A few newbie question =)

I am very intrigued so far, but plan to spend the first month on a "free" account before deciding whether to commit to a Premium and a longterm commitment with property ownership etc. I do have a few things I have had a hard time figuring out ingame on my own. I did read thru a lot of sites & knowledge bases but I have a bit of "information overload" and was hoping someone could point me to some specific answers.



1) I know the Premium account allows you to buy land (up to 512m included before addt'l tier fees) and a certain amount of "prims" -- a few 512m lot parcels I looked at, included not only a purchase price but also a weekly tier fee. I am confused because I thought you bought the "tier" rights thru Linden and the property itself from a private seller, can someone explain (or give me a very BASIC link) that explains the true costs of lot ownership. Why are these people asking me to pay _them_ a weekly tier fee in addition to the purchase price? Isn't that what the tier fees thru Linden are for? Or is this related to Mainland properties vs property outside the mainland?

2) For now, while I wade thru some of the more complex issues, I have temporary decided to rent a very basic little skybox condo I liked for 100L/week. It has a very tiny prim allowance (50), and I am not sure how to tell what the "prim" count is on some freebie furniture, I couldn't seem to locate anything in item properties that said if this particular rug or chair is, say, 5 prim or 85 prim ... how specifically do I get that information? I also tend to accidently drop items thru the floot a lot =oP will they evict me if they have to auto-return too many lost items? Or is this not really a big deal? I figured the first couple times wasn't a problem but wasn't sure if say after 12 items dropped, you become an undesireable or something because of scripting loads... or something ...

3) Am I able to add some type of ambient music to my new rental or does sound/music add a lot of bandwidth or somehow not possible to do? Can I acquire say a musicbox or turntable with certain preset songs and still stay within my tiny allowance (I think "prims" are like model faces so not at all related to sound, but surely these thigns add lag to an area and so are regulated somehow?)

4) I think there are newbie centers & volunteers but I am having a hard time understanding how / who I can ask specific questions ingame. Is there any kind of "newbie chat channel" where one can ask dumb impromptu questions on the spur of the moment?

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I am sorry, I really HAVE tried to research many of these on my own but my poor brain is bustin' from so much new stuff to learn ... I hope people here are gentle with newcomers ....

1) Mainland land purchases require you to be Premium and pay tier directly to Linden Labs. Island/estate land 'purchases' do NOT require you to be Premium and you contribute to the land owner's tier, but it's more of a lease agreement and some unscrupulous island owners have been known to take advantage of the fact that, from LL's perspective, you don't actually own the land you've purchased. The Land search has a drop down that allows you to choose whether to include islands in your search.

2) There are prim counters out there, but I've always just right-clicked on the object and chosen Edit. If you click the 'More' button and go to the General tab, it will tell you how many prims your object has.

3) Not sure how the radios work, but if you own a parcel, you can stream music to it.

4) Try NCI or the Shelter. Also, search Groups and see if there's something in there that's newbie help oriented.

Tier does go directly to LL (Linden Lab). If the person selling land is asking for moeny after the sale then either a) it's a private island and I would suggest looking elsewhere as "rent" should not include the buying of the land originally or b) Someone has no idea of what they are talking about and ~thinks~ they can charge tier after teh sale, or c) it's a rippoff artist trying to collect L$ they are not entitled to, or d) it is a private sim area with a covenant, simular to RL Private Communities where you pay a monthly fee for certain services.



R-Click on the object in question and open the EDIT pane. If not expanded, click on MORE, then in the General tab, it will detail how many prims are in the selected object. Note: Moving your avatar while editing can "blank out" the edit pane and you will ahve to reselect the object.



For rental land, more than likely only the landlord can do this. Under the Media Tab in About Land, which you can find in the WORLD menu at the top of your screen. Most landlords have a means of contacting them (ie IM, Notecards, e-mail) Contact your landlord requesting the media stream you'd like (or type if you don't have a specific) and then wait patiently. They do have RL and can not always jump inworld to handle things right then, but most do so in a timely mannor. Remember, IMs get capped (prevented from recieving) after so many due to system restraints. If you don't hear in a reasonable timeframe, ask again, but don't get upset. They just might not have recieved it.



NCI (New Commers Inc) has places all over. While not always staffed, there are MANY teaching aids at their locations. The Shelter is a dance club dedicated to helping new Residents. Freindly atmosphere and almost always someone there.

You can always pop out here onto the forums and ask as well. Answers depend on the people reading at the time and beware of the moronic forum trolls that lurk in the shadows *smirks* They come out and ridicule because they have no life. Just ignore them as the brainless slime dwellers that they are and lsiten to the ones that actually talk politely ^.~

Wlecome to SL. And if you'd like a copy of my Newbie Welcome Guide, shoot me an IM inworld. I'm off for work now, but will send you a copy if you want when I get home. It's not all inclusive, jsut things I wish I had known as a newbie.

Cheers

~Jessy

Also, the Candle Society is expressly for newbies; people hang out there and ask/answer questions. There's also a bunch of helpful notecards posted around.

Re: Stuff falling through your floor: I wouldn't imagine that the land owners would really care, and would have no problem continuing to return your stuff. You can always tp down to the surface and look for your stuff there, and 'take' it back into your inventory if you can find it. If you're not sure where it is, in the Tool menu (I think, I'm not logged in right now) you can check 'select my objects only' and then while on the ground under your sky box, select 'edit' on the ground, draw a square using your mouse, and all of your objects should show up in that box, even if they're UNDERground. Hope that helps!

You've gotten some decent answers to all of your questions, but I'll add that once I return from vacation on July 2, you may feel free to IM me in world with your random questions if you haven't already found someone else who is happy to do so. In the meantime, I believe I can be privately messaged through my forum profile and will happily answer any other questions I can while I'm stuck on a limited bandwidth connection and can't get in world to get my fix

Char

Sigh, ok I just dunno why all my furniture falls thru the floor or whatever it is doing, after I *think* I have it positioned.

Is there some final last step I am missing to "set/save" it or something, because it ALWAYS vanishes after I get done positioning. And not immediately -- I take the focus off and it seems to stay there a bit while I glare at it suspiciously, it seems to behave, then suddenly it is GONE and I am getting yet another "returned to lost & found" message again....

Also -- do items always drop to the floor if they are not precisely flush or will they hover a nanometer above the ground if you don't set them down perfectly? Is this what my problem is?

And thanks so much for the very fast replies!!!!

Does your landlord have a tenant group? If so, you need to have it active when you place items, or they will be auto returned.

I'll just add to Charlene's offer.... happy to help/answer questions in world anytime

and welcome to the most addictive thing you can legally do...............

hi Brash,

It sounds like your stuff is being auto-returned by the parcel. You need to ask your landlord to either set the parcel's autoreturn to OFF, or to add you to a group that has land permisssions.

Ok, I got the group thing figured out and now it all stays, yay!

Thank you all SO much!!