Newbie Kit: What do you wish you'd known?

I'll send you the WIP tonight. It won't be the final, but there should be enough to keep you entertained for a while, along with Landmarks to under 30 day freebies

Cheers.

get over to sin skins before your 30 days is up

Thanks Lucrezia. Can't wait. Appreciate it.

Imogen, I'm already wearing a beautiful skin that I'm extremely pleased with that I bought from Dragonfly. Got a nice bod now! But thanks for the heads up.

Add me to the list of hopeful recipients - just reading this thread has been enlightening.

If Lucrezia hasn't finished by the time your 30 days are up, Sommer, we could declare you an "honorary noobie" for another month or so...

N Minus 7 and counting...

No. It will be nice to at least get past the one month stage. lol

Hi everyone! I just landed in my Second Life on Thursday. I am feeling so overwhelmed with info overload while having so many questions at the same time.

I hope to attend some of the classes listed on an NCI board near the spot where you first arrive but its the little things that are so frustrating. Like how to find and use an animation so you dont walk like a stick person, or how you find and use the nicer hairs. I just tried to go to Gurl6 an hour ago because they give out a voucher for hair but it had a no pass zone all the way around it.

I have completely missed this whole feather thing..are they purchasable? And I cant seem to get some of the prim hairs and clothes that I did get for free to actually look right!

Arrggg I wish I knew more about programming now or even had an old version of Paintshop.

Anyway...I will keep up with this thread and if anyone knows where I can go to talk to other women about the whole shapes, skins, hair and why my eyebrows keep going wonky, please post.

I am going to log in tomorrow for my first full day in SL and hope a nice cup of coffee in the morning will make things clearer.

Look forward to meeting some of you

Welcome to SL, Avien!

Don't worry, you'll catch on fast.

Gurl 6's "freebie hair" voucher is a great service (Thanks, Six Kennedy!) But you can also get other makers' hair free, some without having to visit their stores. Try The Free Dove for a good selection, not only hair, but other things too.

Calla also has great hair. They give some out as freebies at the Dove, but you can sit in their camping chairs to win hair too. And there are usually other campers there, so you can meet some nice people that way.

Flight feathers can be found among various free goodies.

Might have to work on the walk. Some shoes have a sexy walk built in. Or you can buy one separately....here's a link to an inexpensive one: http://uncensored.slexchange.com/modules.php?name=Marketplace&file=item&ItemID=237540

When you buy a shape, you're buying the time someone put in on the appearance sliders to make it look juuuust right. A lot of people figure they can do just as well on their own, for free. And you can...it just takes some tweaking and patience.

Skins are another matter. The default skin can be adjusted for tone and makeup colors. Most custom skins can't...sort of like wearing a thin suit of latex. But they are MUCH better looking than the default skin. You just have to spend some time picking out the right shade and the makeup style and colors you like. You might want to get several variants of the same skin, for daytime and evening makeups. A few skins are semi-transparent at the lips and brows, and let you use the makeup sliders to make changes in a limited range. Once you pick a skin, you'll probably want to go back and tweak your shape again...a given skin seems to demand a certain shape to look its best.

Skins can be expensive, but if you look around, you will find some quite good ones offered free or at very low cost.

If you're looking for and at everything, and don't want to keep bouncing around the grid from one specialty shop to another, you might try browsing the Big O mall. They have LOTS of stores.

I can't say about the wonky eyebrows...do they do this in Real Life?

Hope to see you in world!

If I could go back and do anything over, I'd take a lot more snapshots of my early days in SL, and make a lot of landmarks. I wish now that I had landmarks to my former first land, the clubs and shopping areas I used to hang out at-- all gone-- just so that I could go back there, years later, and remember, and see how it's all changed.

Hi Avien,
Like Lindal said..... the Free Dove is a good place to start, quite a few nice free hair packs too. As for skins.... Sin Skins do a lovely 1L$ pack for under-30-dayers. No need to buy a walk really, a standard 'sexy walk' is available in an AO freebie at the Dove as well. And there's definitely a pair of free shoes there with built-in sexy walk. Flight feather..... i'm sure someone will hand you one if you ask. If not, give me a shout in-world..... i'll gladly throw you both a flight feather and a walk )

Drop me a message in game and I can help you fix up any of your hair/clothing problems at least. I don't get out of the sandbox much these days and chatting with anyone in game would be a treat just to break up the monotony. Even after almost a year in game I'm great with prims, but my friends in game all seem to be my alts. =/

If you find a good place, be sure to let people know =) Maybe you'll have better luck than me!

Thanks everyone!

Making some notes now for places to visit. I should probably go to the new area sandbox and sort through all the zillion of things and get my inventory in order before visiting new spots. This is why Saturday mornings with coffee work so much better than an evening after a long day at work

Picked up a notepad too. Seems taking notes will be a huge help for a bit.

To be honest, it is a little intimidating to jump into social scenes when you arent sure exactly how you "work". Worrying about embarrassing yourself seems to be just as much a reality in SL as in RL.

Just in case he reads these forums, I wanted to thank Christofer, a lovely gentelman dressed as an Egyptian god, for saving me from the new arrival area the other evening and spending some time trying to answer my never ending stream of questions.

Thanks again

SL will help you get over that "easily embarrassed" problem.

In the few weeks I've been here, I've....

- fallen from a great height
- snatched myself baldheaded in an, er, intimate situation
- was unable to remove my pants in the same situation.
- lost my bearings and couldn't find Calla's store while it was only about 50m away
- froze my AV in various odd positions
- chosen an inappropriate gesture by mistake
- teleported to underwater destinations. Blub.
- teleported to destinations where I couldn't get out except with another TP
- missed my landing and dunked myself in the water. Several times. Blub.
- flew into walls/ceilings/windows/floors. Bonk.
- put on the wrong article of clothing
- put a box on my head/hand/waist. Several times. In public.
- rezzed a spaceship in a public sandbox, and run it smack into a group of AVs while trying to figure out the controls.
- went to a dance club with only the lame SL default dances in my possession
- distracted a lady while she was modifying her storefront and had a billboard dropped on my head.
- got myself yelled at by security systems.
-IM'd when I should've chatted and vice versa.

The list goes on, but you get the point. Even experienced SL'ers do this stuff sometimes. It's a new world, after all! Just laugh at yourself and move on.

Most of this sounds like me, especially the flying-into-walls stuff. Well, maybe not the "unable to remove my pants in an intimate situation". Er, I mean, I CAN get my pants off fine. I just don't need to. Because, I mean, I am never in intimate situations, I mean, where my pants would need to come off. Or, er, I mean not other kinds either ..

Ok. Mostly I just fly into walls. A lot.

i still do half of that list.... especially the flying into walls thing, i forget i havemy jet pack on while traveling and well ..BAM doesnt even describe it.

i carry swim fins with me at all times. and with the wrong article of clothing? well at least its not a "prim" part!! Welcome to SL You Two!! im sure You will have a blast!!

oh i forgot !! Wilted Rose has an awsome freebie spot across from her store, hair skins shapes clothes, etc. look her up in world!!

After almost a year, I STILL fly into immobile objects and wear the occasional box...I think you just get less worried about it as time goes by. "Oops! Oh well..."

Oh, and ETD has some great freebie and/or very inexpensive hair. It's on sort of a bookshelf-looking stand to the left of the doorway as you come in.

Brash, you crack me up. Humorously, not aerially. Well, maybe aerially, if I think about your post the next time I'm flying.

When I was new, I did a lot of both. I took pictures, and made lots of landmarks. Four years later, its kinda fun to visit all the dead landmarks to see what now occupies these old places.

I've been looking at this thread for days, and I find that my early days in SL weren't exactly comparable to a noob's first days today. There has been an interesting discussion of places to go, freebies to get, and advice. In my early days, most of what we are familiar with in SL wasn't invented yet. All I can say is that I wish I had known about SL a few months earlier. I wasted 7 months being a "Founder" in TSO before coming here.

If I could go back I would want to have known two things ... first I wished I had known that when I went into appearance and changed my clothes others could see what I was doing while I was doing it not just after I saved it and closed out ... and I wish I knew how to add a friend I didn't know how at first.

Elinah

Whew! I've just finished going through all the responses. Thanks, all. Now I need to re-write, and re-organize. But please keep any more ideas coming. I'm going to try and keep things brief, yet informative and also without duplicating the amazing efforts of others.

Thanks again! You've all been very helpful. And if anyone wants to "beta test" my kit, please either comment here or IM me. It would be good get some feedback of the kit itself so I can make final edits before I unleash it. Thanks.

you might want to include a link to zonkster.com

it's aimed at users who want to reach someone in-world without logging on.

Oh my, I just spend over 7 hours sorting through all the things in my inventory and I havent even starting my "visit here" list.

THANKS to Lucrezia for the use of her lovely tea room. Finally a spot to try on clothes, tinker with sliders, etc. The notecards you sent me are great and Ive only scratched the surface of all the information they contain.

A bite to eat and then off to see some shopping site
Laters everyone

I tink dis is why I take as many as I do now. I wish I'd taken more piccies of home over time, or some of the places I visited when I first got to SL. Maybe spent most times at the 3rd birthday, too.

Oh, and bought all the Starax goodies I wanted, too.

Mari

Marianne McCann, I just visited the link in your sig, you are one cute lil sweetheart!

I have 4 daughters (twins twice! Yikes! -- Now *Teen* Twins Twice, Triple Yikes!) and your pics brought back a lot of happy memories of their younger years ^_^

Back when they were Marianne's age: http://brashendeavors.net/pix/kids.JPG