A few questions

1) Can someone point me towards a good newbie site for Second Life? I can't find any good newbie groups; the ones I've been told about aren't there anymore.

2)Where can I buy walking animations? I want to customize my avatar as much as possible, but I'm confused as to exactly what I can do to it, such as animations and scripts.

3) Does renting an apartment cost real life money?

Please forgive me, I just started yesterday...

Sort of yes. You need to get hold of some Lindens to pay your rent, Lindens can cost real life money (You can buy them using paypal/Visa etc).

However you can earn Lindens inworld, in which case they won't be costing you real life money. I may have confused you here, I'm confusing myself!

There are also rentals on Private sims, away from the mainland, where you may be asked to pay real life money via paypal or some such system.

I like Abranimations. If search is still down, open the map and enter Devils Moon as the region name.

1) I don't know any sites, but in world, try The Shelter. They've got some really nice people there.

2) Go to the Animation Warehouse. It's got pretty much all the animators in one place. From there you can demo all the Animations you want.

3) Rentals, yes, they will cost you real life money. If you haven't already, you can buy Lindens (currency) in game by clicking the green circle in your top right hand bar. You also use outside sellers like SLExchange (although you'll be going through a few extra steps). You can also work in game, but that's an extremely slow process imo.

Welcome to SL. It's a great place to be when things actually work.

Renting will cost lindens, which you can buy using paypal or a credit card. You can also check on this forum under employment or something like that and look for jobs to earn money. However, the amount of the rent is really very little. I used to rent before I joined premium and bought land. IM Lizzie Bergson, or might be Bergeson, by searching for her under "search" and "people". Her and her partner have some really nice little houses for rent, and they're great landlords. The rent was based on amount of prims....for example, I have a lot of furniture and stuff, so I paid 300L per week for 300 prims to use. But you can pay 200L a week or 200 prims, etc. If you work that out to RL money, it amounts to a little over $1/week in US money. So, about $4-5 bucks a month to rent from them. When I was searching for rentals, that was about the nicest and cheapest I found for the amount of prims you could have to use.

NCI is a great way to start. If search is working, put NCI in the search and you will find about 10 places to visit. The have tons of freebies (including walk animations) and people to help you. They are relatively safe places to hang out and there are classes geared for new folk.

(New Citizens Institute).

Ok, thank you everyone.

And my default hair is gone! I was trying on a demo of other hair, and then I couldn't get off. Now that I got it off, the hair that I had when I started is gone! How do I get my default hair back?

If you go to The Shelter or the NCI areas, you can get a lot of free hair, free shapes and skins, free clothes, and sometimes a little free L$. There are dressing rooms there as well and some very helpful people.

You won't miss your default hair or skin, believe us!

(But you can find the originals, if you must, somewhere in your inventory under Body Parts or clothing, or just edit appearance and remake them. Click SAVE OUTFIT and you'll always be able to revert to them in the future.) K.C.

Mattheous, do go to NCI's main site (I think its call Kuala? something like that). They have a BIG bulletin board of classes right by the freebie area, it's immense. Or use Search to find classes - they list all of them there. Other teaching institutions, like TUI, also list classes under the Events section. For someone like yourself I would recommend NCI's newbie party class, where they teach you how to manage your avatar, clothing, and how to socialize as well! Maybe make a few friends!

Friends are the most important way to learn about SL. If an older avatar is helpful and friendly, then ask them if you can add them as a friend in order to ask them an occasional question. Then do so! (Right-click on them and choose Add, I believe is the easiest way).

If you don't have to, don't rush into spending money on an apartment. Make some friends - maybe you can eventually live with or near them. You don't have to have a place to live to enjoy your SL.

Have fun!

Fpr the animations, I recommend Abraminations, as an earlier person suggested. They have easy self-contained animation overrides that will give you better walks, stands, sits and other animations, and you can preview them before you pick a set. Then you just find it in you inventory, right-click it and choose "wear" and voila, no more robot walk.

Later on you might want to explore more complicated options, but to start with a self-contained AO is a good way to go. Abraminations isn't the only source of them, but it is one of the best.

NCI's main center is in Kuula. It's a wonderful resource.