Taking suggestions for a SecondLife Survival Guide

Okay. I acccidentally suggested as a joke that we need a Survival Guide for Secondlife.
And now everyone thinks it's a good idea. And they want copies.

So... since I"m bored and need to break in all the Content Production crap on my computer, so I figured I'd compose a short guide. Thing is, I need your help.

I know plenty about
- Basic Building
- Basic Scripting
- Navigation and Wresting the UI
- Flying

I need help with
- Shopping
- Land Ownermanship
- Clubbing
- Making your own unugly avatar (I didn't make my shape).
- Noob-Freindly Destinations
- Common obstacles, scams, crappy locations, etc.
- Proper combat / counter-griefing tactics

First point for new players: stay out of the forums!

I can help with shopping, I'm semi-pro at it, and with shape making tips. But I'm usually in world pretty late on weekday nights so I'd have to impart my knowledge on the weekends.

When Is A Yard Sale Not A Yard Sale -or- Only using the one useful aspect of the Find Menu...

Would that be searching for people, or places?

I'd say People. But I use Places sometimes. Events, Classifieds, Popular, are spammed to death and completely useless.

Yep, I haven't even look at the events list in about 4 months. I've never even looked at the classifieds yet.

I use Places all the time. Just type in random crap and see what pops up. Then pop over and take a look around. I use Events, too, but it is very convoluted.

n00bs can handle the forums. It's great for tips and tricks.

Jargon file would be helpful too. I remember the thing that really confused me at first was all the SL specific language:

* Rez
* Resis
* Prim

etc

Oh and the notorious box-head syndrome.

Add "tp" onto that list. First time I heard it I thought they were talking about toilet paper.

Hey this is a great idea. I'm tempted to steal it seeing how I made a whole nice system for books!

TP = toliet paper for me, too!

I would like it, Burke, if you don't make land barons sound like demons from hell, or try to scare off everybody from living on their lands.

I would also like it, if you are going to talk about garage sales, that it be accurate: Garage sales are okay, listed in Commercial, as long as they have a specific beginning and ending time, and a host is present throughout.

coco

What is a Resis anyway? I know it's a type of monkey and all.

I think it's supposed to be plural for "Resi," short for Resident. But Resis monkies are pretty cute.

And.. I dunno. I think part of mastering the Appearence sliders is more a self-experimentation thing.

If nothing else, though, one should at least recommend that new players try and modify themselves from the default shape as soon as they can. Personally, I spent most of an hour on the appearence section of Orientation island just modifying my shape. ..Though most of that time was spent just waiting for the thumbnails to load. x.x;

And I've heard it mentioned in another thread about waiting a while before buying anything. That might be a good idea. let one get used to the markets and get a feel for what a "good" price for things are.

Right. I wish we had more default shapes.

toast made a really funny politically-incorrect guide-to-SL that was in the boardman park (near the gazebo) or may be located in Deimos now.

Oh maaaaaan, that thing is hilarious. It is up in Deimos, in between the shops and the waterfront. Absolutely SL-politically incorrect but so damn funny. And mostly true.