After reaching levle 81 yesterday and picking up my new skill (and training my new talent point) I decided to slow things down a bit and explore archeology which is a new secondary profession that came out with cataclysm. By secondary profession I mean it doesn’t count towards your maximum of two – it runs on the same lines as cooking, fishing, and first aid.
My trainer was in Orgrimmar so that’s where I headed. Training the skill gives you a survey command, as well as the archeology button that you can click to see your collections. How it works is quite simple. At any one time on all four continents there are dig sites. You can locate these by right clicking your map and viewing in continent mode. You’ll see little shovels marked on the map. The next step is to fly to these locations. When you get close, you’ll see that the map has a red area marked off. This is your dig site area. Landing, you’ll use your survey skill and a little machine pops up that scans the area. It will point a telescope in a direction, and a coloured light shows up. The light indicates how far away you are from your extraction site (red, green, or yellow), and the lens of the telescope points the direction you should head.
From there it’s just a matter of narrowing down your search field. Eventually you’ll scan an area and an item will spawn near by that you can interact with. You extract the item and discover something, fragments, tablets, those sorts of things. So far I have discovered 12 fossils (common) and 17 night elf fragments. These work almost like EQ2 collection quests, where you need a particular number of fragments before you can solve the puzzle. They (the fragments) represent pieces of lore and history within the game, and if you’re looking for something fun and different to do (since WoW lacks housing) I really suggest you give it a try. I need 31 pieces to solve the fossil puzzle, and 30 to solve the night elf one. The rewards are fluff items (as far as I’ve been told) but can include mounts and vanity pets. You also gain experience for extracting fragments just like you would for harvesting (mining, and herbalism).
Like most crafting in WoW, it is level restricted. The dig sites will be in any zone area that is equal to your level or lower. That means if you’re level 30 trying to search for dig sites in Outlands or Northrend you won’t find any. I’m pretty excited to solve my first fragment collection and see what sort of lore / story is revealed. Sure, it’s mindless busywork, but I really don’t mind it at all. There are so many people in a rush to get to end game I’d much rather just take my time and enjoy the sights and sounds.
Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!
I can’t wait to figure out everything that comes with this new tradeskill. I’m going to focus on my goblin leveling but I hope Yo dive deep into it when I get higher in level.
I like things like this in game most of the time. In EQ2 when I saw a glowy on the ground I immediately run to it, I can’t help myself. This Archeology sounds like it’s a lot of fun in the same way.