In the time it took between me buying the Pumpkin Pack and publishing my last blog post that featured it,a couple of extra activities have been added.
Pumpkin Flower Tea
I mentioned in my last post that the pumpkin growing beds also let you grow pumpkin flowers, now you can make those into tea using the rustic teapot.
When you grow pumpkin flowers and take them into your Pouch, you’ll receive three portions: HnF_pumpkin_flower: Ava Bloodrose you received 3 of item: HnF_pumpkin_flower
The recipe for Pumpkin Flower Tea is as follows;
HnF_rustic_teapot: HnF_pumpkin_flower_tea requires the following ingredients: HnF_hot_water: 1 HnF_pumpkin_flower: 1 HnF_honey: 1 It will take 5.00 minutes to make
Jack O Lantern
It wouldn’t be Spooky Season without Pumpkin carving, would it? So now you can make your own Herb & Fable Jack O Lantern.
HnF_craft_table: HnF_jack-o-lantern requires the following ingredients: HnF_pumpkin: 1 It will take 30.0 minutes to make
Obviously you need a knife and a table on which to carve your pumpkin. The Crafting Table is free as part of the Lavendell Quest and the Knife comes with the First Wand pack from the store.
In the spirit of the spooky season, Herb & Fable have released a Pumpkin Pie set along with the various ingredients in the store allowing you to make more when you run out.
The pie pack gives you enough ingredients to make three pies, which is a multi-step process.
So what to do with this lot? Let’s check out the recipe cards, you can add them from your inventory and they display on screen.
To make Pumkin Pie you will need:
1 x HnF_pumpkin_pie_mix 1 x HnF_pastry_case 1 x HnF_icing_sugar
First you need to heat your pumpkin in the Saucepan which takes half an hour. Since the pan is copyable, I’ve put three out to heat at once, they’re also Modifiable so I resized them too.
To cook the pumkin you will need:
1 x HnF_pumpkin 3 x water
While the pumpkin is cooking you can start on making the pie mix.
To make Pumkin Pie Mix you will need:
1 x HnF_cooked_pumpkin 1 x HnF_pumpkin_pie_spice 2 x HnF_eggs 1 x HnF_milk 1 x HnF_sugar 1 x HnF_sea_salt 1 x HnF_butter
So before we can make pie mix, it looks like we need to make some pumpkin spice using the mortar & pestle to grind up some of the ingredients.
To make Pumkin Pie Spice you will need:
1 x HnF_ground_ginger 1 x HnF_grated_nutmeg 1 x HnF_cinnamon 1 x HnF_allspice 1 x HnF_black_pepper
After you’ve done all that, you should then have cooked pumpkin and pumpkin spice to use as ingredients for the next steps.
Once you have both your cooked pumpkin and spice, you’ll need to mix them together in your mixing bowl.
When that’s done, you’ll have pumpkin pie mix,that can go in the oven with the pie case as per the pie recipe. When they’re baked you’ll have some pies that look lovely and which will restore yourHHerb & Fable health stats when used.
As with cooking in the real world, a lot of mess has been made of empty containers and leftover produce, so your workspace may look something like the picture below. You can see that the items now have red hovertext over them, meaning you can either recycle the containers or compost the food waste.
But now of course you probably want to make some more? No problem! You can grow your own pumpkins with the Pumpkin Beds and seeds, with the other ingredients also available in the Herb & Fable store.
GrowingGrown
If you look here though, it’s not just actual pumpkins that you can make, but pumpkin seeds and pumpkin flowers as well.
During the Zoom call last Thursday (25th September) something was mentioned that seems to have slipped under the radar, everyone focussed on the new “Premium Plus no stipend” news.
What didn’t make so much news was the mention of a new official Second Life viewer for Mac, written to run on the “M” series of chips, or “Apple Silicon” as it’s known.
This viewer has been mostly created by third-party open-source developers who did most of the work coding a viewer to utilise the technical capabilities of these chips. Philip Rosedale admitted during the call that there’s no way the Lab could have dedicated enough time or resources to do this work and they are very grateful to the community.
Linden Lab then used this code as a base for a new Official Viewer which is integrated into Viewer 7.2.2.17774206511 Beta and according to Brett Linden “will soon be advanced to the default Mac Viewer”.
What got my attention was Philip Rosedale’s excitement as he commented that the difference they have seen in FPS (Frames per Second) is “between 20% and 200% improvements”, even on his old M1 generation MacBook.
However, I was at the WebRTC voice stress-test last night and it was Phillip that kept disconnecting. To be fair though, there were well over 100 avatars present, which would strain most systems. He was reporting 30fps in that crowded space though, which he sounded very happy about and is pretty impressive.
So I thought I’d try it for myself and asked a friend very nicely if they’d lend me their MacBook for a couple of days. It was a MacBook Air 15, 2023 M2 with 8GB RAM, I was pleasantly surprised.
I did some very unscientific tests noting the FPS at a few places with the current Release viewer then cleared the cache and updated to the current Beta. I then went back to each place to note any differences.
Current Release Viewer
Location
FPS on arrival
Lowest FPS
Approximateaverage once all Rezzed
Avatars Present
FaMeshed
61
28
27
50
Warehouse 21
43
11.4
27 (but laggy and crashed)
51
Muddy’s
45
21
20’s
45
Totally 80’s
45
34
30’s
(didn’t count)
Beta Viewer
Location
FPS on arrival
Lowest FPS
Approximateaverage once all Rezzed
Avatars Present
FaMeshed
34
24.6
mid 30’s
44
Warehouse 21
43
15
27 (stable not laggy)
44
Muddy’s
44
24
35
62
Totally 80’s
40
26
40’s to 52
39
I left the graphics settings at the installed defaults which were in the Low range, but increased the Draw Distance to 240m. The Beta viewer was noticably smoother and seemed to lag less where the previous viewer had, but maybe just a complex avatar had left between my visits. If you have a Mac though, I’d definitely download the Beta, you’ll notice a marked improvement.
Information from the release notes:
Known Issues:
Apple Silicon does not support convex decomposition for physics meshes
We are looking to have a new convex decomposition solution for generating physics meshes in a subsequent release for all platforms
Apple Silicon does not support pathfinding tools
Navigation buttons in the in-viewer browser are no longer present for marketplace and search
We will be restoring these in a future update
Subtle rendering differences might be noticed on certain configurations and EEP environments
We are working to improve these.
You can find more details and download it from the Release Notes page.
Being a Windows user, this really won’t affect me, but I know there’s a lot of Mac users out there and I feel this should have got a bit more of a fanfare for their sake. Maybe that’ll come when it’s promoted to being the default.
The header image is a screenshot from the WebRTC test session.
So here’s my take on the news that’s appeared on several blogs already; Linden Lab announce a new subscription plan . “Premium Plus – no stipend” quite simply a subscription with exactly the same benefits as Premium Plus, just without the signup bonus and monthly payment of 650L$, at a cheaper price. You can expect this to become available mid October.
Table showing different Second Life subscription plans, with Premium Plus highlighted that has a check box labelled “Save $105.12 US without Stipend & Bonus”.
Targeted particularly at creators or store owners that want the other benefits like free uploads, but don’t need the stipend payments because their business provides a Linden dollar income. The Lab believe it will also suit enthusiastic residents that want the benefits like the extra groups, but prefer to buy Lindens as they need them. Apparently the majority of current Premium Plus members buy extra Lindens anyway, so reducing the monthly/annual subscription outlay might be appealing.
Brad said in a Zoom call on Thursday “It’s the best option for SL”(people taking a no-stipend subscription). This is because paying Residents stipends puts extra lindens into circulation in the virtual economy, which is a pool that’s already flooded, which affects the exchange rate negatively.
After the Zoom call, I took the above image and posted it into the Fantasy Faire Backstage Discord server with a brief explanation to see what the merchants thought. Here’s some of the responses;
“They vastly overestimate how much I actually make lol. I spend more on stuff to make stuff with than I earn back lol I like the stipend but i could see it (non stipend plan) being handy for some”
“yeah i’ll keep my stipened some weeks it’s all i have coming in […] but certainly a good deal if you are only going to cash out”
“The stipend is the reason i have premium plus…they gonna give us one thats just free uploads with a stipend? lol i dont need the group space, or the land bonus, just the uploads and the stipend…actually i could do without stipend if theres just free uploads”
“As someone who is neither a creator nor a DJ, I always have more outgo than income in SL. My stipend goes right to the tipjars of the couple of events I attend each week, and the rest out of pocket. I wish there was a level between Premium and Premium Plus Minus Stipend. Maybe something with 110 groups and 450 L$ stipend but leave all the upload fees at Premium level since I don’t mind paying 10 L$ for the occasional texture a couple times a month.”
In contrast a larger brand creator I shared the news with said:
“Wow”
They seemed keen on the idea, despite having just renewed their annual Premium Plus subscription. However since there was talk of being able to switch plans quickly, that might not be an issue.
What I take from this is that the no-stipend plan is much more suited for large-scale businesses. Smaller businesses still appreciate it, but also raised above are the things people don’t need but are paying for. Some don’t need the land bonus (they possibly have a full region for their store), others don’t need masses of groups. I think this should be the first step in creating a custom subscription system, allowing you tick boxes for the benefits you want or don’t want and have the price adjusted accordingly.
I’m reblogging this recent post by Daniel Voyager,with my own thoughts thrown in. I got excited when I saw Daniel’s post, since in my opinion Lumiya was the best mobile viewer of its time. I may actually go as far to say of any time for that matter. Linden Lab are doing their best building their own viewer from the ground up, but it’s focussed mainly on new residents as an entry path, not for seasoned residents that might want to quickly log in to do some task or other.
This is a reverse engineering project to resurrect a much loved piece of software. If you have the skills and are interested in helping out, you can check out the GitHub Repo for more details. Click below for Daniel’s original post.
(Header image from internet search, no credit claimed)
While checking the Second Life Reddit posts over the weekend I came across this post named Restoring Lumiya Viewer to the public posted by Kaleaon who is the last member of Alina Lyvette staff. Kaleaon has not been in contact with Alina for nearly a decade. The plan is to open up the Lumiya Viewer […]
For approximately 18 years Bernard Drax,aka Draxtor Depres, has been making videos about Second Life. Yesterday he did a live stream announcing he wouldn’t be doing any more. He may upload more unreleased videos he still has, but he doesn’t plan to make any more.
I’m not overly surprised to hear this, after his monologue last month, regarding the closure of the Second Life Book Club islands.
Drax says he’s not “burnt-out” he just wants to change his focus in life, some self-care after many busy years. He intends to focus more on his family and himself doing such things as producing for his son’s band, since his background is in music. To me it’s sad news, but a totally understandable decision that I totally respect. Especially since Linden Lab withdrew their sponsorship in March 2024, which I think was a big mistake on their part.
However Drax isn’t leaving SL, he’ll be logging in to reply to messages and may well turn up if you invite him to any events you may be having.
The channel will remain as a curated archive of videos documenting Second Life, along with the documentaries he produced, going back as far as the 17th May 2007.
Yesterday there was another Linden Lab Zoom call. I’m not sure what subject to write about frankly, because several topics were covered,but as a fellow blogger said to me; “Someone’s got to, or what was the point?”
I was a bit confused at the start as to the purpose of the call, because they were talking about the Lindex (Linden Dollar currency exchange). I don’t use Facebook or regularly read the SL Forums so I was unaware some creators have been worrying (complaining maybe?) about the market fluctuating. It’s a financial market, this stuff happens. The problem is (as I understand it) the market is stagnating, as in it’s been stable for too long. The physical world, with tangible currencies has had 20 years of inflation, Second Life hasn’t, apparently the exchange would realistically be nearer 400 than the 250 that it’s been at for decades. As a result the money creators make in Linden Dollars, is worth a lot less than it used to be when cashed out. This isn’t a new problem, the Lab have been struggling with it for some time. In Brad’s words; “Covid saved us”. Meaning that when the COVID-19 Pandemic came along, there was a sudden influx of new and returning residents, who all needed to buy virtual cash, giving the economy a massive boost. Those residents now seem to have left again.
What’s the solution? It’s a bit tricky to say the least. If creators raise prices, customers are less inclined to spend and it won’t solve anything. If Linden Lab intervenes and sets the value of the Linden Dollar, residents will say they’re interfering. Customers don’t want prices to go up, neither does the Lab, it’d make the situation worse.
I’m no financial expert,so I can’t really speculate on solutions, but one thing that wouldn’t hurt is more people spending money,as in new residents.
One barrier to new residents actually buying anything however is store owners setting their security systems to kick out residents under 30 days old. How can you expand your customer base if you do that? I understand it’s a common practice to reduce spammers and griefers, but the situation the SL economy is in right now, those new residents are the most important ones. Don’t put your prices up, let more customers into your stores.
A few other points that were mentioned before I cease my rambling;
Creators that were having their products copy-botted will be pleased to hear that the most prolific offenders (that Linden Lab could prove) are in Brad’s words “gone and won’t be coming back. They got more than a stern letter.”
On the subject of the real-time transactions experiment that went tragically wrong; The more secure an account, the more likely those payments in real-time will be. I interpret that as maybe they might introduce them for accounts that have MFA enabled, but that’s just speculation on my part.
On new signups; The number of new accounts has gone up x10 more than previously. Of those residents, twice the number are staying around, but it still needs to improve. It just takes one bad experience, like being booted by a stores security system, to leave and not come back. Grumpity Linden gave an example based on metrics of new users arriving at a stores landing point then not going in.
Random stat revealed by Philip: The average avatar age of regular logins is 14 years old.
Basically we’re all old, getting older, and don’t have a clue how to keep the next generations from leaving after a few minutes on the mobile app.
This morning I received an email from Flickr saying there was a Terms of Service update that came into effect yesterday (24th July). My first thought was “what new restrictions are they going to implement now that’ll push SL folks out even more?”
Well the first major thing is a minimum age limit for account holders of 18.
What’s Changing For Everyone
The primary update is that Flickr will now require all new users to be 18 years of age or older to create an account. This change helps us align with evolving global online safety standards and ensures a consistent and safe environment for our entire community.
For residents in the UK, it gets worse:
For Users in the United Kingdom: Important Changes to Content Access
Due to new UK regulations designed to protect minors online, we are implementing a specific change for how content is accessed within the UK.
Effective July 24, 2025:
Access to content with SafeSearch turned OFF will require a Flickr Pro subscription.
This is because a Pro subscription requires credit card verification, which serves as age assurance under UK law.
So if you’re in the UK and want to see stuff that isn’t PG rated appropriate (which lets be honest applies to quite a bit of Second Life content) you’ll have to shell out for a Pro account.
The big flaw in that plan however is: You can open a bank account at 16 in the UK, or as young as 11 with parental involvement.
Further:
What this means for you in the UK
Free Users: SafeSearch will be automatically enabled by default. To view all content on Flickr, you will need to upgrade to a Pro account.
Pro Users: No action is needed. Your ability to turn SafeSearch off remains unchanged.
This change will definitely have a very detrimental affect a lot of people use of the site. Who I think will suffer most here will be merchants displaying their creations, all of a sudden they’ve lost the majority of their UK audience, and of course their UK customers that can’t see those adverts.
Another attempt by Flickr to try and push out Second Life and other virtual world content? Maybe, but that’s where we are now.
A couple of days ago I got a YouTube notification about a video from Draxtor:
ATTENTION BOOKSTERS: SL Book Club Archipelago is closing = we do a last walkthrough
Linden Lab are closing the islands that hosted the Second Life Book Club shows, that started April 2020 and finished November 2024, tomorrow (Friday 11th July 2025).
In Draxtors words:
“The Second Life Book Club Islands, which were a gift from Linden Lab. The agreement was that I would get these islands to conduct a weekly event. Author interviews, celebrations of the art of writing, and the joy of reading. And it was really awesome. We started in April 2020. And we concluded November last year. And now is the time to take these down because there really is no event anymore.”
I got up early this morning to try and follow Drax around as he did the last possible walkthrough of Island #4.
You can watch the different island walkthrough videos on his YouTube channel and all the episodes of the Second Life Book club in this playlist.
I attended many of the bookclub shows between 2021 and 2022 and watching some of the walkthroughs brought back fond memories. I have a large collection of snapshots I took at the shows, some you can see in this Flickr Album, but I will try to sort through the rest adding appropriate author and show details and make them available somewhere.
The Second Life Book Club should never be forgotten. It was a prime example of the use case for virtual worlds. Of course you can have a book club anywhere, but only in a virtual world can you create a discussion space that resembles a setting from or inspired by the book and avatars that resemble the characters…every WEEK!
If you don’t watch any of the videos linked above,(some are quite long and everyones busy) just watch the clip embedded below; It’s the last 15 minutes of this mornings walkthrough in which Drax shares a few pearls of wisdom and a suggestion about reading that I think everyone should consider.
(Apologies to Draxtor for my avatar being a background distraction for a few minutes, before I realised I was in his camera shot.)
Last night was the Summer Solstice in my part of the World and there was a group Ritual at Centauria, the home of the Second Life JINX Centaurs and Herb & Fable.
Back in 2009 when I first came to Second Life I did a random search for Witchcraft, which did take me to a related community, but their events and activities were always focussed in the wrong timezone for me. When I was able to attend, I didn’t really feel part of the proceedings, it didn’t resonate with me, it didn’t trigger an emotional response within me. However I did make some very good friends there, that I’m still in touch with today , one of which was at last nights ritual with me.
Now nearly sixteen years later,these rituals Julula puts together do trigger that meaningful response. They are a lot of fun because Julula puts in so much work with custom animations and emotional immersive audio to bring the community event to life.
“Being in Second Life, we can focus on our avatars, but also feel the benefit of this ritual in real life. We are all from different countries here, and so this space allows us to connect from wherever we are in the world. Here we come together to share space and create connection in a magical way.”
The quote above was part of the dialogue from last nigh and it’s so true. These are the kinds of activies I feel Second Life was built for. Bringing people together from all over the World in joint celebration.
If you want to do your own Ritual to celebrate the Solstice, you can buy the Solstice Ritual kit from the Jinx store at Shop and Hop. If you’re a registered Herb & Fable player there is a free add-on that allows you to perform the Ritual in a way that gains you some XP and a couple of related badges.
Here’s a snapshot of the ingredients you get with the Herb & Fable version.
