Of the three gathering crew skills (strictly speaking you could count slicing as a fourth, but I don't think that gathering money really counts), my bioanalysts and scavengers never have issues maintaining a healthy supply of high-end crafting materials. I spend most of my time in PvE doing group content, and in both flashpoints and operations, there are plenty of beast and droid type mobs that can be disassembled for their parts. But what is there for the archaeologists? Nothing! Nowhere!
Now, I'm not saying that we should start fighting living crystals (better not give Bioware ideas) and I don't think there's any existing mob type for which it would make sense to suddenly turn out to consist of artifact fragments. But there are plenty of existing instances where it would make perfect logical sense to place some artifact gathering nodes at least:
Assault on Tython, Korriban Incursion: The seats of the Jedi and the Sith respectively are known for suddenly revealing ancient forgotten artifacts to this day, why not let us find some?
Athiss, Legacy of the Rakata: What better places to discover interesting archaeological finds than on planets that are home to forgotten civilisations? Athiss actually has a couple of artifact nodes but except for the ones that unlock shortcuts, they just give pretty useless buffs and you can't level your skill on them either.
Battle of Ilum: The whole reason people are fighting over Ilum is its crystal supply, where are there none for us to pick up in the caves?
Battle of Rishi, Blood Hunt, Hammer Station, Lost Island, Taral V: These all have at least some outdoorsy areas where it would make sense to find a crystal or two.
Cademimu, Kaon Under Siege: OK, city planets are a bit of a stretch, but considering the sheer amount of junk lying around on the streets of Corellia, why shouldn't we find anything on these too?
Operations also offer up multiple locations where it would be perfectly reasonable to find artifacts and/or crystals: Eternity Vault, Terror From Beyond, Scum & Villainy, Dread Fortress & Palace, and Temple of Sacrifice all qualify in my opinion.
Now, you could argue that if we're going to start placing static gathering nodes for archaeologists in instances, why not have some for scavengers and bioanalysts too, aside from the corpses of mobs? And you know, I wouldn't mind that either. But they already have something, while archaeologists leave every instance empty-handed. Give them some love first, I say.
Back when I was messing around on Iokath pretty much for all my playtime, I noted that gathering nodes of all kinds were pretty plentiful.
ReplyDeleteHAve the bots gotten there? That would be disappointing.
Oh, out in the open world archaeology nodes are as plentiful as all the others. This post is only about the situation in instances, where they are the only ones who get nothing.
DeleteAh. I never feel like I can take advantage of the dead bodies in instanced group content. Either the group is moving on after the fight and I'll fall behind, or everyone is grabbing the bodies and it's a race to gather.
DeleteMy first thought was that this was going to be a WoW post, and I had to do a double take once I realized it wasn't Priest With a Cause.
ReplyDeleteYou're right in that you'd think that Athiss would be perfect for Archaeology, but I think that there's one or two things that it an do in the instance and that's it. Kind of surprisingly lame for an instance about, you know, an archaeological dig.
But still, I'd argue that Slicing is the one gathering skill that comes in handy for F2P players the most. It's the reason why I look at gold farmers for SWTOR and shake my head.
Do you think archaeologists are unloved in WoW? I have no idea what that's like these days.
DeleteAnd slicing is certainly useful, but considering that you can also get money from many other sources, it does kind of fall into a category of its own.
I suspect that a lot of farming is unloved these days in WoW, particularly when you could get better gear via running instances/raids than crafting. I know that was the case in Cataclysm and Mists, so I can't imagine that things have changed. I could see people doing some crafting/gathering for transmog or for people who PvP using low level alts, but for use in leveling or end level raiding? Yeah, not happening.
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