Archaeology Needs Help + Ideas

Gameplay Professions
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Archaeology Needs Work

I just recently leveled Archaeology on an alt from 0 - 950. It took sometime to complete as I needed to frequently stop to prevent my head from exploding.
The process is extremely boring with a reward system that for the most part is disappointing. The profession offers no benefit or support to any other profession. While many crafting professions have become mostly obsolete or quickly fade out after their release, I believe Archaeology can be made productive.

This is just a suggestion and everyone is free to expand or dismiss any of the ideas. I did not browse through all the previous years of forum chatter, so
I apologize if any of these suggestions have been previously mentioned. This is a collection of ideas that either in part or in whole I believe could make the
profession both worth the time players put into the profession and will keep players interested in it’s continued exploration.

First we need a set of ground rules.

  1. The profession need to be fun, this is a game after all. Time and hard work do need to be an essential part of the profession, but enjoyability should be one of it’s top concerns.

  2. The profession should have longevity. Players need a reason to continue to throughout each expansion

  3. Rewards must be beneficial and equivalent to the time spent on the profession.

  4. Like other professions, it should have benefits that can crossover into other professions.

STEP ONE:

Scrape the current system in it’s entirety.

STEP TWO:

All dig sites will now be like mining nodes and provide a several different possible items.

a. Broken Artifacts: (most common) These junk artifacts are vendor trash selling for a small amount of gold.

b. Intact Artifacts: These artifacts (or currency) are traded to the archaeology trainer for gold or other vendor items.

c. Intact Bones: Bones are collected to build/buy the expansion’s Archaeology mount and pets. Bones will be found in small amounts at each dig site. The mount will require completion of a full collection of pristine artifacts to receive the head to the mount and once collected the mount can be constructed. Pets will be purchased with the bones from the Archaeology Trainer.

d. Maps and Objects: Maps and special objects are collected to unlock the location and access to special (5 to 10 person) dungeons (see examples below). These items will be Account Bound allowing gearing of alts. Dungeon will reset each week and should be the length of Onyxia Lair.

QUESTS:

Daily quests: These quests will offer a small amount of gold reward with a small chance to offer a special reward (rewards like a buff of speed, mounted, swim/breathing for mining, digging, and herbs.

Weekly quest: This quest takes a player into a single person dungeon where the player will be required to solve a series of archaeology style puzzles ending at a mini boss and a larger reward plus a pristine artifact to be displayed.

Pristine Artifacts: These artifacts are collected and placed in the Archaeology Hall. Placing them into the hall will result in a reward of gold. Completion of the entire set of objects will result in achievements, gold, and the mount head piece. Additional completions could result in extra gold.

DUNGEONS:

Example 1. The Goonies: Each week you will need to find a new map leading you to the location of the fireplace that allow you to enter the dungeon. This
can be on any continent in any location that has a fire place. Only the map holder and his party can enter or see the dungeon entrance. While small, the
dungeon will follow the movie from the falling rock traps to slides down to the water boss. ( If the entrance location has a basement, players can give an ogre in the basement a candy bar to open a second boss fight on the ship of the Fratelli family)

Example 2. Krull: Finding an hour glass will allow players to enter a spiders cave where they will learn the location of the tower. The tower can be on any
continent and again only players in the group can see or enter.

The bosses will drop an assortment of items (great for leveling up alts and/or players that can’t get into raid dungeons) Crafted Item enhancements
(extremely rare and account bound) will drop here. This would also be a great place for dropping extra Anima, Legendary enhancements, and other bonus items. Allowing some raid loot to drop from these dungeons will allow players in small guilds or players with less available time to get similar level gear and will not take away from the achievements or necessity to “dumb down” raid dungeons as it has been done in the past.

With some or all of these changes the Archaeology profession can be enjoyable, sustainable, and benefit other professions. With proper loot drops, achievements, and other rewards, many/most players will find the profession worth their time.

Thank you for reading. I hope you can all build on the ideas to help make Archaeology a more enjoyable profession. Together maybe we can get Blizzard to listen.

1 Like
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Read through all your suggestions for Archaeology, the most underrated profession in WoW. I wanted to be an archaeologist when I was a little kid, so I might be a little biased. Neverthless! I think you have brought up some good ideas!

All dig sites changed to mining nodes isn’t a bad one, I like it and think it can work fairly well. Personally, I like the idea of their being digsites, but I believe those can be changed into archaeology events that can vary. The Explorer’ League for the Alliance and the Reliquary for the Horde can host the event, giving a chance for some pvp and competition between the Factions. Also, the Reliquary can use some more attention. Maybe in peaceful areas there can be less killing of each other and more pranking.

As for rewards, I saw a lot of mention of mounts and pets, which are good. I like the idea of gear more, most specifically if the gear represents the culture and people we digging up. Because who doesn’t love transmog?! But why stop there~? How about we add character customization to the rewards. Perhaps we are looking in Outland and/or Alternate Draenor and discover idols, statues, etc that show different hairstyles and tattoos/war paint that will add to the customization to Orcs and/or Draenei? Same can go for the other races of WoW.

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One of the problems now is that this is a profession that you can “finish.” Meaning once you have all the rares of a certain type, there is literally no benefit to you or anyone else to dig in its sites.

What I’d do with all the grey items is turn them into normal quality items that have an on use effect of other class abilities with either charges or a limited duration from when you first used the item. These items could be traded or sold on the AH as long as they haven’t been used.

There could be a troll item that turns you into a bat and allows flying; basically a Druid’s flight form. Or there could be ones that allow you to cast Arcane Intellect or other class buffs. While some abilities would be way too overpowered, anything someone else could cast on you while running by would be fair game. This would also be a good opportunity to bring back items you get from quest rewards with charges that you can only get once.

And they wouldn’t all have to be charges or time duration either; there could be a mix or each. The troll one might allow you to access to bat form for 3 days, while the Arcane Int one would simply be 25 casts total.

I think that the way digsites work is mostly fine in expansion continents, but Kalimdor and E.K.s would need an overhaul. Each type should always have at least one digsite up; no more digging in Felwood when you want Tol’vir.

This change would give players a reason to dig up artifacts, as well as a reason to buy the items from other players.

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One of my goals is keeping old content relevant. I don’t like how empty the world feels and I think it’s a concerning issue.

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What I was hoping for is a archaeology based quest/story line. The way it stands now, the profession doesn’t seem like it has any meaning other than as an item to complete your achievement journal.

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I’ve been searching all over and googling my head off and hopefully you can help since you seem to know more about Archaeology than anyone else. I’m at level 75, it won’t let me pick up anything else and I can’t find any trainers that have any more training available. Do you have any suggestions? And no, the game will not let me shoot an arrow into any of the trainers. As I have thought about that solution. :smile: Any help will be greatly appreciated, thank you

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Please let it go the way of First Aid already. It was horribly implemented, and just went downhill from there.

Give dwarves a random buff when they get drunk or something instead. We need more dwarves with blurred screen swerving about in our raids.