Archaeology, Part II

I'm done.  I mean it.

When I started doing Archaeology, it was, well, because it was another secondary profesison, so why not do it?  It was something I could do when I couldn't dedicate a lot of time to the game, because I could catch a griffin to my destination and walk away to do other things.  (Arch is a good afk profession . . . or one which requires minimal focus when you're sick with a dreadful cold . . . *cough* . . .)  It was something to do just to get it done.  And people said there were some cool toys you could get.

Then I found out about Tyrande's Favorite Doll . . . the caster/healer trinket . . .

I did some research and found out it was a Night Elf rare item--one of seven--so I concluded I would have better luck picking it up if I focused my Archaeological endeavors on Kalimdor.  This worked out well, because I could either port to Uldum from Stormwind or I could teleport to Moonglade, depending on whether I had more nodes at the northern end of the continent or the southern.  (Hooray for being a Druid!)

And so my pickaxe started tearing Kalimdor apart.

Over time, I managed to pick up 6 Night Elf rares and 49 Night Elf common items.  No trinket.

As yet another Night Elf common item showed itself in my Archaeology window, I threw my hands into the air, recognizing that the game could just continue to hand me common items and never, NEVER offer me the trinket.

Archaeology requires, in the end, all the skill it takes to pull the handle on a slot machine.  And, like those hapless older women who sit at the slots and keep pulling, the participant keeps thinking that maybe the next pull will be the jackpot.  But the jackpot might never come.  The participant's time may simply end up being wasted, their resources drained, their opportunities lost, their spirits downtrodden.

And so I put my scrolls, runes, etc., from Archaeology in the bank and, instead, picked up my fishing pole.  A few hours of sick time and several "Murder She Wrote" episodes later, I had advanced my guild some 800 fish closer to our 10,000 fish goal.

At least that was progress toward something tangible.