I read that "protected" land was sort of Linden public preserve, so I tried setting up this 72 prim freebie house boat on protected land ocean. It got yanked out from under me in about 10 minutes. So much for that idea!
Traversing Second Life is a truly great experience. You can explore the beautiful and bizarre, meet people from all over the world and yet, at some point a body, even a virtual one, requires a bit if privacy.
Everyone´s reasons are different. The amount of rooms you can rent by the hour with sex beds and dance poles, attest to one common reason. It simply isn´t mine. I´m the Lady Hermit, remember?. So this post, as will all my posts, has a moderate rating.
FREE PRIVACY: DRESSING ROOMS! Run a search, I don´t know how many there are now, but Info Hubs and Newbie areas often offer free private changing areas.
UNDERWATER: You forget it´s there, but down deep in the the virtual sea is a good place to change clothes without being bothered. If you are very lucky and the auto return is slow(half an hour would be good), it is even a good place to rez big stuff you want to examine, or even try building something freaking huge. If you find a good undersea location, LANDMARK IT AND RENAME THE LANDMARK “MY SOGGY SANDBOX” OR SOMETHING.
EMPTY RENTALS: You know how you can get a small to medium sized meal by pretending you are going to buy cheese, and eating TONS of samples? Most rentals are open for inspection by prospective clients, which includes you, doesn´t it? Normally you can´t rez furniture, but you can probably change undies, and then some. This includes shop rentals, by the way.
ABANDONED LAND: I have had good luck messing with my wardrobe and rezzing big stuff on abandoned land. Just remember to pack the space station away before you bring out the dinosaurs!! Too many prims will get the auto return going.
You may have gleaned, gentle readers, from my meanderings that I do not part with ANY currency(, and there are quite a few in my life despite the euro) without exploring all my options. Seriously, I am REALLY cheap . But as Second Life has developed into a more serious method of chilling out for me, I began to get, well, bored with constantly trying to find somewhere free to be alone. I didn´t want to wait for a dressing room, or jostle in a sandbox… I just wanted to get out a bunch of my cool free stuff and mess with it. (Without swarms of male avatars showing up and asking to be my” friend”. Which is not harassment, I know; but it is like continually reliving everything that ticked me off about being 20. I know this isn´t something you hear too often, but men become much more likable as you get older. They don´t feel as though they have to make what I always thought of as the “obligatory pass”. They hold the door open, talk about their kids, crack a joke,talk about real concerns, ask for advice, in short, they act like people… Whoaaaa girl!! Reining it in. Rant over. Sorry. )
So I finally decided to break down and rent. This is what I learned.
You can rent anything, from a tent on a beach for 10L$ a day, to private islands for thousands of Linden dollars.
1. You really can rent almost anything. I got alot of results running a simple yet effective search, “cheap rentals”.
2. about 1,5 L$ per prim is a good rate. Get out your calculator. IF YOU WANT TO BUILD, LOOK FOR A RENTAL WHERE YOU CAN BUY EXTRA PRIMS!!!!
3. Your rental does not become your HOME LOCATION. You can only set your home location to land you have purchased as paying member, or to an infohub. There are rentals you can list as your home location, but it will cost you!! Just make sure you briefly teleport back to your rental before logging out, and then set your Second Life browser to “last location”, before logging in the next time. Also, put your rental in your landmark files FAVORITES. An easy, free way to get home quickly.
4. If the rental is furnished, check carefully to see if it is full of adult poseballs. If you don´t want them, they are very annoying.
5. If you are renting for somewhere to mess with building, , or even just do something small like change clothes YOU ARE GOING TO NEED A DECENT SIZE AREA. Otherwise you will spend all your time adjusting with your camera angles so you can see what the heck you are doing. In a small rental, the second your avatar turns around, the camera is looking at a wall . Very annoying.
This was my first rental, a large apartment on top of a tower block at Enchanted Islands. It was unfurnished, big, open very neutral, and only 199 a week for 50 prims. At that price Lady Hermit rented the flat next door as well so she wouldn´t have neighbors!
6. You are going to want a neutral setting. What if you rent a snow covered ski chalet , and then get a really great freebie box of tikki themed stuff? Look for the words ART or ARTIST when renting. They tend be more geared to the resident shaping the feel of the rental.
7. As much as my son and I enjoyed the two apartments, as my disassembling/ building repertoire expanded, I began to notice the roof was getting in my way. As was the 50 prim per apartment limit. I decided I would be happier on a piece of land with a higher prim allowance. EMPTY LAND RENTALS ARE VERY EXPENSIVE. And even on artsy Enchanted Islands, the rental lots are side by side, demarcated by a single line. GASP! NEIGHBORS!!!! The cost of islands in the sea is genuinely prohibitive. Which brings us to….
My island in the sky.
