Posts with tag archaeology

Welcome to the all-exciting, weekly news recap featuring Panser of TradeChat! In our weekly recap, we'll be tackling the hottest news and whatever other kickin', rad items have come our way throughout the last week. This week's topics include:

• Better digsites for Mists of Pandaria
• Potential new warchiefs
• Diablo III transmog outfits
• Blizzard cleans up GAME's mess
• Real-life WoW abilities

Make sure you subscribe to TradeChat and check back every week for more Weekly Recaps!

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When I hit the new skill cap in archaeology on beta and achieved Zen Master, someone in my beta guild remarked that 600 skill points in archaeology sounded painful. But it's not -- it's actually better! Archaeology got some buffs in Mists of Pandaria.

There are only two new races to worry about, the pandaren and the mogu, and you get nothing but these two on the continent of Pandaria. As usual, players get four random digsites across the entire continent, though it's currently bugging out to three or even two sites only. But Pandaria is so huge, you say. We're restricted to no flying until 90. How can it not be painful?

Players with the archaeology profession will get to experience some joy come Mists of Pandaria, according to a new post at MMO-Champion. All of the datamined items are directly related to Pandaria itself and allow us to start piecing together the history of the continent. Pandaria currently is such a new land to all of us that Matt Rossi and Anne Stickney have managed to condense all of the lore we currently know about it into a single post, which is truly an epic feat. The new items introduced through archaeology will help us paint more of a picture of what Pandaria's history was and who the major players were.

Items such as the Manacles of Rebellion, Cracked Mogu Runestone, and Petrified Bone Whip are relics of the depraved Mogu Empire, focusing on their love of torture and slavery. The Spear of Xuen and the Standard of Nuzao show us that the pandaren aren't the naive, comic race that some people are assuming; they've fought in and won their own wars. And in classic pandaren fashion, the Empty Keg of Bewmaster Xin Wo Yin and the Twin Steins of Brewfather Quan Tou Kuo highlight the race's love of beer.

As it's still beta; things are still subject to change. For one, I'm hoping Blizzard adds in more pandaren lore items. Beyond that, I'd like to see some new on-use vanity items like the Last Relic of Argus, as these datamined items all lack any on-use effects. Finally, I think Blizzard may want to revisit the rarity of some items; the Edicts of the Thunder King make very little sense as a common item when you realize they're essentially the same as finding the stone that holds Hammurabi's Code or the tablets of the Ten Commandments.

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It's open warfare between Alliance and Horde in Mists of Pandaria, World of Warcraft's next expansion. Jump into five new levels with new talents and class mechanics, try the new monk class, and create a pandaren character to ally with either Horde or Alliance. Look for expansion basics in our Mists FAQ, or dig into our spring press event coverage for more details!

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I'm not kidding you guys. Seriously. I was doing archaeology the other day, flying around happily on the new Heart of the Aspects, listening to some music, when the most amazing thing happened. After solving for a Castle of Sand, I began my tol'vir archaeology ritual of pressing the solve button, closing my eyes, turning around and running out of the room. When I return, hopefully a rare tol'vir artifact will be waiting for me to obsess over.

This phenomenon known as the tol'vir rare find is an anomaly. Two quickly made their appearance for me, then vanished, forever leaving me to a storeroom full of Canopic Jars and Sketches of Desert Palaces. It's getting quite full in there. But not this faithful day. This day would be different.

Finally, the impossible happened -- another tol'vir rare. I'm freaking out, man. It's the monkey paw! And the worst part about this blessed miracle is that I can't go to sleep until I solve it.

Have you ever experienced the pain of the double-edged sword in World of Warcraft? Have you ever been the victim of something lucky that turned into an obsession?

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It's no secret that archaeology can be a boring pain in the butt. Archaeology is less of a profession and more like a Profession in which I have spent a long time studying, gotten my degree in, and now dedicate my life's work to. Podcasts are an excellent diversion, but there's something tactile missing.

One night while I was out in the Uldum desert, painfully sulking my way from one failure of a dig site to the next, I got a whisper from a fan and reader who just wanted to say hello. "You caught me at the best time, in fact," I told him. "I'm just bored doing archaeology."

This became a thing. We got on pretty well. Other people began to send me messages during my archaeology sessions. If you know my name (pretty easy to find me if you look hard enough) and I'm on WoW late, you should say hello. You just might get me right in the middle of archaeology.

What do you like to do to pass the time while doing archaeology?

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Every Thursday, The Overachiever shows you how to work toward those sweet achievement points. Today, we are still searching for the Crawling Claw.

Wow. OK, a lot of people care about archaeology, or at least about improving archaeology. Last week's OverAchiever, How archaeology could get a lot worse (and why we hope it won't), spurred a ton of discussion and was kindly linked on the forums as well.

Players wrote in with a lot of their own suggestions, criticisms, and comments, and a lot of them were so good that I honestly felt that WoW's most widely despised profession probably merited another look with those in mind.

Every Thursday, The Overachiever shows you how to work toward those sweet achievement points. Today, we are really, really pissed off that we can't get the Crawling Claw.

There are two kinds of people in WoW: people who hate archaeology, and people who really hate archaeology. While it seemed like it was one of the more promising additions to Cataclysm, archaeology just hasn't worked out as well as everyone had hoped. Even the most dedicated lore nerds are guaranteed to wilt in the face of the game's most relentless RNG.

Whatever, right? Some experiments work, some don't, and it's ultimately more important that Blizzard's willing to take these risks in the first place. But ever since Mists of Pandaria was announced, I've been worrying more about archaeology's future. As Ghostcrawler once observed, archaeology was designed to be easy to add to, and it's reasonable to expect new races and new items to appear in the future. However, unless something fundamental about its design changes between now and Mists, it's the only profession guaranteed to become an absolute hell as it expands.

Why? Because archaeology suffers from two problems: It's too random, and it's not random enough.

This Breakfast Topic has been brought to you by Seed, the AOL guest writer program that brings your words to WoW Insider's pages.

Ah, archaeology -- a secondary profession with so much potential in theory, and the mind-numbing death of many hours of playtime in reality. I was originally really excited about a global scavenger hunt as a downtime activity, but after skilling it up, I lost interest. Piecing together tons of vendor trash in the hopes of my next find's being a rare became just another grind for items.

Now that the Cataclysm expansion is winding down, I've been thinking about where archaeology could grow from here. Certainly there will be more toy-type items and account-bound epic gear to chase after, but what else could this profession bring to the game?

It occurred to me that with the coming of the transmogrification feature, digging around Azeroth could be made interesting again. Instead of adding a number of gray-quality artifacts to sell for pocket money, why not have the common finds be transmoggable art pieces? Think gray-quality versions of gear, good only for costume unlocks. What better way to bring old stuff back to the present than by having us literally dig it up? It could work as an avenue to bring back discontinued tier looks (imagine digging in Eastern Plaguelands for pieces of original Naxxramas raid gear) or even open up items that never were before available to players (like a giant totem skin for two-handed maces, so you can look like a tauren warrior from Warcraft III)!

Where else do you think archaeology could go? What do you think we could be digging up in the next expansion?

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This Breakfast Topic has been brought to you by Seed, the AOL guest writer program that brings your words to WoW Insider's pages.

Right now, I'm taking a break from archaeology. I spent the days between the U.S. holidays of Memorial Day and Labor Day digging from two to six hours, flying up and down Kalimdor, in an attempt to get the Vial of the Sands. I felt someone within my guild should have it. While I had other guild members doing archaeology, they weren't dedicated -- no, the proper term is "crazy" -- enough to spend hours doing this. By the end of August, I didn't care about the items that got me 100 or 200 gold when vendored (Cat Statue with Emerald Eyes and Silver Scroll Case). I just wanted the recipe. Finally, after my fifth canopic jar, there it was. I had all the mats ready, and the day I got it, I could become a dragon.

I almost never use the mount. If someone wants a ride, I transform and we go once or twice around town. But as my permanent ride? No. It's too big and awkward for my tastes.

Every Thursday, The Overachiever shows you how to work toward those sweet achievement points. Today, we are convinced that archaeology's RNG won't apply to us.

There are a number of interesting (and by interesting, perhaps I mean "occasionally very expensive and likely to drive you insane via RNG-laden accessibility") mounts available from professions, though for some of them, you'll have to be a practitioner in good standing before you'll ever be able to learn them.

Regrettably, I am the bearer of some very bad news this week concerning the Vial of the Sands for all those of you who like circumventing the highest costs in the game.

Also read:

• Combining The Ambassador and Mountain O' Mounts
• Mountain O' Mounts in Outland
• Mountain O' Mounts in Northrend
• Mountain O' Mounts in 5-man dungeons
• Mountain O' Mounts in raids
• Mountain O' Mounts from achievements
• Mountain O' Mounts from PvP

• Warlocks will no longer be able to give people the increased buff from Improved Demonic Tactics when they switch specs or otherwise lose the talent, and their Glyph of Imp will now not affect all warlock pets.
• Maloriak in BWD is now going to prefer to cast his Flash Freeze on ranged players and won't cast it on a player specced to tank. Tanks can still have it chained onto them, however.
• Bountiful Bags guild perk will no longer create more keystone items from archaeology finds.
• The goblin racial Best Deal Anywhere will now only work with vendors you have reputation with and won't stack with exalted guild reputation dealing with guild vendors.

The full list of hotfixes after the beep.

I sometimes feel like no portion of the game is really real to me until it's featured in machinima. Until someone's put the game dynamic to music and video, it just doesn't tend to stick out in my head. I've been pretty successful at ignoring Harrison Jones in Cataclysm, but thanks to Greyfoo, I'll have to learn Archaeology.

Greyfoo has put his immortal stamp on Harrison Jones. For the first time, I actually care a tad about the master of WoW antiquity. And Greyfoo's explanation of why Jones does what he does makes the character a little more empathetic.

This isn't the first time Greyfoo has changed our opinion about the game. "I hated the draenei until Exodar Disco," says Mat McCurley. "I love Velen now, and I like their story."

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Interested in the wide world of machinima? We have new movies every weekday here on WoW Moviewatch! Have suggestions for machinima we ought to feature? Toss us an email at moviewatch@wowinsider.com.

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The last build rolled out on the patch 4.1 PTR introduced some cool new items, but Blizzard wasn't done there. The build rolled out today included even more! These items include:

• Pterrordax Hatchling
• Voodoo Figurine
• Extinct Turtle Shell

Technically, the turtle shell was in the last build, but we misinterpreted the item when we saw it on Wowhead. Our initial guess was that it would be a drop in Firelands due to a display bug giving it the heroic label, and we assumed its itemization was unfinished. However, we eventually came to the conclusion that it's extremely likely that the shield is actually an archaeology award -- it's bind on account. It will lose its current heroic label between now and when the patch launches.

These items are continuing Blizzard's effort to populate neglected research types. Trolls needed a little more love beyond the endless journey to find Zin'rokh, and fossils needed even more love. An epic shield, another pet, and the other additions from previous builds will go a long way toward making fossil dig sites less ... painful.

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WoW Patch 4.1 is on the PTR and WoW Insider has all the latest news for you -- from previews of the revamped Zul'Aman and Zul'Gurub to new valor point mechanics and new archaeology items.

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Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today.

Today's edition of The Queue discusses the nature of the death knight, the recent lack of creepy whispers, the nature of the vrykul, and ... something special. Enjoy!

Oscar asked:

Is it me or does it feel as if the whole "caster" part of DKs was just wholly abandoned and just being confined to Death Coil and a few other abilities?

If you remember the recent Ask the Devs chat that the fine folks at Blizzard posted, you'll remember the following exchange:

Ask the Devs - Answers #1

Q: Are there any plans to bring new items to Archaeology with each future patch? - Idej (North America/ANZ)

A: We may not make it every patch, but we designed Archaeology specifically with this kind of expandability in mind. Our most immediate plans are to add rare items to the Vrykul and especially Troll races, since they have so few, and add more to Fossils in general since you end up with so many Fossil sites. We also have some plans to make it slightly easier to focus on races upon which you want to focus.

source

It appears we may be seeing the first of these rare items in the datafiles, as the Vrykul Drinking Horn, the Troll Drum, and the Ancient Amber now exist. These three rares flesh out three races that had limited reason to want to solve them. Now we're all just waiting for a means to focus on the races we want, am I right?

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WoW Patch 4.1 is on the PTR and WoW Insider has all the latest news for you. From previews of the revamped Zul'Aman and Zul'Gurub to new Valor point mechanics to the new Archaeology items.

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