Well-known Second Life womenswear retailer Belle Epoque (store SLURL) is celebrating its sixth anniversary with a free hunt! You are searching for birthday cakes hidden in various places around the store, containing 30 free items from Belle Epoque, as well as free items from a number of other retailers.
Here are my picks for the best of the hunt prizes! I hope that you don’t mind that I used a pose stand to show off these prizes—it’s just so much quicker to work this way, and I wanted to share my finds with you as quickly as possible! There are many lovely dresses and gowns from Belle Epoque as hunt prizes, all unique and one-of-a-kind designs, but they come in sizes to fit Maitreya Lara and Meshbody Legacy bodies only! All accessories such as headbands and hats are unrigged and resizable.
First up is a pair of hunt gifts, the oversize pink Maite rose headband (hunt prize #14) and the form-fitting Nailah ballgown (prize #9):
Candace dress (prize #2):
Circe asymmetrical tailored dress (#5):
Tyra dress (#6):
Gia dress (#7):
Christine dress (#10):
Natalia dress (#12):
Rose shirt dress (#13):
Jennifer top and skirt (one piece; #15):
Monica dress (#16):
Allegra gown (#30):
L’Amour Curtois historical straw bonnet with hair (#29):
The Free Spirit headpiece (#24):
Knit top dress (the hunt prize from c*C*c):
Tania minidress (the hunt prize from UNA):
The Belle Epoque 6th Anniversary Hunt ends November 30th, 2021, so hurry on down to the in-world store and snap up some fabulous free fashion for your avatar!
In a virtual world where you can be anybody (or anything) you want, Halloween is a bigger holiday than Christmas in Second Life! Today I will be giving a quick rundown of many of the events taking place across the grid.
First, if you haven’t done so yet, be sure to visit the Halloween Shop and Hop event before Nov. 1st, 2021 to pick up some fabulous free gifts, including free store credit for a variety of stores! Here’s my blogpost showing just a few of the gifts available.
There’s also numerous Halloween-and-fall-themed hunts! You can get further information on seasonal hunts posted on the HuntSL and SL Hunts websites (two places with all the latest up-to-date information on hunts in Second Life).
SL’s Top Haunted Places Tour and Hunt is something I try to go and do every year! Starting at Shady Manor, click on the large sign to receive a folder containing five notecards with SLURLs to no less than 83 different scary and spooky places to explore! Many have at least one free gift for you to find, several spots have several, and some of them are quite nice!
For example, among the free gifts from the Crazy Cajun Hallowe’en Hangout is a mini-cauldron Mystery Brew drink, complete with a Bento drinking animation!
Second Life has posted a blogpost listing a number of official Halloween events you might be interested in. Among them are:
A trick-or-treat on the Linden Homes continent of Bellisseria (more details here);
Many SL clubs will also be holding events on October 31st! Do a keyword search for “halloween” under the Events tab in Search in your Second Life viewer to find out what’s going on, where and when.
This avatar is wearing:
Mesh Head: Cleo by Akeruka (a previous group gift; the Akeruka group costs L$150 to join)
Mesh Body: Juliet by Altamura (a previous group gift; the Altamura group costs L$100 to join)
Hair: Que Bella in abyss black from Hairoin (a store which is unfortunately no longer in Second Life; I bought this many years ago and I forget what I paid for this)
Dress: black Karla harness dress (one of many free group gifts from DM Design; the DM Design group is free to join)
You might be surprised to learn that there is a large and active Russian-language community in Second Life! Second Life – FREE is a little-known-about Russian-language group on Vkontakte, the Russian version of Facebook. It’s the largest VK community dedicated to free and inexpensive things in Second Life. (Use the Russian-to-English translator in your Chrome browser to read the posts in this Russian-language community. You do not need to set up an account on VKontakte; just click on the “Not Now!” link whenever a pop-up appears asking you to log in.)
This group is hosting the Creepy Russian Village Hunt in Second Life for Halloween, with prizes from a variety of vendors, ranging in price from free to L$25 each. The hunt object is the traditional Russian nesting doll!
I was particularly taken by the Russian/Slavic design elements of the womenswear prizes, so today Vanity Fair is modeling a few of my favourite prizes from this hunt. I won’t be telling you where to find these elusive dolls, but I will share with you my top six tips for successful hunting in Second Life.
Please note that in order to take clearer pictures of the hunt prizes, I changed the default sky settings of the sim to Nam’s Optimal Skin 1. You might want to leave the lighting at the default setting to really appreciate the atmosphere of the creepy village! (The pictures I took of the sim are stills from a promotional video for the hunt.)
This lovely Mavka peasant dress, the prize from Silk Road, costs only L$25 and comes in both white and black versions. The Mavka dress comes in sizes to fit Maitreya Lara; Meshbody Legacy and Legacy Perky; INTHIUM Kupra; eBody Reborn; and Kalhene Erika mesh bodies.
Here Vanity is showing you two different hunt prizes from ERSCH, the very Russian Laerta head ribbon (which comes in three pieces; you can detach the right and left bows), and the Alice dress, which comes in bloody and non-bloody versions (there’s also another hunt prize consisting of the same dress, but in black instead of white). The ERSCH prizes are only L$15 each. The Alice dress comes in the following sizes: Maitreya Lara and Petite; Belleza Freya; Meshbody Legacy and Perky; INTHIUM Kupra and Kups; and eBody Reborn.
This beautifully embroidered red, white, and black Adela gown is one of the hunt prizes from ANTAYA (Maitreya Lara size only; L$25):
Another prize from ANTAYA is the Hilda gown (Legacy and Maitreya sizes; L$25). I found the Maitreya Lara version of this garment includes an auto-hide which automatically alphas out your hands and feet, so you will need to reset that using your Maitreya alpha HUD (it’s a small bug, but one I’d have thought the creator would have caught while testing).
There are many other prizes in the hunt; you can see them all here. (Don’t forget to turn on the automatic translation in your Chrome web browser!)
UPDATE Oct. 26th, 2021: A few more hunt prizes have been added to the Creepy Russian Village Hunt! This white dress with the embroidered hemline and the red bead necklace are two separate, free prizes from Dreamcatcher (sizes: Maitreya, Legacy and Kupra):
The Uber shopping event is celebrating its 7th anniversary in Second Life, and instead of making all the gifts available on a single shopping sim, the organizers have decided to turn it into a hunt. You are searching for a gift box hidden in each of the participating stores (here’s the website with the SLURLs and hints). There’s no need to join any group, just click on the gift box and it’s yours!
Now, you should be aware that many of these gifts are additional HUDs that will only work with a separate article of clothing which the store has for sale this round! However, I have picked out three very nice gifts which stand on their own.
From BREATHE comes this generous gift, a complete fatpack of these subtly patterned women’s pumps (they come in 18 colours, plus 3 colour options for the sole, to match whatever you’re wearing):
The gift from Neve is this well-made overshirt/jacket, which comes with a HUD with eight colour choices. It’s the perfect finishing touch for your autumn outfit!
Finally, the gift from Glam Affair is this beautiful freckled fair skin for LeLutka Evo X heads, which comes in four versions with different coloured eyebrows (blonde, red, brown, black), plus one with no eyebrows if you wish to add your own. Please note that you will have to shell out for the matching Glam Affair fair body skin at L$299, though. However, I still think it’s a great bargain and I’m quite happy with this look:
Naria Panthar has posted a very helpful video showing you most of the over 125 gifts (she recommends you watch it on fast forward and just visit those stores whose gifts interest you):
Happy freebie shopping!
UPDATE August 29th, 2021: If you don’t have the time to watch Naria Panthar’s video, here is another video by Peach Daniel which covers most of the Uber 7th anniversary hunt gifts in just ten minutes!
…Aaand one more gift to show you all! While the Uber hunt gift at BAZAR is a bit hard to find, it is well worth the trouble, because you get this adorable popcorn machine to decorate your virtual home! Add a few movie posters and you’re all set!
