Archaeology - And all it's dusty little secrets!

[Deleted]

Awesome guide, easy to read and quite helpful (:

[Chiper]

I'm guessing you find Northrend Night Elf sites in Borean Tundra, south-west Dragonblight and Crystalsong Forest. Dragonblight has a few High Elf ruins, Crystalsong was a former High Elf capital, and Borean Tundra has Naga, which are descended from High Elves.

[Raka]

the most helpful information to me is not getting rare-things double... im heading for that AQ mount and so im just digging all of kalimdor and solving tolvir artefacts until it spawns ... thx

[Torais]

Too much nonsense blabber and too few real info. If I wanna read something that claims to be entertaining, I go read a book.

While harsh in your assessment I somewhat agree. It seems to skim around the sides of a lot of issues like proper use of keystones, hording fragments for whatever epic you want to shoot for and so on.

While not a terrible read, it does seem to waffle on about the obvious too much and barely addresses certain core issues.

[Constraint]

Nice well-written guide. Good attempts to add some humor into it. Exaggeration is a little strange on the sword, but I guess there's no confirmed 'drop-rate' as yet, so whatever.

If possible though, please change the title.. "And all it's dusty little secrets" means "And all it is dusty little secrets". You don't put an apostrophe between 't' and 's' for possession for 'it', only when contracting 'it' and 'is'. Looks funny at the moment.

[Vicieus]

Eastern Kingdoms is definetly faster to level than Kalimdor as horde, and here's why:

Zeppelins in the south and north obviously cut down traveling time between south and north shovels. Plus you can set your hearth to a middle point on the map (New Kargath) to get all those dwarf/fossil sites there.
Kalimdor is much wider than eastern kingdoms so you have to fly A LOT LOT more east to west, west to east than eastern kingdoms
Kalimdor has A TON more environmental obstacles (i.e. HIGH MOUNTAINS AND TREES!!!) Flying up over them, and then flying a long way down reduces your digging time by a lot.
Troll digsites spawn just as much as Nelf shovels for leveling.

Rares will slow down your leveling complelty if you don't save or use the fragments correctly to skill up. My rule of thumb when leveling was that if I have more than 3 of a certain race i'll use them on the commons that I can use them on. So, if I had 4 troll fragments id use it after I have dug all the current troll digsites. You don't want to solve first if you have one extra fragment because the next common might not have the socket.

If you're digging a lot of troll or nelf sites hopefully you'll gain the 3 back before your next rare. Use your better judgement though.

[IRBoNZi]

I dont know if anyone has said this before I didnt read the whole thread. BUT.... As an alliance your not so screwed over as stated for Eastern Kingdoms side. The horde zepelin can still be used. Just land on the top of it at undercity or Gromral with your flying mount and travel from north to south and back. Just dont land on the wrong one, i have ended up several times in Orgrimmar. And dont go near any guards, as u might be killed or knocked back off the zepelin.

[Deleted]

Very nice guide. Well done, and thankyou for it.

The tool that is summoned is a theodolite to help you locate the items in a dig site.

[Deleted]

Although I'd quite like a decent archaeology guide, I didn't find this one particularly useful. Some constructive criticism:

1. The content is quite light and obvious to anyone who's levelled archaeology already. My main concern with starting archaeology is not where I might learn it or who the various races are, but how I might save time. Boubuille has already posted some very useful information about addons, there are tons of tips and tricks to save time flying about, optimal flying/farming routes, et cetera. I'd expect this kind of information to be fleshed out more. Elitist Jerks don't usually just say "healing druids like intellect most", they have a detailed discussion of why, quoting time and original research.

2. Poorly written. I find the prose difficult to read and rambling. Break up your sentences a bit and try to keep on point. There are also numerous spelling, punctuation and grammar mistakes that make the entire thing feel really unprofessional (for example, the "it's" in the guide title shouldn't have an apostrophe). There's an excellent Guide to Writing Guides available which is worth reading for this sort of stuff.

3. Layout - related to #2. As said, it feels a bit rambling, and in sections like "where to level" you mention lots of really useful tips about hearthstones, portal points, et cetera. From a brief flip through the guide, I had zero idea this was even there. Clearly label useful information like this, for example, under its own subheading or in bullet points. This was also covered in the Guide to Writing Guides.

Hope these tips are useful for you bro, thanks for your time and effort (these things take ages, I know!). Don't be afraid to rewrite and improve!

[Deleted]

Next time you decide to post a guide you might want to get the facts right on things before you have people going in circles.

- No level requirements – Dwarf, Fossil, Night Elf, Troll (Eastern Kingdom / Kalimdor)
- At least 300 – Draenei, Orc (Outlands)
- At least 400 – Nerubian, Vrykul (Northrend) - should be 375
- At least 525 – Tol’vir (Kalimdor – Uldum) - Should be 450

I could have read more but I didn't feel like being a total jerk. At least you tried though.

He got a reward by doing this guide SO...

[Caanrial]

Need to mention that the Canopic Jars are what you need for the flying drake mount transform alchemy recipe. As a druid I can't wait to get mine so I can carry guildies high above the hills...then shift into flight form! j/k...or am I... :-)

[Deleted]

Nice guide but you left out one thing..

I hit 525 archeology today and when I went to do daily HC, I was "lucky" enough to get lost city, there was a blue quest near the entrance that needed a tol'vir relic to complete. Same with Vortex Pinnacle. AS I didn't have one at hand at the time, I had no idea what those quests rewarded (and still don't)

[Subliminal]

Nice guide but you left out one thing..

I hit 525 archeology today and when I went to do daily HC, I was "lucky" enough to get lost city, there was a blue quest near the entrance that needed a tol'vir relic to complete. Same with Vortex Pinnacle. AS I didn't have one at hand at the time, I had no idea what those quests rewarded (and still don't)

I'm also wondering about that.
It would be a shame to waste any tol'vir keystone though. +12 tol'vir fragments is a huge deal.

[C9R9D]

i enjoyed the tips haha (:

[rhorle]

The guide should have mentioned the various buffs you can get in instances from turning in keystones. Like the +5% crit buff you get from doing the daily quest in Grim batol for one dwarven keystone. And they apparently last for the whole day, since I've wiped and it is back on when I zone back into the instance.

[Azgraal]

The Last Relic of Argus
This crystal seems to be a magical recording device of some sort. The message it plays is in a language you can't entirely decipher, but you gather it is either a recording or a recreation of the first meeting of the eredar and the naaru.

When using this item you’ll get randomly teleported to any of the following locations:

- Golakka Hot Springs – Un’Goro Crater
- Nighthaven – Moonglade
- Dire Maul Arena – Feralas
- Duskwood
- Wetlands
- Wailing Caverns
- Mardenholde Keep (Hearthglen) – Western Plague Lands
- Lost Rigger Cove – Tanaris
- Fuselight-by-the-Sea – Badlands
- Hellfire Peninsula
- Blasted Lands
- Narain Soothfancy’s old hut at Steamwheedle Port
- Stranglethorn Vale

There could be more locations but this is all I currently know of.

You can add Dabyrie's Farmstead in Arathi Highlands to the list, it was the first place i got teleported to.

[Auloria]

When looking at the map (after you’ve trained your archaeology of course, why haven’t you yet!) you’ll notice small shovel icons spread across the map you’re in. These little shovels represent dig sites and you’ll be chasing them around the globe nonstop, I hope you’re excited yet.

Can you explicitly say to zoom out to the full continent map in order to see the shovels? I couldn't figure out why I couldn't see shovels on my zone maps, and I'm definitely not the only idiot playing wow.

[blazto]

Nice guide but you left out one thing..

I hit 525 archeology today and when I went to do daily HC, I was "lucky" enough to get lost city, there was a blue quest near the entrance that needed a tol'vir relic to complete. Same with Vortex Pinnacle. AS I didn't have one at hand at the time, I had no idea what those quests rewarded (and still don't)

They give your group a buff. HoO is a speed boost and BRC is 5% reduced elemental damage. Not sure on the other ones.

[Kalcheus]

Can you explicitly say to zoom out to the full continent map in order to see the shovels? I couldn't figure out why I couldn't see shovels on my zone maps, and I'm definitely not the only idiot playing wow.

I hate how in STV you have to zoom out twice to see it.

I would suggest leveling in Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms simply because you get the same amount of dig sites and the same amount of fragments but when making good use of your hearthstone you can get to them a lot quicker. On that same note I’ve noticed how the Kalimdor / Eastern Kingdom dig sites seem to spawn close to each other more often than they do in Outlands or Northrend. And on another, much more important, note you’ll need a lot less fragments to get to a solve in Kalimdor / Eastern Kingdoms which will speed up your initial archaeology leveling by a lot.

I just wanted to highlight this from the OP, with one thought and one addendum. Definitely agree that the higher number of fragments required makes levelling in Outland/Northrend a bad idea, although I believe this was done because the travel times are (ostensibly) faster among sites than it is in EK or Kalim (as the continents aren't as big as EK/Kalim are long). That said, I believe it is worthwhile to complete one dig site of each of the four races (Orc, Draenei, Nerubian, Vyrkul) just to see what you're going to get next, on the off chance it'll be a rare.

I have to admit, it was pretty funny digging right in front of Hellfire Citadel. The Ruins of Auchindon, however, are obnoxious.

[taintted]

one big typo in this guide for alliance that a little bit of research would have fixed, as of patch 4.0 there are flight paths in darnassus and exodar to kalimdor and the boats no longer go to auberdine since its destruction in the shattering.