Addons: Minimal Archaeology

Addons: Minimal Archaeology
Current Wowcraft build: 4.0.3

When I first ran into the Archaeology profession in the beta, I was very excited. You dug things up and put them together and got stuff! And there was lore! And it was fun! But when it went in on live, I realized there were a few... I might call them 'flaws' but I know they're really just design elements... that, in my opinion, seriously detract from the enjoyment.

First of all, you're going to spend the next couple of years of your life on griffons, flying between zones, just so you can go dig up three things and get back on a griffon and go to the next one. Wow. Can we say boring? At least there's old-world flying now, so you can just sit down where you need to go without fighting through loads of grey mobs.

Secondly, I will never ever do this on a character that does not have old-world flying, because I would spend all my time riding to the place, killing tons and tons of mobs just to get to one dig, then do that twice more, and then griff my little butt to an entirely different zone to do it all again. No thank you.

Thirdly, since there is no way to control or even really know what area will pop next for you, you constantly have a dilimma: do I fly next door to get that troll/fossil site that just popped up, just so I can clean it out and hopefully get a site I want to pop; or do I fly all the way across the continent for the dig site I want and hope that I didn't just spend ten minutes on a griffon for three digs?

Fourth, there is no way in-game (and there probably wouldn't be, it's not within the scope of the in-game tools to tell you things you don't know) to see a list of all available projects and compare them to the ones you've already done, to know if you should still bother digging up troll and fossil sites. Oh wait!

That's what addons are for.

Meet Minimal Archaeology (Curse | Wowi).



No, it's not Archy. I know everyone is all up in the Archy and I won't tell you to not use Archy, unless you just feel that Archy is the equivalent of the professional painter's 300-color oil paint set when all you want to do is draw a smiley face now and then.

Minimal Archaeology does two things.
1. Shows you in the main window how many fragments for each race you have (with the option of auto-including available keystones), and gives you a Solve button that lights up when ready, as displayed in the upper half of the screenshot.
2. Gives you a list of All Possible Artifacts and tells you what you have and haven't completed, as displayed in the second half of the screenshot.

There's a few more options such as 'play a sound when something is ready to be solved', but generally? Minimal Archaeology is really... minimal. And that's kinda nice.

It probably won't make me do archaeology any more often than I already don't... but I know that whenever I do get the bug to pop in a movie and watch it while flying around from zone to zone... to zone... to zone... that this handy-dandy polite little addon will be there, ready to tell me at a glance all the important stuff with no extra fluff.