“What’s a hunt?” I hear – well, it’s pretty much what it says it is. How they’re executed differs – they can be
simply a hunt within one store for an item or items that you ‘buy’ (but they’re really free, or perhaps $1), or they can be sim-wide, which means you have to wander around an entire island looking for a particular object, or they can be what’s known as grid-wide, and these involve teleporting from store to store around Second Life to find a specific object. The latter are the most common, and are a great way to acquire some quality items. They will however clutter your inventory up fast, so be sure to go through what you find every few stores and decide if you want to keep the items or not! If you’re interested in seeing what kinds of hunts are in progress or upcoming, check out http://slhunts.wordpress.com
One can also find ‘group gift’ skins at places such as Essences, which offers a free male skin if you join their group and click on a board to receive it. If you’re wanting something of a Gothic bent, you could do worse than hopping to Frick skins, which has a few examples of male skins, though a set of three of these will set you back about L$150 (which sure beats the $1,000 I see most skins go for). Group gifts and prize boards – where you wait for the letter of your first name to come up, and then click the board or sit on a chair – have been a valuable source of items, although they do, by and large, cater to the ladies moreso than the men.
When it comes to hair, even as an experienced SL native, I’ve often run into trouble finding hair stores that have more than maybe 5 styles for guys. I’ve only ever come across a few freebie styles in my travels – there’s a couple of men’s hairs courtesy of Bryce Designs at The Gnubie Store (although I’ve personally found them to be rather small for my head), and again, I sincerely recommend hunts and checking out store groups for freebies. Calico Ingmann’s group joiner will result in a men’s hair freebie in a variety of colours when you subscribe, as will Amacci’s. Alli & Ali is a favoured hair store for folks who don’t want to lay out cash for hair; the designer has been making some effort of late to accommodate the male portion of her clientele – if you join the group, there’s usually a men’s hair gift on the front desk of her store once a week. Vignette sells its entire stock of hairs for free, but sadly the creator has only one male style. If your head size is larger than 50, you’re also going to have to learn how to resize your hair manually as it doesn’t come with resize scripts.
Shoes are another area of frustration, but worry not – In Her Shoes, despite the title, does have a small selection of utterly free men’s boots, and DUH shoes carries a few freebies, including an impressively well-sculpted pair of pirate boots that come in a variety of colours. If you’re looking to spend a few lindens on shoes, her offerings start at about L$10, and they do come with resize scripts. HoC, aka House of Curios, has some quality shoes starting at just L$20.
Midnight Mania boards around the grid are also a decent source of free stuff. This is where you ‘slap’ or rather, click on a board, and once a specified number of people have clicked it, the board will ‘lock’ and everyone who clicked the board receives the item, usually at midnight PST. There are groups specifically set up to ‘call’ boards, and they’re easy enough to find using Search. Because stores can and do change locations with alarming frequency, I haven’t included landmarks to the places mentioned in this article, but they’re readily found by using the Search function in your Second Life client.
This is a continuation of another article, if you haven’t seen the beginning, well click here.