Hatchling Guide

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Congratulations on purchasing your first Hatchling avatar! What follows on this page will hopefully be a fun and informative guide to navigating the world of Second Life through one of Daryth Kennedy's avatars. This guide will pick up from where Purchasing a Dragon Avatar left off and take you on the next stage of your dragon journey.

Key Points

Before we continue, there are a few general points to note:

• If you visited this page hoping for a more generalized overview, you can always take it From the Ground Up.
• If any of the terms used on this page are unfamiliar, please see the Second Life Terminology guide on this wiki.
• Words that mean something specific in SL terms will usually be italicised in this guide, e.g. to touch something in an SL sense.

With that said, let us continue on with this guide:

From Inventory to Avatar

So you did it, you pumped your L$650 into the egg vendor of your choice and now you're the proud owner of a couple of inventory objects, a Heads Up Display or HUD control and an egg named for the Hatchling you chose. Due to the complexity of the avatars this egg is actually a container, a box that holds all the pieces of the avatar. In order to wear the avatar and transform into a Hatchling you first need to unpack the egg:

Unpacking Your Egg

The first step is to rez the egg - to drag it out of your inventory and drop it on the ground. While you can do this in the Cathedral, it is not always a good idea. If there are a lot of people there it might be difficult to find room and you will contribute to lag, so if it looks busy in the Great Hall you can always go down to the Sandbox to rez your egg, or to some land you own if you wish to do it privately.

Once the egg is rezzed, you need to unpack its contents. If the egg is equipped with an automated unpacking script it will notify you by saying:

Click me once to begin hatching

You can then touch the egg and wait a few seconds and you will receive some inventory, usually a folder in the name of the Hatchling you purchased. If your egg does not say the above message or if nothing happens when you touch it, you will need to unpack the egg manually. Please see the notecard contained in the contents of the egg for information on how to do this.

Whichever method is used, you should arrive at a point where you have your dragon avatar unpacked into a folder in your inventory. Now you are a step or two away from turning into a cute little hatchie. Please remember that if you are unpacking your egg in a public area, you will now need to either take it back into your inventory or delete it.

Wearing the Avatar

Now that your egg is unpacked and you have a new folder in your inventory with the dragon parts in, you are ready to turn into a dragon. There are a couple of ways you can do this, either the "long way" around which is to wear each item in the new dragon folder individually, or the much faster and easier way, which is to drag the folder out of your inventory and drop it onto your avatar.

Before you do this though, you may want to give a small consideration to your current avatar. When you turn into a dragon, basically everything you are currently wearing becomes unattached, including your basic body shape, basic hair, etc. This is because the dragon avatars have their own custom body shape, which is used as a skeleton for the prims.

Your original body parts along with your clothes and other attachments are not lost during the transition - in the sense that they're still in your inventory - but if you are not sure what they are currently called or where they are currently located, finding them after the fact can be tedious. If this concerns you, then you may be interested in the article From Human to Dragon and Back Again, which explains how to back up your current form and how to switch back to it easily.

Whatever you decide to do, once you are ready simply drag the Dragon Folder out of your inventory over the top of your avatar and then drop it on yourself. If SL is mildly lagged, make sure the folder is really hovering over your avatar before you let go! After a few moments, you should begin to morph into a Hatchling.

Being a Dragon

Congratulations, you are now a cute little hatchie! Hatchlings have the easiest time moving around compared to the other dragon avatar sizes, as they are roughly the same radius as a human and approximately half the height so they tend to fit in many of the same places while also being able to sneak into tight corners. That said, there are still a few useful tips for them:

Movement and Camera

Hatchlings have short legs and sometimes find it difficult to scale big steps, low walls, or particularly severely undulating ground. The answer to these problems is to remember the jump and flight keys in SL:

• Pressing Page Up will cause the avatar to jump and you can usually time this jump to clear short flights of stairs or low walls without needing to fly.
• Pressing the Home key will make your avatar fly. On particularly rough ground it is sometimes useful as a Hatchie to fly along a few centimetres above the ground.

Dancing at Club Dragon Inferno can be fun, especially as Hatchling. While there are some dance orbs in the club it is also worth noting that many of the "Animations for Tinies" in SL in general will usually work to some degree on hatchies, although some odd protrusion of the arms may occur. It's certainly worth testing out some of these animations, as they can be very cute.

Sometimes the low down hatchie view can be limiting. If you are standing still and need to look up or "tip your head back" - as in tilt the viewpoint of your SL client - you can use the camera controls, which can be accessed from the View menu in the SL client, or by holding down the alt key as described in this Second Life Knowledge Base article. If you need to move around with a different camera position, rolling the scroll wheel on your mouse will lock the camera into different levels of zoom. To return to your original camera point of view, press the Esc key until the view resets.

The HUD

The dragon HUD is a powerful tool that unlocks so much of the potential of the dragon avatars. As well as allowing your dragon to roar and breathe the breath unique to its type, as well as allowing the dragon to animate in some ways such as moving wings or coiling its tail, the HUD offers access to the colour and texture switching abilities of the avatar. This allows you to craft a truly unique dragon that reflects your personality and shows off your design sense to other residents and dragon owners alike.

Rather than reproducing the information here, please see the Dragon HUD page for a comprehensive breakdown of how it works.

Colours and Copies

With so much customisability built into the avatars it is easy to end up with more than one cool colour scheme per dragon. Perhaps you will have different schemes for different moods or different times of the week or different events. The good news is that the dragons have copy rights turned on, so you can make a copy of the whole avatar and keep different folders for each new style and scheme you invent. You can either copy the dragon folder in your inventory, or simply rez your dragon egg to unpack a fresh new copy. The latter method is useful if you lose a dragon part or something stops working too.

This copy-enabled setting is true of the egg packaging itself too and many dragon owners like to use their egg as an ornamental display piece in their home while still keeping a copy in their inventory.

Among the Isles

The fun of being a dragon does not end with the avatar itself, not by a long shot. Many would say that it begins with the avatar and moves on from there. Many helpful, talented and fun-loving dragons inhabit the Dragon Isles and there are a variety of fun things to see and do there:

Dragon Community

The community aspect of the Isles is strong and participation is often rewarding and fun. There is so much to see and do as well as cool places to hang out and chat. A lot of dragons seem to congregate in the Great Hall of the Cathedral, perhaps out of some nesting instinct, after all most were born there in a manner of speaking. The sandboxes too have a habit of attracting dragons, although it should be noted that they are provided for building first and everything else second.

As well as these places to hang out generally there are often specific events organised at certain dates and times. One popular party spot is the Drum Circle under the volcano in the Limbo sim, which plays host to many dragon parties. Notification of upcoming events in the club can usually be found on the News & Events forum on the Council of Wyrms forums.

There are many contests held on the Isles too, sometimes in response to holidays such as the recent Halloween Costume Contest and sometimes held for the fun of it. There is an Isle Contests page on this wiki where such things can be tracked. They are often discussed on the forums too.

Other cool places to visit include the Marketplace and the largely residential sim of Lethe where you may be able to rent a dragon cave if you're lucky, and - obviously - Hatchie Haven!

Council Membership

The Dragon Council groups further the sense of community, with a group for each type of dragon avatar. The groups are not merely decorative and actually serve as a passport to certain features around the isles. This can include things such as the ability to:

• Vote in contests and on important dragon issues
• Have access to dragon avatar owners only content
• Receive occasional notices about important dragon issues and events
• Show your affinity for the dragons

The group for Hatchlings is called the Council of Wyrm Hatchlings. If you do not receive an invite to this group within 24 hours of purchasing your first Hatchling egg, please contact a Guide, Mentor, Ambassador or Guardian in-world to assist you with registration and invitation to Council of Wyrm Hatchlings.