Category: Second Life

UPDATED! Second Life Steals, Deals, and Freebies: Advent Calendar Gifts for December 2nd, 2020

Here’s my blogpost with links to four lists of Advent Calendars and 12 Days of Christmas Calendars, plus my “Top Ten” Calendars you should not miss in 2020!

The Advent Calendar at Virtue

I don’t usually do writeups on Advent Calendar gifts in Second Life, because they are only available for 24 hours, and for those people who don’t visit my blog every day, it can be a bit frustrating to see free apparel and footwear that they might have missed picking up the day before.

However, since I am still stuck in self-isolation in my home during the province-wide pandemic lockdown in Manitoba, I might start doing a show-and-tell of some of the bounty that I did pick up that day, just to keep busy. So, here is my haul for December 2nd, 2020.

Virtue is a store run by Abiela Heartsong, who is a Christian woman who specializes in modest but stylish womenswear. Every year, she has an Advent Calendar in her store, with a free gift each day (you do need to join the Virtue group for free to pick up these gifts).

If (like me), you have some time to kill, then in front of the Advent Calendar are two camping chairs, a relative rarity in Second Life these days! You can sit for 60 minutes and win this lovely pastel party dress:

Camping chair at Virtue: My avatar looks so bored…

While my avatar waits, I will show you a couple of the December 2nd Advent Calendar gifts I picked up today. The blue Felicia outfit from Virtue comes in three separate parts: pants, tube top, and sleeves (not shown below), in sizes to fit Maitreya Lara; Belleza Venus, Isis, and Freya; Slink Physique and Hourglass; and Meshbody Legacy. The texturing is lovely, and it’s the perfect outfit for being stuck at home!

The December 2nd Advent Gift from the Essenz women’s footwear store is this lovely pair of Athens high-heeled sandals in black, which include a HUD to change the colour of the sole and the bow. This shoe comes in sizes to fit Maitreya, Belleza, and Slink feet. If you do not wish to spend the L$350 to join the Essenz store group to pick up all the Advent Calendar gifts, you can choose to buy this pair of shoes for only L$50 by clicking on the appropriate panel at the front of the store! (I love it when stores provide that option for non-group members! I believe Entice does that, too.)

Just a reminder that both WOW Skins and 7 Deadly S[k]ins have Advent Calendars with gifts of female Bakes on Mesh skins for your avatar. If you missed your chance to join the 7 Deadly S[k]ins group before December. it now will cost you L$1,000 to join, but for that, you will get 31 days on gifts! The cost to join the WOW Skins group is only L$199, but with that you can not only pick up each day’s Advent Calendar gift, but also all of the monthly group gifts (there is a box with all the previous group gifts on a small table underneath the display of the most recent monthly group gifts).

Happy freebie shopping!

UPDATE 9:15 a.m.: Camping is done! Here’s what the Alexandria Dots party dress looks like:

The shoes in this last picture are the Wales pumps from Essenz. This is a group gift, a complete fatpack, which alone is enough reason to join the Essenz group for L$350, as I explain in a previous blogpost about the Wales pumps:

That means that you get 26 shoe colours times 4 sole colours times 4 metal colours times 4 shoe styles, which works out to 1,664 different shoes! So even if you aren’t already a member of the Essenz group and getting this fatpack of versatile pumps for free, the L$350 group join fee works out to L$0.20 per shoe! Now, if that’s not a deal, I don’t know what is!

The group gift of the Wales fatpack of pumps is located on the front counter of the store, just behind the Advent Calendar (see red arrow below):

So, you listen to your Auntie Ryan, the undisputed Freebie Queen of Second Life 😉 , and you get your pixelated ass down to Essenz, join their store group, and mop up some truly lovely shoes!

Shots Fired! Further Dispatches from the Female Bento Mesh Body Wars: Maitreya Throws a 50% Off Cyber Week Sale

I got a tip early this morning that Maitreya was having a Cyber Week 50% Off sale which, of course, includes the perennially popular Maitreya Lara female mesh body:

The sale excludes gift cards, and is only at their mainstore. I popped into their store (SLURL) to check it out.

The Maitreya Lara female mesh body, which usually retails for L$2,750, is on sale until Dec. 6th for only L$1,375. The petite breast add-on, which usually sells for L$599, is only L$299. And the flat-chest add-on (which I believe is comparable to the popular V-Tech add-on) is selling for L$249, half of its regular L$499 price.

This is the first time in this blogger’s memory that Maitreya has ever had a sale. Of course, everybody and their dog designs for Maitreya Lara; they still have an estimated 70% of the female mesh body market, although I’m quite sure that they are seeing strong competition from, among others, the Meshbody Legacy female mesh body, which includes a package of deformers to enable you to wear most Maitreya Lara-designed clothing on it (Nodoka Hanamura recently reviewed the Legacy body here). I have noticed more and more designers are now creating clothing for the Meshbody Legacy body, including a few who used to be Maitreya-exclusive (like Belle Epoque).

And, of course, there have been other, cheaper Maitreya Lara-compatible mesh bodies which I have written about before on this blog, notably the LucyBody Atenea and the Kalhene Anya mesh bodies, which I have found fit most apparel designed for Maitreya Lara. Please note that, as of this writing, the Kalhene Anya Bento, Bakes on Mesh female body (which includes a head) is still on sale for only L$999 (45% off the regular price) at Kalhene’s Black Friday sale (here’s the SLURL to their store):

The Kalhene Black Friday sale was advertised as ending on Nov. 30th, so I don’t know if it has been extended, or for how long, so if you want that L$999 Kalhene Anya body, you’d better hurry down today! As I have written, you get more bang for your buck with the Kalhene Anya body than you would with Maitreya Lara. I have found in my testing that the Kalhene Anya mesh body is 99% compatible with apparel and footwear designed for Maitreya Lara. The only problem area I encountered with the Anya body was the wrist area on certain long-sleeved shirts and tops (see image, right).

Shots fired! The female Bento mesh body wars are starting to get interesting!

UPDATED! Second Life Steals, Deals, and Freebies: What Advent Calendars and 12 Days of Christmas Calendars I’ll Be Hitting This December (2020 Edition)

Looking for the 2021 edition? What Advent Calendars and 12 Days of Christmas Calendars I’ll Be Hitting This December (2021 Edition)

Advent and 12 Days of Christmas calendars are a Second Life tradition
(image by Susanne Jutzeler, suju-foto from Pixabay)

Well, as November winds down, it is time for the dedicated freebie fashionistas to begin planning for December, when many Second Life stores have either an Advent calendar or a Twelve Days of Christmas calendar, with gifts for you to pick up each day!

There are four lists of 2020 Advent calendars published by various websites:

UPDATE Dec. 1st, 2020: I have gone through and checked each of the SLURLs to the stores linked to below, and updated them where necessary. All of them should now take your directly to the store (some have changed location since last year!).

Six Advent Calendars I Will Be Visiting Every Day

  • Firelight Hair has an Advent calendar running from December 1st to 24th (you do need to join the Firelight group for free). The gifts are mostly women’s hairstyles, but there will also be a few male/unisex styles. All hair gifts come with a mini 3-colour HUD.
  • 7 Deadly s[K]ins has an advent tree in their store, with generous gifts every day from Dec. 1st through to the 31st! You do have to join the group; I believe the group join fee is L$125 until the end of November, then it jumps up to L$1,000 during December!
  • Appliqué Chic offers two separate Advent calendars, one for men and a second for women! Each day’s gifts are free, and you can buy gifts from previous days for only L$10 each. No group join is required.
  • Virtue offers an Advent calendar with beautiful clothing gifts for women. The emphasis here is on classic, modest fashion. You do not need to join the Virtue group to pick up these gifts.
  • Entice offers Advent calendar gifts of womenswear from December 1st to 25th (you do have to join the Entice group for free). They also have a very handy sign on either side of their Advent tree, which shows you what each of the gifts look like, so you can plan ahead!
  • Essenz has an advent calendar from December 1st to the 25th, offering gifts of high-quality women’s footwear (the group costs L$350 to join).

Four “Twelve Days of Christmas” Calendars I Will Be Visiting Every Day

Please note that none of these calendars will be set up until mid-December:

  • The Baby Monkey calendar runs from December 12th to the 23rd, 2020 and is free each day. This year, you can pick up all the gifts at once if you prefer to make just one visit, between Dec. 23rd and the end of the year. All the gifts together form a complete, colour-coordinated capsule wardrobe. Even better, you do not need to join a group to pick up the gifts this year!
  • Altamura has a 12 Days of Christmas calendar running from December 12th to 24th, with a different gift every day: male and female accessories, clothes, skins, makeup, even a mesh head! Please note that the group join fee for Altamura is usually L$100, but during December the group is free to join.
  • JUMO usually gives away gifts of women’s apparel and jewelry from Dec. 12th-Dec. 24th, as well as on New Year’s Eve. This is the place to pick up some beautiful ballgowns and costume jewelry!
  • The eBENTO Event has an advent calendar that runs from Dec. 11th to Dec. 25th. Last year, the large red calendar numbers are randomly scattered around the shopping event, with two or three gifts from participating vendors each day. The eBENTO group is free to join.

Happy freebie shopping!

UPDATED! Second Life Steals, Deals, and Freebies: Everything at Sweet Evil Is Free!

I received a tip via the Freebie Queens Discord server, that everything at the Sweet Evil in-world store was free, so last night I went down to check it out.

I am having some trouble coming up with a politically correct way to describe the majority of the womenswear for sale at Sweet Evil. Suffice it to say that I have rarely encountered such a comprehensive array of skin-baring outfits in one store! Not my particular style, but your mileage may vary…after all, many would argue that if you have the perfect body in Second Life, why not show it off? However, wearing a lot of this clothing will certainly get you tossed out of clubs with strictly-enforced dress codes, such as Bray’s Place (my community of choice), where you are requested to keep your nipples, vagina, and asscheeks covered.

However, especially among the tops, I was able to pick out several more modest items. Much of the apparel comes in two versions, one with patterns and another with a colour tinting HUD. Here’s an example, an underwire tank top which comes in a tintable cotton texture, a tintable satin texture, and a one version with a patterns HUD:

All you have to do is right-click on the vendor panels, and select the Deliver option when a blue menu appears in the upper right-hand-corner of your viewer (do not left-click and select Pay; that way you have to pay L$1 for each item).

Below, Vanity Fair is wearing the Tight Turtleneck, which offers you a variety of 15 preset colours for each of the body, sleeves, and turtleneck separately, plus a colour HUD to allow you to tint it to match any outfit. Very versatile!

You should also know that word has obviously gotten out since yesterday, and the Sweet Evil store was much busier today than it was when I paid my visits yesterday evening. Today, I also found that the overwhelmed CasperVend systems in the store took as long as 20 to 30 minutes to deliver some items, and some items were delivered multiple times. So please set aside an hour if you are going to come ransack the store, okay? 😉

Also, I can find no information, either in the store or in the store group, about why the owner is holding this giveaway, nor how long we can expect it to last. Is it a Black Friday sale? (Can you call it a sale if it’s all free?) Who knows. So, if you are in the market for skimpy, skin-revealing clothing, you might want to pop into Sweet Evil soon. Here’s your taxi.

UPDATE 9:21 p.m.: Well, over the past two hours, I have received so many erroneous, duplicate deliveries from the CasperVend panels at Sweet Evil that I had to mute messages from the store. So be warned, the CasperVend system at Sweet Evil is completely overwhelmed and malfunctioning badly.

UPDATE Dec. 4th, 2020: A couple of people have informed me that the Sweet Evil store has now permanently shut down.