Tag: Freebies

Second Life Steals, Deals, and Freebies: Gifts from the 9th Anniversary of the Kustom9 Event

At the ripe old age of 19, the virtual world of Second Life has a thriving in-world economy, and part of that ecosystem are the regular shopping events, which SL’s store owners often use to showcase their new releases. One such event, Kustom9, is celebrating its 9th anniversary with a treasure trove of gifts, if you join the Kustom9 group for free.

The rechristened Moesha Heartsong is showing you two of these free gifts in the video below. The animation override (AO) is by Body Language, and has a youthful, cutesy, kawaii air to it, don’t you think? (What I usually like to do is reuse only the animations I like, adding them to an existing AO, and discarding the rest. I mean, how can you go wrong for free?)

The dress Moesha is wearing is the Kustom9 present from the Luas booth. It’s a special Hallowe’en edition of the Sena dress, which comes in the following sizes: Maitreya Lara and Petite; Meshbody Legacy and Perky; INITHIUM Kupra; and eBody Reborn.

The gift from Apple Blossom is the Shay minidress in a champagne colour (sizes: Maitreya Lara and Petite; Meshbody Legacy and Perky; and INITHIUM Kupra).

One fun unisex gift is from Spoiled, and it’s this highly configurable heart-shaped Cheeky balloon, with comes with a variety of full-body and arm-only Bento poses (the arm-only poses mean that you can use it with your existing AO).

There are 3 separate Bento hold poses for each of the right arm and left arm, and you get a HUD with endless colour options for the balloon itself, and even the string! There are also many options for the quote on the balloon (most are birthday related), or you can turn the text off completely, as you can see in the black urban angel picture above.

Now, this is my opportunity to tell you about one of my pet peeves in Second Life—HUDs with text so small that you cannot read them! You cannot tell me that, on this huge HUD, you couldn’t have made the quotes section larger, and actually readable?!?? Despite this admittedly minor quibble, this is a very generous gift, and I expect I will trot out all my SL alts to pick one up!

The ninth anniversary round of the Kustom9 shopping event runs from October 18th to November 8th, 2022, so you have plenty of time to swoop down and sweep up some fabulous freebies!

Second Life Steals, Deals, and Freebies: the Halloween 2022 Shop and Hop Event Runs Oct. 6th to Nov. 1st

The Hallowe’en 2020 Shop and Hop event is back, with 16 sims groaning with free gifts for you! Every booth has at least one free gift, and a few of them offer more than one! This popular shopping event runs from Oct. 6th to Nov. 1st, 2022. Here’s a handy alphabetical list of all the vendors participating.

As before, I am NOT going to cover the Shop and Hop event in detail here on the blog. Instead, I have compiled a notecard of my picks for the best and most fabulous freebies, free store credit offers, and gift cards, and posted it to the Second Life group I maintain, called the RyanSchultz.com Steals, Deals & Freebies group (the group costs L$50 to join; more information here). My notecard includes the exact SLURL for each freebie, for you to pop in, pick up your gift, and move on to the next score, for the most efficient freebie shopping experience! (Note that SL’s list of stores in the paragraph above has several SLURLs which stick you behind store walls!)

As always, there are many offers of free store credit and gift cards; here are my picks:

  • Addams – L$300 (group join fee L$5)
  • Blackstone – L$300
  • GGVG – L$500
  • Luna Chelsea – L$500
  • MALified – L$400
  • Mirage (home decor) – L$500
  • Nuve – L$300 (expires Oct. 31st, 2022)
  • Poison Rouge – L$350
  • Paper Sparrow – L$500 (join group for free; credit expires on Dec. 1st, 2022)
  • Vagrant – L$300 (expires Nov. 5th, 2022)
  • Zerkalo (home decor) – L$300 (expires Nov. 5th. 2022)

PRO TIP: Grab that L$500 gift card for Luna Chelsea and head over to the footwear section in their main store (exact SLURL), where you can pick up five L$99 fatpacks (over 70 colours!) of a wide variety of women’s shoes and boots, like these Destiny classic leather pumps (which also come in patent leather and suede versions):

Stock up on shoes using the L$500 gift card at Luna Chelsea, and you may never need to buy shoes for your avatar again! (Haha, just kidding, of course you will…)

Here’s a completely free vampire outfit I was able to pull together, using a combination of free gifts and free store credit, and taking advantage of discounted prices at the Hallowe’en Shop and Hop:

  • the Blood Vamp outfit is the gift from the Be Bold booth, and it includes the boots (there’s also a L$250 gift card if you join the Be Bold store group for L$50);
  • the red-lined black high-collared Bento animated cape I purchased on sale using the free credits from the MALified booth; and
  • the perfect finishing touch of the Sweet Death Crown, which I bought on sale using the free credits from the Poison Rouge booth.

Happy freebie shopping! Obviously, most of the gifts this round are Halloween-themed, with ghosts, bats, witches, and pumpkins galore. Boo!

Image by SzaboJanos from Pixabay

Second Life Steals, Deals, and Freebies: Free Hair Buns!

Hot cross buns!
Hot cross buns!
One ha’ penny, two ha’ penny,
Hot cross buns!
If you have no daughters,
Give them to your sons
One ha’ penny,
Two ha’ penny,
Hot Cross Buns!

English Nursery Rhyme, 1700s

I haven’t been blogging as much as I like lately, mainly because of how busy I am at my full-time paying job as a university librarian, and I know that there are lots of news and events happening out there in the metaverse which I am not reporting on!

Lately when I come home from work, I am exhausted, and my favourite means of relaxing and unwinding is, of course, Second Life, where I continue to scour the grid for fabulous freebies. (Remember that most of them I do not blog about here, but I do post notices to my in-world group, the RyanSchultz.com Steals, Deals & Freebies group!)

I am currently working on a special project with my fellow freebie fashionistas of the Freebie Queens Discord server, where we are drawing up a comprehensive listing of SL stores with free gifts. And it was while I was checking through a first draft of this list that I came across a wonderful freebie: a fatpack of hair buns! These buns come in a wide variety of high-quality hair textures, and have a natural, relaxed (some would say, messy) look to them. I think they’re perfect, and best of all, they’re completely FREE!

It’s part of a collection of previous group gifts offered by L’Etre/Doux. All you have to do is teleport into their store (SLURL), join the L’Etre group for free, and then click on the image of the gift box shown below to receive the package:

The gift box contains many items—earrings, chokers, eyeshadow, face glitter, even a witch’s hat!—but I want to focus on the set of unrigged hair buns by Doux. These hair buns come with 7 different HUDs, each with 18 different textures:

  • blacks and whites;
  • blondes;
  • brunettes;
  • fades;
  • naturals;
  • pastels and ombres; and
  • reds.

Please note that the hairbases are not included, but you usually already have several sets with the Bento mesh heads you purchase or get as gifts, such as this lovely Lilly head, a previous Christmastime group gift from LeLutka:

And because they are adjustable (unfortunately, not resizable), you can easily use them with hats and caps, as I did with this Catwa HDPRO mesh head (again, another previous gift):

Of course, these buns are unisex, so you can rock a manbun as you gallivant around the grid if you so desire! This avatar is wearing a Catwa head with a classic Bakes on Mesh female hairbase I pulled from the LeLutka Lilly gift head:

If you are looking for free hairbases to use with these buns, the No Match hair store in SL has you covered! Just visit the store and look for two gift boxes on the ground (exact SLURL):

These boxes are free, and you do not need to join a group to purchase them. One box contains classic hairbases for a full range of hair colours, plus appliers for Catwa heads and LeLutka classic heads, plus Omega appliers; the other box contains hairbases for LeLutka Evo X and Akeruka ADVX mesh heads.

So what are you waiting for? Move your buns and get these buns! 😉

Second Life Steals, Deals, and Freebies: Free Gifts to Celebrate the 12th Anniversary of the Firestorm Viewer!

Second Life is probably unique among metaverse platforms in that the most popular viewer software is not a product of the company that makes Second Life, Linden Lab! That would be the Firestorm viewer, created by the community itself by a non-profit company called the Phoenix Firestorm Project:

The Phoenix Firestorm Project Inc. is a non-profit, incorporated organization whose mandate is to improve the user experience in Second Life and other virtual worlds by providing an advanced open source viewer with greater features, options and interface flexibility than the standard offering by Linden Lab. The project has approximately 80 volunteers working for it and are managed through departments divided up as Development, Support, Quality Assurance and Gateway. We provide live support 24/7 in nine different languages inside of Second Life through our support groups and on the web via our issue tracker.

And to celebrate its 12 anniversary, Firestorm threw a big party yesterday, Saturday, September 3rd. And in a circle around the four-sim event stage are free gifts from Firestorm and other Second Life vendors for you! All gifts are free and you do not need to join a group to pick them up.

The present from Firelight Hair is a new unisex fatpack of hair called Glen/Gwyn, which comes in both male and female versions, rigged and unrigged, plus a HUD with 32 different textures:

Firelight is also generously giving out the same gift to SL users that it put out a year ago, for Firestorm’s 11th anniversary! This shorter unisex hairstyle is called David/Davina, and also comes in male and female versions, both rigged and unrigged, with a texture HUD as shown below:

Next up we have a casual outfit featuring three more free gifts:

The T-shirt is the present from Addams, and it comes in a wide variety of sizes to fit most female mesh bodies, and in two colours: white as shown above, and black. (Note that there is also a men’s T-shirt gift, which also comes in black and white!)

The gift from Firestorm is a fatpack of this unisex baseball cap featuring the distinctive Firestorm phoenix logo, with comes the the HUD shown below, where you can mix and match the colours of the cap and the logo as you please. There are two versions of the baseball cap, one for smaller heads and one for larger heads, and both can be resized simply by clicking on them, which pulls up a menu. It’s the perfect accessory for any fan of the Firestorm viewer as your avatar strolls the grid!

Finally, there’s a very nice gift from virtual shoemaker Versov, these wonderfully detailed sneakers, which comes in sizes to fit men and women! These special-edition Firestov sneakers come in sizes to fit feet for the following mesh bodies: Maitreya Lara, Signature Gianni and Geralt, Legacy (male and female), Belleza (male and female), and Slink (male and female). There’s also an unrigged pair in the folder, which you can adjust and resize to fit other brands of feet. They are a keeper!

There are also many gifts for you fans of breedables (which I am not). Here’s the blogpost on the official Firestorm blog listing all the free gifts. I’m not sure how long all these gifts will be available, but I seem to remember that the Firestorm 11th anniversary gifts were available to pick up for at least a month after the events held at the stage. As I said, the event stage is a circle covering four adjoining sims, with the same gifts available around the perimeter of the stage in each sim. According to the event listing:

SLURLs: LOAD BALANCING! If your first initial starts with…click a corresponding SLURL:
A-J http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Firestorm%20Ghost%20Town/14/240/3902
K-R http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Firestorm%20Aerodrome/238/15/3901
S-Z http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Firestorm%20Dow%20Forest/237/238/3902

Since the big party was yesterday, you could choose any of these SLURLs and you shouldn’t have any problem getting in! I wouldn’t wait too long to pick these wonderful presents up, though.

PRO TIP: Did you know that you can pick up many other free gifts at the VERSOV main store, including three fatpacks of high-quality unisex sneakers of various designs and colours? Join the VERSOV group for free to pick up the fabulous freebies, which are located on panels at the front counter of the store…here’s your taxi!

Happy freebie shopping! 😉