Public Test Realm Patch 4.0.6 Notes (Updated Jan. 14, 8:40 PM PST)

Looks like new Archaeologists will start solving earlier, at skill 50 you’ll now need to solve to gain skills (used to be 100). Also common artifacts get a boost in sell values (to npcs).

The new changes below go along with the fragment limit and UI changes
and the Survey Cooldown and BoA changes.

[bluepost]Archaeology (Source)

• Archaeology finds now grant a guaranteed skill point up to 50 skill, and then no longer grant skill gains, as opposed to granting up to 100 skill very slowly.
• The sell value of all common artifacts has been doubled, while a small subset of common artifacts have had their sell value increased far beyond that.[/bluepost]

More on Archaeology has been updated on the PTR! (Survey 3 Second CD)

The new information relates to older (below lvl 85) BoA gear which now can be used 9 level early then previously allowed. (Such as 51 instead of 60.) We also have a decrease in Survey cooldown to 3 seconds! This change will surely up the appeal of such items for many players.

The changes below go along with the Archaeology fragment limit and UI changes.

[bluepost]Archaeology (Source)

• Survey now has a 3 sec cooldown, down from 5 sec.
• Queen Azshara’s Dressing Gown now requires Level 51, down from 60.
• Headdress of the First Shaman now requires Level 61, down from 70.
• Nifflevar Bearded Axe now requires Level 71, down from 80.

[/bluepost]

With the new patches being tested on the PTR comes new Archaeology news.

It looks like we will have a limit how many Fragments are kept at a given time. Some call this a nerf but something was bound to change due to the thousands of fragments many players are accumulating as they farm away for a certain race. This could potentially allow more items (rares) to be added to current Races without Archaeologists having a massive (unfair) stock pile of fragments to simply find the new items with like the image below. This change can be debated either way but at least Devs acknowledge just how many (crazy amounts of) fragments are being Surveyed.

Along with the fragment change, the User Interface is getting some love with updates to the (default) journal summary page display along with a “Ready” icon for projects. However people using an addon (like Archy!) already have this functionality and convenience.

Full blue quote below:

[bluepost]Archaeology (Source)

• Archaeology fragments now have a hard cap of 200 per race. Players will not be able to collect additional fragments until they complete artifacts to take them down below 200 fragments. Players with more than 200 fragments will not lose additional fragments in 4.0.6, but in a future patch we may remove any fragments above 200.

User Interface

• There are now number displays on the summary page and dropdown menu.
• Ready Flash has been added to the race icons.[/bluepost]