A new round of The Arcade opens in less than 20 hours! I hope you all have your wishlists and wallets ready? Here’s one last peek at the items you can get before they open their doors and you can shop ’til you drop for yourself!

Tableau vivant’s M4ryl1n Magic has been a busy bee the last couple of weeks, releasing all these pretty new hairs all over the place! On the left we have Sabra which debuted at this round’s Fantasy collective and features long fantastical waves and a pretty hair ornament at the back. Her sister-hair, Sabahi (not shown), is very similar except it doesn’t have the front parts scooped back into the ornament. Both hairs come in different sizes, men’s sizes for Sabahi and even implant versions so you can wear them with your mesh breasts (like I did!). On the right we have Tabviv’s creation for this upcoming round of The Arcade called Petit! There are two styles you can win, the common style is similar to the one pictured but it doesn’t have any ‘straight out of bed’ flyaways. The one I’m wearing is the Rare which is a really cute bedhead look, the other Rare is a mens’ fit so you gentlemen can enjoy this one too! Each prize comes with a colour change HUD with 6 colours and a cute little animal plushie for your head. I don’t know about you, but I wish I looked this good waking up in the morning!

My cute little pug friends accompanying me today are the gacha prizes from Birdy! I’m showing off the bunny and the sheep versions which are 2 of the 3 Rares available, and the little piggie, which is one of the 13 common prizes! All the pugs come with a hold pose so you can still go about your daily business with your new puggly-pal! Collect them all and your can have your own little pug zoo in your arms.

For those of you who are new to this event, The Arcade is a gacha event (pay the machine, get a random prize) featuring a collection of SL’s top and most talented designers! It runs every three months and is open for the entire month. This round opens up on March 1st at Midnight SLT. It is always extremely popular so plenty of lag is to be expected, especially if you plan to get in on the first week but don’t worry, I have a few lag-busting tips for you!

The Arcade Survival Guide

1) Don’t dress up! – Definitely don’t come wearing all your scripts and HUDs. Nobody will see how pretty you are because you’ll just be grey to them and you’ll be lagging the Sim up even more by wearing all your bells and whistles. Instead, opt to shop in nothing but a full-body alpha (get one for free here). Detach all your HUDs, AOs and mesh/prim attachments and you’ll help make The Arcade a more bearable experience for yourself and others.

2) Cam-shopping for newbies- In the likelihood that the actual event space is packed to bursting with avatars, try shopping from the edges of the adjacent regions instead. The Arcade is in the sky so press yourself up to the borders of the neighbouring regions, fly up to the height The Arcade is located and set your render distance to max. You will also need to make sure that ‘limit select distance’ in not checked in your Advanced menu (bring up the advanced menu by going into Preferences – > Advanced -> Show Advanced menu).

3) Derender all the things!- Both Firestorm and official viewer users can do this, but Firestorm has a lot more control. Firestorm users, right click an object/building/person then select derender -> Temporary. This will remove the selected object/person from view until you TP out of the area. Alternatively, go to world -> Radar then select everybody on that list, right click and select defender. The official viewer doesn’t have these capabilities so try pressing ctrl + alt + shift + 4 to derender everyone.

4) Going AFK is rude!- And it means that people who are actively trying to get into the event won’t have a chance. So if you’re going to be away from the computer for anymore than about 10 minutes, TP your avatar out so other people get a chance to shop too.

5) Cheshiresoft’s LetMeIn HUD– More often than not, the event will probably be full. This useful tool allows you to step away from the computer and grab a cup of tea while it constantly makes teleport attempts until a space is open and you can TP in. Make sure you check it often though because if you don’t take the HUD off within two minutes, then you’ll be teleported back again (to stop AFK avatars from cluttering the area). This really helpful HUD is only 150L$ on the marketplace, and I rely on it totally for busy events like Collabor88 and The Chapter Four.

6) ARCADE ETIQUETTE– This is SO important. Always be polite and respectful, DO NOT send designers hateful notecards because you can’t win the Rares. These machines are totally random! Contact a designer politely if you paid for an item but didn’t receive it, accompanied by a screenshot showing your transaction info.

Maybe I’ll go into more detail about these one day, but that should do it for now!

Good luck!

*X*