Unhappy with my new account

Hello, I've just been on SL for about 3 weeks now, and now I'm paying $10 a month, when I upgraded my account I got some land and a free house, but I'm thinking of ditching/downgrading my account because of the Prims restriction, I started having problems when I could place parcels anymore.

I've only got 117 prims for my land, my house take up the most and I've only been able to plant a few objects, now I'm starting to wonder if I should just give up paying $10 evey month?

Any ideas on what I could do?

Thanks

Unfortunately there is not much you can do, short of investing in more land (it is painfull up front, but in the long run it isn't that bad... particularly if you plan on doing something with the land)...

For now you could try building your own house... the free pre-fab houses are fairly prim-intensive (atleast the ones I have seen)

one thing you can do, if you like SL is go for the annual plan (6$ a month, but up front) and tier up for a bit more land.

Other options include renting land, in which case you're not tiering up or paying $ to Linden Lab, but you'll likely end up buying Lindens with USDs to pay the rent in world.

Thanks for you reply's, I might keep the land for now, and do some Prim Management 101 to the house, but very dissapointed at this restriction, it now looks like my Second Life is more restricted than my first. All I would want is some way to increse the ammout of prims/objects I could fit onto it, but doing this costs more or looks complex more hard work.

Prim management is important when you only have 117 to work with. An extra 512m of land is $5 each month on tier and you will get an extra 117 prims. When you get the additional land, be sure it is in the same region, as the prim use is based on the percentage of land you own within a region. The plot does not have to be right next to your current (but, its nicer if it is) it only has to be in the same region. You can use all of your prims on one plot if you wish.

As already suggested, the annual plan is a nice way to go if you know you want to be here awhile and have the $72 up front. That way your premium account is paid for in advance for 12 months. It also makes the $5 each month for extra land a little easier to manage.

Even if you do stay on the monthly plan and spend $15 a month for your account and extra land, its still a pretty good entertainment value. For $15 a month, you have access 24/7 all month long. Weighing this price against buying a music CD, renting DVD, eating out, or going to a show, it is a pretty good value overall.

Hang in there, best of luck to you.

Another idea for you would be just have a roofless skybox. Its not that hard to set the house into the air for privacy, and there are easy to set up teleporters to make it easy to access the place. Doing this would cut down on prims that would be used for things like roofs, ceilings, etc.

And if your concerned about clouds, they're easy to turn off.

ctrl + alt + D to enable debug *if you dont already have it enabled*, then go to rendering, types, and uncheck clouds.

Prim management is daunting when you first start to do it, but the satisfaction when you learn prim conserving tricks can't be beat. Rich textures offset low prims alot too.

I started on 310m of land and now own a sim... so watch out! Building is addictive.

Actually, I think it's past time that LL do an overhaul of the objects available for free at telehubs, as all the houses there are too big/primmy for First Land, and most of the other objects are from pre-v1.2 days and not good examples of how to build/script today.

Any of the objects there that are still good could always be moved to the Library Folder that we can all access.

I have made First Land houses with 12 prims or less, though these days I tend to be creeping up towards an average of 40-50, just for added detail.

Are you in one of the new houses in Blumfield? If so, you may be limited in what you can do with your house. I checked out some of the houses and some seemed more prims than others. There was a cute one for 39 prims. And there are a lot of low prim furniture available. I was at one house in the neighborhood and the owner had a 9 prim table and an 11 prim chair and a 18 prim lamp. Each of those items could have been done and nicely with 2 or 3 prims a piece.

Also, if there is something outside of the home you wish to experiment with, you can go to a sandbox. If you use something like Frans Charming Personal Workspace, you can go up in the air and do all sorts of things without having to pay for prim.

Thanks for all the help, and also to the people who found me in game and helped me out I've desided to stay with SL for now, but might downgrade account. Yes I did get the land in the new Blumfield the area looks good, but is void of people .

Prim managment is hard work, but I'm getting used to it, I think LL could have given new users like myself a tiny bit larger land, 117 is quite small, I don't want to apear as greedy but 250 would have been great.

hi findal,

if you want a prefab house, there is one by damianos thetan which is only 12 PRIMS! and it's very nicely textured. that will leave you with 102 prims to decorate etc.

alternatively, you can build your own house which would take less prims. you can take a basic building class, and follow it up with a trip to the prim library in the region (sim) called noyo. that place will teach you all the fundementals of building in SL. a trip to GNU in davenport will equip you with dozens of free building textures.


good luck

surreal is right about being clever with textures. my house is basically a box with some additional architectural features but it looks great and its all in the textures. since your still new and may not be ready to try your hand at building, just seek out some low prim prefab. they do exist and you will have plenty of prims left over to decorate. prim limits suck for sure, but dont let it make you feel your second life is so restricted. there is so much more to SL and believe me you will work around prim limits, as we all do.

welcome to SL, btw

hmm, lets see if i got this,

annual = yearly
6$ x 12 months = 72 $, not bad if you market your land for profit...

yearly

72x10 720$ every 10 years, wow.. i've paid rent thats worse than that...

*scratch that, WAY WORSE

And let us not forget the rumors going around that say we will have more prims per 512m² with future updates...

What you can do is find a store that sells low prim furniture. I started with a 512 parcel and wasn't able to use much of the Tim Hoffman furniture I purchased when I rentd a large barn with a whole lot of available prims. Go to FIND and search low prim furniture stores or IM me and I will send you a landmark.
Pug

The most economical method of all is to do all the detailing, windows, and so forth with textures. I have seen some using that method that are as low as 8 prims for a small house, and you can buy them as pre-fabs. There are some disadvantages; since all the detail is done with textures, you really can't change anything easily, not even paint the interior walls. (The pre-fab ones I've seen are sold as no-modify anyway.) And the detail on a house done that way will not look as sharp as some, because one texture has to cover the entire wall surface, rather than having a smaller one (stone, siding, whatever) tiled to cover the surface. But if you want the maximum number of prims for your interior, it's the way to go.

The other thing you can do is to learn some tricks for reducing the number of prims in a building design. My own custom house started out as the "gray 30-prim house" that's widely available in various collections of free house boxes, but I made major changes that reduced the prim count, even while I increased the living space. For instance, I got rid of the decorative frames around each window; one prim each right there. My house is on a hillside, so the back windows are blocked, so I got rid of those as well -- a couple more prims saved. I expanded the design to two floors -- but a single window object could be expanded to cover the second story as well, since the part inside the walls doesn't show. You're welcome to view the final result at Leafroller (164, 12) -- the final three-level house is about 40 prims, not counting the fancy sliding doors on the deck, and it's roomy and has plenty of detail.

When it comes time to decorate, think textures! You can put in wood floors, floor tile, wallpaper, and so forth, and they cost no prims at all. If that's a little too stark, add a rug -- just one prim. You can find nice basic chairs and tables that run only 4 prims each -- mine are a bit more expensive than that because I like furniture with poses. Inexpensive sofas and beds are also available.