Fist weapons are one of the few weapon types you cannot equip straight out of the character creation screen. You have to buy the proficiency from a Weapon Master, and on the Alliance side only two of them teach it. Everything else — swords, polearms, guns — sends you to a different trainer entirely.
Quick answer: Alliance players learn Fist Weapons from Ilyenia Moonfire in Darnassus or Buliwyf Stonehand in Ironforge. It costs 10 silver and has no level requirement.
Alliance fist weapons trainers and locations
Two Weapon Masters cover the Alliance capitals. Whichever one you visit, the skill is identical — pick the city you can reach fastest.
| Trainer | City | Coordinates | Cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ilyenia Moonfire | Darnassus, Warrior’s Terrace | 57.6, 46.7 | 10 silver |
| Buliwyf Stonehand | Ironforge, Military Ward | 62.2, 89.6 | 10 silver |
Stormwind is not an option. Woo Ping, the Trade District Weapon Master, handles crossbows, daggers, swords, staves, and polearms, so a Stormwind-based character has to make the trip to Ironforge or Darnassus.
Learning Fist Weapons in Darnassus
Every Weapon Master has a dialogue option that points you to whoever teaches a skill they do not. If you are hunting a different proficiency later, ask them instead of running between cities.
Learning Fist Weapons in Ironforge
Requirements and cost
- Price: 10 silver, the standard rate for every weapon skill except Polearms.
- Level: none. Fist Weapons can be trained at level 1, unlike Polearms, which require level 20.
- Class: weapon skills are class-specific, so a trainer only offers Fist Weapons if your class can equip them.
- Faction: Alliance characters cannot use the Horde trainers, and vice versa.
How to confirm the training worked
Open your character window and switch to the Skills tab, which is still present in Forever with a refreshed look. Fist Weapons should now appear under your weapon skills with a value you can raise. If it is missing, you either bought a different skill or your class cannot equip fist weapons at all.
Hovering the skill gives you more than it did in Classic. The tooltip now spells out exactly how your current weapon skill changes your attacks against a target of a given level, so you can see the effect of each point instead of guessing.
Fist weapon swings run off the Unarmed skill. Training Fist Weapons is what lets you equip the weapons, but the number that goes up as you fight is Unarmed, which every character already has.
What changed about weapon skill in Forever
The skill still works as it always did, but the old ways of exceeding its cap no longer exist. In Forever, no racial ability increases weapon skill. Dwarves’ Gun Specialization, trolls’ Bow Specialization and Throwing Specialization, and humans’ Mace Specialization were removed or replaced. The two remaining abilities—Axe Specialization for orcs and Sword Specialization for humans—now provide crit chance instead.
Gear took the same treatment. Edgemaster’s Handguards, the epic world drop that handed out +7 weapon skill in Classic, now gives +1. Principal Game Designer Kriz Zierhut framed the change in the Forever Deep Dive by calling weapon skill the strongest stat for melee in Classic, and one that was too easy to stack.
For a fist weapon user, that mostly means the 10 silver is the whole investment. There is no racial bonus to chase and no glove slot to build around, so once the skill is on your sheet you are simply swinging until Unarmed climbs on its own.
