There are times when being able to log in to a quiet location is a distinct advantage. If you’ve just cleared your cache, for example, then being in a quiet spot with nothing to render but your avatar can sometimes help your inventory to load a bit faster. Or if you’ve been hassled at a previous location it’s useful to be able to relog into a quieter spot.

Here’s a quick tips guide to doing that, from Mar’s alt, Roxie  :)

Hop behind the cut!

First of all, if you haven’t done so already, add a button for the Map View onto the lower toolbar of your viewer. (I’m using Viewer 2 throughout here, as this is a Newbie Notes series and V2 is the viewer that Linden Lab encourages newbies to use.) To do this, right click on the toolbar. Select all the options (they’re all useful ones to have!) and watch as the buttons appear.

Click the map button and resize the map window if you have to (just grab the lower-right corner and drag it). Now click once inside the window, hold the mouse button down, and drag the map images. You should see them move around inside the window. If the view is too close-up, you can use the scrollwheel of your mouse (or the slider at the bottom-right of the map window) to pan out a bit. You’re looking for blue, water-only regions, like these:

NOTE: You’ll find two kinds of blue region. Water regions (ones you can visit) all have names and have a slightly wavelike texture on the map. Void regions (which cannot be visited) don’t have names and are a plain blue. In both cases, these are mainly Linden-owned regions.

Once you’ve found a water region with nobody in it (and there will be quite a few containing one person who is also using this tip I’m giving you here!) click once in the middle of it (you’ll see a red circle placed there) and then click the Teleport button on the map:

Depending how high up in-world you were when you teleported, you may find yourself falling or sinking. Don’t be too worried, just let it happen until you hit the water and sink down. Something to remember here: your avatar can’t drown! Second Life is not like some other games where, if you found yourself underwater, your avatar would begin to lose health. (An exception to this is the very rare privately-owned water region which has damage enabled. The way to tell if you’re in a Linden-owned region is to look at the title bar and examine the land, which we’ll come to in a moment.)

So here you are – *glub!* – at the bottom of the ocean, and while it looks a little bit spooky down here, it’s quiet and you’re most likely alone:

Roxie landed in a water sim that had some seaweed rezzers in it, placed there by one of the Lindens:

To check what kind of region you’re in, look at World > Place Profile:

The safe, Linden-owned sims all list Governor Linden as the owner, and will show as Protected Land (which you’ll also see in the title bar at the top) –

Make a note of the region name. This one is called Bettger:

It’s handy to keep a small notebook for jotting down things like this. Stash it in the drawer of your computer desk, or keep it somewhere nearby for when you need it.

Keep hopping around until you have the names of three or four safe water regions like this. Then, go to Me > Preferences:

In the General tab, make sure the ‘Show on login’ radio button is checked, beside ‘Start Location’ – like this:

Incidentally, you don’t need to be logged in to change this, which is handy if you forget to set it and then get in a bit of a panic thinking you need to log into the place where you were being hassled, just so you can re-set it! You can actually access some basic preferences with the viewer opened but not logged in. Just fire up your viewer (no need to log in!), and then check Me > Preferences:

Next time you fire up your viewer, click the downward arrow beside ‘Start At’ –

You can now type in one of your safe water region names, and then click Log in. You will log in to the very middle of the water region that you specified:

If you’ve come to this post and don’t have time to look for water regions, try using the Second Life Map page. Scroll around until you find a quiet water sim, then click once inside it and the name should pop up. Don’t bother with the ‘visit this location’ link (unless you’ve associated your Second Life client to automatically run when you click a SLurl) – just note down the name and enter it in your start location, as shown above: