On Monday, September 16th, the first batch of regions containing the much anticipated Linden Homes Trailers and Campers arrived in Bellisseria. While they took a while to set up, they were made available on Tuesday, September 17th – and were all gone within 24 hours, demonstrating their popularity with Premium users.
Given I’d only taken a quick look around in my preview piece First looks: Bellisseria trailer and camper homes, I hopped back on Thursday, September 19th to take a more detailed look on horseback and, for the fun of it.
Travelling the regions via the many trails – grass and track – and by following the railway lines, the first things that struck me was the care with which the regions have been laid out – particularly the blending of landscape between the Trailer and Camper regions and those for the Traditional Homes and Houseboats. There are no unnatural boundaries of “empty space” as witnessed with the “old style” Linden Homes, or abrupt switching of one style of landscape and terrain for another. Instead, and has been demonstrated throughout Bellisseria’s development, everything flows naturally from the more “suburban” areas of the Traditional Homes and coastal buffers of Houseboats into the more open countryside environment of the Trailers and Campers.
This might seem an odd thing to point out, but it’s important as it demonstrates the commitment from LL’s Land Team to make Bellisseria a genuinely contiguous, natural environment where there is a sense of place, rather than just a conglomeration of houses lumped together. This helps to make Bellisseria somewhere people can live, breathe, share and joy, and have plenty of encouragement to explore and participate.
In keeping with this is the way the parcels for the camper vans and trailers have been set out; as with the homes and houseboats, these are not simply cookie-cutter arrangements stitched together into a simple patchwork; each region has been landscaped to provide a natural environment, with balance between protected land and camper / trailer parcels and finished with a sound scape that enhances the setting, while the trailers and campers have all been more-or-less individually placed so there is no sense of simple repetition across different regions.
Within the regions, there are also plenty of public spaces. The most obvious of these at the time of writing is the Campwich Lodge. But there are also assorted lakeside piers and decks, camp sites, and cabins (the Premium gift Winter Cabin re-purposed), scattered throughout the regions.
Not all the units that have been claimed have been occupied – something that is true of the Traditional Homes and Houseboats – but those that have are being enthusiastically decorated in much the same way as the homes and houseboats were, with a lot of happy chatter on the various Bellisseria related in-world groups. It’ll be interesting to see when / if pictures of people labours start turning up in the forums, such as in the Linden Homes photo thread (although at 60-ish pages, perhaps a new thread is needed!).
During my ride / walk through the regions, I tried avoid nosing inside the trailers and campers (they people’s homes / alternate homes after all!), but as expected, much use is being made of the outside space with people setting down just about everything you can imagine that’s in keeping with the theme: hot tubs and home pools, decking and seating, awnings and tents, picnic spreads and barbecues and – yes – even pick-ups and 4x4s.
For train enthusiasts, the railway lines – although incomplete pending the arrival of further public regions (some of which are currently in development) – offer a rez zone in the (at the time of writing) yet-to-be-named SSPE260 region. It’s seen a fair amount of use already, with a variety of trains from steam locos to electric train cars to trams appearing on the tracks. In particular, a lot of people have been picking up the Michie Marine DB101 “line security loco”, which is available for no charge on the Marketplace and using that to ride the rails.
As I’m not a major train enthusiast, I initially tried the Premium Gift rail handcar (circa 2012), but found this no longer wanted to function – so I grabbed a copy of the Michie Marine myself. A nice touch with it is that the drive is automatic; set it in motion and you’re free to appreciate the scenery; no need to keep a key pressed. I assume other rez zone will be added as the railway is extended, but given the location of the one at SSPE260, it’ll be interesting to see if a boat rezzing area will be provided on the waterway close by, as the region is built-out. Doing so would certainly make sense.
And talking of waterways; one of the neat things for me personally is that given the location of my houseboat, it’s possible to cruise to Campwich Lodge by boat, making it an ideal place to visit by water whenever the mood takes. I’m far from alone in this – care has been taken to ensure that the lodge is well connected to many of Bellisseria’s bodies of water and waterways.
In terms of which design seems to be the most popular among those moving in to the new regions, I would suggest that overall, it would appear to be the Williamsburg. While by no means an accurate indicator of things, overflying the new regions did seem to reveal the distinctive split-level roof of that design appearing a lot more frequently overall than the other designs. By the same “standard”, it would appear the Newport – possibly the smallest of the designs available – is the least popular at this point in time.
Eyes will doubtless continue to be on the new Bellisseria regions for a while – particularly given work has already started on extending the railway lines into some of the surrounding regions. In the meantime, kudos once again to the Moles and the Land Team for their work.
Related links
- First looks: Bellisseria trailer and camper homes – September 2019
- A Look at the Camper and Trailer Homes with Patch Linden – June 2019
- SL16B Meet Patch Linden – a summary with audio and video – June 2019
- Patch Linden on the new Linden Homes release process – June 2019
- Articles on Bellisseria in this blog
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