Archaeology receives stealth buff

by Anne Stickney Dec 14th 2010 at 5:30PM

Yesterday saw a slew of hotfixes, but it appears that today's maintenance has added a stealth buff to archaeology. Previously, all surveys in an area were only allowing three fragments per successful survey, making the archaeology grind a little long. Today, it appears that surveying an area is allowing anywhere from three to six fragments per survey, a substantial buff for those trying to complete artifacts at a speedy pace.

While there has been no official blue post regarding the change, it has been verified in game. For more information about the archaeology profession and how to get started, check out our Archaeology 101 video, courtesy of Robin Torres.

[Thanks wowdigsite.com!]

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Tags: archaeology, archaeology-achievements, Breaking, cataclysm-game, cataclysm-guide, cataclysm-news, expansion, expansion-three, next-xpac, third-expansion, world-of-warcraft-cataclysm, wow-4.0, wow-4.0.2, wow-cataclysm, wow-expansion, wow-guide, wow-third-expansion

Filed under: News items, Cataclysm

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)

Grovinofdarkhour Dec 14th 2010 5:34PM

Woot fer pickin!

Moo Dec 14th 2010 5:34PM

sweet. I actually DO enjoy grindy gathering from time to time, but the travel was pretty painful. This is welcome.

tatsumasa Dec 14th 2010 5:35PM

thank you blizz. i'm only up to about 130 and the grind has got really annoying since there's no rare finds or anything until much much later. less flying back and forth to the same spots=good thing.

peon47 Dec 14th 2010 10:38PM

I got my skeletal raptor mini-pet at 117. So stick with it, you might get lucky.

WaterRouge Dec 14th 2010 5:39PM

Thank goodness. Trying to do Archeology on a toon leveling up (pre-60) was just a pain.

Arrowsmith Dec 14th 2010 5:40PM

So what does this mean for Dwarves? We get 6 to 12 fragments per digsite instead of a steady six?

wutsconflag Dec 14th 2010 7:00PM

I was kind of hoping that this would be addressed sooner rather than later. The Dwarven racial bonus sounded really cool until you found out it was (at least partially) broken.

A) Faster surveying time.

This doesn't matter as long as there is a cooldown on the survey action. It's pretty much useless.

B) More fragments. Previously not working. I'll be checking to see if it's working properly tonight, but my gut reaction is "not yet".

sprout_daddy Dec 14th 2010 8:55PM

I could be wrong, but I have read before that the cooldown IS the buff - my non-dwarven guildmates have longer cooldowns on the Survey ability than I do.

And the fragments were working - where most of the people in my guild were averaging 4 to 6 per site, I never see less than six per site before the recent fix.

Tish Dec 17th 2010 3:44PM

I haven't seen any difference as a dawarf. I was only getting x2 or x3 (mostly 2's) before this buff, and I have seen more x5 and x6's since the buff, so I know the buff is working, but my husband says his survey is a 5sec cooldown and that is the same as mine, so really haven't been able to tell any benifit for being a dwarf at all myself.

Magma Dec 14th 2010 5:40PM

Perhaps a refund...for those of us who already...did quite a bit beforehand?
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Who am I kidding, It'll be a cold day.

humperdinck Dec 14th 2010 5:53PM

Nice Shatner.

DruidGuard Dec 14th 2010 5:42PM

This makes me so happy. I used archeology to level from 81 to 85 (my attempt at killing two birds with one fossilized stone), and while it was fun, I can attest to it definetly feeling like a bit too much of a grind to get random drops. This is great news, and a step in the right direction.

Psykechan Dec 15th 2010 8:50AM

I leveled from 80 to just about 85 doing nothing but archaeology. I've even got the epic Tol'vir ring out of it. This buff doubles the fragments that we would have got which means that I probably would have got *all* of the epics (minus Tol'vir) by now.

Leveling through archaeology even with this buff still isn't worth it because you will not have good enough gear to do anything once you hit 85. Plus once you start to get decent gear you still can't do regular versions of the low cataclysm dungeons. In other words, don't do it!

GerardthePriest Dec 14th 2010 5:44PM

Maybe this means they fixed the issue where the Dwarf racial Explorer was supposed to give bonus fragments but wasn't doing so?

Brunnstag Dec 14th 2010 5:47PM

Thank heavens! Blizz probably realized people were getting ticked at how long it was taking to build anything, and still not getting anything but worthless greys... Up to 300, and haven't gotten a darned thing. -_-;

N-train Dec 14th 2010 5:49PM

Thank heavens!
While I don't see this really speeding up leveling a ton (though I guess that depends on how rare a 4+ fragment is), it gives one leveling something to look forward to from site to site. Maybe my luck is just off, but I've found some racial keystones to be quite uncommon (trolls) and some that I've gone all the way to 300 and only seen one or two (dwarves). This gives me something to look forward to and makes the whole thing more exciting.

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