Premium & Purchasing Land Qs

[AngelicDescent]

Hi all. I just started playing last week and it's been a fun adventure so far. I've had a chance to build some things within a public sandbox and from this, I would like to own a piece of land on the mainland. That said, this brings me to pricing and upgrading to Premium membership. I've done a lot of reading of forum posts, well as the wiki information, but I'm still confused because of how the pricing works. Once I upgrade to Premium, this will give me an option to buy a parcel on the mainland from my understanding. Thank you to whomever can answer these questions, which I apologize for being so many. I wanted to get some insight, second opinions and to make sure what I'm reading is correct or not.

a.) I know Linden gives individuals a home with Premium, but does Linden choose where I'll live on the mainland if I want to get a parcel? Or do I go to the locations that are yellow (with the small dollar sign) on the map, then purchase that parcel from someone else? Once a parcel is bought from a resident, the information in "About Land" will be changed to me or is it something I fill out on the Second Life website? How does that process pan out?

b.) If I have to go and buy the land at the yellow locations, how does square meters interact with monthly land fees? I assume locations are different in terms of square meters, so it's something I'll have to look at. I did check out the calculator, too. For example from what I saw using it, if the land is 900sq-m, it will get rounded up to 1024sq-m's monthly price?

c.) In the future, I would like to start my own clothing line, so I can at least make a living within the game (for better world interaction and "crafting" purposes). Keeping what I asked in mind above this, say I look for a parcel for my store on the mainland, this is allowed? And additional fees for that land will be added to my overall land fees (parcel I consider my home + the parcel my store is located on)?

d.) For general parcels (e.g. pieces of the home, furniture, etc), how does that play in with square meters? I noticed on "About Land" that there was a number of parcels that could be used on the land. Will that parcel amount come with the land?

e.) Overall Pricing: with everything that was asked, this brings me to pricing. I will be paying Premium costs ($10 monthly) and land fees ($5-8 monthly). I'll probably buy additional $L for a parcel on the mainland and a prefab house from a store in-game (or build my own). I wanted to make sure this was correct about the overall costs.

[Alwin Alcott]

a) if you want a Linden Home you can sign up for that at your accountpage, it wil be given out randomly, so you can't really choose the place, but you can abandon it up to 5 times a day till you find a good place. After the 5th you have a wait for 24 hours vbefore you can change again.

the about land you can change yourself inworld as soon you own a parcel.

b) The yellow parcesl on the map you can buy freely... it's for the one who wants to pay what the seller asks, so be very carefull what you buy, some won't ask reasonable prices. Use you inworld search to see what's for sale, size, and costs. The more land you own the higher the tier level will be/ And tier is calculated at the highest amount of land owned during a billing cycle ...one second, one m2 above your paid level and you will be at the next for a month.

c) you can have a stor everywhere you want at the mainland, as long it doesn't break TOS and maturity zoning. Every parcel you on, or the larger your landholding, will affect the tier level. Be aware tier levels speed up quite fast, next level is double of the previous one... if you are on 1024 and buy additional 512 you go to 2048!

d) you can rezz up to 117 prims/land impact per 512sqm. one object can hold more than on prim/li so it can fill up pretty fast.

[Qie Niangao]

Alwin explained it already, but I just want to re-iterate: a Premium membership comes with a choice of two distinct options, one a free Linden Home (very restrictive, at fixed locations, with a non-removable house, and allowing no commercial uses), or regular Mainland (where you get to choose from and pay for any for-sale or at-auction parcel on the Mainland continents.

From your description, you almost surely want to buy your own location, not settle for a Linden Home.

With your Premium membership, you get the first "bonus" 512 sq.m. of "tier". If you need more than 512 sq.m., you'll pay more, according to the calculator you've already found.

Note that many people "live above the shop" on a sky platform, or swap that arrangement with the shop on the platform instead. Others keep home and business on separate parcels. Either way, the limiting factor will almost always be Land Impact -- the total number of prims and mesh geometry that will "fit" within the limits determined by the total area with the same owner in the same Region.

There are many other possible considerations for special cases. To the extent your situation has been described, the one other I'd mention is the "group tier bonus": Mainland owned by a group instead of an individual can be 10% larger than the tier contributed to the group. Practically, that means a single Premium membership that contributes all its 512 sq.m. bonus tier to a group can support up to 560 sq.m. of group-owned land (with a little left over, less than the minimum unit of land ownership).

Finally, note that Premium membership also comes with a weekly L$ stipend. If you do the math, that's a very significant discount to an annual membership fee, so much so that a group of annual-premium alts, all contributing only their bonus tier, is a very cost-effective way to own Mainland, net of those stipends.