Damp Poultry United

Every witch is different and unique and there is certainly no deffinite plan to witchhood. What I'm attempting to do with this page is adding in what I'd recommend to a henne if they asked me for information on what to do within the guild.

Stage One: Splat!

So, you've arrived onto the Discworld! Welcome! At this point you're either a "newbie" (a term meaning you have never mudded on the Disc before) or an "alt" (you've played the mud before but are creating a new character). Either way however, you are now or hopefully soon to be a wet henne (a specific name for a newbie that is a member of the witches guild).

First thing first, if you want to be a witch, you need to check your sex. Only females are allowed in the witches guild. If you've created a female character you're already off to a good start. If you have a male character you may want to refresh or more easily take a quick trip to Gennie Applebottoms in Ankh-Morpork or Ogg-Sans in Bes Pelargic can take care of all of your gender troubles. Brief warning though, on the Discworld's "Women's Day" (a Discworld holiday celebrating women where everyone is turned into a woman for that day) no one can join the witches guild.

If you've been perceptive up to this point you'll notice typing "inventory" or "i" shows you what you're currently wearing and carrying. Within the items you have should be a voucher, "look" and "read" the voucher to get information on how to exchange it for a talker. (If you're entirely lost you may want to read "help essentials".)

After this, you must visit the powers that be. Currently there are two locations to join up in the guild. One is in Bes Pelargic and the other is in Bad Ass. This is where we will momentarily diverge onto two separate paths.

What effects these paths however is where you started in the game and which language you can speak. "languages" will show what languages your currently know and "skills other" will display your language skills and "refer"ing yourself shows the region you started out in. You should have 100 spoken and written in the language of your beginning area. (The languages are agatean, morporkian and djelian.) If you speak Agatean you'll currently advance at Ogg-San and learn spells from her and commands from Mama Diksha otherwise you'll visit Granny and Nanny in Bad Ass. (Granny and Nanny both speak morporkian but understand djelian.) However, for some commands and methods through out the game having a broad knowledge of all the languages (at least level 60 in spoken for each) will be to your advantage.

Stage Two: Joining the Witches Guild

Maps that can help you find all of these locations can be found through the links page. Follow the link to Airk's or Zuroc's maps and you've found a wealth of information that will make access to the Discworld much more easy.

However, if something goes arry and you get lost somewhere on the Disc your friendly "godmother" can be summoned (help godmother) who will portal you back to your start location. However, at guild level 50 her use will cost lives so please don't become too dependent on her.

Stage Three: Movement & Transportation

Hopefully by now you have figured out the basics of movement (if not "help essentials" is your friend) this section is for the more detailed modes of transportation and movement.

Broom Skills brooms are wonderful but quite a challenge. Even with higher bonuses tripping and misflies occur regularly. Be prepared for this by advancing to avoid it as much as possible. Also be cautious that an enchanted broom is more difficult to fly. (For whatever reason it seems that for a brief period of time hennes can fly very easily then all of a sudden this luck stops and flying becomes a grueling activity.)

The Discworld offers an interesting method of providing distance by incooperating something called terrains. Terrains are large expanses of what could best be described as wilderness. You have two options of travelling directly through the terrains. You can either walk "options personal travel=walk" or use the journey option "options personal travel=journey" which allows you to cover large expanses of the terrain at one time. Signs are your friend and be careful because there are roaming auto-attacking NPCs.

Stage Four: Every Wet Henne's Wishlist

Now comes the fun part of obtaining stuff. These are merely items that I've found important in my travel through the guild.

Talkers: typing "help talker" while on the MUD and using the above map will give you all of the information you ever need. When you first logon you'll recieve a "voucher" and go to one of the places listed under "help talker" that you can exchange the voucher at. In addition to this there is a wizards spell and a few NPCs about with it who will be more than willing to talkerise almost any item for you at a price. Talkers are essentially very helpful tools that will allow you to chat on certain channels. As a young witch it's considered helpful for you to have a talker and the witches talker channel to recieve more specific guidance.

Clothes: at times it can get a bit chilly on the Disc and you can actually get sick from this. If you snoop about some Witches cottages you may find some free clothing about. I'd pay particular attention to Granny's where you can get a dress, hat, cloak, and stockings. Otherwise the Disc has a vast variety of clothing stores.

Broomsticks: follow the link. However, I would just like to remind you that you can use your taliswoman to guild level 20. Flying can often be a difficult task for both wet and older witches. While it's a wonderful tool you may wish to continue your use of the taliswoman until you understand the workings of the guild and game better.

Blorples: you won't be able to use this yourself early on but having it on you is fantastic. From playershops try to locate a blorple (often a piece of jewelery) to a local doctor's office. If you've read the link above, you'll understand why.

Money & Currency: undoubtedly you're going to want to buy a few things and you will need money to advance when using Granny and Ogg-San. To make life even more entertaining each area of the Discworld tends to have it's own form of currency ("help currency"). If you plan on visiting different areas of the Disc on a regular basis you may want to make yourself familar with the different money changers available. For example, the closest money changers to Granny's is in Ohulan Cultash and in Bes Pelargic there is one North of the ferry stop but you can only change Aegean and AM currency there. Currently you can "search" the streets of AM and BP to find money and items to sell at General Stores. You should earn enough money this way to get what you need to immeadiately start off. You may also find this link helpful.

Titles: part of the fun of being in the witches guild are the titles you see in front of our names. Such as, Mistress Clover Withycombe. To initally get these visit Granny or Ogg-San and inquire about them (be sure to use please) and from then on when you use "title" it should list those that are available for you to use.

Stage Five: Advancement In The Witches Guild

First, for an amount of money Ogg-San and Granny are available to you for advancing purposes.

As you've been walking about gathering all of these items you've actually been working hard at gaining xp (experience points) through just being online and exploring forn parts. You can see how much xp you have through score brief and score verbose. Now we need to spend it! If you've managed to obtain some money return to your local advancing Witch (the same two you could join the guild through).

I'm only going to list the basics here, the very earliest of things you'll want to get and then the rest is up to you. Initially I would dump almost all of your experience into fighting. You'll only be able to advance it to level ten in the guild and will then have to learn from other people or teach yourself. If this is your first time I recommend advancing "polearm" which allows you to use your broom as a combat weapon. Alternatively you can advance and get the command squint followed by the method of scathe or squinch. Either will allow you to wreak a degree of havoc upon the Disc allowing you to gain more XP more quickly than idling. For the next things to advance I'd recommend:

Hag's Blessing is a light spell so you'll be able to continue your witchy pursuits in the dark.

magic.methods.physical.brewing or Mother Twinters Yarrow Enchantment these tools (more information is provided through the links) will offer an alternate and often easier way to gain money.

I do recommend concentrating on fighting. The more fighting you have the easier it is to get XP. Kills also have valuable items and money on them. Something idling xp will never give you. Along wither polearm you should choose either dodge or parry to work on as your main defense. (Parry is good because your burden level can be higher(you can carry more stuff) however dodge allows you to cast spells at the same time.) Magic will always be there to advance (inexpensively at that). Save up some money, get some armour. After you're a self sufficient fighter I then recommend turning back towards magic to advance. Here you can either choose the spells and commands to work on that will help you in fighting and you can choose to be a more combat oriented witch or you can proceed to spend xp and money on whichever of the magic spells, commands, and skills you wish.

Stage Six: How To Make Friends & Influence People

Here is a quote worthy of remembrance from our very own Sera, "Manners, respect, common sense, try it themselves". Think of it as a guild motto, no matter your round world age nor your playing age will ever excuse you from these rules. (At least in a practical application. You may notice some Olde Baggages acting out of line but try to become somewhat "established" with a good reputation before becoming extremely difficult.) I have always found the witches guild to be extremely friendly, however, most of the ladies have no problem giving sharp prods when they're deserved. Do your best to behave. Try to get some playing time under your belt and do your best to "feel" how the guild runs. Many ladies have been playing for years and don't necessary want to deal with misbehaving hennes.

Here are some things you should watch out for:
1. Try to use complete sentences on the talker.
2. Avoid netspeak and caps lock on the talker.
3. Try to do things on your own before seeking help. Such as looking at webpages, reading descriptions, help files, and the syntax command. If all else fails, ask!
4. Don't beg for money.

Asking questions is a great way to get help. Though there are two things that you should be prepared for: silence and rejection. Silence because as knowledgable as many people are they're not always online and there are some attributes of the game that are just not widely known. There's also a reason for all of the excellent Witches Guild webpages out there, I recommend finding one that serves you well and using it for reference prior to asking questions on the talker. And then there's rejection. Rejection comes from two avenues of questions that often are regarded as just being lazy. Lazy either that you didn't bother trying to find the information yourself, didn't look around for it, nor try anything at all. Just simply asking for an easy answer. You may get answers to these but you need to be prepared if you do that some Witches, particularly more experienced ones, may ridicule you and point out that you could easily find this information on your own. Please don't take this too literally though, they are offering guidance and merely make a memo on your behavoir on these occasions.

Stage Seven: Awareness of Your Proud Heritage

The Witches Guild is the youngest guild on the Discworld MUD. While we've encountered and passed many of our growing pains we're still a growing guild seeking it's identity in the world known as the Disc. That is, some of spells are seen as "copies" taken from the wizards guild, the first guild. Not that there's anything wrong with copying.

Our fearless guild is currently striving along a new path of being commah copying.

Our fearless guild is currently striving along a new path of being command oriented by our leader, Woom. If you've been fortunate enough to read the Discworld novels you'll most likely have a basic understanding of why we're advancing toward command dominance.

Within the guild there tends to be a spectrum of witches that run along the lines of combat oriented <---------------to---------------->service oriented. If you stick around, both of these will evantually make more sense. Most witches fall somewhere in the middle.