Post by drazzl on Jun 21, 2015 9:36:26 GMT
Archeology; I can say it's more fun than fishing, but really that isn't saying much. It's a mini-game of Hot & Cold, as if you didn't outgrow then when you were 10. I only do it for the achievements, and the MoP and WoD ones are very grindy requiring you to get 25-30 copies of each of the 30-40 artifacts. Yes, that is every bit as awful as you can imagine and possibly more. But, leveling it by itself and getting basic achievements as a result takes very little effort actually and can be done without actually doing archeology.
This system relies heavily on the Garrison, because everything in WoD revolves around how overpowered the reward systems are for this glorified Facebook game. Also, it will take a long time, probably the remainder of the expansion. I don't consider that much of a drawback since there's very little effort involved and it is certainly preferable to hours of grinding at a time.
Step 1 - Train Archeology...just need to make sure to mention that. And make sure to train it up before hitting cap at any tier. When you hit 600 archeology, you need to go out into the field and find one archeology node to get the item that trains you up to 700. After that, you can return to your garrison never again having to deal with it.
Step 2 - Farm your mine daily. More specifically, collect the contents of the 4 carts in the mine as these give archeology fragments. It takes only a minute or 2 of your time and there's no real hunting or effort involved. Perk, you get a decent income of Primal Spirits this way to aid your crafting or buy Savage Blood to sell. This is just something you need to make part of your daily routine when you log in to check your missions.
Step 3 - You'll earn follower missions awarding archeology fragments once or twice a week from your garrison, do them.
Step 4 - As you complete artifacts, crate them and stockpile them. Go to Warspear, in the Northeast of the area there's a goblin area where the archeology trainer is. To the side of this building under the tent hidden from view is an Arakkoa who will sell you Explorer's Notebooks for 5 crated artifacts. Buy these. They trigger archeology follower missions. While you can buy creates of artifacts from any race of your choice from prior expansions, these don't yield as much. Those crates of fragments yield 4-9 fragments each for an average of 30 for 5 crates. The missions obtained from these notebooks award 50-100 fragments at a cost of 5 crates from the vendor. Both have a chance of yielding ciphers at about the same rate.
*As a note, I've heard there was an issue with triggering these notebook missions in rapid succession. As if the follower mission log could only accept 1 archeology mission in its queue of open missions. So if you triggered 2 notebooks back-to-back, only 1 mission would be there. However, if you trigger a mission and send a team to handle it, you can safely trigger a 2nd mission immediately. I did it this way to be on the safe side as I did not want to risk the resources to confirm or dispel this rumor.
A few final notes:
This system has a feedback loop to it. By completing WoD artifacts, these can turned into crates to buy more missions for more artifacts to turn into crates etc. The conversion rate is actually quite high, I'd estimate 25% returns on purchased artifact fragments turning into more purchased artifact fragments. Racial artifacts prior to MoP did not turn into crates and instead yielded only a few gold, not conducive to leveling the profession. Worth it to buy the crated fragments later though for trying to get rare items the system offers - pets and a mount.
If you're willing to/enjoy doing puzzle/jumping games, visit Spires of Arak. There's about 350 Arakoa fragments and 4-5 ciphers to be gotten from these. They are repeatable across toons for milking the ciphers.
Pristine artifacts are a quest item that awards a few crated artifacts and ciphers to further feed the cycle. Simply turn in at your garrison main hall.
This system relies heavily on the Garrison, because everything in WoD revolves around how overpowered the reward systems are for this glorified Facebook game. Also, it will take a long time, probably the remainder of the expansion. I don't consider that much of a drawback since there's very little effort involved and it is certainly preferable to hours of grinding at a time.
Step 1 - Train Archeology...just need to make sure to mention that. And make sure to train it up before hitting cap at any tier. When you hit 600 archeology, you need to go out into the field and find one archeology node to get the item that trains you up to 700. After that, you can return to your garrison never again having to deal with it.
Step 2 - Farm your mine daily. More specifically, collect the contents of the 4 carts in the mine as these give archeology fragments. It takes only a minute or 2 of your time and there's no real hunting or effort involved. Perk, you get a decent income of Primal Spirits this way to aid your crafting or buy Savage Blood to sell. This is just something you need to make part of your daily routine when you log in to check your missions.
Step 3 - You'll earn follower missions awarding archeology fragments once or twice a week from your garrison, do them.
Step 4 - As you complete artifacts, crate them and stockpile them. Go to Warspear, in the Northeast of the area there's a goblin area where the archeology trainer is. To the side of this building under the tent hidden from view is an Arakkoa who will sell you Explorer's Notebooks for 5 crated artifacts. Buy these. They trigger archeology follower missions. While you can buy creates of artifacts from any race of your choice from prior expansions, these don't yield as much. Those crates of fragments yield 4-9 fragments each for an average of 30 for 5 crates. The missions obtained from these notebooks award 50-100 fragments at a cost of 5 crates from the vendor. Both have a chance of yielding ciphers at about the same rate.
*As a note, I've heard there was an issue with triggering these notebook missions in rapid succession. As if the follower mission log could only accept 1 archeology mission in its queue of open missions. So if you triggered 2 notebooks back-to-back, only 1 mission would be there. However, if you trigger a mission and send a team to handle it, you can safely trigger a 2nd mission immediately. I did it this way to be on the safe side as I did not want to risk the resources to confirm or dispel this rumor.
A few final notes:
This system has a feedback loop to it. By completing WoD artifacts, these can turned into crates to buy more missions for more artifacts to turn into crates etc. The conversion rate is actually quite high, I'd estimate 25% returns on purchased artifact fragments turning into more purchased artifact fragments. Racial artifacts prior to MoP did not turn into crates and instead yielded only a few gold, not conducive to leveling the profession. Worth it to buy the crated fragments later though for trying to get rare items the system offers - pets and a mount.
If you're willing to/enjoy doing puzzle/jumping games, visit Spires of Arak. There's about 350 Arakoa fragments and 4-5 ciphers to be gotten from these. They are repeatable across toons for milking the ciphers.
Pristine artifacts are a quest item that awards a few crated artifacts and ciphers to further feed the cycle. Simply turn in at your garrison main hall.