Things you wish you'd known as a noob.

I'm trying get a general idea of what brickwalls folks new to SL run smack into frequently. Some of you may have to reach way back and remember things that come second nature now.

Two for me were:

1. Wearing that new box of freebies I found on my head.
2. Finding the interesting content in the world.

It took a while of flying over porn billboards, gaudy malls and casinos, and sign after sign of land for sale to find the good stuff.

What did you have a rough time with?

Camera and view controls!

For a terribly long time, I only knew how to maneuver using the arrow keys, so I was constantly spinning and darting off every which way to get a closer look of something.

*sigh*

The thing that sticks out for me was the inworld settings and preferences and such(not building tools). When I try something new I am impatient till I can get it figured out.

I just this moment remember having a hell of a time trying to figure out how to edit items to move them, and rotate them and such. And a great guy Lukas helped me out.

Decorating our first apt was a pain for me because I felt so clumsy trying to get items staight and placed right. My hubby had a tad more experience so I'd just give him all my crap and say 'Here you put all this down, it takes me too damn long....'

Ummm yeah I think THIS was why I had such a hard time w/ what I mentioned above hehe

Sure, camera, view and build controls, but they're hard to teach easily. They're things that need experience to master.

I wish I'd had a link to all the freebie vendors out there. A landmark to Yadni's Junkyard would have done me the world of good. That's why I have one on my property, amongst others.

I never realized it until i saw this graphic:

http://images.businessweek.com/mz/06/18/0618_72covsto_a.gif

Its a great way of showing SL's lingo - I'd put it up as a billboard in Ahern and Waterhead if I were Linden Lab!

Regards,

-Flip

I wished I'd known that Flipper and Archytas were coming to knock me off my trivia throne.

Bastards.

On a serious note, I wish I had know you could take a copy of a set of linked sets, and then rez them as a complete build. I also wish I had known about drag copy a LOT earlier.

SITTING IS DANG HARD

One of the most difficult things for me to do.

But, will be easy with new click actions in Second Life 1.9.1! Click once to sit on a prim... no more of that "Spin around and, uh, zoom the camera out, and ummm right-click the prim and... sit... oh wait, misfired, let's do that again!" crap.

I also wish I had learned about right-clicking the Mini-Map early on.

Don't worry. Torley knocked us off!

LOLEX! I didn't know Nol played trivia! Well, that's an interesting piece of... trivia.

(Ah, the days when I'd actually page through the Events...)

Everyone plays trivia... or at least used to...

Land. Everything about land confused me as a newbie. Both the transaction side and the land tools. Of course the market was different back then, plenty of public land up for grabs.

The things I wish I had known as a noob. Right now it is, get control of my inventory early. I went around getting as many free items as I could, oh sure, some of it was very nice. But my objects folder got HUGE! Now I'm scared to try and go through it. Its a monster. Guess I will have to do it at some point. Keyword, organize.

Torley was the master. Fast typist too.

I always suggested just giving Torley the money and the rest of us play for fun.

Took me almost a year to realize "drag copy"

Drag copy!!!! As well as the "copy selection" thing. but i guess that stuff really goes more under building.

Learning to use the debug menu was something i would have liked to have known from day one.

Keyboard shortcuts (which there are still not enough of) for map/IM/chat history/everything else

the fact that there IS a chat history.

Learning that dragging a folder containing only ONE item of clothing onto your av will make you naked other than that one item.

super secret hidden options you wouldn't think to look for like "save object back to inventory". I didn't know about that one untill about two years into SL.

hmm...guess that's all i can think of. I definately agree with the alt-ctrl-shift camera control thing, a lot of noobs i meet don't seem to be aware of that.

Ok my two year anniversary hasn't hit yet, what are U talking about, I don't think I'm familiar w/ this? hehe

I remember thinking, "why the heck are all these square boxes appearing? what does a plywood square mean? have I reached the goal?"

I kept expecting it to be a game, till I realized it isn't.

All the other stuff I didn't understand are non-issues now.

I wish I knew that account transactions are purged after a month.

Omg yes! 3 months into SL I decided to sit down and organize my already insane inventory. Took me four hours!!! Ok well I got up a couple times, peed, talked to people, mumbled insanely to myself about my stupidity... but still... 4 hours!

Wait, you mean there are other ways to look around?

It kind of sucks being a newbie. People should make more threads like this.

My problems the first week was duing exploring. I would find myself trapped and did not know how to escape. I finally learned to just teleport to another location. Example: I fell into a grey area between sims when trying to climb a rocky mountain. Another time I used a saved landmark to a place that had changed to something else and my poor av was partial stuck in the walls.

Here's one I just learned several weeks ago:

To more easily detach something you're wearing, type "WORN" in the search in your inventory. Brings up everything you're currently wearing so you can detach it more easily than trying to click on an earring while dancing

Force sunset was a biggie for me. I walked around in gloomy darkness for weeks until I realized that I can make it daytime whenever I wanted.

I also loved(love) goofy avatars, I would drag each item, one by one onto my av. It took me at least several months to learn that you can drag the entire folder onto your av.

I wish I'd known every AV I met was actually the alt of another AV.