WoW Forever: dungeon gear that speeds up crafting

Professions in WoW Forever have picked up gear that does nothing for a character in a fight and quite a lot for one at a workbench. Two pieces of it drop in the Deadmines. Smelting Pants can be worn from level 16 and cut the casting time of the copper, tin, bronze and silver smelts by 25%. Cookie's Stirring Rod is a wand from level 17 that raises cooking speed by the same 25%, and unlike the trousers it stays useful far beyond the levels where it drops, because every wand user carries one anyway.

The piece that has caught the most attention is crafted rather than dropped. Arcanite Blacksmith Hammer is a throwing weapon from level 49 that has a chance on hit to stun its target, and its description says it also counts as a blacksmith's hammer. That matters because the plain Blacksmith Hammer is a tool every smith has to carry and nothing else, so the new one frees a bag slot and arms the character at the same time. Making it needs Blacksmithing at 270.

This is the kind of reward that does not make a character stronger in a fight, and that appears to be the point. A drop worth going after because it changes how you play, rather than because it raises a number on the sheet, is the direction the beta has been taking with professions for weeks now — the same beta that gave them recipe tracking and links in chat.

Cooking in particular is worth more in this version than it looks from the outside, which makes a wand that speeds it up less of a curiosity than it sounds. What comes out of the pot has its own reason to be made, and shaving a quarter off the time it takes to make it adds up over a levelling run.

This comes from a single report by a site that tracks the beta, and Blizzard has not listed these items in its development notes. The beta runs until 21 October, so what the bonuses look like on launch day is not settled: WoW Forever opens at 23:00 UK time on 4 November, which is midnight on 5 November in Central Europe.