Ode to the trinket

It took quite a while before I figured out what a trinket is. A kind of fun gadget you could put on yourself with the most varying effects.

Exactly how it looked it was hard to know - as known it doesn't show on your char. Else I wouldn't have minded to have my Icon of the Silver Crescent (equip: + 43 dmg, use +155 dmg i 20 sek) around my neck. It would look good - on Larisa in the game as well as in real life.
(This fact, that not even the ordinary necks will show anywhere else but in Armory is one of the things that annoy me. They can't show necklaces, but shoulders turn up at any size, which most of the time just look ridiculous on my little gnome girl. I can understand that huge shoulders are quite right for some other classes, like a human warrior. But on a gnome... come on! Considering the intelligence it's just a waste. We don't need to look like that, knowing we're superior in any other aspect)

End of distraction and back to my ode to the trinket. According to the dictionary it means "cheap thing for decoration, cheap bijouterie". Generally it seems to be something you hang upon yourself. Tingeltangel. And that's what make them so charming, isn't it. You could get just about anything with your trinket.

Of course there are those that have pretty predictable Like one of my present trinkets, Xi'ri's gift , which simply gives some extra spell crits and spelldamage. It's convenient, but hardly imaginative. But exept for them, there are loads of models that are more fun. I probably only know about a few of them.

My personal favourite trinket throughout the whole game I got somewhere right above level 40, and I carried it for a long time in the game, probably even in Outlands. What kind of thing will last that long? Naturally, my Nifty Stopwatch (use: increases speed run with 40 percent for 10 sec), which I got in Badlands by completing a questchain starting here. Oh, how many awkward situations that watch has saved me from! As a mage you can blink away, but sometimes blink is on cooldown or you simply have to deal with a bunch of fast mobs, joining as you run, and you have to stretch out your steps a bit further. One click on the trinket - and suddenly you have that little lead you needed. Simply a perfect thing to wear for a little levelling cloth dressed gnome - in PvE as well as in PvP.

It takes some thinking to come to the conclusion what trinkets to wear for the moment and what you should carry around in your bags just to stay on the safe side, to swap in if needed. Like Violet Badge, which gives a decent stamina boost and 45 arcane resistance. It's perfect to put on, fighting Aran, but rather useless when normally grinding or questing. On an average I remember to put it on every second time it would have been useful to me.

Trinkets come and go. I'll never forget how I by dying and releasing at the wrong time missed to loot Shade of Eranikus in Sunken Temple, thereby missing the trinket Chained Essance of Eranikus, which makes you spread some kind of poisonous cloud around you (50 nature dmg every 5th sec for 45 sec). Oh, how annoying, especially since I saw the other party members completing the quest, getting their trinkets! I just couldn't get it out of my head until I had returned to the place of the crime, killed the dragon once again, this time surviving, so I could put my hands on it. Unfortunately I was a few levels to high by then, or at least I had gotten another better trinket, so that trophy went straight away to the bank, where I kept it for a long time as some kind of souvenir, until it was destroyed in a clearing.

For a long time I wanted Power Infused Mushroom (gives 200 mana when you kill a target which gives xp or honor), which is a quest reward for doing the end boss in Underbog. Which I'm sad to say I've never had the opportunity to do. Maybe it will end up like the poison thing from Eranikus - make it's way into the bank slot when I eventually will get it. I still have the quest in my log.

We all make wish lists in the game from time to time. The wishings should have the right amount of challenge - be within reach but only if you stretch yourself and are a bit lucky. Of course I could dream of the T6 set, but what's the point when I've only got two pieces of T4. It seems pointless.

That's why my wish list right now is topped by nothing lesser than... a trinket! To be more specific a little - or rather quite large, after all it's a huge monster we're dealing with - eye, Quagmirrans eye. I certainly could use a bit more of spellhaste rating.

Another goodie is the Hex shrunken head (with the same stats as my Silver Icon, just a bit more of it), but since it comes from one of the harder bosses in Zul Aman, my current chances to get it seem pretty small.

And so I keep dreaming, losing myself into the land of the trinkets in the enourmous database of Wowhead. Sometimes I laugh when I think the game developers have been cleaver. There's something in the trinket concept which I think inspire to mischief. They can let go of their imagination. To the joy for all of us who are trinket fans.

Long live the trinket!

PS 17 feb 2008: Horray, another trinket is put to my collection! Tonight The Black Stalker fell (in heroic mode) and the mushroom is mine! Probably I won't use it, but still. It will stay in the bank slot, reminding me that sometimes you need patience. Suddenly the quest that seemed to have a permanent spot in your quest log will be completed. Never give up!