the esteemed shaman, Kuanchichi

The achieves for Archeology in the Mists of Pandaria expansion aren't really nearly as interesting as they were for, well, everything else in the game.  Basically they consist of: collect 5, then 20, of everything in Pandaria.

But there are two other collect achieves as well:  The Seat of Knowledge, and (added with a patch 5.2) History of the Mantid.  They involve collecting pristine artifacts, and are conceptual follow ons to the achieve It Belongs in a Museum...

A Pristine Artifact - which is Pandaria only - regardless of what it is, is a quest item, and always pops the same quest text:

This artifact has been restored to a remarkably excellent condition.  Perhaps you will put it on display at the Seat of Knowledge, so that lorewalkers and archaeologists can study it.

This is awesome!  When looking at the archaeology pane, there are all these items, and little descriptions, and you're left wondering, what does that actually look like?   Well, with a pristine, you find out, because despite the mild "perhaps" in there, the quest objective is very emphatic and there's no perhaps about it:  PUT THE ARTIFACT ON DISPLAY.  To complete the quest, you must CLEAR THE CLUTTER AND PUT THE ARTIFACT ON DISPLAY.  Seems that they don't want any dithering from people taking the word "perhaps" too literally.

Kuan has yet to get the achieves for all the Pristine items, but he has quite a few of them on display.  This screenshot captures the quest, to the right is a Pandaren game board that's on display, and below is Clara teasing me in guild chat about working on Archaeology, which for some unfathomable reason she thinks is more boring than Pet Battles.

Once an item is on display, you get to see what it actually looks like, and also it shows the same text you'd get in a mouseover in the Archaeology profession pane, with an added attribution:  donated by the esteemed shaman, Kuanchichi!  Here's Kuan (in his PVP gear, btw) looking at Edicts of the Thunder King.  To his right is clutter, and right of that is the Twin Stein set.

I love it!  the esteemed shaman, Kuanchichi.  I love it so much...!

Vile of the Sands

Kalimdor Archaeology. it is so dead boring. and yet that is what Kuan is stuck doing, waiting for queues to pop for arena, battlegrounds, waiting for raids to form and parties to be ready. becuase Kuan is an Alchemist, and he needs Vile of the Sands.

did I mention how boring it was yet? one can't get all the spiffy Archaeology achieves, those mostly require going across all the continents. but the goal is to get as many Tol'vir Dig sites as one can get. and those are only in Kalimdor.

Kuan's gotten 3 Canopic Jars so far, but no recipe, only mummified guts. on the other hand, he picked up [Ring of the Boy Emperor] early on, and now, a scepter which I really thought was going to be some BoA wand.

but nooOOooo:


And here I thought having a Red one was cool.

Fossilized Raptor

While waiting for a battleground or arena queue to pop up I generally do some archaeology.

Kuan and Mornara have regularly been doing PvP on Saturday night, which means that my archaeology is maxed out and I'm starting to get some fun stuff. This past weekend, while waiting for arenas I ended up completing the Fossilized Raptor



It doesn't look like the smoothest ride, but sometimes you have to sacrifice the comfort of your posterior for looking cool.