Best Places for Archaeology!

[Glowstuff]

Nice post, will be useful for when I decide to level my Archaeology!

[Miray]

Thx a lot for the nice guide!

[6eyki]

Extremely useful thanks.

[konijnen]

i was excited at first when i found troll fragments in northrend becuase i figured with the shorter distances to fly between sites it would be faster. statistically it looks like EK is stillt he better bet tho :<

[TyrianFC]

Very helpful post, but I wish it could let me make canopic jars more often :P

[aggression]

What's up with Tol'vir digsites today? Been digging for 1½h and got my 8'th digsite now. :S
Blizz improved spawning on them? Or just compensation with my 10 digsites yesterday over 7 hours or so.

EDIT: Just got another, few mins after this post. Either I'm really lucky or blizz finally did something with tol'vir sites.
EDIT: And another one now

[Bethan]

I had 6/7 digsite in Uldum in a row (had to do one in tanaris in the middle) the 2nd day after I start farming tolvir
later on the same day I got 1 uldum digsite out of 28 consecutive

RNG is RNG

[aggression]

For sure I was just really lucky yesterday. Farmed Kalimdor for 4h today, 2 tol'vir digsites.... Only plus is I got 7 Highborne Scrolls, and can sell them as I have every nelf rare.

[Deleted]

Thanks for working all of this out, it's a great help when specifically searching one of the rares.

[Kaysha]

I've been doing Archaeology a lot, being an Alchemist and all (you guessed it, I want the mount ). As such, I've scoured Kalimdor for digsites primarily and as such have visited all digsites more than once. My numbers are a bit off, from the table posted - as well as the table posted on the frontpage. My findings, compiled in a few different formats:

Darkshore: 1 Night Elf
Ashenvale: 4 Night Elf
Stonetalon Mountains: 2 Night Elf, 1 Fossil
Southern Barrens: 1 Night Elf, 1 Fossil, 1 Dwarf
Aszhara: 2 Night Elf
Desolace: 4 Night Elf, 2 Fossil
Dustwallow: 2 Fossil
Feralas: 8 Night Elf
Felwood: 4 Night Elf
Winterspring: 3 Night Elf
Tanaris: 4 Troll, 2 Fossil
Un'Goro Crater: 5 Fossil
Silithus: 1 Night Elf
Mount Hiyal: 5 Night Elf
Uldum: 9 Tol'Vir

Total count: 62 digsites in Kalimdor, of which 9 (the Tol'Vir ones) are only availble post-450 skill, making for 53 available digsites pre-450 skill. Counting up for each race, I am getting the following numbers:
Night Elf: 35 - 66,04% pre, 56,45% post
Dwarf: 1 - 1,89% pre, 1,61% post
Troll: 4 - 7,55% pre, 6,45% post
Fossil: 13 - 24,53% pre, 20,97% post
Tol'Vir: 9 - 0% pre, 14,52% post

I can't see where the numbers in the two tables (in this thread and on the frontpage) are coming from, as they don't show explicit numbers, only percentages. It seems the table on the frontpage only considers 56 digsites, post-450? And as far as I can see, the post-450 table in this thread considers 5 Troll and 8 Tol'Vir digsites, instead of 4 Troll and 9 Tol'Vir; can't see what's up with the pre-450 table, though.

Haven't got information about the other zones, maybe I get around to it once I have my Vial (0/3 jars so far ...)

[Simca]

Kaysha, the numbers are from http://www.wowpedia.org/Archaeology#Zones_and_dig_sites and http://www.wowpedia.org/Dig_site

As far as we know, there are only 8 Tol'Vir dig sites not 9. If you can discover any more than what is on that list (and perferably provide a screenshot so we can find the borders and verify it is new), than that would be most appreciated and I'll gladly update.

Also, the one from the front page a few weeks ago is out of date - I made a few corrections to it since then.

The only two differences between Wowpedia's data and yours are

• Tanaris: 4 Troll, 2 Fossil (Wowpedia says 5 Troll, 2 Fossil)
• Uldum: 9 Tol'Vir (Wowpedia says 8)

[Kaysha]

I've been making screenshots of the various zonemaps with digsites on them, and then compiled them using paint, to get zonemaps with all digsites in one image together. My Uldum map has 9 distinctly different digsites .



So these are the 9 locations:
- Temple of Uldum
- Ruins of Khintaset (directly north of the Temple of Uldum, and just west of the Obelisk of the Moon);
- Ruins of Ahmtul (northeast of the Obelisk of the Moon, ruins just about buried in the sand);
- Orsis (just southeast of the Temple of Uldum);
- Ruins of Ammon (along the coast in the south);
- Neferset City (also along the coast, east of the Ruins of Ammon);
- Khartut's Tomb (in the northeast corner);
- Tombs of the Precursors (Halls of Origination, north part, below Khartut's Tomb);
- Halls of Origination South (haven't got the exact name, but it's not the Tombs of the Precursors site in any case);

Total of 9 sites. Those latter two are actually adjacent and if both are up at the same time, also likely to overlap along the border that they share.

It could be that I am still missing one in Tanaris, but I would consider it somewhat unlikely. As it stands, I would not know where Tanaris could be having a fifth Troll digsite, without it being marked somehow with a Troll temple image on the zone map.



Edit: I see that WoWpedia lists the Abyssal Sands twice as a digsite, once as Troll and once as Fossil. I think the Troll digsite mentioned there is actually incorrect and that it is supposed to be the Fossil digsite instead.

Edit2: I realise I may have made a calculation mistake for the pre-450 digsites. Considering that the digsites in Twilight Highlands in Eastern Kingdoms only start to appear post-450, does the same apply for the 5 Night Elf digsites in Mount Hiyal? If so, the calculations I made for pre-450 shouldn't include those.

[Simca]

Awesome! I'll correct it for the Tol'Vir later today (raiding atm), and I'm correcting Wowpedia's information now.

As for the Troll... I'm reluctant to -remove- a digsite. Can anyone else confirm the existence of a 5th troll site in Tanaris... one missing from the map above?

I -thought- there was one at Sandsorrow Watch, that semi-overlaps the Zul'Farrak digsite. I was like 90% sure.

Edit: 5 days late, but I updated the OP with the new Tol'vir point, my sources, and the question.

[Kaysha]

I can fully understand that reluctance . A negative can't be proven, after all. Keep in mind, though, that the Sandsorrow Watch encampment is partially covered by the Zul'Farrak digsite. I've been almost inside the camp once for a dig - could it be that you had the same? In any case, I will keep my eyes peeled for additional digsites in Tanaris (or any other zone) of course, as I am still exclusively digging in Kalimdor. 0/5 jars so far ...

[Deleted]

I wish i could trade all my fossil digsites for tol'vir digsites. Im tired of all these bones without any keyfragments to sell!!

[Stockli]

Wow, some nice posts here, thanks for the info.

[Deleted]

I love me some percentages, great overview OP :-D

I got the orc rare as my first orc project :S leaving orc digsites entirely useless for me (apart from counting towards common artifact achievements and otherwise). I finally got The Last Relic of Argus, but I'm still short of the Arrival of the Naaru, just won't show up!

And yeah, Nerubian digsite % is so depressingly low.

And, echoing a lot of the other posters, don't even get me started on Tol'vir :-(

Get out of my interwebs, fossil digsites!

[Daws001]

Lord, there's even more fossil sites on Eastern Kingdoms?! Every time a fossil node pops up a kitten dies. Of this I'm certain.

[Deleted]

i dont mind any dig site, except freaking fossil, ofc i pref nelf/tol'vir

[thelne]

Hello folks. With the new changes to the price of artifacts found via Archaeology, I decided to figure out which continents would yield the most gold (if someone chose to use Archaeology for gold).

I first calculated the total number of fragments to make every unique artifact per race. I disregarded rare artifacts since they cannot be sold.

Dwarf: 27 artifacts for a total of 982 fragments
Fossil: 12 artifacts for a total of 419 fragments
Night Elf: 18 artifacts for a total of 639 fragments
Troll: 14 artifacts for a total of 470 fragments
Draenii: 8 artifacts for a total of 362 fragments
Orc: 9 artifacts for a total of 405 fragments
Nerubian: 7 artifacts for a total of 315 fragments
Vrykul: 5 artifacts for a total of 225 fragments
Tol'vir: 7 artifacts for a total of 315 fragments

I then added up the sell prices of all of the artifacts using the new sell prices on the front page. This has been made easier by the front page. Thanks Boub!

Dwarf: 565g
Fossil: 260g
Night Elf: 393g
Troll: 124g
Draenii: 160g
Orc: 191g
Nerubian: 127g
Vrykul: 95g
Tol'vir: 157g

Using that information, I found the average price per fragment based on race. Note: these are only prices per fragment and has nothing to do with prices of scrolls/tablets/hieroglyphics since the AH prices of those vary by server.

Dwarf: 57s 54c
Fossil: 62s 05c
Night Elf: 61s 50c
Troll: 26s 38c
Draenii: 44s 19c
Orc: 47s 16c
Nerubian: 40s 32c
Vrykul: 42s 22c
Tol'vir: 49s 84c

Using the dig site distribution from the OP and assuming that all dig sites have an equal proc rate, I calculated continent expected value per fragment.
(example: EK - .3396*.5754 + .2453*.6205 + .0377*.2638 + .3774*.4419 = .4704g)

Eastern Kingdoms: 47s 04c
Kalimdor: 57s 10c
Outlands: 45s 57c
Northrend: 41s 79c

So, using these calculations, it appears that Kalimdor has the highest average fragment worth of 57s 10c largely due to the high amount of Fossil and Night Elf dig sites. Depending on how fast you can get to dig sites (I'm a mage so that's easy) and the price of scrolls/tablets/hieroglyphics, you can decide where you want to farm if you are looking to make some gold as an Archaeologist. I will update if/when new races are added or new information comes available.

Again, thanks to OP for chart of distribution of dig sites and Boub for calculating total selling prices per race!