SL for Nowt

A brand new male av (whose blushes I shall spare by blanking out his name) tried to make friends with Mar today. She TP’d into the main money tree directory area, and was instantly accosted. Literally! The room hadn’t had time to fully rez before this charming conversation happened in IM:

[4:11] Newbie: oi

(He immediately offers friendship. Mar declines the offer.)

[ 4:11] Newbie: oi
[ 4:11] Newbie: posso te add
[ 4:11] Newbie: ?
[ 4:11] Mar: Excuse me?
[ 4:11] Mar: I don’t speak Italian.
[ 4:12] Newbie: this is portuguese
[ 4:12] Mar: And I don’t just add random people. I’m sorry.

Mar TP’d right the hell out and muted Prince Charming up there without further compunction. Rezzed only yesterday, he has a long way to go before he’ll make friends that way…

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Today I just logged Mar a couple of times to send her whizzing around the grid (which was pretty unstable during the rolling restart) to grab some money. She found a bunch of cherries at one spot, worth 20L, so that was almost half of the daily Linden quota I’d set her already found.

My intentions with this money is to get as much as I can before the end of her 30 days as a newbie (you’re disqualified from getting money from money trees after that time) and at the same time to build up an inventory of stock to sell in a small store or market stall. Then, I’ll look around and find somewhere to rent where she can actually sell those items and hopefully begin to generate an income of her own.

No pictures today, alas (and Photobucket have withdrawn one of the NSFW ones from yesterday. Oops.)

Earned: 64L

Spent: 0L

Day 2 was spent jetting around SL, money tree-hopping. And a very profitable day it was, too! Thanks to trees sprouting a lot of fruit (worth more money than simple bills) as well as Linden dollars, I ended up L$155 richer by the end of day 2! (And yet still some people think camping is the way to earn money in SL without doing anything much…)

I also created a chair (with a sit poseball, using a freebie sit script that I got) to go with the glass desk and lamp. (Typical me, I forgot to take a screencap of it, though.)

Day 3 was also spent grabbing a bit more free money. I’ve set myself the goal of getting at least L$50 a day from money trees: easy enough to achieve, especially when I hop online in the early hours of the morning (GMT) and many of the trees haven’t been visited by other people recently. They’re often loaded with money and fruit at those times.

I also grabbed lots of freebie items along the way, got some lucky chair prizes (many of them designer ones, not cheap-looking freebie tat) and saw some strange sights. Now those I did screencap. You’d better hop behind the cut for those pics (and be warned: a couple of them are NSFW).

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So at the end of day 1, how is Mar’s status as an SL n00b? Well, I ended the day with a new look, a couple of built items in my inventory, and some L$50 richer without having to camp for money.

This is how Mar looks now:

A bit of an improvement on her initial image, I think! Pop behind the cut to see how she got along on her first day in Second Life.

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So what is SL for Nowt all about? (Hey, that rhymed…)

Well, I wanted to see if it was possible to live a Second Life without putting in any external money of my own.  I’m going to do this without camping (sitting on chairs/mopping floors/doing other activities that make an area look busy, in return for small amounts of cash) and definitely without begging. To begin with, this means everything will be a freebie.

My goals are as follows:

• Kit out a female avatar (relatively easy, as SL is full of freebies for girl avs)
• Create a ZHAO for her (animation overrider, to give her customised walk/fly/stand animations)
• Build up an inventory of free textures to be used in building items
• Find her somewhere to live (requires money, so I’ll need to raise capital somehow)
• Find somewhere to sell the items she builds and thus get her a regular income (again, requires money)
• Create a male ‘look’ for her, as she has an ambiguous name and could be either sex (plus kitting out a male for free in SL is much harder than kitting out a female)

These are my starter goals, and I don’t expect to accomplish them all at once! But with the help of some fabulous blogs and freebie places in SL, I should soon be on my way.

This is Mar, my new avatar. Say hello, Mar!