I feel like Archeology has been very neglected over the years Legion had a few nice rewards but all the other expansions had nothing exciting to offer since Cata when it first came out.
I don’t know what is the plan for Archeology in Shadowlands but if there aren’t any here is a suggestion:
Every Shadowlands zone should have it’s own Archeology questchain wich should be accessible even if your Archeology is only 1. These questchains would lead you trough certain places of the zone where you’d later farm artifacts but the quest itself would require you to kill mobs, gather things, examine stuff, do puzzles etc. once you are done with a questchain in a zone you would unlock certain recipies that would relate to the zone you did the quest chain in. These recipies would be a mount, an arsenal ensemble, a cosmetic transmog set, a pet a toy and some misc. items. These would have different artifact costs that you could farm within certain points of that zone and you could pick wich of those rewards do you want to craft first.
For example:
After finishing the questchain in Bastion one of the rewards would be a Baby Steward pet (Stewards are those Owl-looking creatures in Basion) and it would cost 500 Kyrian artifacts to craft it by Dariness the Learned (high elf archeology trainer)
Main reason I think questchain with unlockable rewards is the right way to go about this, because you still have to farm artifacts wich in it’s own can be quite timeconsuming and grindy and rather to bind these to rng I think it would be the best to unlock those things and create the ones you want. It gives a player a choise rather than a prayer to RNG. There might be people who only would want to do it only for the mount or only for the transmog but that’s already better than never touching Archeology ever at all because of really crappy rewards like in BFA a low ilvl useless trinket. And not only one but all the different zones in Shadowlands should have their own questchain and own recipies and artifact currency.
I don’t think people have time in todays fast and furious world to stop and dig around for the remnants of the past
Actually would be cool to puzzle together the lore of the races, especially once proud, now begone, like the Kaldorei Empire, Ancient Eredar, the Trolls and so on… tablets, stories, real lore, not just , you know… it was hinted in some book or comic
Give every race a past, and let that past be explorable!
One can dream…
on a fundamental level, I LOVE archaeology.
The main drawback of it is… in order to do it you have to fly a huge distance between dig sites. they are random and they are placed far apart and that is really really stupid.
like so many things in this game it just involves doing something incredibly DULL and BORING in order to get to the fun bit.
Also, when you are at a dig, the damn mobs are not going to leave you alone. I understand that is sort of realistic considering where the sites are placed… then why not put the sites in places where you aren’t going to get constantly ganked??
or give us a cloaking device to use while digging.
or make the dig site a phased area with a perimeter set up.
the act of discovering these things, piecing them together and learning some lore is just so juicy and it’s hamstrung by stupid decisions and things that just get in the way of the fun.
also, if I want to do arch in current content, I have to do bloomin’ azeroth arch… nope. not gonna happen. not again. I’ve had it with that.
I just don’t understand why there is a skill requirement for it anyway. what… is the soil harder? does it require more skill to move because it’s able to evade or something? there should be no skill requirement to dig in the mud.
I hope they add a ton more archeology achievements in Shadowlands. I don’t know why, but numbing myself with rng fishing and archeology is one of my favorite pasttimes.
It’ll be the same as it now, where you get a few boa’s a few pets and toys, and most you will just farm artifacts so you can crate for other digsite pieces.
I like archaeology, it’s a fun little time killer waiting for an lfr or a dungeon.
Protecting!
It belongs to a museum (did anyone noticed, what Dr. Jones dug up, never - ever- ended up in a museum?)
Or a private collection
You know, safe keeping!
pretty much true. when i read your title my first thought was huh? what got archeology to do with wow. then the penny dropped when i read the first sentence. thats actually pretty sad because i liked doing archeology when i started playing again in wod but it eventually became boring and i stopped and completely forgot about it.
now im
i ll make sure to pick it up when i log in and do some digging.
but you re right, archeology really does need some love. again something with so much unused potential. i want more quality transmog.
edit: wow, just noticed that my last archeology achievement was in 2016.
Thanks to the insane distance between digsites, it not even helps leveling (even with flying)… while even pet battles - PET BATTLES!!! - daily gives a better xp, than diging around
you are right. i still remember i even used to do that in the past. leveling through archeology i mean, because i wasnt in a hurry and i really wanted to complete everything. but the distances between the dig sites were very cumbersome.
I’d love Archaeology a fair bit more if it wasn’t so tedious in many aspects.
First of all the random part, have always hated too much random.
I’ve been farming Uldum Archaeology sites since early MoP and still haven’t found the recipe for the vial of sands, as an example. It’s painfull.
Then there’s the insane time investment a single archaeology excursion is. Without flying, for new zones, it’s even worse. Often an entire digsite doesn’t add up to even complete a common relic, not to mention rare ones.
Archaeology has a lot of potential, but it’s current iteration is just too tedious to truly be a lot of fun. Especially in a world that already requires you to do a large amount of tasks each and every single login. And as it is, it’s already a niché part of the game that very few people truly invest time in. I doubt there’s going to be anything truly exceptional for archaeology in shadowlands.
I’m Always salty when every expansion archeology gets basically nothing new, it’s the profession I enjoy most and at this point they aren’t even trying to make it interesting, it’s just left on the side of the road rotting…
thats actually pretty sad because i liked doing archeology when i started playing again in wod but it eventually became boring and i stopped and completely forgot about it.
really does need some love. again something with so much unused potential. i want more quality transmog. 
