Archaeology 101

Archaeology is the new secondary profession introduced in Cataclysm. Available for all (well, once you reach level 20), and trainable in your capital city. I still see people asking about all them blinking lights and what and how, so here goes. Everything you need to know about archaeology to get started!

Once you train yourself the basics, you can find the new skills from your professions tab. Archaeology shows you the basic tab with all the artifacts you have collected previously, ones you are currently gathering and how far you have advanced, and a bit of lore text about each of them. Survey is the actual skill you use when searching for artifact fragments. I suggest placing at least the Survey on your action bars for easy access (and maybe even keybinding it), possibly even Archaeology.

Now, after training, you may want to take a look at your map. You should see four digsites on every continent of appropriate level:

1-300 - Kalimdor & Eastern Kingdoms (troll, night elf, dwarf, fossil)

300-400 - Outland (orc, draenei)

400-525 Northrend (Nerubian, Vrykul)

525 - Tol'Vir artifacts in Uldum

The digsites are shown as tiny pickaxes on your map, just remember to have you "show digsites" checked on the map, as pointed by the helpful red arrow. In closer scale you will also see the digsites circled with orange-ish/grey (it keeps flashing at times) graphic to help you narrow it down a bit more.

That is pretty much all you need to get started. At this point I'd like to promote a fancy Archaeology addon, that makes managing your fragments, artifacts and digsites just a little bit more.. er.. manageable. I present to you: Archy Archaeology Assistant. The link is to Curse.com, but you may download it from wowinterface.com or where ever you normally tend to get your addons. If you are strongly averse to addons, feel free to ignore this bit.

Now, how this thing normally goes, is having to shuffle between your map, Archaeology tab, back to map, dig, check the number of fragments, check map for new sites, dig, check fragments and so forth. With Archy, you'll get handy movable windows on your screen whenever you feel like having them on (free tip: "/archy stealth" hides and shows the windows).

Here you can, at one glance more or less, see your current skill level, which artifacts you are gathering and how many fragments and keystones you have, and which are the four digsites on your current continent and how far each of them is. The closest spot is always at the top. Rare items are displayed with blue background.

You can also fast see which type of digsites are available (curse you night elves!), and how many fragments you have dug up from which site (I really suggest picking up all three, or you have to travel back later to gather the missing pieces. Extra work that can be avoided).

In your minimap you will now also see a small cyan dot to point out where you have discovered arfticats previously. And a pickaxe icon for the digsite itself. All this information is basically available in the game itself, Archy just makes it that much more accessible.

Well then, you have your digsites searched and ready to be cleansed from shiny loot and those pesky trolls who try to interfere. Now it's time to click on the Survey tool (or the keybind you assigned for it, yes?). You shall be seeing something along these lines (though not everyone may see a respectabe and über cool shadow priest, but that can't really be helped, I'm afraid.):

First you are likely to see a slowly blinking red light next to an item that looks like a telescope. Means you're nowhere near where you should be. You are also very likely to see this light plenty of times. See, that telescope is supposed to point towards the point you should be heading to, but the red light is also very inaccurate and tends to point to whichever direction it damn well pleases. So have fun running about.

When you get a bit closer, you may delight in seeing the yellow light. You are getting closer! Finally, the rapid blink of the green light. Almost there! Keep digging a little more and... Profit! (teleporting from brown location to a lush green one not guaranteed to happen, also your digsite may or may not have red lobstrosities, but general principles still hold). Loot, rinse, repeat.

Now you are a proud owner of a fragment. Which does eff all, until you collect enough of the same kind. Low end artifacts take 35-45 fragments, and rare ones up to 150 fragments to complete. And why should we go through all this? Well, it can be kind of entertaining at times. Maybe. Infuriating when you just keep getting worthless fossil sites after getting both the rare artifacts already. But yeah, there are those shiny epics! Mostly useless, but fun. Some less useless and also fun. A lot of the usable epics are account bound, so they may even be of use to your alts that don't know how to wield that pickaxe.

 Scare your friends by turning into a naga!

And ride into the sunset with your new skeletal raptor.

This concludes Archaeology 101. I hope this was of some use to someone :)