Yes, Secondlife is very fast-moving. lol

When I asked for help for this project in the SecondLife community, there were also many tips and hints on where to get something for free. One thing surprised me a lot: that the well-known meshbody from Legacy is also available in a free version.

To be honest, for my taste, Legacy’s bodysuit has far too pronounced hips and therefore far too big an ass. Some people like that, but I don’t. Nevertheless, I teleported to Legacy and got the free Meshbody. After all, I want to know.

Indeed: I found the free body in a full version.

And it was really amazing: the body is available in a full version!

It looked really good in combination with the mesh head from LAQ. I also tried to change the body via “Edit”, but I couldn’t get rid of the strong hips and butt as I wanted.

But at least I now have a choice and can change the bodies if necessary. And that can have many advantages. Especially when you can’t get clothes for the mesh body you’re actually wearing. Yes, there are creators who don’t make fashion for all bodysuits.

But let’s just let the pictures speak for themselves.

I already look good, don’t I?

So I teleported straight to LAQ and stood right in front of it. One head each for women and men, even in UHD quality or, if desired, as Evox!

With a left click on “Buy Head Only” I got a menu. When I clicked on it with the right mouse button, a window opened and wanted 1L$ from me. Blimey. Should I ask if any of the bystanders would lend me 1L$?

No, that’s definitely not good form in Second Life. Begging and borrowing is absolutely frowned upon here! I had no choice but to earn 1L$ somehow, somewhere. I’ll tell you how I did it in another post, which is all about earning money.

I later found out that it would have been much easier to get this head without a Linden. I tried again later with the male head and it worked:

LEFT click on the signs and select “Deliver” from the menu that pops up. Then you get the head delivered even without money.
If you buy the head with a hard-earned L$, don’t worry: you’ll get the L$ back.

So I finally had the mesh head for the Lucybody, which I had also won in the meantime and which was sent to me by the Midnight Maniac Board (MC-Board).

I hadn’t unpacked it yet. A mesh body makes less sense without a head.

Very excited, I went back into a sandbox and unpacked both the mesh head and the mesh Lucybody…

In the “Clothes” folder, I first created subdirectories for different categories.

• Clothes
  • Animation Overrider
  • BDSM
  • Dresses
    • cloth
    • leather
  • Jackets
  • Jumpsuits
  • Shoes
    • boots
    • heels
  • Top And Pants
  • Top And Shorts
  • Top And Skirts
    • cloth
    • leather
  • Xmas

You might choose a different form of order. That’s perfectly okay as long as it helps you find everything again.

–>For newbies: this form has always helped me in the past years and still helps me today (even though I use a tool called Wardrobe¹ (for a fee) with the Pippa avatar)

There is a great tutorial in three parts how to organize your inventory _{^{(This links goes to YouTube)}}. The first part alone is very helpful, how an inventory can be organized.

Finally, I then unpacked each of the collected garments (if necessary) and added a picture to the folder so that I can see what’s inside with just a mouseover.

You can see how to do this here ^{(This links goes to YouTube)}.

1. Wardrobe is a webbased tool connected to an inworld HUD, that allows you to dress your avatar just by clicking a pictured item. Together with the RLVa-Relay your avatar get dressed by the HUD. This has a lot of advantages, because you can combine a lot of clothes with each other. ︎

They offer a free meshavatar for newbies who are not older than 30 days!

I tried out this mesh avatar and was very impressed, especially as this avatar is equipped with a HUD which makes it possible to hide different parts of the body. This means that the skin no longer sticks through the clothing.

I also put on hair from the hairshop Stealthic called “Adore”. And I was really taken with this look.

This avatar comes with body and head and is therefore already complete. The clothes I put on Meshtest were for Maitreya.
It doesn’t really fit, but thanks to the HUD I was able to quickly compensate for this.

The body is kept very simple and comes, for example, with two different hand shapes (with or without long fingernails) and three different feet, which make it possible to wear flat shoes or high heels.

With the feet, however, there is the problem that the feet stick out of the shoes in certain poses. A fact that you can safely overlook if you start in SL without money.

Here are some expressions…

Of course, I also checked out this blog page and visited everything I could find there.

I took every conceivable group I could join and within three days I had collected 22 groups, all of which I have linked in the compass.

Of course, this also resulted in a lot of information and offers, very few of which I was able to accept because I had no money.

But I can only recommend accepting every group at first, especially those that offer freebies and group gifts as long as they don’t cost any money. Too bad: the best groups want an admission fee

Because the more information you get, the more stores you visit and sometimes you end up in real treasure troves that offer a lot of freebies!

And my advice is to start by collecting everything that even comes close to your own taste, because on the one hand, clothes that you don’t really like can look really great on your avatar later on, and on the other hand, if you don’t like it after all, you can delete it again later.

Under no circumstances should you keep items that you know for sure you don’t want! The inventory fills up quickly and quickly becomes confusing!

What a mess! Lots of stuff!

For this reason, it is important to go into a sandbox regularly and tidy it up!

Through the links on Fabulously Free I also came across Heavens Gate, a japanese store that also offers a free meshbody for newbies not older than 30 days!

And he gave me a very very simple mesh avatar named “Bambolina”, which is not available at Altamura. But I guess, if you ask politely for Bambolina, I am sure you will receive it.

This avatar is really very simple, it’s ideal for people who find BOM and layers far too complicated.

And I think it looks very good for the first meshbody! No grumpy look any more!

After all, I wanted to know what I would look like with some of the things I had already collected. So I took my hair and a nice dress and put everything on together.

I think the first result is quite respectable, even if the clothes don’t fit properly (Maitreya).

The supplied HUDs are kept very simple.
One of the two HUDs controls the eyes and mouth, the other allows you to hide or show some parts of the body.
These include toenails, fingernails, nipples and hair.
In addition, the foot position can be changed, so you can wear almost anything between flat shoes and high heels and your foot is really in the shoe!

I could have finished my mission and the challenge here already, because from Newbie to Meshavatar would have ended here, wouldn’t it?

But I’m far too curious to see what else is out there!

–>For the newbies: Groupgifts are small gifts that many stores give to their customers free of charge. Most of them are somewhat older but still very nice items that still fit the common mesh avatars.
To get these groupgifts, you have to join the store’s group and have the group activated.
Unfortunately, joining some groups costs money, but this pays off with regular purchases: group members not only receive regular information about updates and new items, but often also get a discount when shopping in the store.

So I entered “clothing” in the Second Life search and worked my way from one result to the next.
Wherever I found Groupgifts, I joined the store’s group if possible. Unfortunately, some groups cost money and since I didn’t have any yet, I had to do without these groups.
Of course, I could have visited one of the many freebie stores, but again, admittedly, my SL experience played a role here.

–>For newbies: Of course you get a lot for free in these freebie stores. Also clothing. These clothes are often very old and don’t always fit mesh avatars. They are often not made from mesh objects, but from real prims. This doesn’t always have to be a disadvantage, but it can mean that the clothing doesn’t fit properly.

When I joined the group, I was also given the opportunity to either use the “Lucky Chairs” or click on the “Lucky Letters”, which earned me more clothes.

I could afford to be a little picky. You don’t have to take everything that’s free. I have my own style and I would like to implement it as much as possible.

On my trip, I met Sarah, who had read the profile. We talked about the project and she gave MeshTestDummy three gift cards from Ewa Boutique. So Mesh was able to buy a few nice things.

[05:07] Sarah xxxxxx (xxxxxxx): do you accept gifts?
[05:07] MeshtestDummy: Yes. That's realistic. :) Newbies get gifts :)

Thank you very much, Sarah!

-> For all newbies: Midnight Madness boards are supposed to collect a certain number of interested parties within a given time. The interested parties simply click on the MM board and are registered as interested in the indicated item. If the specified number of interested parties is reached by the specified time, all interested parties win the displayed item, free of charge of course. If the number is not reached, the board starts again from the beginning.

So the first thing I did was visit LucyBody to register on the MM board, because it was clear that it would take some time to get the body. Here you’ll pay with the most available “currency”: patience.

But it’s worth it because – as I learned from the forum – the Lucybody is supposed to be compatible with the mesh body from Maitreya. And there is a lot of clothing available for Maitreya.

One small drawback: the Bake On Mesh¹ attachment is unfortunately not free. It is available for 250 Linden$ and will be needed later. So you have to get a job to earn a few Lindens :-).

All right. After registering it’s time to find clothes.

1. https://community.secondlife.com/knowledgebase/english/bakes-on-mesh-r1512/ ︎

Is it possible to look more grumpy?

I walked around Adventure Island a bit, found several help how to handle the viewer and your avatar. As you can imagine, I skipped all that.

I had a totally emtpy inventory, OMG! I can’t remember, when my inventory was this clean at least!

->Advice to newbies: Keep your inventory clean! Your “object”-folder will become a mess, soon. So sort the items you get from the first day in SL, create new folders if needed, move clothes to “clothes” after unpacking them.

If you bought furniture, create i.e. a folder “_my parcel” and in this folder add subfolders with i.e. “furniture”. And in THIS folder add another subfolder i.e. “living room”. If you keep your inventory clean from the beginning you will have it much easier later!

Move the packages you got to “Received Items” after unpacking.

I thought a long time about the “allowed” and the “disallowed” by remembering, how it was, when I came into SecondLife first.

Based on these experiences I defined some conditions.

Conditions are:

• I can’t buy any Linden$ from SL, because (pretention:) I am broken in RL.
• I’m not allowed to accept any ALMS (Lindens), except: tips generated by a (temporary) job. So please don’t donate me, just because you like this project.
• We pretent I am a newbie and don’t know anything than some few SL-basics (even I have a lot of SL-skills for sure.)
• I use the tools SL give me. The search, the groups, the possibility to earn some Lindens.
• Newbies get a lot of help and gifts. So gifts like textures, gestures, objects, landmarks, advices etc are okay and welcome, because it’s realistic.
• Please pretent, I am a newbie, so please don’t do, what you will not do to a newbie, just because you may like my project and this challenge. *smiles*

Of course: there is one thing I can’t deny. I know many brands in SecondLife and by this I have a massive advantage in opposite to real newbies. But to be fair, I don’t search for these brands, I search for “body”, “hair”, “clothes”, “lingerie”, “head”, “accessoires” and so on. And of course I visit other places too, like newbies would do.