Snips and Snails and Puppy Dog Tales

Little Keen hit 525 archaeology tonight.


Big Keen is still 310.

Hitting 525 made me realize that... nothing changes when you reach cap. You have to do the same exact thing you do while skilling (complete all kinds of them) in an attempt to get the one(s) you want.

Little Keen still doesn't have the mount (though that doesn't matter), does have the raptor pet and is working on the gnome pet. It would be nice if I could focus just on Tol'vir (for the alchemy recipe to turn you into a dragon mount), but the four dig sites you get are random, could be anywhere.

He's about a quarter of the way into 83, mostly just from archaeology (he did two XP quests and a handful of cooking/fishing dailies).

Tired of archaeology posts yet? I am. zzz

Grumble mumble. Due to an alchemy recipe (the one that turns you into a dragon that others can ride) coming from archaeology, and since big Keen hit 310, I decided mini-Keen (alchemist) had to become my priority in archaeology. See, big Keen was doing it first so that he could get the raptor mount. At 300 one goes to Outlands. Raptor mount comes from Fossil line... which is only in vanilla. Yeah there's another mount once you're maxed out, but really, I'm sick of this 100 mount achievement. I'll get the last two sometime before I quit the game. Maybe.

So! Had to restart on mini-Keen. This actually isn't the worst thing ever, though it's boring and annoying to start over. I know how to do it right now. He's 97 and hasn't completed a single object yet, he'll have nearly 20 to do once he gets those last couple points. Plus mini-Keen is a hunter, that rocks because he has movement and his pet takes care of any random aggro.

Kills me to have to start over again, but it would be worse if I waited until big Keen got to max before starting mini. Plus I hate fighting on rogue, and when he moves to Northrend things will actually start putting up a fight, so... better all around that mini-Keen digs.

Let's just hope the recipe coming from alchemy isn't a false rumor. :P

Stop with the useless rares, okay archaeology? You're costing me a lot of skill points (30+ so far!) for items I have no use for.

Mentioned last night, here's the screenshot of the Druid and Priest Statue Set. Inside that green glow are leaves (like some healing spell), they just didn't show up in the shot.

Tonight I made a second rare, Chalice of the Mountain Kings. The description is "witness a historic sword dance". While the green glow one lasts just a couple seconds, this one lasts maybe 30 or more. Four figures appear and dance for you!

280 as of tonight. zzzz Unfortunately, I'm going to need to take a "break" soon. Haken, other-Keen, Thack, and Crow are all rolling in rested, so going to need to burn that off. I think they'll all go archaeologing, and feed those special items (the ones that fill in the missing parts) to big Keen. I hate to slow big Keen's skilling, but... I want archaeology on them all eventually anyway, and it'd be a shame to let rested XP go to waste.

Edit: Confirmed that the hand pet, Crawling Claw, comes from Tol'vir Archaeology -- so no chance at it for a long time.

The bone raptor mount comes from Fossil, so there's a chance of getting it from dig one. It takes 100 fragments, like the other rares.

I've heard tell of a second mount, but I haven't even gotten confirmation of a name yet. Comes from one of the big name archaeologists though, so it's probably real.

As much as I didn't want to quest, I went back to finish up Thistle and get him out of the starter/phased zone. Lots of questing! zzzz He ended up out and level 15.

Slight problem with RPing him: He wants to "pass" as human, so I'll be RPing him in his human form a lot. It's darned ugly. :/ I couldn't get a worgen form I liked with a human form I liked as well.

Oh well! I've not RPed in a week, so this likely won't be much of an issue. I really need to get back to RPing on a regular basis.

Archaeology: I learned something new: Rare finds suck for skilling. You get 5 skill points for each thing you complete. Most things take about 30 fragments. My pet took 85 and the second (useless) rare took 100 pieces, and I still got the same 5 skill points.



The pet (kind of hard to see) came with an achievement and a spiffy title! Yay!

The second rare thing I got was a big waste, especially for 100 pieces (that would have been 3 other things + 10 extra frags, 15 skill points instead of 5!). It's called "Druid and Priest Stature Set". Once every five minutes you can use it to... make a green glow around you. Effect lasts for maybe 10 seconds.

Skill level: 205. 85% into level 71 (mostly from archaeology). Very very rough estimate guess on time spent today: Seven hours.

Rolled my worgen this morning. Successfully got the name Thistle! Got to level 11.

I don't know why, even in the easiest questing, it exhausts me. I get so tensed (needlessly tense! I had heirlooms from level 1, played hunter, and was leveling faster than the game intended since I was mining/herbing at the same time). I was never once at a risk of dying, yet it's nothing but stressy to me. I don't understand my reaction at all.

I think I'm still phased, so will need to go level him more so I can get him free for RP.

On archaeology: Last night I thought I had a problem. One of my four possible places to dig was bugged. The pointer was pointing me to a place in the zone (same zone name), but it wouldn't let me dig there ("you can't use that here", usual message when you dig in the wrong zone). I figured I'd be stuck with only three places to go until Tuesday at best. (Logging in and out didn't fix things.)

This morning I logged in and found I still had the zone as one of my four, so I went out to give it another chance, and it worked -- my spots were different this time.

So: While your four icons don't move when you log out, the spots within them do. That's important to know!

Just a quick list, sleepytired.

Tips:
#1: Do not complete any fossils before level 100. This is the biggest, most important tip of them all. From 1-100 you get skill from digging, after 100 you only get it from completing fossils, so do not waste those points by using them before 100!
#2: After you make a successful dig, do not move. Start your next one from that spot. It is not too rare for the second (and sometimes third!) item to be in that exact same spot.

If you know of more, please please let me know in comments! I've only been doing this two days now, so I'm far far from an expert.

XP: Don't do archaeology for XP. You get some, but it is not much. I did it for six hours tonight and got about 25% of a level. I'm not complaining about the amount though, you should not get as much XP as you would questing or whatever. Seeing how the highest mobs I've been around are level 50, it's amazing I'm getting XP at all!

Gold: If you take up archaeology for gold, you're going to be disappointed. As far as I've seen, there isn't a single copper in this.

Items: I got my first rare! I've completed 17 items and I'm level 170, but a friend of a friend got a rare as their very first fossil, so it must be totally random. (Mine is a pet, Fossilized Hatchling. I'm 27/85 on finishing it.)

Rate of skilling: SLOW. S-L-O-W. I strongly suspect Blizz will adjust this. 110 to 170 almost six hours. 10 skill points (two completed fossils) per hour is... not WoW-ish at all. (This slow skilling might be because I hadn't known tip #1. D: I completed mine as I skilled. Learn from my mistake!)