Toy lovers in World of Warcraft, it’s time to collect ’em all.
When WOW patch 6.0.2 releases in the next couple of weeks in preparation for Nov. 13’s Warlords of Draenor expansion, the Toy Box feature will launch with it.
Players of the massively multiplayer online role-playing game will finally be able to take all the quirky, fun items they’ve collected over 10 years of playing and put them into a single spellbook-like collection, potentially clearing hundreds of spaces in their bags and bank.
Above: The first page of the World of Warcraft Toy Box in Warlords of Draenor. Toys in your bags become clickable items. When you click them, they are learned and added to these pages, where you can use them like spells.
It will also be the first time that players can see almost all the toys available in the game. (Some that are no longer available will be hidden, unless the player happens to own them already.) But which toys are the best? I’m so glad you asked.
The rules: I’m only including items that are actually toys, not food or clothing or other non-toy items with actions attached (though I may mention them in passing). All toys, by definition, have actions attached — their sole purpose is to make something fun happen. Non-toy items typically add other benefits, such as increasing your character’s statistics.
Above: This combination of two toys — Rasha’s Sacrificial Dagger, which allows players to kill themselves, and Mourning Glory, which makes a flower grow over their corpse when they die — are totally fair game.
The list of which toys are in the Toy Box in the Draenor expansion changes constantly, but I’ll include a note if a toy I’ve picked as the top selection in a particular category isn’t stored in the Toy Box … yet. Blizzard has been going back through all the items in the game to add toys to the Toy Box, but it’s definitely a work-in-progress given the tens of thousands of items available in WOW.
I’m usually not including items that have charges that run out or that “poof” on use or toys you can’t get anymore. For example, the Haunted Memento has a spot in my inventory forever because of the shade it continually creates to follow me around. But the only way to get one today is via the Auction House from other players that hung onto theirs from years ago, too. That’s not fair.
I’m also not including items that, despite that they should be in the Toy Box, aren’t likely to make it because they also have character-boosting statistics on them. I’m looking at you, Rainbow Generator.
Above: The Rainbow Generator in mid-strike. Care Bear stare!
I’ve picked my favorite and a whole raft of runners-up in each of five different categories. The links take you to WOW’s item pages; further links on those pages lead you to sites that have instructions for how to earn each toy.
Toys to transform you
A whole horde of items — not just toys — in Warcraft transform your character into other races, classes, or species.
You can shapeshift into a leper gnome, ghost pirate, blood elf, or a ninja, for example.
Prefer something inanimate? Change into a giant coffin or encase yourself in a chunk of amber. Take the form of a huge stone statue. You can even plunk yourself nearly naked in a giant clamshell in an ode to Botticelli’s “The Birth of Venus” painting (no, really).
Above: You can never un-see a naked orc.
Ai-Li’s Skymirror will transform you into a slightly watery-looking replica of whatever you have targeted.
Or you can even — with one my favorite toys — take the form of the giant bull-like tauren Mr. Smite from the Deadmines dungeon, causing your character to shout at anyone who’ll listen, “You there! Check out that noise!”
But the best transformational toy is clearly the Super Simian Sphere. This gadget turns you into an ape inside a giant pink bubble of light, which you take with you wherever you go. It’s one of WOW’s frequent pop culture references — in this case, to Sega’s Super Monkey Ball series — but it has a uniquely Warcraft look, and it lasts for five minutes.
Above: The Super Simian Sphere: smashing.
Sadly, the Super Simian Sphere is spectacularly seldom seen, dropping randomly from elite-difficulty enemies in the Wrath of the Lich King expansion (character level 70-80) dungeons and larger raid instances. It’s bind-on-pickup, so it can’t be sold to other players, adding to its rarity. But it’s still out there. Go farm it, my friends.
Toys to mutate other players
Above: The Super Soaker turns players blue and leaves them in a puddle.
Our next honoree is the best item for messing with other players: the Shado-Pan Geyser Gun, otherwise known as Warcraft’s Super Soaker.
You can use plenty of doodads to transform your friends. Make them orange, turn them into a bunny, put a voodoo mask on them, stick starfish to their faces, shoot fireworks at them — why, the possibilities are legion.
The Brazier of Dancing Flames even gets your friends in on the action. Use the item, and it drops a brazier on the ground with a tiny flame dancer on top. If other players target it and use the /dance emote, they’re turned into fiery dancing draenei themselves.
Above: The only good draenei: a burning draenei.
But the best toy for transforming other players is clearly the Geyser Gun, an item you earn by jumping on water spouts in the Throne of Thunder raid dungeon until your eyes bleed. (I kid, of course. I mean until you reach 250 stacks of the debuff you get from jumping on water spouts, which you may reach long after your eyes start bleeding. In apparent sympathy, an NPC will then mail you the gun.)