limits on height that I know of. I don't notice lag as much in a skybox. Keep prims under their limits and don't have a lot of high resolution textures if you can help it on the land, or scripted items. That seems to help, too. Also don't buy a lot next to a very busy place, or the sim (surroundings with the same name), will lag more than other sims.

3) Set it to group. Wear group tag when setting home. But that will make things like tv and radio more problematic.

4) Pay attention in the land search tab to current median prices. Do not go much over that unless the surroundings really, really warrant it. Sometimes it IS worth it to bite the bullet a bit on entry price since then that 512 is yours as long as you have the premium membership going. Also, describe what sort of parcel you want, here or in the 'mainland land prices' thread because a lot of people might have seen one in their travels. Also post your price range, maybe.

Make sure there is no covenant. If it has a covenant it is either not mainland or not really for sale - you'd be renting it. You want land you can buy outright. Mainland has no covenant.

Search Xstreet for a free or dollarbie skybox that is low prim. You can find freebies/dollarbie ones at hunts and also La Flat has regular dollarbie specials on skyboxes if you join their group, although theirs are not ultra low prim. Every prim counts in a 512 lot.

Have fun hunting and good luck.

You can get lower lag by avoiding more commercial areas. Some merchants feel they need to avoid areas lacking commercial traffic, so are likely to stay less crowded.


Depends on what you plan to do with ground, if anything. Look at what I did with my plot:
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Fietzo/78/175/72
- but most of my stuff is in the sky.
Note also how on the adjoining plot I used the lack of flat land to my visual advantage.

Height limit is roughly 3990. But at that height if your building is over 10m tall, you won't be able to add anything on top of it.

If you want to know your exact limit, fly to 4100, and drop something big enough to find when you fly down. That's where I got my number, but I did it long enough ago that I don't recall for sure.


As others have said, group them. Ideally, if you plan to go above 512, add one more alt to premium -per- 560 by which you go above. Every premium in your group then donates its land, you get a 10% bonus to the total, and usually it will end up cheaper than buying tier.



Spend a good day before you buy - LM lots of plots. Don't rush into a good deal too quickly.

Travel using the map with land for sale turned on. It just feels as if for some reason, 80% of the land for sale is not showing in search...

TVs and radios are just fine on group land. Just deed them to the group. For that reason, never buy a TV or radio unless it is copy.

If you plan to go up to 1024, there are good deals still on my Sim. 512 as well if you don't care for protected land, but today the last of the protected 512s were bought.
- Some foolish land flippers have also just put up some very BAD DEALS on my Sim... way overpriced (9-13L or so per sqm next to a 3L plot is not wise... ). So it might result in the Sim staying largely empty for a while.

The only radio I've found that works on group land is AJ Trumbo's and the only way I can get a tv to work on group land is to copy/paste the feed url into the media tab.

Another way to see land for sale is to go view/land owner in your top toolbar. The land for sale will be orange.

I'm guessing you forgot to deed the radio/tv to the group (just setting is not enough) or the land is only set to group rather then deeded to group.

As long as the media device and the land are both deeded to the same group it will work.

No, the only way would be to visit the plots yourself and see how your avatar behaves and what the plot looks like.


4096 meters is the maximum building height. I believe this means that the center of the top prim in your house can not be higher than this altitude.
If you're only interested in living in the sky, then do NOT worry about flat land. The only thing that you should care about would be the price of the parcel, sim performance, and the view at your intended altitude (wear a flight feather to fly as high as you like, Argent Stonecutter supplies them for free at his shop I believe).
Manny land flippers flatten land, and feel it is a good reason to increase the price asked for the parcel, destroying more mainland groundfloor view in the process. Really, if you don't care about doing something on the ground, then do not worry about whether it's flat or not either. If you're ever interested in building things yourself, then non-flat land will actually make an awesome training ground, just to try and fit a build in to the limitations of the ground.


By all means, DO buy your land for the group and invite some alts for it. Transfering your land and allowance to a group increases the allowance by 10%, which is one of the reasons why some people use multiple alts to purchase land. A 512 sqm allowance turns into a 563 sqm allowance. You won't be able to use all those 10% because plots are always in increments of 16 sqm, but it does mean some extra prims on your land, even if the "extra sqm" is located on the other side of the sim. It's just 9 more prims on a 512 plot, but still, those 9 prims are worth it!


For a land: just fly around, and look at the prices of plots. Turn on "show bounderies" in the "view" selection from the top menu. You'll find a LOT more parcels than using search. The parcels that are set for sale will have an ORANGE borderline. Also, be careful that the parcel is "complete". A common practice used to be (and I still occasionally see this) was to cut out the centre piece or a corner of the parcel, and ask 20,000,000 or something for that small piece, while setting the main parcel for sale for a normal price. Donut parcels like these are USELESS, this is a scam to be VERY careful about.
If you are unsure about a parcel, just make sure that the borders form a perfect square for 512 or 1024 plots. For a 1024 plot, you will even want each side to be excatly as long as each other side. If there's a weird extrusion on one side of the plot, then there's a chance that there's a hole in the middle or a gap on another side.
Standard square parcels also tend to fit prefab builds much better than the ones with jagged edges do. Prefab builds are generally made with a standard square in mind.

For your house/skybox, the following tips: Less prims is better. There are some good skyboxes available that take only about 10 prims. Never go over ~50 prims, or you won't have enough prims left for furniture.
Good skyboxes come in the pricerange of 0L$ to 1000L$. With this I mean that more expensive isn't necessarily better, but also that some features do tend to be more common for the more expensive ones (lockable doors, tinting windows or closing curtains, built-in holo-decks, etc.).
Make sure to get a copy-able version of your skybox, it makes some things so much easier, though you won't be able to send a copy to your alts then. You might want a modify-able skybox even, but that's upto you of course.

Furniture:
Prims matter! You'll run out of prims very fast with a 39 prim bed or a 25 prim couch with 9 prim table.
I never go over 20 prims for a bed, and even then, usually don't go over 12 prims when buying one. And they can still look as good as (or better than!) the 39 prim bed.
A couch rarly needs more than 12 prims either, many very nice couches exist that take only 7-8 prims.
A table should never cost more than 6 prims. Even a non-sculptie table can look good with as little as 2 or 3 prims.
The more prims you save on furniture, the more prims you'll have left for personal details, like paintings, statues, a magazine on the table, poseballs, etc.
And of course you'll always want to keep some prims unused to unpack bags. I've seen merchants with 20-prim shopping bags, though those were really pushing it. But keeping 7-10 prims unused to unpack bags seems to be the "sweetspot", at least for me.

Build limit is exactly 4096, a nice round number.

This.

Once you deed it to group, any radio will work, through its normal controls.


Oh, if you find any donut parcels -PLEASE- AR them. Do your part to help repair mainland. That tactic is reportable, and should be reported. Though I don't think LL will act on a corner cut, they should if the donut hole is actually fully enclosed inside the dominant parcel.

Don't hesitate just because they seem to be owned by different people - often the seller of the dominant parcel uses an alt account to hold the donut, but LL can tell who is who if they have to - report the donut's owner, but not the outer piece. The outer piece might be an innocent victim, or it might be a connected account.


Build height max -IS- 4096. I'm sitting in world right now testing it. Flew to 5300, and dropped and item. It stopped at 4096. I opened edit and changed it to 4800, it stayed where it was. I tried to move it to 4097, it stayed at 4096.

That must be new (possibly added in Havok 4). It used to be when you rezzed an item over 4096 it went off-world immediately.

Nope, deeded it, and set it, and had officers of the land group come in and do the same....

Also same thing on land I own myself.

Abigail is right though, your device is unusual if it does not work in this way correctly. I would say most radios will work on group land but you must deed them or at least deed the control unit in a two part device.
I can speak from experience not only as a group land owner but as a creator of a radio that works on group land. Ones that might not are ones that check if the person touching the device and operating the menus is the same owner as the radio. Obviously if the radio is deeded to a group then you are not the owner of the device, the group is. Radios that don't check this or do a proper check for if you are in the same group as the radio before allowing it to set the parcel music URL would work just fine.

I also would add that in my opinion there are more advantages than disadvantages of having land in a group than self owned in my experience.

Presumably you could rezz an object where the centre of the root prim is at 4096 and have it extend upwards past 4096, a bit like the void scenery trick.

Clarissa, If I can remember to I'll send you the 411 on the two radios I use.

I took scripts from one and put them into another - so I probably just need to give you info on one of them (the one that had the right scripts was 9 prims, I put it into a 1 prim one...

I think the only reason I did that was not liking the menu design of the 1 prim one (it had a max of 10 channels, the other has 59 channels in it, so far, maybe low 60s - I've added a few, I don't know why, I only use one of them - but I don't like having limits on me even if I don't ever go past them anyway).

They were both freebies, so its no major investment.


Oh... this might matter. At 5300 I didn't rez the item, I wore it, then dropped it. I then flew down and down until I saw myself pass it by (I made sure it was very big and solid white so I couldn't miss it ). There it was at 4096.

I actually did this because I misread the posts above and thought they were claiming max height was 4996... After I did it and after my post, I re-read above and realized that the claims above me did in fact say 4096...

Where can I buy one?



A lot of the freebie ones and some of the for-sale ones seem to run that way. I've tried with - okay won't name them here but - some decent brand names in SL and they will not work on group land. AJ Trumbo's radio works on group land but I think it takes tweaking the note card, and a lot of newer residents won't want to or perhaps be able to do that.

I'm surprised a scripter hasn't made a tv and radio that work better on group land, yet. Or if they have I haven't really found them I guess.



Oh thank you!

I'll send you one for free when I get inworld tonight

Wowsers, thank you also!!

Well, yes, an object can extend past 4096. A simple 10m sphere will extend to 4101. But if you read off the object position in the editor that shows the center of the root prim, and that's what counts.

Hmmm.

Here is where I got my two radios:

https://uncensored.xstreetsl.com/modules.php?name=Marketplace&file=item&ItemID=534890
- I used the skin of this one.

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Thalia/139/206/701
- Artisan Designs Free Radio, sitting near the entrance to the furniture store. I took the scripts from the one that says it is made for use on group land, and put them into the first radio, then combined their stations notecards.

I deeded the result to my group.

How do you combine station notecards, please?

Sure, I knew all that about the position of the centre, just was not 100% sure if SL allowed a prim to poke past the 4096 limit - pretty useful though as the base of your skybox could be the root prim and at 4096 with the rest of the linked structure extending upwards to at least link limits.

I just opened the two cards and did a select of the text in one, copied, and pasted it into the other. Then I manually edited the syntax of what I'd pasted in to match that of the second one (I think I had to change commas into lines or something).

You can always edit notecards, so you can always change your list of stations, add, or subtract or whatever. About 50-80% of the stations in most radios and TVs in SL are dead streams that don't work, so at the least you'll want to delete the entries for those as you find them or as they get shut off...



Until you decide to rez a sofa up there at the top inside your eye of Sauron...

- Or your linked sexbed up there rezzes something and if goes 'poof'.

(That happened to me actually - I was -at- my prim limit and my sex bed decided to rezz a toy and next thing I knew I was IMing the creator explaining my oopsie... I assume the same problem would occur if I'd done it at above max height.