Archaeology

This page is a complilation of my own experience and this thread.

General Information
Where to Dig

• Continent Maps
• Zone Maps

Dig Sites

• Surveyor's Scope
  • Red Light
  • Yellow Light
  • Green Light
• Finds
• Hey, Someone Else is in My Dig Site!

Loot from Finds

• Fragments
• Keystones

Raising Your Skill

• Find Skillups
• Projects

Completing Projects

• Primary Pane
• Project Pane
  • Using Keystones
• Artifact Pane

Artifacts

• Common
• Rare
• Canopic Jar
• Known Artifacts

Achievements

• Guild Achievements
• Personal Achievements

Tips and Suggestions

• Addons
• Where to Begin
  • Fast Track to Skill
  • The Completionist Path
• When to use Keystones
• Bugged Finds
• Repeatable Quests
• Zul'Gurub

General Information

Archaeology is a secondary profession. It consists of digging up fragments and using them in projects to complete artifacts. It can be learned as early as level 20, and grants considerable experience.

There are trainers in all four racial cities, Dalaran and Shattrath, and Borean Tundra.

Learning the skill gives you two buttons. One is the profession pane, and the other is for your active ability, Survey.

No tools are used for this profession.

Where to Dig

Continent Maps

Open up your map to view the full continent of Kalimdor or Eastern Kingdoms. Scattered across the map you will see 4 small shovel icons; you may have to maximize the size of your map to see them. If you roll your mouse over them, each will generally have a name indicating what you'll find there (fossil beds, trollish ruins, etc).

Dig site types are dependent on the continent and your skill level. When you begin, you'll see:

Kalimdor - Night Elves, Trolls, Fossils. Rarely Dwarves.
Eastern Kingdoms - Dwarves, Trolls, Fossils. Rarely Night Elves.

At 300 skill, Outland offers dig sites for Draenei and Orcs.

At 375 skill, Northrend opens up with Vrykul, Nerubian, Night Elf and Troll digs. Nerubian sites also rarely appear in Eastern Kingdoms.

At 450 skill, you have a chance of getting Tol'vir dig sites in Uldum on Kalimdor.

Zone Maps

When you open the map of a zone that has a dig site, the site will be visible as a colored blotch. This better details the boundaries of the site you'll be searching.

Dig Sites

Once you've reached your dig site, it's time to begin using your Survey ability. You will likely want to move this to your action bar. When used, you'll get one of two results from using Survey.

Surveyor's Scope

This looks like a telescope on a tripod, and a light on a stick next to it. As with a telescope, the larger end is pointing generally towards the target, with a cone of uncertainty. The light indicates distance.

"Cone of uncertainty" means that the scope may not be pointed directly at the target, but can be up to a certain angle off. The farther the target is from that location, the larger an area the target can be in.

Red Light

Your target is 70+ yards away.

Yellow Light

Your target is 30-70 yards away.

Green Light

Your target is 7-30 yards away.

Finds

If you don't get a scope within a dig site, you'll get a "find". This is what you're looking for. It'll be some sort of object that spawns on the ground and sparkles till you loot it. What it looks like depends on the type of dig site. Fossils spawn as a low mound of dirt with a fossil exposed. Night Elf finds appear as a handled vase or urn. Troll finds are upright tablets. Dwarven finds are another type of urn or vase without handles.

Finds have certain spawn points. Once you get one, survey again to see if another might be in that same spot - it happens often enough to be worth it.

Each dig site will yield 3 finds. After that, the Survey ability will no longer work there, the highlighted area of the zone map will disappear, and another dig site will appear somewhere else on the continent.

Hey, Someone Else is in My Dig Site!

Don't worry. Archaeology is completely non-competitive. While another archaeologist may be using the same dig site, or may even loot the same spawn point, they cannot see your surveys or finds, nor can you see theirs. Each of you will stil get 3 finds from the dig site. Archaeology is 100% ninja-free!

Loot from Finds

When you loot your find, you'll receive fragments and sometimes a keystone.

Fragments

Like everything else, the type of fragments you loot are particular to the dig site, being either fossil or one of the races. Each find yields 5-9 fragments.

Fragments count as currency and will not take up bag space. You may not stockpile more than 200 fragments of a particular type at a time.

Keystones

Keystones are uncommon (green) items sometimes looted from racial finds along with fragments. Keystones equate to 12 fragments when used in a project, but are in solid form and take up bag space. They are not soulbound, and can be traded, bought, and sold.

As with finds and fragments, the type of keystone you might receive is related to the type of digsite, with one type per race and none for fossils. The first ones you're likely to see range between Highborne Scrolls, Troll Tablets, and Dwarf Rune Stones.

Raising Your Skill

There are two ways to raise your skill when you begin, then one later on.

Find Skillups

Looting finds awards skill points up to 50.

Projects

Completing projects awards 5 (for common) or 15 (for rare) skill points. After reaching 50 skill, this is the only way to gain more skill in the profession.

Completing Projects

Your Archaeology pane is where you'll find project information.

Primary Pane

On the primary pane, you'll see symbols for all the races, plus one for fossils. If the symbol is not grayed out, and has a name, then you've "opened" that type of project by collecting fragments for it at some point.

There's also an extra symbol that's not used. This may be for future expansion of the project types.

Project Pane

Clicking on one of the "opened" types takes you to that type's current project. Each type (fossil and each race) can have one project at a time. You have to complete a project to get a new one.

On this pane, you'll see:

• The name and icon of the item your current project is for.
• The rarity of the project.
• A short paragraph about fossils or the race your project is for.
  • For rare projects, this paragraph will be lore about the item.
• A pulldown menu to switch between project types.
• A progress bar showing how many fragments you have for that project, and how many you need.
• A button to complete the project.
• Keystone sockets (if any).

This pane is pretty simple. If you have enough fragments, click the button to complete the project. You'll receive the artifact in your inventory, and a new project will appear. If you have more fragments than you need, they roll over to the new project and are not wasted.

Using Keystones

Keystone sockets appear below the progress bar on many racial projects (never fossils). If they appear, there can be up to 3 of them.

As mentioned before, keystones are worth 12 fragments. Let's say you have a Troll project with one socket, and a Troll Tablet. When your progress bar is 12 or fewer fragments away from being complete, you can put a Troll Tablet into the socket and then click the complete button. The Troll Tablet will be consumed, the project completed, and a new project will open.

You can click and drag keystones to the sockets, or simply click a socket if you don't want to sort through your bags. If you have a keystone for that project type, it will appear in the socket when you click it.

If you're unable to complete the project, the socket will reset without consuming the keystone when you switch projects or close the pane.

If your project has multiple sockets, and you have multiple keystones for it, you can fill as many sockets as you have keystones for.

Artifact Pane

The second "bookmark" ribbon on the profession pane shows your completed unique projects. This can be sorted into individual project types, or viewed as a whole.

Artifacts

Under each project name, you'll see that it's a common or a rare project.

Common

Common projects produce poor quality (gray) artifacts. These are vendor trash, except for the Canopic Jar.

Rare

Rare projects produce rare or epic artifacts. These include mounts, pets, BoA gear, and toys of various sorts. You can only get one of each available rare or epic artifact; once you've got them all, you'll only get common projects from that type.

Epic artifacts only begin to show up in your projects at 450+ skill. Rare artifacts can appear at any skill level. I personally had a rare artifact appear as my very first project on one toon.

Canopic Jar

This item is a Tol'vir common-quality (white) container. Usually it contains a piece of vendor trash. For a 525 alchemist, it has a very rare chance to produce the Vial of the Sands recipe. This is the only known source.

Known Artifacts

Wowhead has an excellent sortable table.

Achievements

There are various achievements to be had for this profession, found under the (duh) Professions category.

Guild Achievements

• Making History - 500 completed projects.
• Obtaining 525 skill points in all professions.

Personal Achievements

• Obtaining 150/225/300/375/450/525 skill points.
• Completing 10/50/100 common artifacts.
• Completing 1/10/20 rare artifact(s). These also award titles.
• Completing an artifact of each type (fossil and racial).
• Completing all artifacts of six lore-based sets.
• Obtaining 525 skill points in Archaeology, Cooking, First Aid, and Fishing.

Tips and Suggestions

Addons

Archy is an excellent addon and I highly recommend it. It has a number of very helpful features, not least of which is a color-coded range finder from the spot where you last surveyed. (Current link is to a bug-fix version that operates well.)

Archy features:

• Highly customizable on-screen dig site and active project lists
• Interfaces with TomTom to organize dig sites by distance and point you to the closest one
• A colored/numerical indicator of how far you've moved from your last use of Survey
• One-click project completion
• Sounds to indicate when you're within a range of your TomTom destination, and when a project can be completed
• Dig sites shown on the mini-map
• Marks and saves spawn points as you loot finds
• Colors saved spawn points based on roughly how far they are from the last use of Survey
• ... And more.

Archaeology Helper (ArH) is an excellent visual HUD, and I've found it complements Archy very well. It allows you to place a colored overlay on your screen that coordinates with the direction and distance your scope indicates and shows you the cone of uncertainty on the scope.

Where ArH helps the most is when you drop two red scopes in a row, pointing in widely differing directions. Marking each correctly with ArH will show you where the cones of uncertainty overlap, which is a much smaller area to search.

Where to Begin

Check the table linked just above. You may find particular items which appeal to you, which may in turn determine what continents you focus on.

MMO Champion has a nice table compiling drop rates for each type of dig site on each continent.

Fast Track to Skill

If you just want to raise your skill quickly, here's a few tips.

• Don't complete any projects until after looting finds quits giving skillups at 50. You'll need the fragments anyway, so you may as well milk the finds for as many skill points as possible.
• Use whichever of Eastern Kingdoms or Kalimdor offers you better travel options. Travel time is your biggest obstacle.
• Whichever one you pick, stick with it! Fastest project completion lies in limiting your active project types. The rare Night Elf dig on Eastern Kingdoms, or Dwarven on Kalimdor, won't slow you much. But switching continents basically means you're splitting your time among 4 fully-active channels instead of just three.
• At skill level 300, head to Outland. Your project types are limited to two there (Orc and Draenei). Stay in Outland until you've reached your desired skill level.

The Completionist Path

If your goal is achievements, here's the tips for you.

• It's still fine, as with the fast track, to not complete projects until after looting finds quits giving skillups at 50. You won't lose anything doing this.
• Start in Eastern Kingdoms. You'll get a lot of Dwarven projects done, which figure into a lot of the collection achievements, as well as a good start on Trolls and Fossils.
• At 300, move to Outland for Orc and Draenei projects.
• At 375, move to Northrend to add Vrykul and Nerubian projects, along with Night Elves and Trolls.
• At 450, off to Kalimdor. Tol'vir projects will rarely spawn in Uldum at this point; mostly you'll have Night Elf, Troll, and Fossil sites.

After that it's a matter of luck and persistence.

When to use Keystones

Some say to save keystones and only use them for larger projects. I disagree. Keystones are worth 12 fragments no matter when you use them, so there's no mathematical reason not to use them whenever you can.

Bugged Finds

Very rarely, you'll end up with a find you just can't reach. Don't fret. Just leave the site for a while. It will stay on your map until you get all 3 finds from it. However, if you go do something else for a bit, the find spawn points will change, and you can go back and finish that dig site.

Repeatable Quests

There are repeatable quests for archaeologists in Cataclysm dungeons. An item only archaeologists can see appears near the entrance with the blue exclamation point over it. You trade a keystone for a buff for the dungeon (example, one in Throne of the Tides gives a 10% bonus damage against naga while in that instance, in exchange for a Highborne Scroll). There is no benefit to Archaeology for doing the quest.

These are group buffs. WoWInsider has posted a list of each one, what it does, and what it costs you.

Zul'Gurub

Zarhym has posted that Archaeologists with enough skill will be able to unlock an additional boss for their group, randomly chosen from a group of four, with some unique loot.

Last updated 3/12/11