How hard to find are our event locations? Yes.

The mainland of Dorenas World has probably got some of the most well-hidden event locations on the Hypergrid. Let me sum them up by sim.

Landing

The festival ground is the easiest location. It's open-air, it's big, it's impossible to miss the stage, and you land right next to it either way.

There's also an amphitheatre, but I've yet to see something happen there. Anything in the grid that requires a stage happens on the festival ground.

Nihilon

Home of the legendary Rock-House that has seen the same event with the same DJ each Friday for almost ten years, first for four hours, now for five, with only three Fridays without an event.

But "Rock-House" already says it: It's inside a building. But the landing-point isn't. The OSW beacon lands you in front of the beacon which is diagonally opposite the parking-lot. From there, you still have to walk to the building, open a semi-transparent door and go inside.

The map lands you at 128,128 which is under water, and the sim is decorated under water, so you're tempted to believe it's an underwater event.

Oh, by the way, landmarks inside the Rock-House don't work properly either. They land you on the roof. Thus, setting the landing-point inside the building, right next to the dancefloor with the avatar oriented towards the dancefloor, won't work anyway.

Westend

The UnFassBar BassBar is currently home of a bi-weekly Thursday event. But it adds to the difficulty of finding it. Not only do you land outside, and the events are in-doors, but you land near the middle of an urban sim from where the event location isn't even visible. It's along a street, around a corner and along another street, and then it's inside a building with doors that can be found all over the Hypergrid, but rarely with a club inside it. At least it has a neon sign outside.

Before you ask: No, there is no teleporter. There aren't even arrows. Unless someone offers you a teleport, it's about a minute of walking if you know the way.

GridTalk

Named after the eponymous German OpenSim forum that's almost as old as the grid and founded and run by our Thursday DJ, this is the sim that makes finding recurring events the most difficult to find.

This starts with GridTalk having a whopping six event locations. Five of them have dance balls, all except the amphitheatre. Yes, another amphitheatre. At least three are used by the regular Tuesday event.

Oh, and the landing-point is in the middle which is nowhere near either of the locations. There are paths everywhere. But again, no teleporters, especially not the one teleporter that takes you straight to where the party is.

For most of the year, the Tuesday event is at the campfire in the northeast. In summer, it's on the beach in the west. The cold of the winter drives us into the club building in the southwest.

To make matters worse, that building has two clubs inside, connected by spiral stairs that aren't too obvious to find. The GridTalk-Club is upstairs, that's where you end up when you walk to the building from the landing. It's fairly straight-forward to find, even for an HG-Safari, but you have to know that it's there where an event is happening.

The Haifischbar is downstairs, and you can't even really see any traces of it from anywhere else on the sim except when you look closely enough inside the GridTalk-Club, and you discover the stairs.

To make matters even worse, we're at the Haifischbar this winter.

An honourable mention goes to the Keule, a club in the north near the campfire that was built by our very own ProgRock producer. "Keule" is one of his favourite words, and it's German for "club" as in the weapon. I've only seen him do a set there once, but our Thursday DJ has hijacked the club on one occasion this winter in order for it to see some use. Now, it's still a club inside a building, one without doors, but a building.

Dorenas World

The old landing sim and the oldest sim in the grid is an honourable mention of its own because years may pass without a single event. It has the rather spacious dance club Dancing Desire in a building with lots of glass, and the landing is close to the building, so finding your way there is not too difficult because you should actually be able to see the party itself.

That said, the grid is not beyond pop-up dance clubs such as for Dorena's birthday last year. We held a surprise birthday in a park in the east of the sim where usually nothing happens at all. Also, it coincided with the HG-Safari visiting the grid. Some travellers had quite some difficulties finding the location in spite of red arrows everywhere.

Anachronia

Yet another honourable mention is the second-oldest sim in the grid. As far as I can tell, it currently has three locations, none of which are used regularly, and none of which are easily visible from the main landing point.

One is Gulliver's, the grid's own Irish pub in the northwest and the grid's oldest and smallest party location. Back when Dorenas World was new, it was big enough. I've only experienced one event there, and that was my own idea: Since St. Patrick's Day was on a Friday last year, I suggested moving it to the Gulliver's and playing some Irish tunes. The only way of fitting the irregular guests who came that day into the club was by up to six ladies dancing on the bar counter.

Anyway, the club is outside the wall that surrounds the main area, and so you can't see that there's a club on the sim at all. Oh, and the building doesn't immediately look like a club from outside because there are some nearly identical buildings around that have nothing inside them, particularly not a club. And just how many Hypergridders would expect an event inside a tiny Irish pub built in 2010?

Then there's the Glass Onion in the east which is similarly hard to find. I've been told that it has only ever seen one event. But since I live not too far away, dibs on it, should I ever start DJing. Yes, it's outside the wall, too.

Lastly, there's a location at the top of the tower in the middle of the sim. That tower is easily one of the highest structures in the whole Hypergrid. Getting all the way to the top requires several minutes of climbing stairs or a teleporter. The only events I've ever seen there were performances by Torben Asp before he passed away, and when these happened, there was always at least one teleporter in Anachronia itself and, I think, additional teleporters in key places on the grid such as Landing.