Rufferta

On the other hand, if you are already using your 1024 tier on Mainland and want to move into Bellisseria, I believe you will have to upgrade your tier (Under Account/Land Manager/Land Use Fees/Update Tier) to qualify.

For those who like Asian decor, this is an Outdoor Bath House set from Monkey Banana These items were originally sold at gacha events, you might be able to find some of the individual items on the Marketplace, but I got the fatback at the inworld store in Calliope for $L1000*. I unpacked it later in a sandbox to get the prim counts**. Yuya Bath House - 7 (platform with bamboo shown on left, other plants in background not included) Yuya Bath - Hinokiburo - (square wood) - 3 with some poses High Bamboo wall - 3 (not shown) Low Bamboo wall - 1 (not shown) Shampoo bottle set - 1 Bath duck - 1 (slow rotation) Soap - 1 Bath pails - 1 each Bath light - 2 - touch on and off (2 lights - one black and one tan) Bath Sake set - 1 (gives cup and drink animation) Bath Enclosure - 4 Clothes Basket - 2 Towels - 1 Bath Chair - 1 with animations Mizu Uchiwa (fan) 2 - with animation - two designs Furo with secret Kappa - 3 (furo shown, but not kappa) *$L900 for group members **I'm sure you could link items to save prim costs. Most items are 'no modify, no transfer' but I was able to tint a few items. Now I hope the next Premium house theme is Japanese.

http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Gebuesch/78/180/28 As promised, I have put together a collection of resources for Bellisserians who might want to live on the Mainland but don't know where to start. It is my response to the Bellisserian Embassies on the Mainland. It's not fancy enough to be called an Embassy though, so I just called it "Gateway to the Mainland". Subjects include topics like "What is Tier?" and "A Short Tour of the Mainland". I hope to add information in the future on terraforming, joint ownership of land, house placement & landscaping, and a step-by-step guide to buying a parcel. Information is from a variety of sources including residents' comments after I posted an article on "How Not to Buy Land"*. If you have any comments, suggestions, or complaints I have put in a suggestion box by the front door. You won't be able to find the place on search due to Bellisseria's restrictions, but there is currently an Operation Mainland passport kiosk on the front porch and after February 26th there should be a Bellisserian Bureau of Bureaucracy passport kiosk there as well. *One of the few subjects on which I am an expert.

Don't tell them you want to downgrade at the end of your paid membership - they seem to have only two categories of membership - Premium with automatic renewal and Basic. As other posters have mentioned, you will lose any land you hold and your stipend will stop. I learned the hard way. Wait until just before renewal is due to expire to downgrade..

http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Blue Moon/182/229/23. This is a free 12-stop hunt where you look for red envelopes. Each envelope gives you a notecard with information about the celebration, and a clue to the next stop. When you've found all 12 envelopes, there are two prizes - a flying tiger and a gift certificate. I also recommend trying the nearby Walden Walk http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Blue Moon/250/184/1094 where you follow a path around an area simulating Walden Pond. Clicking on landmarks along the path gives you notecards with quotes from Thoreau and more information about his life. If you join the group you will also receive a gift at each stop along the way and another one at the end.

It took me a while to find a house that would fit on a 1024 cliffside parcel in Westport, Sansara. The parcel is between the water and the road with neighbors on both sides. I chose this Trompe Loeil Beach Cottage because of the window walls. When I set my graphics distance down low, the view to two sides is all water. When I want privacy, all the glass can be shuttered. The trees in the photos belong to the neighbors' parcels.

When I was looking for land I used all of the above methods: Looking for yellow spots on the map, Going to 'Search' and checking "Land for Sale", Looking at the auctions, Looking at the forum Land topic "Parcels for Sale". In addition I also made temporary landmarks, i.e., "Possibility #1", etc...as I explored so that I could find likely parcels again. Sometimes I would take a pod ride and set my viewer to "Show land owners" so that parcels I passed would show yellow. This method gives you a better idea of the terrain, but it is harder to make landmarks, and my viewer acts weird if I do it for too long. Have fun!

Setting up a Mainland Embassy in Bellisseria: I have some time and tier available and I'm thinking of setting up a "Mainland Embassy" in some part of Bellisseria. I'm thinking such an embassy might be helpful to newcomers whose experience has only been in Bellisseria and who might be interested in venturing outside. This 'Embassy' could provide links to posts and places that can offer help and advice on topics like: What do we mean by Mainland? Geography of Second Life Who can buy land. How to find land. How to evaluate land before you buy it. What is tier, anyway? Renting vs. 'buying'. Finding a house or structure that will fit on your parcel. How to make your own house. Skyboxes. Terraforming and terrain. How to take advantage of the 10% group discount for land. How to be a good neighbor. Decorating on a prim budget. I would be interested in knowing if the BBB would allow me to place one of their passport machines on such a parcel, especially since I am willing to let other groups have their kiosks in said 'Embassy'. I'm not social and can't offer big events or hoopla, but I can make up "Honorary Ambassador" certificates for anyone who wants one. There will always be free coffee and donuts. Added: This is not my original idea, it was inspired by others' suggestions. It makes sense that if Bellisseria has embassies on the Mainland, Mainland should have one or more embassies in Bellisseria.

Sold.

I just reduced the price to $L2000.

I believe I fixed the slurl. Thank you for pointing it out.

Gnoma Region, 123,124,5 Parcel ID 934cdfaf-d4ee-eb2c-0bad-67a025aec6b1. http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Gnoma/123/119/51 Parcel has road frontage, is on a pod route, and property right behind it is abandoned.

OK - you can give a class on how to get and rehabilitate abandoned land, and I can give a class on "How Not to Buy Real Estate".

Some employees of Linden Labs have said that Bellisserian homes are considered ‘starter homes’ for new residents but it seems that a lot of folks just want to stay there. Here are some of my suggestions to encourage migration to the Mainland by making it easier for them to find new places. Establish penalties for sellers who lie in their real estate listings: I just spent several days looking for affordable 1024 plots on the Mainland. Sellers’ ads were often misleading and stated that parcels had “water access” or “protected roadside” when they did not.. Some said that the land was ‘for sale’ when in fact the fee was a rental fee. One even stated that their land was on a different continent. If I was a new resident who bought “water land with sailing access” and then found myself on a water locked prim raft with no recourse I would be angry, and my anger would extend to Second Life in general. Figure out how to get ‘how to buy land’ information to newcomers. The Second Life web page has an excellent introduction, but it doesn’t provide much information to protect against sellers who are not operating in good faith. There are many private residents who are trying to help newcomers. Feorie Frimon, for example has an excellent business, Operation Mainland Real Estate, where she sells parcels she has carved out of unclaimed land,, but I’m not sure information about this is getting out to newcomers. http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Bay City - Handa/14/59/27 Lindal Kidd used to give excellent lectures on “How to Buy Land” at Oxbridge University in Caledon, but I could find nothing like that currently. The Bellisserian Bureaucracy has done a wonderful job setting up Mainland embassies and tours outside Bellisseria, and their “Passport” system encourages residents to explore. Perhaps Linden Lab could also offer office space in Bellisseria to newcomer organizations where they could give lectures and offer advice? Open Land and Sea Access Figure out how to remove the private parcels on ‘water land’ to unclog navigation, or make more waterways. I don’t think Linden Lab needs to make more Mainland, but they could make better use of what is there. Build more roads and rivers. Maybe the Moles could dig out channels for rivers and freeways (suggested names “The Mighty Patch River” or “The Patch Freeway”) and then cut out 1024 parcels beside but not on top of the passages. Right now there has been some progress in clearing private parcels on rivers, and completing a highway in Satori, but it would be wonderful if every waterway was navigable and every road was connected.

What I would like is a larger tier/land allowance. I would be willing to pay up to $200 annual premium fee for 3072 or thereabouts. I would like to have a common inventory for all my alts - Since my alts were created at different times they have different inventories, and I get tired of asking myself things like "Just which one of us has the good oak tree?"

I just sold my last two parcels in Mocha because I was tired of looking at the results of some of my neighbors' +/- 40 terraforming. There are other areas of 'the color sims' that still look nice, but the area around Mocha is a mess. In my opinion, radical terraforming is only useful when you have large blocks of land to work with - when there are smaller parcels there is more risk of ending up with peaks and craters. For small parcels it is also harder to work around the edges without affecting your neighbors. I envision the base land in terraforming as a somewhat flexible horizontal sheet whose altitude points can only be moved up or down - you can terraform to make slopes or holes, but the surface can't be moved sideways. Where you see arches and caves they are the result of clever landscape add-ons. I don't know if there are computer programs that could allow you to terraform to make caves or overhangs on virtual land.

I'm doomed - the last thing I bought was N95 masks.

A Second Life Mainland Community? I like the idea. I was planning on tiering-down to 1024 before my premium accounts renew next year, but wouldn't mind paying for more just to see what happens with this experiment. Living in Bellisseria has always seemed like living in a subdivision or a condo. I would like to put up my own house, and choose my own drapes. I'm assuming that there will be some way to put a covenant on the land itself (like Horizons) but suspect that maintaining the rest of it will require lawyers. My only other concern would be the requirement that the land be flat. I like a variety of terrain.

If your land is on the Mainland, I believe you would lose the right to own land if you change to a basic account.

I had the gatcha bug for a while - Most of the time I budgeted my spending but once in a while I would find myself standing at the machines like a casino zombie - blankly pulling the lever. Like a gambler, I remembered the wins, and not the losses. I rationalized my habit by saying I would donate the items that I didn't want to one of my groups to be re-sold, but when I looked at what I was going to donate I realized most of it was a bunch of junk. For the better items, perhaps creators can sell them as "limited editions" or "collectibles"?

Do we have an assumption that successful virtual realities need to have super realistic avatar rendering to be popular? I have some expensive avatars in Second Life, but in Minecraft I am happy with the Steve-skin. In Minecraft dressing is easy, but in SL it can take hours to match outfits with bodies, and the forums are full of newbies asking questions like "Why doesn't my new head fit my new body?" Second Life has a lot to offer, but I believe we lose a lot of newcomers by making it so hard to put together a decent look. I won't even get into building....

This is the landing point for a wonderful museum in the Blake Sea. After touring the museum and picking up notecard information about subjects such as Yggdrasil and the Nine Worlds, you can go out back and view a longboat on the water. Next door is a smaller museum showcasing art styles. Where am I?

This cabin is in Sheldon, 19/215/48. It was a joy to explore Bellisseria again - there are so many lovely places there. I can't wait to see what surprises the Moles will have for us in the new Fantasy regions!

I found the Open Seas Project Box - good information, and a beautiful parcel! http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Fudo/20/149/22

Another thought - if you have the patience, visit the parcel at different times of day and on different days of the week. (Advice based on experience - once pitched a tent without noticing the Midnight Express Train's track was a few feet away.....)