Ten Video Game Drinking Horns
Drinking horns and video games go together like, well, drinking and video games. We come across a lot of people who use their drinking horns as their gaming bevvy vessels for various reasons. Maybe it’s because the larger horns can hold two beers so it means less getting up off the couch, or maybe it’s because it’s how our ancestors would have kicked back on a Sunday night if they could have.
Not only are drinking horns awesome while gaming, they’re also awesome in gaming. Just for fun, we dug up a few instances where devs just couldn’t resist putting drinking horns into the game. Just like in real antiquity, many of the horns are one-of-a-kind (quest items) and exceptionally coveted.
World of Warcraft
WoW‘s added tens of thousands of items to the game over its long tenure as the king of all fantasy games. Heavy in Norse, dwarfish and elven iconography, it would feel weird if the game didn’t have any mentions of drinking horns – so weird, in fact, that there are no less than four.
Vrykul Drinking Horn
The Vrykul Drinking Horn is a toy that’s created through collecting artifacts via the in-game profession of archaeology. When activated, the horn puts a cosmetic Viking helmet on your character’s head and makes your size increase. Interpret that how you will.
Carved Drinking Horn
The Carved Drinking Horn is a treasure picked up on the Anguish Fortress in Shadowmoon Valley. Treasures are flavor items found lying around on the ground or in Azeroth’s many nooks and crannies. This one serves as a lackluster mana pot replacement.
Empty Drinking Horn
Before it was nerfed, this item was regarded as the best melee trinket in the game. It’s dropped by Mannoroth in the Hellfire Citadel, the third raid in the Warlords of Draenor Expansion.
The Lion Horn of Stormwind
If you’ve been around for awhile, or even if you haven’t, you may have heard of this trinket: it’s infamous for being the worst epic trinket in the game’s history. It was removed from the game during Cataclysm, but has since reappeared as possible salvage in a player’s salvage yard. Many say its only use was as a flag carrier in PvP, since it was so bad it even had a bug where an attacking player would disconnect from the server.
Skyrim
Of all the game worlds where one would expect to find a drinking horn, the very Norse-esque province of Skyrim would probably top the list. Alas, characters drink from metal tankards. Come on, Bethesda, wouldn’t it be so much more badass to drink our Honningbrew out of a horn?
Naturally, since the game is one of the most highly modded IP’s (probably) ever, it was the modding community that answered Tamriel’s call for more horn. If you’d like to replace the tankards in your game with drinking horns, check out Jangosan’s Drinking Horns mod.
The Ornate Drinking Horn, which is the only official drinking horn in the game, is a quest reward for several Theives Guild quests and later becomes a Theives Guild trophy.
Ornate Drinking Horn
Elder Scrolls Online
The Horker Tusk Drinking Horn is vendor junk, but we definitely appreciate the flavor text. Skalk-King’s Drinking Horn is another similar low level vendor item.
Pillars of Eternity
The Drinking Horn of Moderation is an amulet in Pillars of Eternity, a crowdfunded party-based RPG that takes place in the Baldur’s Gate universe. The amulet’s flavor text is pretty rad.
This small drinking horn was commissioned by a group of road wardens who, after many dangerous journeys through the Living Lands, decided they needed something to commemorate their past adventures and steel themselves for new ones.
Some believe that an entire set of these horns was created. Chanters of the Living Lands tell stories of men and women taking swigs from these horns only to charge headfirst into battle, shouting elaborate insults about the ancestry of their enemies. But if other horns exist, none has been found.
Bound to a leather strap, the horn is encircled by verdigris-encrusted scale bands and is engraved along one side. Most of the script has long since worn off, but the words “…used with moderation” remain.
Baldur’s Gate: Icewind Dale II
For D&D and Baldur’s Gate fans that haven’t played 2002’s Icewind Dale II, you may want to consider going back for a little vintage treat.
Sordirskin’s Drinking Horn is a quest item made of gold found in the depths of the Fell Wood. The good news is Sordirskin gives you a heap of treasure – the bad news is he keeps his drinking horn.
Did we miss any video game drinking horns? Tell us in the comments!
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