Broomsticks

A brief word reguarding broomsticks: there are other methods of transportation particularly early on in your Discworld life. You may choose to use the taliswoman for as long as you can and avoid advancing unnecessary primaries. This way you can focus on other skills that you may think are more important prior to advancing for a broom.

What are they and why do I want one?

Broomsticks are the wonderfully magic witchy method of transportation. Through advancement of ma.it.he.broom, ot.directions, ma.me.me.channeling a witch can begin to use a broomstick.

Now, how do I get one?

In the Circle Sea region:

Found between Ankh Morpork and Ohulan Cultash one locates Skund Forest. And nestled within the looming forest of Skund is an abandoned Witches Cottage, a Gingerbread Cottage. Upon entering the cottage go upstairs to the bedroom and "search" for a small cabinet, go "in" the cabinet and you shall find a broomstick.

Skund can be slightly difficult to find in the terrains. However, here is a walkto. Starting directly outside of Hilta's stall in Ohulan Cutash you should be able to copy and paste this into your MUD client:

w;w;s;w;w;w;w;w;w;options personal travel=journey;n;nw;w;w;nw;nw;w;w;w;w;w;w;nw;sw;w;sw;se;s;s;sw;s;s;s;s;s;s;s;s;s;s;s;s;s;s; sw;sw;s;sw;sw;w;sw;w;nw;w;w;nw;ne;nw;options personal travel=walk;n

A word of precaution though, their are auto attacking NPCs that lurk through the terrains. You've been warned.

On the Counterweight Continent:

In Northern Bes Pelargic is the McSweeny Estate. The Estate is divided into two wings, the male (east) and the female (west) wings. Being a Witch and thus being female enter the west wing, go upstairs, and head east for the hanging. "Search" here to find a secret passage to the masculine side of the house and go east then south into a bedroom. "Enter" the wardrobe and a broom will be located there.

If you're caught by a male NPC after going through the hanging you'll be dragged back outside. If this becomes problematic a male friend might make the search slightly easier.

Now what do I do now that I have a broom?

If you can't cast Granny Benedict's Bond of Loyalty yourself ask politely for another witch to bond your broom to you. This makes it your broom in every sense of the word and also will allow you to gain more slots when advancing other.direction. In case it's lost it can also be determined as your broom though I highly recommend visiting an engravers to have your name placed on the broomstick or alternately use a label to paste on.

What to advance.

magic.items.held.broom: This will improve your landings, takeoffs and your overall flying ability. I recommend that you get a 200+ bonus in it before you plan on zipping about the Disc. And even with a 300+ bonus still expect to have failures.

magic.methods.mental.channeling: Half of your channeling bonus determines how much gp can be fueled into your broom at one time. Fueling can be quite draining upon your gp. To get more gp advance magic.points. Another option is if you're a non-combatant Witch there's nothing wrong sitting in tactics attitude neutral to increase gp recovery. A broom can hold enough room for three flights (600 GP, 200GP per flight) I strongly recommend having at least two flights fueled at any given time. Channeling supposedly contributes to your ability of fueling whilst in combat.

other.direction: Decreases the amount of misflights to various locations. Advancing direction can become quite costly though. TMs will come quite readily as you fly to various unique NPCs or players (particularly at night). I personally fly to Greebo rather than having a recorded location at Granny's and TM on a fairly nice basis. Though initially I would at the very least guild max this. Advancing ot.direction also increases how many memory slots your broom has.

There also seems to be a frequently high occurence that initially for many flying seems to be quite easy but then with more advancement it actually begins to become more difficult.

WARNING! A broom that is enchanted is more difficult to fly to a location with. The higher the enchantment the more difficult. The bonus of this though is it will increase the amount of other.direction TMs you get.

Using Hag's Blessing while flying at night can help to some degree. It will offer some light and may make flying more easy. However, at night time when first starting off, you may still wish to walk. Keeping your broom in "excellent condition" ("condition all" in game) is also said to help increase flying success. If you can manage to get the money together (usually around $1600) I suggest getting you're broom "perma lighted" by a wizard. This makes it so you're broom will always give light no matter what, no GP cost, simply a permanent light. I find it comes in very handy.

What is my broom capable of?

You can access the following information by typing "broomstick" in game while holding your broom.

With this broomstick you can 'fly' to a person or one of your recorded destinations (use the number), you can 'record' a new spot for the future, and 'recall' what spots you've already recorded. You can ''shake' the broom to see how full it is and 'fuel' it with more gp if need be. You can be more discreet when flying by 'set'ting your broom to brief or verbose. For more information, look at the syntax for each command. Oh, and also: you can use your broom to ding people soundly round the ears. For that, you're on your own.

When actually flying you'll be able to fly to recorded numbers, players, and named NPCs. Here's a fly-to list that will hopefully free up some room on your broomstick. You also need to remember that you must be outside to fly.

In the "flight room" you can't really do much besides wait and see where you land.

Flight Failure Messages

1. Your broom splutters a bit, then rests quietly in your hands.
You've misspelled the person's name.
2. You attempt takeoff on your broomstick but have to abandon the idea due to the confined space.
This occurred while trying to take off from inside.
3. Tripping over a cat, root etc.
This is a magic.items.held.broom failure.
4. You feel unable to connect with that location.
This occurred while trying to take off from inside
5. You jump onto your broom and into the air... and land again with a thud.
This occurred while trying to fly to a location you're already at.
6. You are still suffering from jet lag from your previous flight.
This result happens if you attempt to take off too close to a landing.

No-Fly Zones

The most important no-fly zone in game is between the Circle Sea (CS) area and the Counterweight Continent (CWC). You'll have to use the Brown Island's ferry to access CWC. Besides this there is the inner Snail, a dangerous place, located in CWC, the island of the Nac Mac Feegle, and the rock tower in Djelibeybi terrains in the CS.

Broken legs, misflights, and other broom related calamitys.

The broomstick does have a few downsides to it's perks. The largest problem you're likely to be faced with are broken legs. Painful, not deadly, and not necessarily the easiest thing to have fixed. If you have survived the crash you'll soon find that you can't walk or fly and can only crawl. Crawling slowly drains you of HP and doesn't get you far. The best thing to do in this incident is to have already been prepared with a "blorple" to one of the Doctor's offices around the Disc. Without this try locating a friendly portaller from the Witches Guild, Taxi, or RRU to take you to the Doctor's in AM at the Flintwick Building, in KLK, or the one in CWC on Onetwolong Ave. Here for a small fee the Doctor will mend your legs. Sometimes fellow Witches will also kindly be prepared with such "blorples" for Hennes.

Misflights, though not usually as decrippling as crashes, can be quite disasterous. Though everyone misflys and this isn't often a problem, on the occasion you'll find yourself in such locations as Gloomy Forest or Medina. For some Witches who have misflights as a concern may mean certain death. The best remedy? Fly immeadiately out. Keeping a broom full will save you from many situations. When you do misfly though, most likely you'll fly to another person or where a person recently was. Often in the more dangerous areas you may land in a group but don't expect them to protect you, though they might.

Though this latter recommendation also has some down sides. It is possible to die during take off which may result in your corpse being in the take off room, the flying room, or almost anywhere your imagination can take you on the Disc. This may have been tweaked in game but there were problems connected with this in the past. Please don't use brooms as your only or best means to escape combat related death.

Keep in mind that any other pet besides a summoned fruitbat will need to be picked up to fly with.

And a final word of advice.

Don't grow too dependent on your broom as a mode of transportation. That is evantually you'll one day have a set amount of slots (when ot.direction starts to become extremely expensive and the TMs slow). However with the Disc constantly growing this can lead to a lot of trouble. I personally have a flying slot to every large city and continent. From there I've made speed walking aliases to other locations I need around the Disc. This reserves broom slots for me to use in the future or during emergencies.

And as a final word of advice, "changes" for brooms have been looming on the horizon. The following is a very old post from our old guild creator Tannah, however, Woom has assured us that changes will still be a result one day though they may be very different than this post:

Tannah's post on The Witches' Guild Board, Thu Jul 11 19:12:56 2002, entitled "Flight Plans":

Coooee, dears.

I know lots of you are in mourning about the changes to brooms, even those of you who understand why it had to be done. I quite understand. And yet, it really was necessary, else it wouldn't have happened at all.

Because getting about quickly is one of a witch's advantages, I've Had Words with the dwarves. They've doubled the number of stops on the brooms they ship out of the factory, and fiddled with the fabric of time so that the brooms previously shipped are fitted out, too. Clever things, dwarves. Not to be outdone, the brooms themselves have gotten into the act, as anywitch who's bonded her broom can tell you.

These extra stops will make it possible for you to get to particular places in your favourite haunts quickly, but you'll still have to plan ahead and not just drop in on the unsuspecting as before. They are, however, a temporary measure.

As you've no doubt heard rumoured, there are new Flight Plans on the horizon. Plans may change, but this seems like a good time to offer you a sneak peak on what the dwarfs (currently) have in mind for the new fangled brooms:

In the New Flight, "recall", "record", "fly to", et al will be Gonne. If that sounds bad, take heart: misflights will be Gonne, too.

Instead, you'll have "take off", "fly <direction>", "hover", "gain altitude", "lose altitude", "land", etc. You'll get to spend as much or as little time as you like aloft, as long as you don't run out of the gp it costs to stay up, and you'll get to fly exactly where you want to be. It may take you longer if your skills are low or the weather's bad, but you won't wind up in KLK when you were headed for OC.

You'll be able to hover just above the ground, go up, go down, drop things from above, fly in loopdeloops, eat an onion sandwhich, wave to your sisters as they fly past goin' the other direction, perhaps even refuel in the air. You'll be able to fly to the tippy tops of mountains that others can't reach. You may even be able to take a passenger, as long as he's willing to risk the chance of plummeting to his death.

Rather than recorded locations, you may be able to memorize routes and/or landmarks that are easy to spot from the air so you won't have to circle in the air, looking for a place to land. From the air, you'll get to scope out the action below and decide just where you want to land and next to whom. You'll definitely be able to drop in on the unsuspecting again, just so long as they don't look up and see you coming.

For the moment, there is no ETA for these new Flight Plans, nor are they finalized. The dwarves are BUSY BUSY BUSY and they tell me there's much yet to be done. Apparently the recent cave in of the No.6 Mine has set things back a bit, so don't go holding your breath. Above all, remember that they might go changing their minds about some of the details. Clever things, dwarves, but fickle.

- Tannannannannannah, No.2 Doyenne, Aaoograha hoa
--
Eat, drink and be fat and drunk