Archaeology 101

With Cataclysm almost upon us and one of the main features is a new secondary profession. This is the first secondary profession added to the game since launch and rather than being on that will make money is one that will enhance your character with a few of the finds but more importantly provide some interesting back story.

So what is archaeology?

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Archaeology is a secondary profession which means everybody can learn it, which is cool. The general idea is that you collect fragments of historical items and store them in a journal. Once you have all the fragments for an item you'll be able to study it and you'll get a reward which can be anything from BoA armor/weapons (sadly not ones that level with you) vanity pets, gadgets and even mounts. Some of the rewards are very good epic items (eg X), also when gathering these fragments you will gain XP until you're at level cap just like the other gathering professions.

When you train archaeology you get the skill survey and also, 4 dig sites (marked with shovels on your World Map) will appear on each continent in zones of your level or lower. Prior to 60 you get a total of 8 dig sites (4 on Kalimdor and 4 on Eastern Kingdoms). At 60 4 more will be added to Outland and at 70 4 more will be added to Northrend giving a total of 16 potential dig sites. The sites are unique to you and will only change when you recover all the fragments from each of them.

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The Trainers
The trainers of this fancy schmancy profession can be found in the capital cities. They are:

Stormwind:	Harrison Jones
Ironforge:	Doktor Professor Ironpants
Darnassus:	Hammon the Jaded
Exodar:	Diya
Orgrimmar:	Belloc Brightblade
Undercity:	Adam Hossack
Thunder Bluff:	??
Silvermoon:	Elynara

The Alliance Trainers

The location of the Alliance trainers are below, apologies to anyone looking for the same info on their Horde equivalents, Blizzard ended the beta before I had collected this info

Stormwind:

Alliance Trainer Location: Stormwind

Ironforge:

Alliance Trainer Location: Ironforge

Darnassus:

Alliance Trainer Location: Darnassus

Exodar:

Alliance Trainer Location: Exodar

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Surveying
Surveying is very easy. Simply go to one of the zones with a dig site indicated on it. Open up your zone map:

And move to the area shown on the map as a orange or blue see through patch (I believe the colour is determined by the faction of the race being researched).

Once you arrive in the area use the Survey tool and you will get a telescope appear. The telescope will have a red, amber or green light flashing on it to indicate how close you are from the item and you should always move the the wide end of the telescope.

Red means the spot is more than 100 yards away

Image © http://www.wowwiki.com/

Yellow means the spot is50-100 yards

Image © http://www.wowwiki.com/

Green means the spot is less than 50 away

Image © http://www.wowwiki.com/

Survey within 0-10 yards of the find and it will appear. Each dig site has 3 fragments inside it and only after all 3 have been found will a new dig site appear on your map.

So what you waiting for go dig up Azeroth!