Haven Your World: Mainland Community Living

This blog was started and is and adaption of a series of pics on my Flickr blog for Ioh.  If you want to see the larger pics, feel free to check out my Flickr stream for Ioh here, starting with the first pic in the series.

Hello everyone!

After taking a much needed cat nap earlier in the late morning for me, I decided I've rested long enough, and ought to do something that is long over due. That is, to give a basic overview of the Haven Your World Mainland Community Living sim.

The name for the mainland region is Little Sheffield. It has been parceled out into 16 rental units. As the left wing of the board that you are greeted with tells you, each parcel is 3,136 square meters in size, a 717 prim allotment, and costs H$125 per week, with an initial H$1 setup to claim ownership of the parcel.

The center of the board piece, which might grab your attention first, welcomes you to "Be part of the community!" It then states, "New to Haven Your World: Mainland Community Living." This area is relatively new still, as the region was first introduced a little over a month ago on November 13th. I had visited Cheryl as she was working on the place a few days to a week prior, and was impressed by what she had already laid out.

Clicking the board gives you three items:

1. a landmark to the Little Sheffield sim that the mainland community rentals is in,

2. a notecard for the Residential Covenant, and

3. a landmark to the Haven Your World Welcome Center and freebie mall.

The right wing of the board lets you know that you are choosing your own home here and that you can either keep the current standard housing that is on the parcel by buying it for H$0, or can return the house and put up one of your own that you have bought or wish to create. There is also an important note to purchase the house, if you wish to keep it, before setting your land to group or turning on auto-return.

So, the process is pretty self-explanatory, with a very quick and easy setup. This, I feel, would make the Community living experience appealing, since there is no waiting period for an island to be processed and to appear. Instead, you're just a few clicks away to be ready to go. The prim allotment, and space, although less than your basic island, is reasonable for both price and purpose. For I would gather that the community rentals would appeal to those seeking a low maintenance home with a quick start up for ownership and usability. That, and it's a wonderful area to form a community. For the drawbacks of the islands are that they are not set up for as easy an access, and some are there more to be a private region for friends to visit on occasion. With the community rentals, in contrast, you have neighbors next to each other that you can interact with and create a close knit community with.

So, for today, we'll showcase Rental 6, and just give a quick look from the out and inside.

So here is the overhead look of rental parcel no. 6. Up ahead, the black building off in the distance is Jilly's Nest, owned and run by Jillytopaz Wasp. She is a wonderful designer of fashionable clothes and good looking human skins, both for men and women. I hope to cover more on her store in a later article on the commercial sim. But for now, I make mention of it to show that you can get a full community experience with both a residential area and commercial area within walking distance of each other. Again, this is perfect for both quick and easy setup and to enhance the user experience for both residents and shop owners, who might per chance want to have a shop as well as a place to live next to each other so they can interact with other residents and shop owners in a virtual community immersion similar to what you get in a real life community. Of course, you'll only see my spots, ears and tail in the virtual community. =~.^=

To the far right corner, you will find Cheryl's house. It is somewhat different from the others, as it has her own build with her particular personal touch and texturing. If you get a chance while in world, I would encourage you to stop by and pay her a visit. She is quite personable and friendly, ;)

This is the ground level floor inside the basic rental housing. I would estimate the area to be about 20 meters in width and 40 meters in length, so giving roughly about 800 square meters of space to portion out your ground floor in however manner you wish. I'm certain you could put in extra walls in order to partition out the area even more, either to provide some privacy or more visibly defined borders between a living room, dining room, and kitchen, if you would like. Otherwise, you can enjoy a nice open living environment to entertain guests in. I put Ioh at the opposite end of the build so that one can get a certain perspective of how much space there is.

The basic way to get to the second floor is by way of the spiral staircase. I rather enjoy this mode since it gives the upper and lower levels of the house a sense of connection between one another. You can, though have put in a teleporter, if that's your preferred method of transportation.

Up above, you'll find that the second level has been partitioned into a hallway of 5 meters in width and 40 meters in length, with two 15 x 20 meter rooms. You could make either two bedrooms, a bedroom and a bathroom, or even make your own partition of two bedrooms with their own inner bathrooms, depending on how much space you want and require. Being that the basic area is about 800 square meters, between the two levels of the house, you essentially have 1,600 square meters. of course, if you want to add on space for the roof, your basic living space for the starter house that comes with your home parcel is about 2,400 square meters. So, consider that your basic land parcel on its own is 3,136 square meters. Your starter house already rezzed on the house takes up 800 square meters, but can have up to 1,600 squared meters on top of the land, if you use both the second floor and the rooftop as part of your housing space. Therefore, in a sense, you actually have 4,736 square meters of space on your land as part of your basic package. Of course, if you use or create a larger build, you can gain more space. Just remember your prim allotment, as well as keep in mind terms of building and conduct found in the Residential Covenant. As noted in the Covenant the mainland community wants to maintain the character of the estate, which is assumed why residents choose to live on the estate in the first place. So yes, there are more limits for living in a residential area. If these limits do not suit what you would like for a user experience on the Haven Your World grid, you are more than welcome to look into what land package would fit you better on the Own Land section of the Haven Your World website.

Otherwise, if you're happy with just a residential space, and can adhere to the covenant, then the Mainland Community rentals just might be the place for you.

So, that pretty much does it for my overview of the Haven Your World Mainland Community Living region. It's a nice residential area. If you like having the community, the quick and easy start up, and can live with the residential covenant for the estate, then by all means, go ahead and check out and purchase a parcel. As stated previously, each parcel is 3,136 square meters in size, has a 717 prim allotment, and costs H$125 per week, with an initial H$1 setup to claim ownership of the parcel. Exchange rate is £1 = H$200 (or about US$1.63 = H$200). So, at H$125 per week, you're paying less than a dollar per week. Therefore, in about a 4 week's span, you are paying H$500, or about £2.5 (about US$4.07) for the Mainland community experience.

In comparison, your basic Home Region is H$600 a month - that is £3 (or US$4.88) per month. With a basic home region, you get the full region 65,536 square meters of land to work with. The base region does only come with 937 prim allotment, as well as a max limit of 10 avatars that can be in the region. But it is a private home with much more space and 220 more prims to work with compared to a Mainland house. Not to mention, there are less building restraints.

But of course, the value depends on you and what you want. If you want the community experience and really don't want to deal with all that comes with owning a full region, then Mainland Living housing on Sheffield is the way to go. Otherwise, if you want more room, more space, and less restraints, looking into owning your own region might be the better way to go. So it depends on your purpose and what you see as your priorities and standards for living in a virtual life.

* Haven shut down in January of 2014. As great as it was, I found a new place where, for a full sim, I pay US $20/mo and have 20,000 prims to play with.  If you're not ready to invest just yet in a full sim, you can get a shop for free and/or an apartment for T$1 (1/4 a US penny).

You can also check out my current project (5/25/2014), on Tangle Grid at Ioh Haven sim here:

tangle_grid/region/Ioh%20Haven/55/112/33

Can also see this and other pics on Facebook.