Please Help

I am new to Second Life. I have done quite a bit of reading but still can't find much help. I have a few questions and any help you can provide would be much appreciated.

01.) I have heard that there are greeters and mentors who can help new people get acquainted with SL. I can't seem to find any of them, where are they? I have already gone through Orientation Island are they somewhere else.

02.) Is there any way to make money besides dancing and taking surveys? I have completed quite a few surveys and have still not received any Lindens. All I have managed to get is a ton of spam in my inbox.

03.) I have been to several so called "free islands" that offer free skins, cothes etc. The problem most of the stuff isn't free. If they are free they should have a big sign saying "free stuff here". Are there any places that I should check out as a newbie? Are there any places wear I can get really free clothes and stuff.

04.) What do the terms "rezz" and "prim" mean? Is there some kind of dictionary of SL terms?

05.) I have yet to make a single friend, I am a very nice person, but can't meet anyone even if my life depended on it. Are there any good places to meet other people?

06.) Is there any kind of in depth walkthrough/faq/guide for SL? I am still quite confused about a lot of things.

I apologize for all of these questions. I just don't know where else to turn for information.

MT, I tried to IM inworld but you are not online. IM me inworld and my partner and I can give you a hand.

The easiest way to get money is to add a pay method to your account (not the same as a Premium membership)...10USD is generally enough to make a good start.

I believe the majority of items at Free Dove are actually free. Otherwise, you can check this blog for designers' freebies:

http://fabfree.wordpress.com/

Rez means to pull something out of inventory onto the ground. You'll only be able to do this in build enabled areas, which you can determine by looking at the top center of your screen where the region info is shown. Prims are the SL building blocks.

http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Glossary
http://secondlife.wikia.com/index.php/Category:Glossary

For friends, try searching terms which interest you in groups and events. Or, stop by the Forum Cartel Hangout in Allana.

There are a number of helpful video tutorials here:

https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Video_Tutorials

Some of them are probably more advanced than you need right now, but the others should be helpful. The Knowledge Base, accessed through the Support area of the website, may answer some of your basic questions.

Hi MT! Welcome to Second Life and the forums. Never feel bad about asking questions, that what the forum is for and everyone here was new once too. SL (Second Life) is a big place and it takes awhile to figure things out.

In regards to your questions, there is a new residents kit available at many locations that will help with some of your questions. You can get one on the front deck of my store (Prim Pincher) though there are many other places to find them too.

Freebies are the way to go for a new resident, and there are many places that have truly free merchindise. There are land marks for such places in the new resident kit I mentioned. Also, typing freebie into search will help you find places.

As for making money, there are several ways to do it, though the best it to take some time and learn how to build or script and create objects for sale. Honestly, it's better to take the pressure off yourself and buy a few dollars worth of lindens to get started, if that is an option.

Lots of other people will jump in with great tips and help here. Have fun, give yourself some time to get adjusted, and, again, welcome.

Free Dove is a great start.

Also search places NCI. Can set home there, and lots of tutorials plus freebies and sand box.

If you need a freind, IM me

hihihi! welcome to SL & the forums

Im Faithless Babii...and iam a mentor...if you would like some help with sourcing free clothes I acutally have my own freebie store...and a guide for places you might want to go to get some more..some fun places to go see...etc etc...my patience is pretty endless, give me a nudge inworld, lets talk

hi there and welcome

I am a mentor in SL, as well as a mentor buddy and mentor coach.

If you ever need any help, or just want to say hi, give me shout (just use search, click on people, type in my name, and then im me from the profile window)
If I am not logged in, I should get it in my email and can reply via email, or log in if need be.

I do spend a great deal of time in SL, and have been a mentor for a little over a year.
I am used to helping folks over the little bumps that they may encounter.
never be afraid to ask a question, no matter how silly you might think it is.
Especially on the forums, there is prolly others who are wondering the same thing and dare not ask hehe.

Wow, you guys don't know it but some of that stuff is helping me out too... Well MT, I can't point you to a bunch of helpful places as I'm pretty new too but if you wanna friend, you can go ahead and search for me. Sadly, I'm not on the grid (In the game) too much 'cause of school and stuff but next week is spring break so I plan to be on a lot in the day time.

Welcome to SL, MT.

For new residents, there are Money Trees which grow L$1 every 20 minutes and will let you 'pick' the money from the tree. They are good for getting you better at moving about and using the camera controls. They also let you explore parts of SL that you might not find otherwise.

I have one just along from my shop Valentino's Design Studios, Achado which you can use if you have Payment Info on File (and are less than 30 days old).

There used to be a 'Master Money Tree Directory' at Bravo Bravo, but last time I checked, it wasn't working. However, there's a Money Tree Pickers Group that you can join (use the Search button and the Groups tab), or you could try just putting 'money tree' into the main (first) Search tab. I'm guessing that's how people are finding out about the trees...

Imho the best way of making money in SL is to sell a product or a service. This is just like starting a business in real life though and obviously takes a lot of work.

Another way is to get a job in SL. However my experience is that there are few jobs that have a salary and they're very hard to find/get. Any job where you work for tips is again lots of hard work as you but if you find the right club/bar then it can work out well.

The easiest way to get L$ is to buy them from Linden Labs with real money. For the price of takeaway in real life you can buy enough L$'s to last you a long time.

My advice is always to wait a month before buying L$'s or buying land though. It's easy for new players to waste a load of cash in their early weeks on stuff that's low quality or they don't need. I certainly did! It's very easy to get excellent freebies if you know where to look...




Check out the Freebie Warehouse. This has a huge amount of truly free items, clothes, skins etc.

My other top tip is to visit the best stores in SL. Many of them have a box of free stuff near the door or the counter. The free clothes you get from a top fashion house will be so much better than the ones from a freebie place.

IM me in world for a box of my favourite free objects and my most useful free objects. I put these together for new players the other day.




Check out this linkey...

/327/44/226476/1.html




I second finding something that you're passionate about in RL in SL. Joining a group or hanging at a place with like-minded people is the easiest way to make friends. Also the Forum Cartel rocks and there's also the Mill Pond Coffee House for chatting.




SL is not an easy thing to learn. Tutorials are all very well but imho it just takes time to pick up the ropes and a year later, I'm STILL learning stuff. Posting questions on this Forum is a good idea or asking other players. It's just the kind of environment where it takes time to find your feet. Check out the stickies at the top of this forum for some really useful advice for new players.




This is exactly what this forum is for! Welcome to SL

Welcome MT,

The Free Dove, any NCI Center, <ASL> all have good freebies. I don't know if you're male or female,but here are a couple more places for freebies.

Dellybean North of True North Designs has 2 freebies up on the second floor where the women's clothing is. She used to have a box called"Mother Of All Freebies". She just did a complete makeover of her store, so I don't know if the giant freebie box is back out yet. You can always IM and ask her.

Jeremey Ryan of Barefoot Designs in Snafu has 2 freebies of men's casual clothing,these are equal in quality to anything for sale in his store.

Many store owners put out freebie items and there are always prize chairs all over SL in shops. Ivalde(women's clothing) has prize chairs for example. You could fully furnish a house or apartment without spending a Linden dollar.

I went to public sandboxes to rez out many of my freebies when I first came in-world. You can't always tell how big something might be from the item name. Or use the dressing rooms at any NCI Center to try on clothes, and you can ask questions of the NCI volunteers there too.

There are many volunteer opportunities here in SL too, like ACS(American Cancer Society), RFL(Relay For Life), Making Strides, American Heart Association and many others. Just look in the SEARCH tab > Events > category > Charities, or look in the Groups tab in SEARCH.

There are many great people behind their avatars, just give yourself some time to find friends. You'll find them without a doubt.

Ha! Nobody's answered this part of the OP yet...

rez (or rezz): verb, transitive. To create an object in Second Life, or to bring it out of your inventory into the world. "I rezzed a cube and sat on it to keep from getting orbited by a griefer".

prim: noun. Short for "geometric primitive". A prim is any of the basic shapes in the Second Life object creation menu...a cube, a sphere, or even a Linden plant. All objects in SL are made up of prims, shaped and combined in various ways.

A given amount of land can support a fixed number of prims. A full region, or simulator, or sim (65,000 square meters) can support 15,000 or so prims (not counting prims worn by avatars).

Prims come from deep underground. They're extracted by LL's prim drilling rig and released into the air, where Residents can grab them by using the object creation menu. Or that's what I've heard. I've never visited the rig myself.

I would suggest that if you ever think you will buy lindens from lindex, to go ahead and do it now, just buy 1 dollars worth, just to get the timer started.

so when you are ready to buy lindens (or sell for that matter) you will not be as hindered by the limits.

the limits levels do not start until you make that first purchase. (some people say that going premium will cause the timer to start, but I can not confirm nor deny that) so to be sure, I advise folks to purchase just a dollars worth to start the timer

actually they were answered, by ann (3rd pst)

Hi MT...welcome~!!

I would be happy to help you in-world any time. I'm one of those 'mentor' people you've heard about LOL Most will be hanging around to help folks at orientation island or the freebie places....and sandboxes.

You can IM me in-world and I'll help you out any way I can. There are tons of freebie places to help you get started....the easiest way to find one is to go into search/places....and just type freebies. (I use this method when ever I search for anything, be it item or place)

Anyway.... it's best to get your feet wet in SL....explore....talk to people and eventually you will get the hang of all the different aspects of existing in a virtual world. making money is a big question that every new person has.....and tho there's quite a few laces to 'camp' or find money trees.....it's painstakingly slow going and you are stuck in one spot for hours while your avatar earns. Not much fun, especially when you're new.
So....best advice I can offer is to continue learning....find something you enjoy and are good at (building, clothing or skin textures, scripting....) and develope a cool product.

It will take some learning and goofs at first LOL But the object is to have fun with it.

good luck (IM me if you need anything)

"Greeters" don't exist any more. "Mentors" are usually found around Welcome Areas, or on Help Island Public. (You can go to Help Island Public any time by clicking Search, selecting the Places tab, and entering "Help Island Public" as the thing to search for.)

Also, there are many people who will be happy to help you in Second Life even though they are not official "mentors". You could visit these places too: (these are strings you can search for) "NCI", "The Shelter", "The Free Dove".



You get Linden dollars by buying them with real money. In Second Life, this isn't "cheating" as it is in other online games - it's what you are meant to do. Buying Lindens is how you pay for the real work it takes to build Second Life and keep it running; that's why Second Life doesn't have a subscription fee - the virtual items you get are really just an additional incentive. You can buy Linden dollars by adding your credit card information to your account, then clicking on the "L$" button next to your balance while you are logged in.

As a new user you can also get Linden dollars by visiting "money trees" in world, from which you can collect small numbers of L$.

You can also earn Linden dollars by selling goods or services. Remember though that your customers will be other real users who have probably paid for their Linden dollars with real money. Doing this can be satisfying but it can also be a lot of work, and unlike online games it is not guaranteed that you will ever be able to earn money this way.



Try the Free Dove, as has already been mentioned. NCI has a large range of freebies, too.



"to rez" means "to appear, or to make something else appear, in the Second Life world". When you first enter a new area, the things around you need to be downloaded, and as they gradually appear on your screen, they are "rezzing". When you place an item from your inventory into the world, you are making it appear, so the item is "rezzing", and you have "rezzed" it. It's from the classic sci-fi movie "Tron", if you've ever seen that (and in both SL and Tron, it's essentially shorthand for "to resolve".

"a prim" is short for "primitive" - one of the fundamental building blocks that make up the world. Everything in Second Life is made from prims, except for the sky, sea, land and avatars. (Parts of land and avatars can possibly be made from prims, through.)



Visit any of the newbie places mentioned above and you'll be able to meet people. Other than that, it depends on what kind of people you'd want to meet!



The problem is that in Second Life, there's no single thing to do, and everyone sees it in a different way. For example, you could write an entire book on LSL scripting, but many people enjoy Second Life without ever caring about it. It is probably best to learn as you go, that way you will learn the parts you are interested in and other parts you don't need to worry about. (Unless you are a learning addict like me, in which case just go out and try lots of random things and see what develops. )

*bump*

Many people get frustrated by the "new" low limits and find themselves forced to wait a month to buy enough L$ to buy land, things they're interested in, etc.

(Don't make a habit out of buying very small amounts though, you pay 30 cents per L$ buy so for $1 you loose 30% in "administrative costs"

It will also ensure that, should it ever come to that, you'll be able to sell L$ without having to wait.

And you get that shiny "Payment Info Used" instead of "No Payment Info on File" .

/me blushes. Speed-reading threads again. I missed it.

/me brightens! But my reply was more entertaining!

You can meet people pretty much anywhere in Second Life. I think people are more open to conversation in certain areas such as: Welcome Areas. Rave/Ballroom/Jazz Dance clubs. Live Music clubs. Sandboxes. Take some time to observe the area first and see how people are behaving. Who knows? Someone might greet you while you are doing this.

Find someone who seems to be standing alone and chat them up. I would recommend IMing people with a greeting. Some people might not like that. Which brings me to my other recommendation: Try reading a person's profile first before you talk to them. You can learn a lot about a person by their profile.

I would ask first before offering friendship. Don't feel bad if they decline because there are hundreds of reasons why they can't or won't. If they do accept, don't stop at just one friend. Make lots of friends because they can't all be available when you log in.

I use L. L=Linden dollar, the money used inside Second Life.

Note 1: There are random times that money trees will "grow" fruit. The fruit can give the lucky "picker" 5L, 10L, 15L, and sometimes 20L.
Note 2: Many trees will only allow you to take something like 25L from the tree (Something like 25L per day, or 4 hours, or something undetermined by me). So if you see fruit and happily pick them you might end up with a max of 25L, and roughly 25L-50L picked put not available to you are anyone else because you already picked your 25L.
Note 3: Some trees require payment information on file to be able to pick the money from the tree.

I also recommend this thread here: /327/3b/234755/1.html

And this thread here:
/327/cb/212810/1.html

And:
/327/2c/171147/1.html
/327/36/138663/1.html

Copy and paste the links into a new window. The code is off-line, unless you have the "BBCode Emulation in Greasemonkey": /327/b2/188445/1.html.

There are mentors in world but they are not always hanging around Orientation and Help island, they have SLives to, but even normal residents will some times help you out. My best SL friend is a mentor and owns a club, and love building with her man so she is not as about as she used to be, but she is very nice and very helpful.

There are many ways to make money in SL for a newbie yet to aquire skills the first options are Camping or Money Tree Farming. The latter is only good for your first 60 days or so but is a great exploration experience. These should tide you over till you develop a skill or more. Don't go looking for a job right away, have fun, explore, meet people and find your place, then find a job you are really happy with. If you have to camp for a little walking around money after 60 Days, you should be able to make enough from money trees for a good anti-idler. Case in point my SL wife started out as a dancer in a club (Not Exotic) she hated it, then I intoduced her to my best SL friend who was starting a club and she learned to host there and liked that better, later she learned to DJ and LOVES IT! Almost as much as she loves me. So take your time, find something you enjoy doing.

Free Dove is good, I would check them out. There are also plenty of shops that offer freebies or newbie packs a well. It may take some exploring but you will get there.

"Rez" is the term for something appearing in world be it an Avatar or Prim, for Avatars you may hear some one talk about their Rez Day, this is equivilent to an RL Birthday.

"Prim" is the term for the basic building blocks of SL. All stuctures and items in SL are made of one or more prims to make an "Object".

When you reach a mainland "Welcome Area" you may find some nice people there, I say this because some welcome areas are better than others. The Shealter is another Newbie friendly place to try as well, other than that try exploring and being sociable, not everyone will reciprocate but it works. Heck daring to poke my head out of the shell I used to carry eventually landed me an SL wife I was not looking for when I came to SL but whom I love very much.

Guide? Not really, though try looking up some SL classes, NCI has some great free classes to get you started.

well I poped in on Orientation Island and Help Island, and there were several mentors there each time...

Another good way of getting free stuff is to go to the onrez site: <http://www.shop.onrez.com>. Registration is free. The site is set up so that you can choose a category, say "women's shoes," and select only those items that cost L$0. You can see pictures of (nearly) all the merchandise, so you can see what you want and not end up with a box of 100 freebies to sort through. The items are delivered in world to your avatar.

Ooh, good tip. You can do this at Slex too.

http://www.slexchange.com/

yes I will give you that.... and now when I rez a cube I will think about it being pulled up from wherever they reside until we pull them up


hmmm maybe.. that is why sims are limited to 15,000 prims, those little suckers are already there, hiding, waiting to be pulled up from wherever they are....