Archaeology - how would YOU fix it to make it good/better?

Community General Discussion
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This is one of my major game frustrations (and I’m sort of hoping they raise it on the Q&A but they probably won’t).

It has been part of the game since Cataclysm, so it’s not like they haven’t had a lot of time to mull over it and come up with solutions. Frankly, it was badly designed from the start but perhaps they did the best they could at the time. After years of mismanagement (looks sideways at MoP Arch) now they are simply not bothering to update or use it all.

My general opinion is this - either work on it to make it more fun and useable, or get rid of it altogether. They did it with First Aid, they can do it with Archaeology; absorb the items from it into other parts of the game just kick it to the curb.

However, it could be made fun and useful. ESO has its own version, called Antiquities. Some parts of that game’s version I find a bit less than steller, but I loved that you join a sort of organisation the Antiquities Circle. You might all remember those Blood Elf characters from Legion who ran around looking for old stuff. They could easily form the basis of such a Society or Club, it could have its own rep track and that could be fun to design and implement.

There are so many options for it, up to and including finding patterns and items from digs for Player Housing, that it would be a shame to let it just die.

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the digsites need to be small. not everyone plays a druid. or give us a lil burro that we instantly mount up on only on digsites. that was my biggest complaint.

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weekly/daily quests give us an item -upon use all fragments in the area pop up.

give us a dwarf team who digs with you.

make the items interesting.

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I can’t really think of how, to be honest.
The important thing is that they need to make it more dynamic. Maybe like those quests where you have to move around until the radar reaches the X.
But at the same time, it’s a total waste of time. It’s not fun. Doing it once is one thing. Doing it for every artifact? Sorry, but no.

Now, if it happened that I’m doing a quest and suddenly the ground opens up and I fall into a mysterious cave that has relics and that sort of stuff I can collect and turn in to an NPC… and some of these caves had traps and things like that.

The important part is that they’re random.
Not an entrance that I already know where it is.
No. It could happen anywhere, anytime.

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I would have digsites be more significant and become interactive over a period of time, a day, a week, etc. How you find a digsite could be part of the game, finding treasure maps in dungeons, e.g.

Once you’ve established a digsite, depending upon your level, you could ‘hire’ archaeologists to dig for you, and they could be specialized to find certain types of items. Over time, they level up to work faster, find better stuff, etc. Some part could still be interactive like the old version. You could return once a day to see what your peeps have found, and perhaps it culminates with a scenario that’s like a mini dungeon (I have the first scene of Raiders of the Lost Ark in mind for some reason).

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Just put it back into the game for everything past BFA.

I enjoyed it as it was, it’s like fishing it didnt need messed with.

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I liked the way they did it in Legion. I know it took some time, but it wasn’t rng based for the awards. I did all the archeology in Legion, but still chasing some of the items that came out with the release of the profession.

Totally can get onboard for smaller sites too if they were to tweak it.

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I’ve been around since archaeology came out and I never have done it. Seems like fishing to me. I’m good :joy:

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Thank you for bringing this up because it’s on my list, too.

How I Would Like to See it Work

I’d like Archaeology to be brought back as a secondary profession, available to all like fishing and cooking, but treated like a primary profession. By that, I mean it should come with a skill tree like the others and allow for a focus on one or more of several categories.

Treasure Hunting
I’m thinking of this as a subset of rewards for “grinding” in Archaeology that produce things like:

  • Gold Caches
  • Special Reagents (the same as special/overload nodes in Gathering professions)
  • Special Gems (like blasphemite, etc.), Rings, and Necklaces that can be “used” to make a pattern/recipe you can keep or sell on the AH.

Zooarchaeology
(that’s a real term, btw)

  • Battle Pets
  • Mounts

Classical Archaeology
This would focus on the various cultures of Azeroth, making the archaeologist better at finding bigger and better cosmetics tied to a particular culture. My imagining of this would give both cosmetic rewards and rewards that could be turned in for reputation gain.

This could include transmog sets, player housing decor, or even access to war paint, heritage armor tmog, & druid form customizations associated with the culture in question.

For example: If you have earned the KT heritage armor, and you grind to master KT specialist in archaeology, you could have access to druid forms, heritage armor, and maybe even unlock KT jokes or KT dances on your archaeology character who is not Kul Tiran. Yes, that’s controversial, but it would certainly make archaeology broadly integrated and appealing, right?

  • Troll Specialist - specific to troll cultures with wheels for Darkspear, Zandalari, and Amani

  • Dwarf Specialist - specific to dwarven culture with wheels for Bronzebeard, Dark Iron, and Wildhammer

  • Elven Specialist - specific to elven culture with wheels for Thalassian, Darnassian, and Shalassian elves.

  • Human Specialist - specific to human culture with wheels for Stormwind, Lordaeron, Gilneas, Kul Tiran, and Stromgarde kingdoms

  • Titan Specialist - specific to Titan creations with wheels for Earthen, Keepers, and Constructs

*Etcetera…you see where I’m going with this.

Rewards I would like to see from a Renewed Archaeology

  • Battle Pets
  • Mounts
  • Transmog Sets
  • Player Housing Displays
  • Gold Rewards (buried treasure)
  • Knowledge Points for a Developed Skill Tree inline with the rest of the professions (earned only through doing archaeology and perhaps books you can buy at certain benchmarks within the profession…not with artisan’s acuity or any other currency)
  • Experience Points for alts leveling via Archaeology alone
  • Meaningful bonuses or increases in QoL (like the significan Deftness boost in Tauren Herbalism) for races with an Archaeology affinity.
  • Player Power on par with profession bonuses. Nothing more powerful than buff food, but meaningful and appealing to all, nonetheless. This is crucial because it will make more people invest in the profession and make all players interested in the products that are created and sold from that profession.

Not everyone in the game levels cooking, but everyone uses buff food. Not everyone levels jewelcrafting, but everyone sockets gems. That kind of thing is what I have in mind. Make it integrated.

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I like to see it simplified, no more designated dig sites and triangulation scouting of where it might be. Just have nodes like you do with ore or herbs where you dig and find fragments. Eventually you find enough pieces to put them together and form your collection.

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I liked the Cata-WoD version of archaeology; I maxed out them, and I continued to explore dig sites. (I really want that Ultramarine Qiraj Battle Tank…)

But, Legion killed my enjoyment of the profession.

The reason is quite simple:

They turned it into an AWFUL grind.

Pre-Legion, you only needed to dig up between 15 to 45 fragments per artifact. But in Legion? It’s between 120 to 180 fragments!!!

Keep in mind that we’re capped to 200 fragments.

The grind in Legion was absolutely ridiculous, and single-handledly destroy my enjoyment of archaeology (and fishing, but that’s another story). I haven’t touched archaeology ever since, which made me really sad.

If Blizzard scales it back on the utterly ridiculous number of fragments – stop requiring 100+ plus fragments for common artifacts! – and bring it back to the numbers that we saw in the Cata-WoD era? I’ll be back on archaeology, and happily.

That being said, I DO like the ideas I see being tossed around here. But at the end of the day, I’m a simple girl:

  1. Bring back the fragment requirements back to similar to what the Cata-WoD requirements were (~35 fragments vs Legion’s ~140 fragments requirement).

  2. Put in some kind of bad luck protection. It’s been 15 years since Cata, and I still don’t have that Ultramarine Qiraj Battle Tank! :joy: :sweat: :sob:

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I think Archaeology failed for two reasons, and you’ve highlighted the first. It’s not that they made it too grindy. It’s that they made the grind boring and frustrating, which is bad game design. I think the fragment collection was part of the issue.

I think they should get rid of the fragment combination system almost entirely and make it something new. Most of what we should get is knowledge (from experience doing the job, which makes sense) and useful-but-common reagents or gold. But when you do find something, make that something a collection of 4 or 5 pieces that combine rather than just random fragments that are basically a currency grind (boring).

The second reason it failed was its total segregation from the rest of the game. You could completely ignore archaeology and lose nothing. Archaeology provided nothing that integrated in any way with any other part of the game, and that’s why it failed.

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To be fair, I actually did like their experiments in DF with that archaeology faction. Too bad the currency required to buy the mount and transmog is through the roof.

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Player Housing would be the perfect time to bring this back. They could add really cool decorations only available through archaeology.

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Rift just had you collect little shinies on the ground. That was infinitely better than what WoW arch was.

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Honestly I like it how it was. I just wish they kept up with it, adjusted some of the drop rates, and add more rewards. I only dedicate time to it when I want a chill day and I’m not in a rush. It doesn’t really need fixing to me. Not everything needs to be “fixed” for efficiency and the change of pace is nice. Gogogogogo doesn’t always need to be the way.

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A lot of what has been mentioned, more involved digs, new rewards, more things themed to they race you’re digging for (Or fossils) , transmogs, toys, items, recipes for professions. A lore book for when you find enough at a site or series of sites that it tells a larger story.

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18

Delves should of been related to Archaeology

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Archeology stuff from farming should have value in the markets as simple as that.

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People need to tackle the fundamental question first.

What is archaeology - what do people like about it?

  1. Putting together the items like transmogs and toys, and learning some in-game lore.
  2. The “hot-and-cold” game.

Pretty certain that of the people who DO/DID engage in archaeology, 99% of them do it for #1.

They should just remove the hot-and-cold minigame. Or have it only as an occasional element. Focus on the gameplay, not the chore.

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