Hello there, potential resident, or maybe you're a long-term resident who just has amnesia! Either way ... I had read that there was a severe lack of regular normal guides written, anywhere, regarding getting started in Second Life, and using its systems. This seemed strange to me, since Second Life has existed since 2003! And since then it's grown in scope and size and evolved very likely way beyond the wildest dreams of the Lindens (residents with "Linden" as their last names are employes of Linden Labs, creators of Second Life) themselves.

So, the first thing I would recommend doing, before you even create your account (although, it's okay to do this even if you already have an account), is head on over to the Firestorm viewer website and download a copy of their viewer. This works exactly like the default Second Life viewer, except it has much more expanded features and deeper control over things, like graphic settings (if you're not running amazing hardware, this is a plus).

Once you've downloaded and installed the Firestorm viewer, find the icon in your start menu or on your desktop, and then boot it up. At this point you may create your account. Please be sure to select an avatar that you think looks nice, because it'll be a while before you have a chance to find something new! Now, enter your username and password into Firestorm's dialogue boxes and then go ahead and log in.

In the Firestorm viewer, you'll be greeted with a Firestorm specific training area.

Before you even move, familiarize yourself with the buttons on your screen. The suitcase on the bottom right is your inventory. Within, you'll find a collection of free items provided to all new residents (although it is not much) and other sample items meant to familiarize you with different types of inventory items. This is all fine though, because the most important part of your inventory is the "recent" tab up at the top.

Any time you receive an item from a store, a kiosk, or a player, it'll go directly into recent. Don't bother searching through the inventory tab when you've received something new. Always go to "recent", and then do with your new item as you please. I personally highlight any new item and hit ctrl + x, and then paste it into a folder I've created called "My Stuff."

Next to the suitcase is a button that says, "AO", and on the other side, a button that looks like a camera. On the furthest right is a Firestorm bird looking button, this is for quick preferences that allow you to change graphic settings on-the-fly (in case you're experiencing a large amount of lag in heavily populated areas).

The AO button is for static animations that play while you're idling or moving. This is a little advanced for a new user, so don't even worry about this just yet.

The camera button on the other side is for your own vanity, and I utilize it constantly. You can use this to designate a location for photos, and then snap a photo right then and there. But how do you manipulate the camera in order to snap a photo of something specific?

If you hold down the Alt key on your keyboard (Windows, either Alt key is fine, but I use the left Alt), your mouse will transform into a magnifying glass with a plus symbol inside of it. Keep holding the Alt key, move your mouse around and then left click on something you want to look at. That item or person is too far away and you can hardly see it? Keep holding down Alt, then left click and hold both Alt and Left Click, and then move your mouse slowly. You can now manipulate the camera around so that you can zoom in or out, or in different angles.

But that's not all! Down on the bottom of the screen with all of your shortcut buttons is another button that looks like a little eyeball. Click that. Now you have even further camera control that's more static, just in case you want to really fine-tune distance and rotation.

You are now ready to be a Second Life photographer!

But let's take a look at the rest of the buttons we haven't discussed yet, so that you're fully prepared to start your journey in this virtual experience.

So far we've discussed the inventory button, the AO button, the quick preferences button, the snapshot button and the camera controls button. Now we're going to take a look at the button that looks like radar next to the snapshot button. With a left click, this button will bring up a mini-map that doesn't look all too unfamiliar from an MMO map that you might see at the top right of your screen.

You can go ahead and left click, hold and drag this map anywhere on your screen. The little red dot is your position, and any green dots around you on this map are the position of other residents nearby. This is useful for getting an idea of how populated an area is before you venture further or getting another avatar's information without moving. I keep this open at all times just because I like to have it available.

Next to the mini-map button is something that looks like slightly unfolded paper, or simply put, the Map button. This is much more expansive than your mini-map, because it not only shows the area you currently reside, but literally all of Second Life. Go ahead and hover over this map, and then scroll down on your mouse.

Wow, that sure is a lot, isn't it?!

Second Life is a virtual world that has existed for over two decades, and there are many, many places to see, even if some of them are long abandoned and only ghosts of their former selves (which, is still cool to see, like monuments in history).

You can go ahead and click the X button at the top right of the world map when you've finished looking around. Be careful not to double click somewhere because it will attempt to teleport you elsewhere.

Next to the world map button on the bottom bar is a magnifying glass. This is your search tool. With it, you can search people's names, groups you may be interested in, places, land sales, events and even classifieds. Some of these things are topics for later, but if you have any friends within Second Life, and you know their name, you can use the "People" tab to search for their profile (and subsequently, add them as a friend).

If you're not prone to enjoying Adult themed places, be sure to uncheck the checkmark next to the red A in the top right of the window. This won't filter everything, but it will greatly reduce the sexually themed areas you see in search.

Go ahead and click the "Places" tab and search up any keyword you can think of. Chances are, you'll probably find a place to go that matches your search terms!

But don't go anywhere just yet!

Click off of this window with a left click on the X in the top right, just like you did with the world map window.

Next, we're going to look at the button that has a little shirt on it. This is where you can save different outfits you've put together. Once you've dressed your avatar in new clothes, skins, hair, or maybe even a brand-new head and body, you can use this window to save it. Both, so that you don't lose your new look, and so that you can put other looks together and build yourself an ever-expanding wardrobe.

This is an example of what you could end up looking like, in the future, through continued wardrobe expansion.

Never mind the car on the right, this is yet another topic, for another time, and a quite exciting one at that!

Before you close the Appearance tab, go head and click "Save as ..." at the bottom and give your current avatar and outfit a name. Maybe something like, "Noob" would be fitting.

And then go ahead and click the X at the top right as we move onto our next button.

Next to the little shirt and the camera controls button we discussed earlier, you'll see a button with what looks like two little people on it. Click it!

This is the people window. In the very first tab you'll see a list of people nearby. Another easy way to get in-touch with someone you've met or want to speak to. Along the rest of the tabs will be your friends, groups, people you've recently met or spoken to, those you've blocked (although I hope it never comes to this!) and sets of contacts.

Most of this is self-explanatory, but the "Contact Sets" button is especially interesting, because you can basically use this to organize your contacts into groups (when you eventually have some, that is).

Such as: Buddies, Colleagues, Frenemies, and so on!

This isn't a feature I've ever really used all that much, but I'm sure it's very useful for some.

Go ahead and exit that window like you've done the rest, and we'll talk about the next button beside the camera controls. Yes, the one that looks like one of those signs that indicates pedestrians crossing the street.

This is another mostly self-explanatory button. On it, you have controls that allow you to use your mouse to control movement. Moving in this way is very cumbersome, so I would not advise it! But, speaking of movement, if you've already tried to move, you may (or may not, if your preferences are different) have noticed that the WASD keys aren't moving you. You may have accidentally typed a garbled message to the people around you! Fear not, because we can change this.

Up at the top left of the window, click "Avatar." Then "Preferences" near the bottom. There is a lot to look at in here, but the most important thing right now is fixing your movement.

Click the "Move & View" button on the left, and then the "Movement" tab within that window. Now, simply put a checkmark next to the option that says, "Pressing letter keys affects movement (i.e. WASD) instead of starting nearby chat."

Some people like to use the arrow keys, or the mouse-triggered movement to move their avatar, but a lot more, including myself, do not!

A few other things you may want to change in the preferences, while you're here.

Click on the "Privacy" button on your right (something very important to many people), and you'll be greeted by a new section full of privacy options. In the general tab, you can select how people see you, or whether they know you exist at all. But our most important option is under the "LookAt" tab.

Think back to the beginning of this guide you're reading. You remember reading about using the Alt key to cam around at objects and people? Well, unless you change the options you're seeing in the "LookAt" dialogue tab, other residents can and will see whatever you're targeting. Especially if you're being naughty and looking at something private.

Go ahead and put a checkmark next to "Don't send my look at targets to others." And if you're not interested in seeing what other people are looking at, uncheck "Show look at targets."

There, now you're free to look at whatever you want, without worry of being criticized if you happen to accidentally cam into someone's home! (Or elsewhere ...)

You can now click "OK" in the Preferences window (be sure you do this, or your changes will not be saved), and if you feel like it, click off the button for manual mouse movement controls.

The next two buttons are also quite important, because Second Life has voice chat! And depending on how you have things setup, you may have already accidentally broadcasted your voice to the world!

On the button next to the headphone button, the one that looks like a microphone, be sure to uncheck the little box, unless you're fine with using your mic to speak to those around you. Pressing the microphone button so that it's highlighted and permanently depressed, means that you're now broadcasting.

Once you've decided whether you want to speak with voice or not, click on the headphone button.

In this window you'll be given a very simple list of those around you who are also in voice chat. This is useful in order to give you control over who you hear, who you don't, and how loud they are. I believe this window is mostly self-explanatory. Turn a user down if you don't want to hear them or turn them up higher if you're having trouble hearing their voice.

Close that window once you're done.

Moving on to one of the most important aspects of Second Life ... the "Conversations" button! Marked by a speech bubble, you'll want to click this, and then click and hold on the top of the conversations window in order to position it anywhere you please.

This is your main line of communication with the rest of the world of Second Life! Here you'll find nearby chat (people who are speaking around you), any private messages someone may have sent you, and group chat messages (if you happen to join a group with active chats going).

But that's not all!

If you click the "Contacts" button in this window, you'll come to a new dialogue that has three different tabs. "Friends," "Groups", and, like before, "Contact Sets."

We've already discussed contact sets, so we can ignore that for now.

Within the "Friends" tab, you'll see anybody you add as a friend. In order to speak to them privately, simply double-click their names and a private message window will be opened. You can feel free to try this with anyone who may have added you while you've been standing here reading all of this (and be sure to block or ignore anyone who's rude to you!)

Clicking back to the contacts section, also notice the "Groups" tab. This is important for keeping track of groups you've joined, because the amount you can join is limited. It's also useful for right-clicking and "activating" different groups that you're in, because some stores around the world of Second Life will have special gifts for you if you're in their group, and it's currently active on your avatar.

More topics for another time!

The last button on the bottom that you might see will look like papers with a question mark on them. This is your "Welcome Island Guidebook" for the time being, and it basically goes over some of the things we've discussed here. You can go ahead and keep this open, or keep it closed, if you feel confident enough after having read most of, if not all of this guide.

There's only one more button left, and it's another important feature of Second Life. Destinations!

Don't go anywhere just yet but give the Destination pin button on the left side of your screen a click and scroll through some of the listed places you can visit. These are featured areas of different themes and populations that may or may not be interested to visit. I hear a lot of new users like to go directly to dance clubs and have at it. But maybe that's not you!

You can close that whenever you're done looking through it.

Now, some general tips before you start moving.

You might be wondering, "Lula, how in the world do I bookmark a location if I want to go somewhere else, and then return later?!"

Up at the top of the Firestorm window, click "World," then move the mouse down and click, "Places." This will open up a window of general landmarks, starting with "Favorites" first. A lot of places you visit will give you a landmark automatically, which will all collect in here, forever. Like a mountain of destinations that grows overtime.

In order to set a landmark for the Welcome Island, where you should still be, click the plus button, and then "Landmark current location."

Next, you'll get a smaller window that lets you set a name for the landmark, a dropdown that lets you choose where you'd like to put it and an area for some personal notes. Just in case you're a forgetful person, like me.

Once you've accomplished that, click, "OK," and voila! You've made your first landmark. I would suggest doing this with every single place you find interesting, so that you eventually build-up a neat collection of places to go.

Now, for the welcome island ...

Some of the information on these signs they have placed around are a little out-of-date, or strange. So, start walking with your W key and use A and D to steer your avatar's camera, and come up to the first sign.

This won't be immediately obvious to you, but to a veteran like myself, this is really weird. Nobody uses the up arrow or "Page Up" to jump.

Walk up to the hurdles and tap the E key. Holy crap! You've just jumped. Now, hold the W key and while holding, press E again. You've just walked and jumped over something. If you hold down E for long enough, you'll start to hover, and even fly! Continuing to hold E will take you up and up and away! If you do this and you want to come back down to Earth, press and hold the C key until you're back on solid ground.

Continue walking along the path.

Ignore these signs as well, because they're also giving strange directions.

In order to fly over this obstacle, hold E and use WASD in order to control flight movement. Take some time to get used to it, and then fly on over to the other side of this log. Use the technique I told you about before, and press C to land where they instruct you to do so.

Continue walking along the path once more.

Take note of how to sit and then stand again. Their instructions here are correct. Right click, then sit. Then click the button at the bottom left to stand again. Simple!

Continue along, taking note of all of the things you've already learned by reading this guide, all the way up to the Etiquette signs.

This is something I want to stress as much as the Firestorm developers do: Please be kind. Be understanding. Be patient. You'll make many friends if you follow these tenants.

Take another extra minute to go over classification. Remember when we talked about the Search dialogue and how you could uncheck Adult themed areas?

This expands upon that. In your address bar up at the top, you'll notice the address bar that looks a lot like something you'd see in an internet browser. Except here we have a blue G next to the address of the Welcome Island you currently inhabit.

G is generally a place that is safe for all avatars, including children. If you engage in nasty, inappropriate or lewd behavior in these places, you absolutely do risk having your account suspended.

In areas classified with M it's a bit less strict, but you'll definitely not want to strip down into the nude unless you're in an Adult or "A" themed area, to be safe!

Once you feel like you understand the weight of area ratings, continue along the path taking note of anything we've already gone over, and making sure that you've familiarized yourself with all of these things.

This is an area where you'll definitely want to stop and learn about appearance, shape and outfit editing. Since this is a very large and expansive topic in and of itself, you can feel free to stay here and mess with things as detailed on the signs as long as you please, but this is a topic I will be keeping for the next part of this guide!

There is very much that you can do with the Second Life avatar system.

For now, I'm going to skip past this and move on!

Next on our stop is an area where you'll learn how to buy things. Remember how we discussed the inventory, and the recent tab? Go ahead and see how that works now!

As you'll see detailed, usually buying something is done by right-clicking on a kiosk, and then clicking "Buy" or "Pay," but we're going to walk on over to the free items shack to our left, where the only input required in order to acquire some neat little free items is a single left click on any of the cards you see! Pick anything that looks interesting to you, but before you do so, open the inventory back up again with the suitcase button. Now, pre-select the "recent" tab so that you're ready to recieve whatever you pick.

I personally chose the Pamela hair, it looks neat!

Now, you can highlight the folder, just like I've done in the photo, and press CTRL + X in order to cut it. Now, click the Inventory tab at the top. Right click the folder that says "inventory" within that tab and click New Folder. Take a second to name that folder anything you'd like. I usually call it "My Stuff."

Now, double click on your new folder so that it's open and highlighted, and press CTRL + V.

Congratulations, you've now started a collection that will be at least, somewhat, neatly organized. You'll want to keep a close eye on items in your inventory and organization, because becoming too cluttered can create more headaches than it solves.

The next sections on the trail will briefly speak to you about the marketplace, and building. These are sort of advanced topics that I don't feel are immediately necessary for brand new Second Life residents, unless of course you're ready to rip out your wallet, and go buy a bunch of things on the global marketplace, of course. But I wouldn't recommend that, as we have a very neat and awesome place to go once you've concluded your tour.

And building is also definitely not something you need to learn right away. That's a topic for another time.

Keep going!

Next, you'll come up to some signs detailing volume, music and media control. Just in case this place ever ceases to exist, I'm going to explain for you why it's important to keep a lookout at this section whenever you travel to different places.

Sometimes, when you meet a new group of people, one of them may be controlling an item, or piece of media that's playing automatically. Additionally, some areas will play music for your automatically. Sometimes this isn't a bad thing, but other times it can be too loud, or maybe you don't want to hear music at some particular given moment.

You can, of course, use the volume buttons at the top right of the window to reduce volume or even turn music, media and voice off completely.

But let's say you're someone who just doesn't want to hear any of this automatically and would rather have it turned off by default.

Firstly, you can click the little icons, such as the movie camera (media), music symbol (music) to start or stop either of these things. But let's get slightly more in-depth here for a moment.

Click Avatar, and then Preferences up at the top left, again, like you did before.

Now, go down and click the "Sound & Media" button.

Click the "Media" tab, and then the dropdown next to "Media auto-play." Set this to disabled if you don't want avatar and item media (like YouTube) to play automatically, no matter what, no questions asked.

Next, click the "Music" tab and uncheck "Allow audio streams to auto-play," and you will no longer hear music automatically whenever entering new areas.

Finally, click the "Voice" tab and uncheck "Enable Voice" if you just don't want to hear anyone talking, at all, period.

Now, like before, click, "OK" at the bottom in order to ensure your changes are saved, and boom, you've just learned how to take control of the auditory experiences around you!

The final stop for us during our tour of the island will talk, first, about teleporters. I don't feel like this is entirely important, but it is kind of neat to learn about. Go ahead and click through this section to teleport up to the signs that speak to you about offering or recieving teleports. This is actually important.

Say one of your friends messages, and asks, "Hey buddy, where you at? Can you give me a TP?" and you have no idea what they mean!

Well, it's pretty simple.

In your private message window with said friend, click the genie bottle up above at the top of the conversations window, then click, "Offer teleport." As long as your friend accepts the offer, they'll teleport directly into the area, exactly where you're standing. Alternatively, if you'd like to go to wherever your friend is, you can instead click "Request teleport," and it'll work just the same, but in reverse!

You've already learned about the things the final signs are displaying for you, so go ahead and follow the instructions of the very last sign and walk through the cave!

This is a nice little area where you can learn some more little things, some of which we're going to go over in other guides. Feel free to landmark this area just like you did the previous area, because we're going to go somewhere even cooler.

You may recieve an IM from a resident called FirestormGreeterBot welcoming you to Second Life, and it may mention something about sending you a group invite. In my experience, in writing this guide at least, I did not recieve a group invite. Don't worry if this happens to you as well. Nothing's wrong on your end.

Feel free to explore the area for as long as you wish, and then get ready to fill up your inventory!

Next up is a place that has existed since I joined Second Life, in 2013 ... Freebie Galaxy! Follow this landmark location in order to travel there now. Don't worry, you can return to these other two areas with the landmarks you should have already made. The above link will open a teleport from your browser. It may ask you if it's okay to allow Firestorm to handle these types of requests.

Now, beware, this is a moderate themed area, and there will be some lewd themed items. If you're not ready for that, or don't want to see things of that nature I would recommend against visiting here.

If you're okay with potentially seeing that sort of thing, welcome! Feel free to explore the many, many different items available to you here. Almost all of it will cost you exactly zero linden dollars. Meaning, you can add them to your collection without opening your wallet and without asking anyone for lindens.

Linden is the Second Life currency that is directly tranlated from the deposit of real life cash, which can also be withdrawn in reverse, right back to your bank account.

Yes. You can make a living out of Second Life! But that is yet another topic, for another time!

Have fun in your journey of collecting items. Go back and forth between these landmarks you've acquired, talk to people! Make friends! And stay tuned for the next section of this guide. Marketplace navigation and currency acquisition!

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