Quick Facts

Storyline
Azerothian Archives To the Archives! Excavation 101 Your First Find Hands-On Experience Technoscrying 101 A Practical Test I Can See Through Time! Excavation: Riverbed Surveying the Riverbed The Body on the Banks Do Rites by Her Technoscrying: Observatory Attune to the Observer A Link to the Past A Window into the Future Nirobin and the Office Living History Lab Partners with a Squirrel A Research Thesis Worth Publishing Back to Headquarters! Finally, An Archivist! Excavation: Gaze of Neltharion Surveying the Tower Hidden in the Midden Antiquated Antics Excavation: Winglord's Perch Surveying the Cliffside The Cache in the Crag A Taste of the Past Technoscrying: Dragonskull Island The Fate of Scalecommander Abereth Without Honor The Hidden Hand Technoscrying: Igira's Watch The Tools of the Dragonkillers An Unlikely Proposal The Scale of it All Back to Headquarters! Again! Graduation Day

Screenshots

Videos

Comments

Comment by Xozus

Day one Bugged. Can do the first two ones but the third stays at 0% regardless of player actions.

Comment by nomaddd

balance on brown line and mine the book that says 0%

Comment by barneystrife

For those that are having trouble with this quest, put the totem on the dirt pile or as close as you can. Click the totem and then you will be able to click the object in the dirt pile several times until it is fully unearthed.

Comment by Celimbrimbor

I hate this quests sorry, bugged or what I dont know, it took me 30min to click randomly, stand in the water, click fire totem, man, wtf blizzard. I mean sure, eventually it randomlly gave me 30%, I have no cooking clue what I did. Then I wa suddenyl at 100%, and then gave me a new quest, screw this lol, fix it pls Blizz.

Comment by Bugsbubba

Also if you are not seeing a brown line or any indication on what's going on when you are messing with the puddles and fire totem. make sure you can see your "Encounter bar" Via Edit mode.

Mine was hidden within my hotbars for some reason and i didn't see it.

Comment by drpimento

hahaha guess what! I couldn't get any progress on the bar at all. driving me nuts. tried everthing I could think of so many times. Finally threw in the towel. The very second I hit abandon - the quest became marked completed.!

Comment by GnomeyG

Once you start the dig, a bar with water on one side and fire on the other side will appear. In the middle of the bar there is a yellow zone. In order to dig, the slider has to be within the yellow zone. If it goes above the yellow zone, towards the fire side, walk through a water puddle. If it goes below the yellow zone, towards the water side, click the totem to empower your fire elemental. When the slider is within the yellow zone, click the dirt pile to dig.

Comment by aphrokatie

For both this one and the one immediately after, I had to walk away out of range of the encounter/totem for it to phase in the way it should. So if it doesn't show up for you, do a lil circle and it should show up if you have that issue.

Comment by Aestua

Edit per a comment below: The below was done AFTER completing the goggles quest. It might matter per Setek0010's experience noted in comment below.

For those who see reference of a 'brown bar' and have NO idea what people are talking about - you probably have your Encounter Bar unchecked in Edit mode.

Click the red ? in lower right corner
Choose Edit Mode
If not already, set Advanced Options=CHECKED so the Combat options will display
Combat: Encounter Bar = CHECK THIS

After I set this, I ran around the island a bit over by the building and then came back and I saw both a progress bar over the book/dirt pile AND a 'bar' with water on the left and fire on the right with a tan section in the middle. At this point I was able to throw my totem and start making progress, digging and keeping fire and water in the 'tan' zone.

That STILL wasn't enough. Reading the quest again, it said to Step through Spontaneous Puddles. I had stepped in and out of one of them and that was NOT sufficient despite finishing the bar to 100% multiple times. You must run through ALL the puddles to get credit for this portion of the quest. Once I'd done so, I finally got quest completion. -_-

Comment by Msbubu

Doesnt even show the bar at all

Comment by smittenkittens

If the bar is not showing up and you have the encounter bar checked in edit mode (see other comments here) try swapping to warmode - it was totally busted wm off but worked just fine with wm on.

Comment by 1yayaya1

Took me awhile to figure this one out even with all the helpful comments.
As others noted, I did not have "encounter bar" on so I was totally lost. Once I made it available in edit mode, there still was not any bar showing on the quest.
I abandoned the quest, logged out fully. Took the quest again and the action bar finally showed up.
The bar will have a water icon to the left and a fire icon to the right. Place your fire totem as close to the mound of dirt as you can.
There will be a needle that slides back and forth on this action bar. If it is too close to water, click on your fire totem. If it gets to close to the fire icon, jump in a puddle
keeping the needle as close to the middle as you can going back and forth between clicking your fire totem and standing in a puddle.
While you are doing this, the percentage on the mound of dirt will start adding up. If you don't see the percentage changing, click the mound, that is the "digging" part.
Click fire totem, jump in puddle, click mound until it reaches 100% and then a book appears.

Comment by Lionleaper

So I did what all had type but didnt work for me, the thing that worked for me was to do the other quest first with the google thingies, after that the bar showed up and I could complete the quest.

Comment by Balail

For me, non of the above worked.

Encounter bar is on
Logged out / reloaded
Abandoned then re-took the quest
Did the google-quest first

For me as soon as I get back to the zone (Azerothian Archives - Sanctuary) the Fire Elemental ("Helpful Flame") appears. Even w/o having the quest in my log. It is still active and following me around in the zone after dropping the quest.

Currently I suspect this is (yet) another way this crap is bugged, as I can't "dismiss" the Fire Elemental and re-try...

In-game bug report it is....

Comment by reRoute

For people that are still stuck and nothing worked to get the encounter bar and the progress bar over the "artifact", I think this is an old bug when you are phased in a different shard than the quest.
Go to Valdrakken and turn PvP Mode On and go back and see if that helps. This is what fixed the issue for me

For people that continue to tell people to balance things or check the encounter bar or whatever, please stop and say that you do not have a fix or did not encounter that issue, you are not helping anyone, there are times when people are more bugged than you.

Hope this helps some peeps like it helped me.

Comment by Zypre

Seems like myself and several other players are now having an issue where the fire elemental will simply not do anything. You click the totem and it just... doesn't.

The other players who were trying to do the quest around me had the same problem. Wew.

Comment by Judicate

Checked settings, followed advice and got no results. I found that for me, there was a conflict with another quest being in my quest log. The Big Dig : Traitor's Rest.
After abandoning that quest, the progress bar immediately popped up & I could finish the totem clicking step of the quest chain :)

PS - when the progress bar doesn't move after controlling the heating/cooling, right-click on the buried item. That starts the actual progress to excavate it.

Comment by Wildthing1066

Very buggy, couldnt get anyting to work at first. THen I followed the advice above and completed the quest for the m,ain event in azure span. When i came back still nothing, I went in the building and checked the vendor, then when i came out the bar was there, so i started then the next part had no bar, so I went back to the vendor and when i got back to the dig it unlocked.

Comment by krakonus

If this is the introduction to "new" Archeology, then please just stop.

Comment by Shashos

This was bugged out for me, but I had already completed the event in Azure Span, so that wasn't it. UI bar just refused to appear. What did fix it was to leave the area via mount, then turn around and come back. UI bar showed and I could finish the quest.

Comment by SoliloquyChrysei

NOTE: I tried the following AFTER I finished that quest in the Azure Span!

Go to Valdrakkan and turn on Warmode (hit N to access your talent tree and turn it on bottom right), it works that way. I'm on Moon Guard and there was no one there doing it (in WM), so I told everyone standing around in WMOff to switch over.

It took me a few minutes to figure out what to do, but you need to click your little fire elemental and step on the water to balance the temp. When you find this sweet spot where it goes slow, just start digging out the item (you can click it) and you'll be done in a flash.

Good luck!

Edit: If you're going to downvote this, at least explain why. This WORKED for me, I am trying to help others complete it. Downvoting makes it less seen.

Comment by Cima

Incredibly buggy as of now.

Comment by Katya883

Didn't need to put war more on, just abandon and restart the quest.

Comment by Akaihiryuu

Broken. UI bar does not appear. Welcome to beta.

Comment by Turkodos

Did you hate archaeology before? You really will now

Comment by Kamillah

JFC... Well, that was super annoying. If this is an attempt to revive Archeology then...flop.

Comment by caroleen

Possible we need a Tutorial to explain how the hell to do this Tutorial.

Comment by DarkShade

If you don't see the % bar, quit the quest and pick it again (the NPC that follows you will give it to you).

Comment by shutupnrok

I had to drop this quest and pick it up again to see the dirt pile in the center of all the water puddles.

Comment by Kaeleane

Wow, get a new job guys, put someone in charge that makes it plain what we're doing. I abandoned this mess after the 1st trip out.

Links

Your First Find

Practice excavating on the Outdated Geology Textbook.

	Use Fire Totem to increase heat (1)
	Step through Spontaneous Puddles to lower heat (1)
	Find fully excavated (1)

Provided item:

	Archivist's Fire Totem (1)

Description

We've got a find on our hands! Looks like this might be one of my books from undergrad. Hah! Now, your job is to get all that dirt off of it, but you have to be careful. The artifacts we handle are very fragile, and the only thing worse than them staying in the ground is them breaking on the way out. Empowering your elemental will only get you halfway. You'll need to use your environment to keep things in balance so that it's safe to excavate.

Progress

Completion

Rewards

You will receive:

Gains

Upon completion of this quest you will gain:

See if you've already completed this by typing:

/run print(C_QuestLog.IsQuestFlaggedCompleted(78762))