The Four Crafting Benches in Dragonwilds (& Why Yours Were Destroyed)

 

    If you logged in when Umbral Sands released and found your Fletching Bench and Smithing Anvil gone, that was intentional. Jagex split crafting across four specialised benches — and rather than migrate the old ones, they destroyed them and left the resources in their place so you could rebuild. Here is what each bench now makes, why the split happened, and what it means for a base you had already laid out.

 

The Four Benches

 

Bench	What it makes
Blacksmith Bench	Tools, one-handed weapons, two-handed weapons, shields, crossbow limbs, quest items
Fletching Bench	Shortbows, longbows, crossbows, arrows, bolts, and miscellaneous Ranged equipment
Mystic Forge	Staves, more powerful capes, and Ascension Cores
Armour Bench	Head, body and leg armour in all three styles — Melee, Magic and Ranged — plus cape-slot equipment

 

    Note the crossbow split. Limbs are forged at the Blacksmith Bench; the crossbow itself is assembled at the Fletching Bench. That is deliberate RuneScape-style chained crafting — "Mine rocks to get ores, smelt ores to get metals, forge metals to make limbs, craft limbs into crossbows."

 

    All three armour styles share one bench. Melee, Magic and Ranged armour all come from the Armour Bench, which makes it the single most-used station for a mixed group.

 

Why It Was Split

 

 

    Jagex were candid about the original design being a mistake:

 

"Initially, we funnelled crafting recipes into the Smithing Anvil for anything to do with metal progression. Unfortunately, that made it difficult to manage from a design AND a UX perspective."

 

    Two problems, and the second one is multiplayer-specific.

 

    The first was navigation. "The player feedback was very clear that navigating and filtering the information was difficult when everything was packed into a single bench." One station with every metal recipe in the game is an unusable list.

 

    The second was queueing. Splitting the responsibilities "allows players to not be piling onto each station to try and get crafting." On a six-player server, one anvil is a bottleneck — everyone crafting metal gear wanted the same object. Four benches means four people can work at once.

 

    And it is explicitly future-proofing: the restructuring gives "a cleaner foundation for future expansions and progression systems." The Mystic Forge in particular was flagged as setting up future progression rewards — and 0.12.1 delivered it, adding the Ascension Cores feature that upgrades Masterwork and Vestige weapons to higher tiers.

 

What Happened to Your Old Benches

 

 

    The migration was blunt, and worth knowing if you are returning to an old world:

 

"On login on Umbral Sands' release, your existing Fletching Benches and Smithing Anvils will be destroyed and the resources will be there in their places for you to rebuild the new resources!"

 

    So nothing was lost, but nothing was converted either. You get the materials back on the floor where the bench stood, and you rebuild from scratch.

 

    Three practical consequences:

 

• Your base layout probably needs rethinking. Where one anvil stood, you now want up to four stations — which is more floor space than most crafting corners were built for.
• Check the ground where your benches were if you have not logged in since. Dropped resources are easy to walk past.
• On a shared server, agree who rebuilds what, or you will end up with two Armour Benches and no Mystic Forge.

 

    The Fletching Bench returned with a visual rework — "a new mesh and an overall art pass to better represent its purpose" — so it is recognisably different from the one you had.

 

Building the New Set

 

 

    A sensible rebuild order for most groups:

 

1. Armour Bench — all three armour styles run through it, so it serves everyone regardless of build.
2. Blacksmith Bench — tools and weapons, and the crossbow limbs the Fletching Bench needs.
3. Fletching Bench — required if anyone is playing Ranged; the crossbow is the reason it exists as a separate station.
4. Mystic Forge — staves, capes and Ascension Cores. Last unless someone is committed to Magic, in which case it moves up.

 

    Build them together. The chained recipes mean you will move between Blacksmith and Fletching repeatedly while making a single crossbow, and between Armour and Mystic Forge while kitting out a caster.

 

    Two things that changed alongside the benches, both relevant to what you make on them:

 

• The Mystic Forge gained the Ascension Cores feature in 0.12.1: "use those cores to upgrade Masterwork and Vestige weapons to higher tiers." So it is not only a creation station, it is where gear progresses.
• One known issue to be aware of: PL7 Shards do not exist in the world, but the recipe to convert them to Cores is present in the Mystic Forge anyway. Jagex confirmed this is unintended and "will be removing the recipe with our 1.0 update." PL7 Cores come only from the Nightmare Crucible, not from converting shards — so do not go hunting for shards that are not there.
• Crossbows are one-handed, which is the point of them: they let you hold a shield or torch in the off-hand, unlike shortbows and longbows. If your group's ranged player has been complaining about giving up the off-hand slot, that is the fix.

 

    One quality-of-life note from the combat rework: swapping to a two-handed weapon and back to a one-handed one now automatically re-equips your off-hand, which makes the crossbow-plus-shield build far less fiddly than it used to be.

 

Practical tips

• Four benches now: Armour, Blacksmith, Fletching, Mystic Forge.
• Your old Fletching Bench and Smithing Anvil were destroyed — the resources are on the ground where they stood.
• Crossbow limbs are forged at the Blacksmith Bench, the crossbow itself at the Fletching Bench.
• All three armour styles share the Armour Bench — build it first.
• Plan for more floor space. One anvil became up to four stations.
• On a server, agree who builds what before someone duplicates a bench.
• The Mystic Forge also upgrades gear — Ascension Cores raise Masterwork and Vestige weapons a tier.
• Ignore the PL7 Shard recipe. The shards do not exist; PL7 Cores come from the Nightmare Crucible.

 

Running your own RuneScape: Dragonwilds server

 

    Four benches instead of one is largely a multiplayer fix — it exists so that a group of up to six players is not queueing for a single station — and it pays off most on a world that stays up, where people craft on their own schedules rather than all at once when the host is online. A gamever Dragonwilds server keeps your base and its workshop available around the clock, updates automatically so client and server versions stay matched, and takes one-click backups before disruptive changes like the bench migration or 1.0 on 15 September.

 

Conclusion

 

    Dragonwilds replaced its overloaded Smithing Anvil with four specialised benches: the Blacksmith Bench for tools, 1H and 2H weapons, shields and crossbow limbs; the Fletching Bench for bows, crossbows, arrows and bolts; the Mystic Forge for staves, capes and Ascension Cores — which upgrade Masterwork and Vestige weapons a tier; and the Armour Bench for all three armour styles plus cape-slot equipment. The split fixed two real problems: an unnavigable single recipe list, and six players queueing for one station. Your old benches were destroyed on login rather than converted, with the materials left on the ground where they stood — so check that spot, plan for more floor space than one anvil needed, and agree who rebuilds what before your base ends up with two Armour Benches and no forge.

 

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