Whist doing my utmost to get raid ready, during pre-patch I spent all of my free time doing Archaeology in the hope I would find the 2H Sword.
I saw that many guild mates obtained the sword after only small amounts of Troll solves, one had it within 16 total solves… Fast forwards some weeks, there are now two of us that require the sword but still do not have it, while there are many casters that have had it that wont use it yet are still farming for thier Staff.
I am all for working for your gear, but as I type this, my guidie is now on a total of 787 Troll solves while I sit on 305.
His total solves are 1200 while mine are at 787 both of us have only seen x1 ilvl359 epic which is the shield.
I pose that there be some kind of cut off - Limit so to speak that once you hit this limit of solves, your percentage to obtain a rare from that faction increases and continues to increase on each solve until a rare pops for that faction.
While many of my guildies are now leveling alts, I am such wasting my life digging for disapointment.
I would be shocked if I was the only one feeling this way.
3 Likes
Agreed, but now it’s too late tbh. The sword loses its value in a couple of weeks. They should’ve just hotfixed in a vendor where you could buy the items with fragments. But they won’t.
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I don’t think it needs a Vendor, and whilst I agree, when the raid sword is availible it loses value, it still has to drop and I have to win it 
I did about 300 solves after that my brain couldn’t handle it
zero fun for almost zero chance of reward (made some cash selling stuff though which was handy as I was poor)
I know gamers can take things to the extreme but the amount of time people have put into this boring as hell task is insane to me
Talk about carrot and the stick
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Could not agree more with this statement.
Yesterday there was a Warrior in my HC Dungeon group and despite playing better than him he did barely more dmg than me because of that stupid sword basically because he lucked out. undeserved honestly, dumbass archeology and that will become even more annoying in raids till we get our 359. at least there is now less competition for 359er weapons…
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Honestly, I think they should add a vendor.
Some of my guildies have had over 1600 solves shared between three different characters for Dwarf for example because they need the staff and still do not have it even though they have been going at it non-stop since the pre-patch hit.
I like the idea of archeology as a profession but there needs to be some form of bad luck protection for those that are just running into a wall. I’ll leave it in-between whether that needs to be some form of bad luck protection or a vendor.
After discussing it with some friends we did reach some form of idea:
- Add a vendor that sells items that you need x amount of for an epic.
You’re stuck with 200 fragments max, let’s say instead of doing a solve you can just buy an item from a vendor for 200 fragments, and you need 8 of those items for an epic.
That’s around 45 solves. Still a reasonable time investment but not where you are running through a tunnel and never see the light at the end of it.
And it also means Blizzard doesn’t need to substantially change anything in the game.
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Very good way of looking at it, or, even add a vendor to swap fragments for ones you don’t want.
i would gladly trade the sword and vial of the sand recipe for staff.
its hilarious how often i still see fossil/nelf sites even when they are completed
What I have found is that while the Archaeology sword is absolutely a large increase over other weapons available pre-raid, it’s very quickly irrelevant in the medium term of this patch. If you’re not raiding in a guild that is racing for the world first you’re not gaining any benefit from investing a massive amount of time into getting an early epic weapon.
Moreover, I’ve done a lot of dungeons alongside other Warriors with this weapon and in spite of their actual ability damage numbers being clearly a lot higher than mine, none of them know how to play the spec properly and I completely trash them on damage… And while I’m not pointing fingers at you here, the majority of people could have done better spending 10% of that time learning how to play the spec properly instead and saving themselves the hassle of 100 meaningless hours doing this soul destroying activity that was rightfully abandoned in retail.
Just stop wasting your time and get a weapon from the raid.
2 Likes
It’s about a 10% damage increase compared to the 2nd best weapon available right now that’s 346 ilvl. It’s identical to Reclaimed Ashkandi from normal and that has a 13% drop chance, so it’s not hard to get a raid weapon but it’s still valuable for at least a few weeks.
Doesn’t change the fact that it’s still a completely dog sh!t system that needed to be reworked prior to launching it in this state. This isn’t Runescape and pure RNG grinds like this aren’t healthy for the game.
The simplest rework would’ve been the vendor, doesn’t require ANY changes to the original system and simplest to implement. Bad luck protection would’ve been nice too but that takes more effort to implement and considering there’s like 5 devs in total working on Cata classic I wouldn’t expect them to do that.
I suggest you stop with archaeology. I tried it for like 3 days and it totally drained my soul. It´s almost as bad as the cata heroics
Just get a nice normal group going and you will get a weapon very fast. The normal raids appear to be easy.
And all those are based around assumption you’re actually playing your spec to absolute maximum. If you don’t ant let’s be fair most people don’t you’re not gaining as much.
That’s not how weapon damage works. It’s a flat 10% increase doesn’t matter how you play your class unless you’re literally AFK and not hitting buttons. Also this is classic playing your class to the absolute maximum isn’t difficult.
Sim calculates it at a 6.9% (or 2000) dps increase over 346 for me, the sim isn’t very accurate or even complete right now but that’s a good estimate. Big upgrade, but it’s a normal mode weapon of which there are a few alternatives, all of which are temporary measures anyway because of Heroic mode.
Not worth the sweat.
It still is in retail where it’s a dead profession. They didn’t fix it after 14 years they aren’t going to fix it now. Of all the things they could improve in this expansion, archaeology is at the bottom of a long list. This whole thing will be irrelevant in 2 weeks and anyone who doesn’t think this is a good use of time shouldn’t do it.
Which is why I didn’t do it in 2010 and I haven’t done it now. It just doesn’t matter. I have better things to do with my time and so do you.
Then why am I trashing every player I come across with this weapon? If skill didn’t matter then this wouldn’t be a factor. Retail has less buttons and more simplistic and straight forward gameplay for a lot of specs, so this doesn’t hold water at all.
And sure if you put me and another skilled warrior with the weapon in the same raid, the skilled warrior will perform better due to the better weapon, but this is not the case for the other 99% of players who spent 50-100 hours farming this weapon and 0 hours figuring out the best way to play their specs.
Accept that this trash profession is trash and stop doing it, put 1-2 hours into learning to do damage with your spec and go play something else, laugh about it in 2 weeks when you already have a 359/372 raid drop.
I got it today latenight with 220 trollsolves. Maybe they changed something. I did also 2 alt cops without zin rok. Got 2 shields and 1 zinrok.
Maybe try to dig 20-30 solves of ur certain race and try the luck again. Maybe they changed something. People just said that for example 4 guildmembers got their epic in a day of farming
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at this point just buy the boe staff from ah, you will farm the gold at the time you dig dig dig
Ive done over 50 Troll solves in the past 2 days 
i got today zin rokh after 102 trolls solves,keep going guys
you might aswell get a weapon from the raid…