Speed up your mount with Carrot on a Stick, get rid of bleeds with a Luffa, and other great trinkets in WoW Classic

As we dive into WoW Classic, we’re discovering a lot of things we’d long forgotten. There are items I remember from the old days that most players may have forgotten, and which had surprising longevity, and most of them are trinkets. Some of the most useful trinkets you could get at level 40 and would keep using through level 60 (and in some cases even into Burning Crusade).

From the infamous Carrot on a Stick mount speed increase to the DPS powerhouse Blackhand’s Breadth, here are the best trinkets that you’ve probably forgotten about.

Get rid of blood with this surprisingly useful Luffa

One such trinket was the Luffa, a leveling item and green quest reward that had the unusual ability to remove bleed effects. This made the trinket a surprising PVP darling for non-Dwarf Rogues, since they could use the trinket to clear bleeds and get back into stealth without being kicked out again by the damage over time effect. Dwarves could use Stoneform to do this already, but other Rogues couldn’t, because almost nothing can take a bleed effect off and it can’t be cleansed.

For a while, the Luffa found itself popular in the Burning Crusade expansion — this lowly little trinket could even clear the bleed effect on the Moroes fight in Karazhan, necessitating a nerf to the trinket so it would no longer work on bleeds applied by anything above level 60. However, this change won’t be in place in WoW Classic, nor are you going to fight much of anything more than a level or two above 60, meaning that the Luffa will once again work to its maximum. Since so few things can actually remove a bleed, the Luffa remains one of those few items players who know they’ll go up against them will prize.

Get your carrot, get your stick

WoW Classic is going to have lots of little treasures like the Luffa. For example, there’s the Carrot on a Stick.

Now, looking at the trinket, you may not get the big deal. It’s +3% to riding speed? And I have to use up a trinket slot to get it? Why do I care?

Well, you care because back in the old days, you didn’t get your first mount until level 40 and it isn’t exactly speedy. If you wanted to upgrade, getting to level 60 isn’t a walk in the park, and making the 1000 gold to get your epic mount will be far from easy. You may sit back and shake your head, saying that a 3% mount speed increase isn’t worth the hassle when you can currently spend 50g and get an epic mount at level 40.

But in the old days? In the old days, it was definitely worth it. The Carrot on a Stick was a reward from a quest that sent you into Zul Ferrak to kill Gahz’rilla, a hydra boss. Someone in your party needs to have the Mallet of Zul’Ferrak to summon him, which required an item from Zul’Ferrak and then a trek to the Hinterlands because of course it did. But once you jumped through those hoops, that mount speed increase was yours.

For even more speed you could also pair the Carrot on a Stick with the Mithril Spurs boot enchant to added an additional 4% to your mount speed. Blacksmiths are the ones who add this enchant — it was pretty much one of the few dependable ways to make money besides cranking out Arcanite Reapers back in the day. On top of that, you could get a riding speed enchant for your gloves. All of these stacked for a pretty good boost, even when your epic mount was a long way away.

The breadth of Blackhand

But for my money, no discussion of trinkets in WoW Classic is going to be complete without talking about Blackhand’s Breadth. It was one of the best DPS trinkets and one that you can get before setting foot in a single raid instance… unless you count Upper Blackrock Spire as a raid, anyway. See, WoW Classic exists before the days of things like Critical Strike rating. On live servers, if you still happened to have Blackhand’s Breadth in your bags, it grants +22 CSR, which means that as we level up past the lower levels it becomes a vanishingly small amount of crit and we’d replace the trinket.

But in Classic, once again Blackhand’s Breadth is not only giving you a flat 2% to crit, it’s available through questing for both the Horde and Alliance. So not only is it a trinket that you’ll hold onto even when raiding, but the value it gives you is a flat 2% crit when you’re level 57 or 58 and get it, and it’ll stay 2% crit when you’re 60 in full Naxx gear. Compare the Blackhand’s Breadth to a Blackwing Lair raid DPS trinket, and you’ll see how very powerful it was considering you could get it from a quest requiring a LBRS and a UBRS clear. Once you have Blackhand’s Breadth, you’ll use it forever.

And there were even more trinkets to take up inventory space

These are just some of the weird items that you could get in the original game that became favorites for various reasons. Whether for strange utility, because they added a benefit that cost a lot of gold to replace, or simply because there really wasn’t anything better they stayed in our bags for a very long time.

Others existed — the Spectral Essence isn’t going to make you more powerful but it’s a fun way to get some additional flavor when you go to Scholomance, for example. A lot of players will remember wearing the Argent Dawn Commission to grind out rep, and you could even upgrade them.

So what trinkets do you remember from the old days? Will you be going to pick any of them up?