A bit odd question about Archeology

[Deleted]

Hello guys, (wall of text/prestory below

this weekend i leveled archeology on 2 alts for diffrent reasons.
My first alt did the grind in Eastern kingdoms with focil, troll and dwarf artefacts. Nothing strange. Mindless grind for a day.

My second alt i decided to grind him in Kalimdor, becuase i thought my brain will explode if i repeat the same grind, in the same environment. So i went Kalimdor to grind Nelf artefacts with occasional procs of troll, dwarf and focil. After the first hour grind i saw i got procs frm mainly Nelf so i went to the AH to buy some Highbourne Scrolls, to lessen the grind. For my surprise there were like gazilion stacks of scrolls for a silly price of 20g per sack. Didn't made huge impression. I was just happy that i got away with it cheap and went back to the grind. Now here is were it started to be interesting, and odd, and strange.

Every time i started digging in a digsite there was always at least one level 85 toon doing the digging too. Every. Time. No matter Horde or Ally. And always 85 level.

When this made me impression my first thought was "bots". and started inspecting the ally toons. Most looked like twinks - 415 ilvl crafted gear, some 450 ilvl weapons, trinkets etc. Some were just freshly dinged 85's with TH quest gear. Then i started poking the Horde toons. With the ilvl on the said toons i could easily oneshoot a 85's, but that couldn't show me if this is bot. So i just went there auto attacks and low dmg things i could do with my toons to see a reaction. First few i poked and killed just waited in the air on flying mounts and waiting for me finish my dig and get off. Some peeps logged mains and came to do some pvp. It was refreshing and killed the boredom of the grind... Anyway i maybe encountered only one bot, because every time i poked him he just bubbleheartstone and if i oneshooted him, he just resurrect and went on digging again completely ignoring me.

Anyway as i described most toons weren't actually bots (well and ot be honest i dont think you can program archeology bot). And as i said above there was like gazilion stack of Nelf scrolls in the AH, so this got me wondering - what is in the Archeology that can give you profit enough to grind it, but not just grind it on you max lvl toon, but on you 85lvl one?
Anyone have a answer to this maybe?


P.S. yes i know Nelf archeology have 2 artifacts that sell good, but still that's RNG between 10? projects

[medievalman1]

Tol'vir archaeology mount and companion pet. While the pet is obtainable via the AH, last I checked (admittedly a number of months ago) they were going for well over 10k on my server. The mount is not obtainable. There's also the vial of sands recipe for completionists... I suppose certain items may be wanted for xmog too, like Zin'rokh.

[Deleted]

1. They're bored with questing and level via Arch and gathering.

2. They're working on achievements and want to collect all the artifacts. Back in Cata, I probably spent 2 weeks grinding Kalimdor for Tyrande's Lost Doll, since I had 4 healers and the trinket is BoA.

3. They're either collecting or selling multiple pets, so they do Arch on all their alts (you can only unlock the project once on a particular character).

4. They're really after Tol'vir artifacts (mount, pet, Vial, BoAs), but in order to get Tol'vir sites to spawn, you have to clear out the nelf and fossil ones.

I think you could have saved yourself the trouble of "poking" (seriously?) alts in greens if you simply whispered someone from your faction.

[Raelbo]

what is in the Archeology that can give you profit enough to grind it, but not just grind it on you max lvl toon, but on you 85lvl one?

You get a lot of XP from doing Archaeology. I used it quite a bit on my alts and IIRC at level 85 a single digsite is the equivalent of 2 level-appropriate quests. The xp seems to drop off rapidly as you approach level 90 though.

Now if you think about it, a lot of people will have level 85 alts lying around since the end of Cata. If you happen to be looking for a particular artefact, it makes a lot of sense to do it on your level 85 rather than your main because you then get the benefit of the XP.

Something else I did a lot of while levelling was pet battle dailies. I could have done them on my main, but by doing on them on my alt I still got almost all the same rewards (the bag and the XP for my pets being the main ones I was interested in, the gold reward for turning in the quest is a bit reduced on a sub-90 though) but with the benefit of a ton of XP - both for winning the battle and then also for turning in the quest. I can't remember if I could do any of the Pandaria ones before level 90, but I definitely did a ton of them between Winterspring, Karazhan, Outland, Northrend and Uldum.

[Deleted]

I can't remember if I could do any of the Pandaria ones before level 90, but I definitely did a ton of them between Winterspring, Karazhan, Outland, Northrend and Uldum.

You can do them. I had my friend fly me around on his cat to reach the ones that require flying.