Development Team Leader
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Yes, the little surprise on deathwing a few days ago was archaeology. This is now available for you all to play with, it was designed and built to be almost exactly blizzlike, and we're working to implement the archaeology-related achievements as well.
For those of you not familiar with archaeology, read on for a few details.
First up - I recommend this archaeology addon - Archy for 4,0,6.
Secondly - unlike normal gathering professions, archaeology is purely a personal endeavour - other people can't swoop in and steal your archaeology dig sites or your finds.
So what happens?
When you learn archaeology you will get randomly assigned one archaeology project per race. There are a number of different races, with more unlocking as your skill goes up. You will always have exactly one active project for each race, and can be do the same project more than once. To complete a project you need to acquire Archaeology Fragments, which you get from dig sites.
You will also be randomly assigned 4 dig sites on Eastern Kingdoms and 4 dig sites on Kalimdor. (When you hit 300 skill you'll also get 4 in Outland and at 375 you'll get 4 in Northrend as well). You will always have 4 dig sites per continent, so when one goes away, another gets added.
So how do you find fragments at a dig site?
Archaeology gives you a spell called 'Survey'. This spell is only usable inside a dig site, and what it will do is set down a piece of equipment named a Theolodite (the name is not important, it looks like a telescope with a flashing light). The scope will point in the direction of the fragment you're trying to find, and the flashing light will be either red, yellow, or green depending on how far away you are. Move closer to the target, cast survey again and it'll give you another reading. Repeat until eventually instead of a Theolodite you'll get an archaeology find, with some fragments inside.
You may also get a keystone inside your achaeology find. Some archaeology projects have up to 3 keystone sockets, and if you have a keystone socket in your current project, and have one of the right keystones then you can put the keystone in and it will count as 12 fragments. So if a project has 3 keystone sockets you can use keystones to reduce the number of fragments you need by 36 - and keystones can be bought and sold on the auction house as well. You don't HAVE to use a keystone if your project has a keystone socket, it's an optional thing, but it's usually worth it if you have one.
So why do archaeology?
Archaeology creates two types of item - common items (which you will usually sell to a vendor for between 1 and 375g) and rare items, which can be a mount, companion pet, armor, weapon, or cosmetic item. The full list is available on Wowhead.
For more information on Archaeology (in case I missed something here), Wowpedia has a lot of information available on the subject.
Have fun.
