The blog has taken a step back from covering most hunts, mainly because I was/am burned out on hunting. I've been focused more on SL sales events, simply because in blogging terms, its easier to get what is needed from the designers directly for the events and it doesn't require that every waking minute of my free time be spent store-hopping and fighting lag in SL or that I shell out lindens to do a hunt for stuff I only want to show on the blog rather than stuff I actually want for my own avatar.
Traditionally, I have always enjoyed covering the male hunts because I think the guys in SL get shafted most of the time when it comes to freebies. In that spirit, I decided to do the current MENstuff portion of the Stuff Hunt going on in SL this month (the hunt has separate paths for men, women and home). The hunt both reminded me of what I love about hunting and the things that got me burned out and fed up with hunting.
PROS:
*I love the challenge and often time myself on how long it takes to get through certain stores where I know the owners are awesome item hiders.
*I love taking the hints and trying to figure out just where things are hidden.
*I love finding new-to-me shops and designers and getting to take a look at what's out there in SL.
*I love seeing the social aspect of hunts, getting out and meeting new people/making new hunt friends.
CONS:
*I hate vague hints that have no relation to the actual hiding place in a store the size of a half sim. I get that you want hunters to have a look around your place, but a hint should at least point them in the right direction.
*I hate incorrect LMs in a gift folder. Yes, I understand there is a blog with correct SLurls, but its a pain in the ass to have to keep switching back and forth between SL and an open browser in order to get to the right places. Seriously. It takes 2 seconds for a store owner to swap out a bad LM for a good one if a problem is found. Other hunts do it all the time and no one has died from it yet.
*I hate stores that think its cute or a way to deter area search users by renaming the hunt items so you get randomly named folders in your inventory. If you have to stop hunting for the evening, or crash - goodbye folders as they vanish into inventory without a searchable hunt name and goodbye to knowing what number you left off on in the hunt, especially if you have to refer to a secondary source for the correct stores and LMs. Don't even let me get started on the annoyance of having to rename every freaking folder so that you can have some kind of logic in your inventory. Granted, to the average hunter, it may not seem like a huge issue, but when you do the hunt volume I was doing when the blog was covering as many hunts a month as it could, this kind of annoyance adds up.
*Give folders, not objects. Old hands in SL know about wearing an object to pull the LM from it, but newcomers might not and having to find a place to rez and unpack each object to get the next LM can be offputting to them. Hunts should attract people to your store and give you a chance to show off what you create, rather than repel the hunters.
/minirant
Which brings us full circle to the MENstuff hunt. I haven't done one in a while, so I was a little excited to do it again this time around. There are 100 stores on the hunt path - it was nice to see some familiar faces and there was a decent mix of new places included. Use the website for SLurls. Some of the stores are free and some are 1L for the items (don't ask me why, I don't know and I don't want to get involved in that particular discussion). I completed all 100 stores, and am fairly sure I got all of them here, but there were renamed folders and crashes, so - no guarantees. What did stick out in my mind this time around was that the hunt felt deserted. Maybe it was the times of day/night I was hunting, but I can remember in the past encountering groups of hunters frequently while being out working the hunt path and this time I ran into 2 other hunters on the entire hunt. It took me 2 days to do all the stores, so maybe it was pure chance I didn't run into other hunters since I went fairly quickly.
In any event, there were some great gifts out there and even with the 1L stops on the hunt, this is a pretty inexpensive way to expand your male wardrobe and try out some great designers.
MENstuff Blog: here
Hunt item:
Cheers,
Shadowed
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