Free stuff for avatars

Goddess Couture hair freebie from hunt for your inner slut

Many people are reluctant to spend money on Second Life when they first arrive in the world.  For some, it's a reluctance to invest in something if they aren't sure it is for them, and for others it is a matter of necessity because they can't afford to buy Linden dollars or aren't able to verify their account for some reason.

There are quite a lot of shops which offer special freebies for people with an account younger than 30 days old.  There are a variety of blogs which outline the best: FabFree in Second Life maintains a list of 30 days and under freebies.

If you are more than 30 days old, there is a lot of free stuff in Second Life, but much of it is pirated or of poor quality.  It can be a depressing experience to trail from freebie place to freebie place looking for something good.  The best ways to get good quality free stuff are to join groups or follow a grid hunt.

Joining Groups

Nearly every creator in Second Life will have a membership group for their brand, and most are free - but check what you are clicking on when you join a group.  Some of the designers ask for $50, $100 or $150 Lindens to join, but that's a minority.  Most realise that a good freebie will speak for them in ways they can't necessarily predict.

Normally there will be a board in a shop which you click and which will speak the name of the group in local chat.  Open up local chat, click on the name of the group and the group joining window will open on the screen.  Click the button to join the group which is about a third of the way down the window on the right, and confirm that you want to join.

Once upon a time you would automatically be wearing the tag of the group you just joined, but I've noticed that this doesn't happen for all (I'm not sure why).  You will normally need to be wearing the tag for the group before you will be allowed to pick up freebies.  If you aren't wearing it automatically, open up the groups window (under contacts, groups) and then click on the group you wish to activate and choose "activate" in the right hand list of actions.

There are usually boxes around the store with "group gift" on them, which you can click and collect if you are a member of the shop's group.  You may need to be somewhere where you can rez items in order to unpack the boxes, although many creators make their boxes wearable nowadays to overcome this limitation.

The best way to find the sorts of groups you'd like to join, is to look online.  SL Universe, for example, includes a very long Fashionista thread, which lists the names of the creators featured in the pictures.  You could try using the links often given under the photographs for the things you like.  Some of my favourite freebies are from CoCo Designs (clothing), Pink Fuel (skins).

Grid Hunts

Amazingly good quality items are often available exclusively in the course of grid hunts inside Second Life.  Creators band together to create a themed hunt which takes hunters from shop to shop, finding a grid hunt object, which remain the same for every shop in the hunt.  Usually nowadays, the search item will be displayed with a poster for the hunt at most of the venues.

The convention for how a grid hunt works is that you start off with an easy find in the first shop, which gives you a prize from that location and a landmark for the next location, and familiarises the hunters with the object they are hunting for.  You then click the landmark in your inventory, to take you to the next location and find the same object there.  Hunt often publish a list of locations and hints for the next location to help anyone who has failed to find an object at a particular location or who is lazy!  Currently the annual "Hunt for your Inner Slut" is running, with a golden model of male genitalia as the hunt object, and the list of clues is here.

Some hunts charge L$1 or 2 to collect the items, but most are free.

It makes sense for participating creators to give high quality items for the grid hunts, as customers who later decide to bring money into Second Life are certainly likely to remember the quality of those creations they like from a hunt... and they will generally have an inventory full of landmarks to those shops as the result of having done the hunt.  The hunters will often turn into walking advertisements for their shops, if they wear the items they have found.

One word of advice:  sort the folders from a grid hunt quickly, and assess whether you are likely to use an item, then file those you will, renaming the folders to identify the contents to you, and delete those you don't want.  Keep the landmarks for the places you like, and discard those for the places you don't.  You'll thank me in the end - there's nothing worse than vaguely remembering a really lovely shop and having to visit 60 locations to identify which one it was!

Different hunts have a range of items, but the "hunt for your inner slut" hunt which is ongoing includes a hair with a variety of colours, shoes, clothing, furniture, jewellery and skins and makeup.   There are a couple of objects which include couples sex animations, too.

No 7: go to the bottom of the class

I decided to check out the No 7 in SL shop which is currently on Avalon, having found the No 7 in SL blog the other day, as I reported then. Above you can see the No 7 Christmas skin (demo) face and back; No 7 Spring skin face and back; and my normal skin face and back, for comparison.

Finding the shop wasn't that easy. I looked up No 7 in the search menu and came up with a couple of groups. The No 7 in SL devotees, which amazingly (read on) has some members, lead me to two entries for locations, but refused to allow me to see the No 7 in SL shop location. I had to back up and click on the owner of the group, and look at her picks to find the shop.

On arrival, I realised there were apparently two skins available; they are in picture frames on the desk in front of the teleport point. The one from Christmas was available as a demo for $1 and in final form for $1000. The Spring one wasn't available at all. There was a texture on another picture frame which gave the price of the spring skin as $400 but the object was not set for sale, despite the fact that the blog said it had been released about a week ago. The demo for the Spring skin wasn't available either.

I contacted the avatar whose name was on the objects (who is also the owner of the group) and reported that the skin wasn't set for sale and the objects were wrongly named. I bought the $1 demo skin.

It's... horrible. Even at $1 for a demo I felt cheated. I don't know how many they sold for $1000L but all those people who bought it were ripped off. This is a REALLY bad skin. It isn't billed as a Goth skin, but is very pale and very patchy. The verdict I got from a few people who know was that it deserved 2 out of 10 for effort. None of them would willingly wear it. The patchiness and make up cause changes to the avatar face, and there are nasty brown marks on the body which would make wearing backless dresses or bikinis out of the question.

I waited a while and then went back to see if the fact that they weren't set for sale had been fixed. I can report that it had... but the names of the objects had not been fixed, there was no demo skin available. When I bought the skin in the interests of journalistic investigation for $400L, I discovered that the skin was full perms, which can't have been the intention. Fear not, not even the most desperate of rip-off artists would want to scam this skin. It's again horrible. I can offer a 2.5 out of 10 for it, and most of the increase is the fact that it is less than half the price, and the colour is slightly less corpse-like, although it's still very patchy. The verdict from my assistants? It's an old lady skin, with bad patchiness, including oddly light patches under the breasts.

I answered the questions about whether they had decided to go with nipples and genitals or no nipples and genitals: the skins have both. The pubic hair looks weird, and the breasts are so odd due to inappropriate light and dark patches, that I can't believe that either would be willingly exposed. The skins are poor and I can honestly say I have been given free skins which were better quality.

I think this is such a shame. No 7 is a perfect fit for skins, the idea of having a make up artist devise a make up in RL which could be translated to SL - all good. Did they actually look at the result in SL? What did the RL make up artist approve? And did they not get someone in SL to check the quality of the product?

The implementation is dreadful, and the quality of the work is so poor, that it is the opposite of good PR, it's destructive in SL of the RL good reputation of the company. They need replacing urgently with skins of good quality. I wondered out loud to a friend with long experience in SL who could have made the skin. She said "someone who ought to be doing something else". I can't help but agree.

No 7 in Second Life

Stumbled over the No 7 in Second Life blog in searching for something entirely different.

I don't know how highly I rate the blog, but I certainly like the idea that they have started making skins to represent the make up which the Boots celebrity make up artist recommends for each season. It sounds like a bargain... I am curious to know what they decided to do about the rest of the body, particularly the pubic hair/no public hair decision. And how the resident skin makers regard this encroachment.

I just wonder if the understated look which will suit people in RL translates to Second Life. Most people would hesitate to appear in public with the amount of make up that avatars wear... or the lack of clothes.