Getting out and about

One of the very common complaints on the forums surrounding WoD is the constant catch cry of “but there’s no content” and if I’m perfectly honest I’ve been a little guilty of sometimes harboring the same thoughts at times. The 6month break on my blog probably gives that away, but really recently my wow mojo has come back and I’ve found there are actually there is a ton of content I just haven’t been inspired to do it earlier.

I’ve been working on getting all the achievements for the Apexis daily quests done. This is much easier since 6.1 as you can  buy mission scrolls from your garrison quartermaster for 200gr rather than wait for the appropriate daily to come around. Most of the achs are really easily done, however some of the achs need you to do things like burn 100 trees so they’ll probably take a couple of trips to get done. Luckily the progress doesn’t reset. Running around doing all the extra quests means I’ve finally got Leorajh to best friends status. The benefit for having him all friendly is I can check my missions anywhere by talking to him.

The other thing I’ve been up to is archeology, a lot of archeology. I’ve been digging in Draenor trying to get pristine versions of all the archeology items so I can fill up my treasure room in my garrison.

I’ve been turning all my restored artifacts into crates of Vrykul pieces and solved the Vrykul Drinking Horn toy. Next one to focus on is the Nerubian as I don’t have any rare solves from them and there is 2 toys that can be collected.

6.2 is removing the option of using spirit of harmonies to buy up restored artifacts, so I used up all my stored ones for Z to pick up a few bonus crates.

And finally, while I was out and about on my Shammy doing her never-ending dailies for the stables look what she found.

The clumsy adventurer is located about halfway down a series of small cliffs in Nagrand.

How to make Archeology interesting

Just keep giving me enough rares that I can’t tear myself away. Either my druid has incredible luck (which seems unlikely seeing how often she doesn’t get the loot she wants) or they have signficantly increased the drop rates on rares in the old Archeology zones and I missed the patch notes along the way.

I originally started the digging trek to see if I could get the Pterrodax Hatchling. It’s from a fossil solve so that meant I concentrated solely on Kalimdor where there are very few dwarf and troll digs and tons of night elf and fossil drops. I’ve levelled Arch before on my mage but it was quite painful and I didn’t bother to read any of the associated stories that come with the solves, common or otherwise.  This time I did and it was pretty interesting and to make it more so, the druid kept turning up rares. I’m not sure if it had something to do with the way I was solving things; I would wait until I had enough pieces of a type that I could do 3 or more solves in one go, or if it was just pure luck. But along the way to 600 my druid found the following treasures:

I love that she now has a matching mount and pet, even if they are boney dinosaurs

and the Pterrodax Hatchling that started me digging

and this one is the Bones of Transformation, which turns me into a Naga for 20secs. I had seen people turn into this illusion but wasn’t sure where it came from.

I do like the little archology vanity items.  I also came across this really interesting article on Archeology that theorizes that you have more luck finding rares if you are above a certain skill level and you haven’t solved many commons: their words are better to explain how the game decides what solve you get.

Basically, it rolls a number and checks it against the total list of all possible artifacts. Rares are, obviously, harder to hit and it’s possible that the epic rares have the lowest drop rate of all (as compared to, say, the kaldorei wind chimes). If the game lands on an item the player is not eligible for, it rerolls. This is the important part. There are only three main reasons a player can be ineligible for an artifact: 1). Their skill is too low 2). It’s a rare the player has already completed 3). It’s a repeat of a common artifact when the player has yet to complete all available common artifacts. Basically, you have a higher chance of getting a rare when it’s coupled with incomplete commons than its actual drop rate would suggest due to these free rerolls. In fact, the probability of getting the rare increases each time you complete another common until you’ve completed all the commons. – Wow Dig Site

I’m not sure if the above is true or not  but I like their reasoning so to test it out I’m going to head over to Eastern Kingdoms and concentrate on troll digs as I have only solved 2 Troll finds, 1 rare and 1 common. Now I’m at 600, if the above theory is right then I should have a higher chance of getting troll rares.

I got the digging bug

I had a bit of a wait for a lfr que so I decided to spend the time levelling up my druid’s Archeology skill. I have Archeology on my mage but I don’t spend much time on her anymore and I figured it would be a good way to pass lfr que times. So I’m going to be spending time in the old world zones looking for Fossil digs. Why Fossil? Because they have the chance to contain two pets; the Fossilized Hatchling and the Pterrordax Hatchling. I’m spending my time in Kalimdor as that seems to have the highest chance to get fossil digsites as there are only 3 different types of digsites; Night Elf, Fossil and a few Troll. Eastern Kingdoms includes Dwarf digsites. I’ll probably level to 600 without actually leaving Kalimdor.

The first  thing I noticed is that levelling archeology is much easier now. Since MOP went live  there were a few changes to archeology; an increase in the  number of times you can dig in a place to 6 which saves a ton of flying and  you also get between 5 and 9 pieces per solve. And I just discovered that you get a skill up each time you dig a piece up rather than each time you do a solve that I remember. This makes levelling way faster than it used to be.

It’s getting addictive, each time I think ok had enough, I then immediately think just one more site.

So in a few hours of digging this afternoon, this is what I’ve unearthed.

• Queen Azshara’s Dressing Gown – BOA int/cloth robe
  
• Highborne Soul Mirror
• Fossilized Hatchling
• Drums of War (not actually solved yet, I need a few more troll pieces)
• 13 Grey items – total vendor value 190g

One of the  grey items is the Chest of Tiny Glass Animals; the name just seems so evocative. It’s included in the achievement Tragedy in Three Acts. I wish it was a rare and would let you open it to display little glass animals similar size to companion pets.

There are five pets in total  that you can get through Archeology:

1. Fossilized Hatchling – Fossil
2. Pterrordax Hatchling -Fossil
3. Voodoo Figurine – Troll
4. Clockwork Gnome – Dwarf
5. Crawling Claw– Tol’vir