Chalet Linden Home Sims Open, New Sims Connect Most Mainland Continents

 

Yesterday on Tuesday March 30, 2021, Patch Linden announced on the official forums that the new Linden Homes, the Chalets, were now open for people to claim. "We are going to start our release of the Chalet Linden Homes today," he stated, "and we’re excited to be getting them out ahead of when we initially anticipated."

The homes come in eight styles, the first four shown at the Winter Expo called Reizend, Edelweiss, Matterhorn, and Alpenrose. The Lab also introduced four more with fewer walls, "so that you can add your own walls to create a customized floor plan. The open plan versions are named Ravensburg, Eikelen, Moritzburg, and Albus." 

The terrain of the sims these houses are on varies from flat to hilly with numbers of trees around and larger rocky hills standing over surrounding areas. There are occasional windmills, which add to the atmosphere of the place. There's also a beer hall intended as a community center at Muehlenbach (160/119/37). Patch says once in a while, there will be a few changes in it's decor. 

As before, some of the sims have amusing names such as Tea Party, Humble Pie, Geppeto, Wild Thing, and others.

There is one big difference between the opening of these particular sims and other openings since the opening of Bellisseria.  These connect the Linden Home continent to the mainland sim to the east, Satori. This now means it's possible to fly or walk between most mainland sims without teleporting. 

Unfortunately because of the map glitchs, we can't really show you the straits in which one can sail through the Chalet lands from Bellisseria to Satori. One will just have to go through to find out for oneself.

Patch Linden would post this video of Magellan sailing through the area, only to run into a pesky problem those living on the mainland are well familiar with. As for what the straits will be called, perhaps the Punky Straits. 

It's an interesting development to close out the month of March.

Source: Second Life Forums

Hat Tip: Daniel Voyager 

Bixyl Shuftan

Bellisseria Land Expansion To South

It's been a few months since we last talked about new areas in the Bellisseria continent. When I last dropped by in very early December, I hadn't noticed any major changes. But it seems since then, the Moles have been very busy.

The land that was originally planned for the south has finally been filled in. But the terraforming didn't stop there. The Moles made a huge extension to the south, dividing it from the north and central lands with a river. When the first land of the new continent was placed, while it was enabled to sail from the continent of Jeogeot to the south to it, it took a lot of ocean. Now just a couple sims separate the two continents.

Besides the continental expansion, a number of islands have also been placed. Some of these are for houseboats, including another "pickle" island. And there are various smaller islands which were placed for scenery.

Looking around, the new land not only had houses and houseboats, but some already had people inside. Looks like at least some of this new area has already been open for Premium residents to grab.

So what's next for Bellisseria? Hard to say. The Lab could easily make a new continent and/or houseboat islands to it's east. But the area has already attracted a number of residents whom have been banding together into a community. The new continent has been Linden Lab's biggest success this year. What they'll try for 2020, it'll be interesting to see.

Bixyl Shuftan

New Sims, Linden Home Areas, Offshore Island, Added to Bellisseria

For those whom have been anxiously awaiting the next batch of Linden homes, your wait  may soon be over. Ten new sims have been added to the Bellisseria continent, six of which hadn't appeared on the map yet as of the writing of this article.

Even though the lower six weren't visible on the map yet, they were visible and accessible in-avatar, including some dock areas for houseboats.

In the four sims that were visible on the map, there were some houseboats set up, though not quite ready to be claimed.

Some places for land-based Linden Homes had what looked like Monopoly house tokens. Perhaps these were to mark where real homes were to go.

That's not all that's appeared in the Costner Bay and Whiskey Bay sims, there's an island with an airstrip and a pier. The airstrip is at Costner Bay (118/82/23). The pier is at Whiskey Bay (173/11/23). Like six of the sims, it wasn't yet on the map when this story was being written.

When some houseboat Linden Homes were released last month, the 709 houses were snapped up in just 27 minutes. Since then however, Linden Lab has announced the price of Premium accounts, which are necessary to claim a Linden Home, will go up significantly later this month. It will be interesting to see how much of an effect the price hike has on how fast the homes are claimed.

Addition: As of 10 AM SL time, the remainder of the new sims have appeared on the map, but not the island yet. 

Hat Tip: Daniel Voyager

Bixyl Shuftan

New Linden Home Houseboat Area Opened, 709 Homes Sell Out In 27 Minutes

Last week on May 14, Linden Lab opened up a new Linden Homes area, just east of the northeast coast of the new Bellisseria continent. The new area was made up of forty-eight sims, forty of which were Linden Home houseboats, and the docks and shore they were moored at.

Daniel Voyager had a couple articles about the new sims and their houseboats (article 1) (article 2). While it was announced in the blog that the new homes would probably be available "with in the next 24 hours," no exact time was given until at 10AM when Patch Linden announced they were ready.

While they were expected to sell fast given the demand, the results were probably a surprise to all but the most diehard fan. Daniel stated that all 709 new Linden Home houseboats were snapped up in just twenty-seven minutes!.

With such demand, it's almost certain that there will more more Linden Homes available soon. Will this be the rest of the Bellisseria mainland that has yet to be placed or another purely houseboat area? Time will tell.

Lower image credit: Daniel Voyager

Bixyl Shuftan

New Linden Homes Continent Update

For those wanting to scout the new continent

Besides landing planes there, one can also rezz them. But the spot can be identified only by the lack of the "no-rezz" symbol on one's viewer. It's at Coral Waters (109/139/22)

For those whom have been trying to get one of the new Linden Homes, a forum post by Patch Linden stated they were all gone within 48 hours. The good news, he promises additional homes "in the very near future." Presumably, this means the rest of the continent, or at least more of it, will soon be moved into positioned, and the homes placed on it.

Hat Tip: Daniel Voyager, Inara Pey

Bixyl Shuftan

New Linden Homes Continent Opens

The sims with the new Linden Homes are now open. On Monday April 15, Linden Lab announced on the official Second Life blog that the homes were now ready for residents to move in.

Let’s be honest - those Linden Homes from 2010 were long overdue for some updates and improvements. It was clear a fresh coat of paint and some new landscaping were just not going to make the amount of curb appeal we were shooting for. In fact, it was time to return to the drawing board and start a better-built Linden Home experience, from the ground up - literally.
The first of several planned Linden Home updates launches today - with the introduction of New Linden Homes - exclusive to Premium members. Your new home may be in the mountains, along the shore, or in a rolling landscape of low hills and river valleys, but you’ll also be part of a large community experience, with navigable waterways, a network of roads, and community areas to socialize and have fun.    
There are two new themed styles in this release - Traditional and Houseboats - and some are twice as big as previous Linden Home offerings.

While only Premium residents can claim a home, the land is open to all. People appeared on the new land, named Bellisseria by the Lab. Many quickly claimed some of the new homes. But not everyone was there for a new house, or houseboat. Some were just there to explore around. And the new land has much to see from rocky hill areas, to beaches and islands, trees, sandy areas with little grass, roads, including angles roads for people to drive uphill or down, bridges to cross, lighthouses, traffic circles, piers, and more.

Thanks to a string of water sims connecting it to the landmass to the south, known as Jeogeot, as well as the water sims that connect it to the one to the north, Sansara, It's now possible to travel from Glade of Sorrows in the south west end of Jeogeot to the Fillip sim on the north edge of Heterocera without teleporting. So there's been lots of people walking, flying, and boating around.

Someone did tell me they came across one new homeowner putting up a security orb, giving those flying about only a few seconds to leave or be teleported out. Fortunately for those who love to explore, this will soon be a thing of the past. In an announcement in the forums by Constantine Linden  yesterday, ban lines are not allowed here, and while security orbs are permitted for now, it's only for a few days.

... at 6am SLT on Wed April 17th, we are going to uncheck the box on the Linden Homes estate that allows parcel owners access restrictions to be more restrictive than the estate. Meaning: no ban lines. It's our belief that with a sense of community being a main goal of Linden Homes, ban lines send the wrong message. Parcel owners can still ban troublesome individuals by name on their parcel but they will not be able to put their land in virtual lock down by restricting access to group only.
 
... We want to allow Residents to fly, walk, drive, sail and explore freely across Bellisseria without compromising Residents privacy and security on their own parcels. To that end we are allowing the use of security orbs. However, since many orbs can be set in ways that preclude even the most innocent of straying across a parcel boundary or being sent home even though you are 500m in the sky we are forced to come up with a compromise. 

You may use your personal security orbs or devices in Linden Homes for now, but early next week: we are going to provide you with an approved device via the Linden Homes Content Packs. It will work just as aggressively in protecting your homes from unwanted intrusion, but still reasonably allow Residents to explore without fear of being ejected or teleported home without warning. Once those are added to the Linden Homes Content Packs, the use of other scripted security devices will not be allowed and this will be noted in an update to the Linden Homes covenant.

So finally a piece of Mainland free of those cursed ban lines and those security orbs that boot you out with little to no warning. Though with the "Good Neighbor Obelisks" being seen around, hopefully that will be less of a problem there too.

On a final note, between the opening of the new land and the reaction to the fire at Notre Dame, a few stories we planned to write about got put on the back burner. We'll get to those soon.

Bixyl Shuftan

Grey's New Land

Between news stories, Grey has been a little occupied with getting a new home. She got what she thought was a hot deal on some "new islands" on the estates where she lives. But as this picture shows, the islands were a little too new, or in her words about the deal, "it's hot hot hot!" Hopefully she's wearing some heat-resistant shoes.

Fortunately with water already starting to flow, the place should soon be fit for human (and foxette) habitation.