anyway, archaeology! WOW. what a grind! i'm strangely addicted though. just a warning: at the time of this writing, it's VERY difficult to level up past 120 skill and it's VERY repetitive with a lot of travel time required. i would recommend waiting until you have your flying mount before attempting to level up this secondary profession. some of the dig sites are so spread out, i'm so grateful that we can fly everywhere!
i won't go into detail about how the profession is done (it's pretty straight forward once you test it out a couple times), but i will discuss the companion pets involved.
after "solving" about 20+ artifacts of multiple races/categories (night elf, troll, dwarven, fossil, etc.) and coming up with only grey items so far, i did some research and found out the following:
Draenei and orc require archaeology skill 300.why is this significant? each artifact has some flavor text, and according to the crawling claw vanity pet: "A legend among the tol'vir tells of a wicked djinn who the Ramkahen sought to destroy. In an attempt to prevent his death, the djinn transferred his spirit into that of a monkey. He was slain right in the middle of the transference and only a fraction of his essence had moved over - only enough to possess the monkey's paw."
Vrykul and nerubian requires skill 375.
Tol'vir requires skill 450.
These are subject to change, and yes we realize there is nowhere in the game yet to get this information.
- Ghostcrawler
this leads me to think that the crawling claw will be discovered by solving tol'vir fragments, but this will require 450 archaeology skill (and while you CAN dig up tol'vir fragments, it is currently not listed in the archaeology skill page on beta atm). so collectors put on your frowny faces because at least one pet will be out of reach for a while.
i expect to eventually come upon the fossilized hatchling soon since these fragments are available at lower skill levels. which artifacts you can "solve" appear to come up as random, though, so i really have no control over whether or not the next one will be the pet. it's a bit frustrating but at the same time a little exciting. will it be the next one? how about the next?!
as for the clockwork gnome... well its flavor text mentions gnomes, earthen, AND the titans so i really have no clue what type of fragments will be required for this one. much like the crawling claw, i'm going to assume that it will take some time before i come across it.
there are still a lot of greyed out areas within the archaeology spell page, which will probably hold the clues as to where other companions will come from. personally, archaeology feels it needs some refinement and work, but that's the beauty of beta yea?
as soon as i get the fossilized hatchling you can bet i'll be taking a screenshot. :P
oh and because i feel that this was important: yes, i've been killing every critter i come upon while traveling. 65 down... 49,935 more to go before the armadillo pup! (side note: atm, this pet does require an achievement to unlock it and it will cost 40 silver, however i'm not seeing a "guild reputation level" requirement listed on the beta. other unlockable items have reputation levels listed such as honored, revered, exalted.)
