Weapons. Oh my goddess. Can we pick something else, please. Swords are great and all but there are so many cool ass weapons out there that could make for interesting magical McGuffins. Like THE SPEAR. The weapon of kings! The king of weapons! You could have a magical spearhead--

--and give your character a quest to find the perfect stave to put it on! I mean Gungnir, the spear of Odin! That was kind of a big deal! The Lance of Longinus! Another big deal! Why aren't there more mythic spears in fantasy?

And hand axes! I mean anything you can ascribe to a mythic sword you can do with an axe. Or a mace. Or literally any other one handed weapon. Don't get me started on maces and flails.

Horses? Horses are fine. I mean my best friend is a horse fanatic so I get it. But they're like ships. People are gonna expect you to provide intimate details of horse physiology and grooming and care, like how if you have a ship in your story you need to know about rigging.

So many other options for mounts. Animals similar to reindeer, elk, boar, water buffalo, gazelle. Heck, give me a reptile. A large flightless bird. Go nuts and give me riding armadillos or giant rodents or arthropods.

I get wolves. They're scary predators. But it's like y'all have never heard of big cats or bears or alligators or weird hybrid fusions of all three. You know what would rule? Put your characters out in the wilderness and surrounded by a pack of crocottas.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crocotta 

And dragons are just fantasy shorthand at this point. They're like vampires: a tired trope. Where are my sphinx, my manticores, my rakshasas? Why not a lamia, a lammasu, a naga? How come you hardly ever see giants any more? There are SO MANY different creatures out there!

Anyway, all I'm saying is that fantasy pretty much gives us a blank cheque to go wild with our imaginations, can we at least make an effort not to fall back into the same ruts we've been carving out since LotR?
/end rant

I would like to thank Twitter for not linking this thread to my original post and making me look like a lunatic. Well okay that second part is on me. BUT STILL. WHAT THE HECK, TWITTER.