Dig It

Oh Archaeology, you are a cruel mistress.

I powered through archaeology last night. I had happily made it up to the 300 skill level and was working through Outlands dig sites. The only two race's sites that you will find in Outlands are Orc and Draenei, so it's pretty quick to get your fragments for completions. It's really quite amazing how much easier it is to collect piles of fragments when you are only splitting your fragments between two races instead of four. Honestly if you just wanted to power level Archaeology I might recommend staying in Outlands from 300 to 525 no matter what your long term goals are. You will get 5 skill points per common solve no matter if you've previously solved it or not.

I was disappointed in the appearance of dig sites though. The Orc race only has one rare, and there are only 10 unique artifacts each for Orc and Draenei. Supposedly the code has been tweaked a little bit so that you are more likely to find dig sites for the races that you still need to collect rares for, but that must be such a tiny chance that it really isn't worth mentioning. I had solved all of the Orc artifacts, but only 6 Draenei commons, and neither or the two rares. I still had 3-4 Orc dig sites at a time at points. That was frustrating, so once I was able to reach 450 I kind of threw in the towel. I did manage to get one of the Draenei rares, but there is still one out there that has eluded me.

My pre-Outlands stockpile included almost 200 each of Troll, Night Elf, and Dwarf fragments as well as enough keystones to choke a goat (14 Dwarf, 25 Night Elf, 36 Troll). A solving I did go, a solving I did go, hi-ho the dairy-o, a solving I did go. Among many common artifacts I did find a pretty, but currently useless to me, dress and a statue, but alas no staff, or trinket. It should go without saying that I didn't find Zin'rokh either.

So now it's back to flying around the giant continents of Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor again. Only now I have stuff scattered in ever more places, yay! Oh wait, not yay. I mean something that's more like the opposite of that. On the other hand I will now have a chance to collect a very spiffy ring, so I'll try and focus on the bright side.

Still, it did not take me very long, play time wise, to level archaeology to 525. It is worth it, in my opinion, to wait until you have 310% flying speed and also to be in a guild with the Bountiful Bags perk. After all the gathering that I've done lately in archaeology I have a suspicion about bountiful bags. I think that the proc will only affect the number of key stones that you get in a dig, not the number of fragments. That is how it seemed to feel, and it makes a certain sort of sense. The fragments are considered a currency by the game, not like the keystones that are items you collect. Does anyone know for certain how bountiful bags affects archaeology?

No matter how it works I'm into the long slog portion of digging now. I can choose which continent to work on, and then fly, dig, fly to my heart's discontent. There's no way of telling how long it will take for me to find what I'm looking for, but you can be certain that I will keep you up to date. I wonder if I will "finish" before they update archeology? I can't just sit around and wait, but it does seem like I'll be missing out if I continue to work on it now. (Don't know what I'm talking about? Check out Ask the Devs #7) It sounds like there are a lot of good things in the pipes, but you never know when the changes will come.