When it was first announced around a year ago, I'll admit I was really excited about this new profession. Being really into the lore of WoW, I imagined that Blizzard would put a lot of effort into different lore pieces that you dug up, as well as a few flavour items that could help your group but aren't necessary unless you want to min-max, like how Cooking works now. I was really into the Paths of the Titans idea too until it was pulled for reasons unapparent. Better luck next time, eh?
Onto today's archaeology however, and I still have the desire to despise it, and not just because they haphazardly did the first thing I was looking forward to, and got rid of the other thing. At the moment, it's a long, boring grind-fest that has the lure of easy 359 epics at the end of it. Really, it reminds me of faction grinding reputations back in vanilla. It does get you to see the world a bit though... Well, the tops of trees.
Which brings me onto my next rant. Having spent a lot of time now digging in Kalimdor for Tyrande's Doll, as well as three different Tol'vir artifacts, I tend to go to digsites that involves Mount Hyjal in some way. This would be fine and all that, if its surrounding zones didn't have just a drastic difference in the sky limit! Seriously, what's the difference of air pressure between being at the top of the tallest mountain in Azeroth, to being halfway down the mountain in Ashenvale's zone, but still causes my bird to screech in horror? What the hell is up with that? I know Blizzard actually want us to see the zones, but couldn't they make the sky limits at least a little less drastic?
So now we're flying just above the trees, and we get to our digsite... Which spans about a quarter of the zone (I'm looking at you, Abyssal Sands Fossil Ridge). Now for a quick tutorial on archaeology:
- Open up the map, zoom out to the continent map, look for the trowel/spade symbol. Point your character toward that and go in that direction, making sure you double check every so often just in case you have to move in case something bizarre like a tree or a Mount Hyjal was in the way.
- When you've reached the zone where the spade told you to go (say that to your therapist), go to the orange area. Sometimes it likes to annoy you and goes grey so it blends in with the map, that's normal so don't worry.
- Once inside the orange zone, you can hit the ground and press survey, and the telescope will spawn with a light that flashes up with one of three colours, or if you're lucky the fragment itself.
- Green means you're between 10-30 yards away from the item. Move 20 yards in the direction it told you to go and survey again. If it flashes green again, move 10 yards in the direction it told you and go survey and pick up the fragment. More often than not I've found that a green flasher can be up to 40 yards away however, so don't be too put off, as the worst is yet to come.
- Yellow lights mean that the fragment is between 30-70 yards away from you, in the direction the telescope points. Simply follow the direction for around 40 yards and survey again, it should go green. If not, welcome to archaeology.
- Red lights mean that it's over 70 yards away. It also means that it does not know where the hell it is, but it certainly isn't nearby. The telescope will point to the most likely destination, however there's quite a big chance that when you move 70 yards into the distance, it'll send you in a completely different direction up to 90ยบ left or right, with another red light.
Speaking of the Un'goro fossil bank, and in turn the rest of the digsites in that zone are incredibly annoying. Once you've found the fossils, after spending an eternity on the red light, the fossils themselves stay hidden by somehow changing colour from the grey they are everywhere else, to a muddy green colour to blend in with the ground. That, on top of hiding underneath the foliage quickly grates on my already frazzled nerves. Sometimes I just didn't bother finding it, as it was a "find" on the digsite checklist, and it was only fossils. Then came the patch notes of the inflated price list, and I facepalmed at my own stupidity.
Heading a bit further south and we get onto my next nuisance, which appeared to me a scant few days ago. I knew I needed several Tol'vir artifacts in any case, which included the spirit staff primarily, then the ring, and getting the alchemist Vial in a Canopic Jar would just be icing on the cake. I have my ring now, so it's just two more to go! Only problem however, is the rare I'm currently getting. Pendant of the Scarab Storm has made me rage for several reasons.
Firstly, its cooldown. Either someone at Blizzard added an extra zero on there as a joke or a mistake, but a 6000 second (1hr 40mins, 100mins) cooldown instead of the usual 600 seconds (10mins) from similar archae items is an evil joke or a stupid mistake that I'm surprised hasn't been hotfixed yet.
Secondly, it costs just as much as any other Tol'vir rare, which all but this one lasts longer than 24 seconds - so I'm being forced to farm an already rare digsite for 114-150 fragments for an item I get to see at most 0.4% of the time. Not to mention the keystones are around 700-1k gold at the moment.
Thirdly, as I mentioned before, when it's the only rare out of six that's cosmetic, you kind of want it to be the one that gets you your Professor title, not the obstacle in gearing you up for raiding. I'm a mount collector, and while not a companion collector as such, I'd certainly pass up the scarabs for a walking hand... BECAUSE IT'S A FRICKIN' MONKEY PAW!! Probably a cursed one too at that, seems to fit the profession as a whole.
As a side note, I feel for plate DPS farming for Zin'rokh, as that's the only rare that trolls have. Especially if you've sold all the common artifacts before realising the money you could have made from some of them *cough* Dwarven Word of Empress Zoe *cough*.
One point I'd also like to mention, that is nice sometimes, but can be very depressing at others, is when you land in the zone, survey, and you immediately get the fragment. You survey again, and hey presto! Another fragment straight away. On the third survey, you also get a fragment in just that one spot. What the hell is that about? Did someone try to dig their competed artifact in that one spot, but disconnected before they got to dig it back up again for free skills or something? Admittedly it makes more sense than to find fragments of the same artifact in Hyjal, Dragonblight, Silithus and Eastern Plaguelands. But still, I just travelled in this direction for this digsite alone for around 2 minutes, and it was over in less than 10 seconds!
I made a point at the start about the lore aspect of the profession. I can honestly say that it sucked. Big time. The Night Elf achievement storyline is one of those Shakespearean/Greek tragedies, of how two night elves love each other, and the parents of the male night elf forbade him from seeing the female night elf, and as a result the female night elf drank spider venom because she could no longer go and see her beloved. The note on the vial said that the bloke should do the same, so they can be together in Elune-heaven. At least somewhere along those lines in any case. Oh, and spoiler alert about a lore piece that had nothing to do with the overall lore of WoW, nor have any ties in the current-day setting at the moment.
I could go on about the rest of the achievements, but it's pretty much new lore where it has no links with anything, other than the thing you have in your hand with some other items you're about to dig up or have dug up. The individual items are pretty good however at explaining things that have already been explained elsewhere. So in conclusion, if the person who's interested in lore actually goes into the completed artifacts section to read up on each item, they'll likely just get clarification on what they already knew, or just a bit of flavour text. To the person who's not interested in lore... It's just a bit of money to them until their next epic.
Final point, and I'll just use one word for this, as I'm sure that any archaeologist will agree with me without further explanation: Fossils.
Other than the entire post above however, Blizzard have done good with this profession, especially if you're a DPS character. Nothing beats a 40min queue on the dungeon finder than digging up some old artifacts in the hopes you can gear either yourself or an alt up with the wealth of BoA items available in this profession. And it's a steady source of income if you've finished dailies and don't like playing the AH.
Download and install Deadly Boss Mods for an Old God whisper whenever you get a keystone (really does make it slightly more bearable), Archy and TomTom addons to make this profession go by a little easier. Bejewelled too, if you can't alt-tab or don't play in windowed mode, so you have something to do between digsites.
And when you've found all the rares that you want... I'm taking bets on 4.1 bringing a new set of competitive epics that we'll be spending hours farming for, only to get a Tol'vir cosmetic rare that needs 800 fragments, lasts for 5 seconds and has an 8 hour cooldown. Not that I'm bitter or anything.
