ArcheologyFollow

Just save them. I was in the same boat until around 400 skill, when I suddenly started to get a bunch of 2-3 fragment items to make. My stacks of 10+ troll/dwarf/Night Elf fillers are now 0-2 each.

i had the great joy [iam not kidding] of this incident where this level 45 dwarf went BERSERK when we happened to have a digsite on teh same area. Now i know the digsites arent shared even if you're on the same spot as another at the same time...but he certainly didnt.

he started going into shift happens mode. abusing me and screaming about how i can do things expletive easy cause iam expletive flying on my expletive mount and my mother and father and all my loved one's and people i so much as glance at are multiple stacks of expletives and its taking forever for him to level archeology and he needs his vial and i have to pay him 24,000g because iam taking that much away from him and just cause iam a high level i think i can bully him and take his nodes and i dont deserve to live and he'll report it to my guild and ruin my name on the server and everyone will know i bully and steal low levels nodes from under them and atleast 4 more whispers that i've forgotten but were hitting the word limit per post.

Like not even halfway through i had already taken my 3 nodes and flown off. I was HIGHLY amused at all the **** he was bringing up, then my heroic random triggered and i put him on ignore and had a good group for lost city [we died a lot on the 2nd last boss cause of some odd Los [or so the healer claimed..] with the stairs which was easily fixed by having hte boss trigger his 2nd phase below the stairs]

I didn't see it on the official blue hotfix post, but sometime over the weekend I got my first 7-fragment dig site, so it looks like the dwarf racial has finally kicked in.

I hit 300 this morning with rares two and three, working on the fourth now. I like it more now with the rare, but skill ups take a long time when you're doing three rare at once. I got the mini and large raptor and the mech gnome pet and working on the druid/priest statue. Also lvl 82.5 so far.

So far, I've managed to get the fossil pet, the gnome pet, and the fossil mount (yay!), as well as a couple other rares that are just flavor pieces (like the dancing dwarves, or the mirror image). Yes, I have been spending a fair amount of time on archaeology (LOL).

I'm at 525, so now I'm just chasing new finds. The problem becomes that it's harder to get the new finds. One example...on Kalimdor, it's hard to get the Tol'vir dig sites because the spawns compete with all the Night Elf, fossil, and other spawns covering the rest of the continent. Also, Dwarf seems to be a little harder to get on Eastern Kingdomes, where Troll sites abound. Night Elf sites are also common in higher levels areas, so Nelf and Troll tend to be overkill. I foresee having to go through a lot of Nelf and Troll sites to ultimately do all the cultures.

As for scrolls, tablets, etc...I don't inherently see any reason to hold onto them. Whether you use them to get 12 pts for a common, or 12 pts for a rare, you still need those 12 pts. Maybe there's a psychological reason for saving them for big projects, but I don't really think it makes a difference. You'll have to get the pts one way or the other anyway.

Overall, I'm addicted to archaeology so far. I may get tired of running all over the place to dig stuff, but for now I just can't stay away.

But, the thing is, it doesn't really matter (other than possibly psychologically) when you choose to use those scrolls.

Say you have a common that needs 35 fragments followed by rare that takes 120 fragments. In total, you need 155 fragments. Does it matter whether you use scrolls to complete the common artifact faster, or the rare artifact faster? Not really, you still need a combination of 155 fragments, whether it's from scrolls or artifacts. If you don't use the scrolls on the smaller common projects, you still have to get the fragments to solve the common artifacts. So, it's basically a wash: use the scrolls on available projects when you have them and farm fragments for other projects later, or farm the fragments now and use the scrolls later. Six of one, half dozen of the other.

If there's a logical reason why you should save scrolls, I'd love to hear it, because I'd love to know if there's a better way.

Yeah - that's odd.

Just got the mirror with the useless mirror image and still working on the baby raptor (fossil sites are way too rare IMO).

The XP is still obscene - at 82 with full rested I'm getting 19.5k per dig - will probably ding 83 and possibly even 84 before I hit 525. This is gonna suck on my main as I'm not really enjoying this and with no XP gain to at least make it feel like I'm not simply doing busy work...sigh.

Edit - oh yeah, if anyone was wondering/worried you can have two rares being worked on at once - I had the hatchling for a bit and then the mirror popped so you needn't worry about not doing combines for fear of missing a rare coming up.

Edited, Dec 24th 2010 1:23pm by rusttle

This. WTB more dwarf digsites.

Hmm. We have two in my guild so far, but we have at least five toons skillcapped. I got ridiculously lucky, and after just one Tol'vir common, found Ring of the Boy Emperor, which pushed my paladin over the magic 329. The very next Tol'vir was the Canopic Jar, but my hunter is not my alchemist, so I'll have to skill my paladin up 250 more points to get a shot at the dragon (how many bets that he won't get the Jar so soon?).

I'm loving Archaeology so far. I'm using the time on taxis to work on my interface, update macros, and the like - in addition to waiting around and/or killing time. Basically, anything that you do in-game that doesn't involve having your toon actually taking actions or require them to be in a specific place can be used for Archaeology. It's the new fishing, only more so.

Noticed a bug with the Druid and Priest statue from NE - it doesn't give a skill up for making it - I got no points and neither did my gal when either of us did the combine.