What to do?
When you start you choose a basic avatar form. This does not matter much because you can change the avatar to look however you want once in SL, even changing a male into a female, or some other type of creature if you know how.
You begin on Help Island which provides tutorials of how to get around, change your appearance, communicate, how to make money, and create items. The tutorials are very basic but they also point you in the direction of where to find more in-depth instruction. There is also an area that has tons of free stuff for your avatar - clothing, skins, items, even free houses (which you would either need to purchase land for or rent a space from someone).
Getting Around
Travel around Second Life is relatively simple. Of course walking is the most basic way to travel, but this tends to be slow. Flying is my favorite way to get around. However you may not be get everywhere if there are walls or buildings in the way and there are also some areas where the creator disabled the flying option.
Teleporting is the main way to travel between areas. If you choose the map option on the bottom of the screen you get a zoomable map of the whole world. Here you can click anywhere or use the menus to find specific places and then choose teleport. You are then immediately taken to that place.
Finding places to go is also simple. The search button gives you an interface to search for any place you might want to go. You can search for general interests like shopping and music or specific places (if you already know it exists) like Info Island. Then you choose from the result and once again use the teleport option. You can also create your own waypoints where ever you want so you can return (by teleporting) at a later time.
Warning: Patience is Required!
One problem in Second Life is that the landscape and the objects in it can take a long time to load. As you travel around sometimes it can take minutes before everything is loaded. Patience is necessary if you want to see everything around you. Some objects take longer than others to load and you may not even know that something is there unless you wait. And wait…
