Staff Writers20 February 2008, 9:39 PM
Help Island is a useful place to visit before you leave for the mainland. There are lots of tips and advice about Second Life and you can also start stocking your Inventory.
Help Island is a useful place to visit before you leave for the mainland. There are lots of tips and advice about Second Life and you can also start stocking your Inventory from the island's freebie store. The Inventory is where all your worldly possessions in Second Life are stored (click Inventory button on bottom toolbar).
Click on the Help Island sign and you'll be given a Landmark card (top right corner) which contains the Teleport link to Help Island. In Second Life, teleporting is the quick way to get around. You suddenly materialize at your destination.
In the box that pops up, click the Teleport link. BTW, when you get a card and keep it, it's automatically placed in your Inventory box. If it's a Landmark card, it goes into your Landmarks folder, Second Life's version of your Favorites.
The teleporting lands you in the central hub of Help Island.
At this point, get rid of the orientation guide box in the top left by right clicking and detaching it. There's another noob already hard at work on changing her appearance (we'll get to
changing your appearance later).
Have a good look around the island. When you're done, head to Help Island's Freebie Store.
The Freebie Store has some useful and not so useful stuff, but you may as well pick up what you can, it just ends up in your Inventory box. Pretend you're in a supermarket and explore the aisles. Our avatar Jeb thinks the 10 Dance Animations could come in handy once he's in a club in Second Life.
To pick up products, right click on them and select Buy. You get the above box, which tells you the contents of the package and, most importantly, the price in Linden dollars at the bottom. In this case, the price is L$0, because it' a freebie. It's just as well, because Jeb does not have any
Linden dollars yet.
Once you've purchased a product, you get the card in the top right confirming your purchase. In this case the 10 Dance Animations are free but the process is the same as if Jeb were buying them.
Wow, "Black Velvet Boy," or "Spider Set." The clothes in Help Island's Freebie Store are so appealing...not. There are much, much better clothes in any of the thousands of commercial stores in Second Life. But keep exploring the Freebie Store.
This is more like it. Some furniture might be useful for the day when you rent or buy a house in Second Island. Most homes are unfurnished at first. However, note that this furniture is just that, furniture. Eventually you're going to need some
"special" furniture .
Anything you buy is automatically placed in your Inventory box, under the appropriate folder.
You can see the goodies from Freebie Island building up. Jeb clearly has plans for the Ornate Medieval Throne, not to mention the Garden Trellis.
Jeb's also found a Tuscan villa. It's free, so it might come in handy when he buys a plot of land in Second Life. The villa gets stored in Jeb's Inventory box along with his other purchases.
Just outside the Freebie Island store, Jeb's found another free house. The only problem with this one is that it's kind of open! But won't hurt to stick it in his Inventory box.
It's time to leave for the mainland, or Second Life proper. From the central hub on Help Island, head towards the Sandbox area and the departure point.