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Comment by error10

You get Fossil Archaeology Fragments from any Fossil dig site out in the world.

Comment by 907041

the profession quests that grant skill points ARE repeatable, but would only grant skill points like once a week or so...

yep "5 skill points per faire week" according to the section titled "so you want to be in show-business" section on this Blizz site:

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/3390849

edit:grammar/clarity

Comment by savagekrosa

This quest is very easy now - all archaeology fragments amount is buffed. A single dig can yield 5-9 fragments (up from 3-6), so even in worst case one digsite gives you a guarantted 15 fragments, which is exactly the amount you need for the quest.

EDIT: Why downvote ? Before they introduced DF, the chance for fragments was smaller, so if they didn't buff archaeology, it would actually need to take 2 digsites sometimes...

Comment by 639420

Requires 75 Archaeology to obtain.

Comment by WoWTheoryCraft

One of the new patch 4.3 Darkmoon Faire profession quests, you must have at least 75 skill in Archaeology to see this quest.

Requires 15 Fossil Archaeology Fragments so remember to collect some before visiting the faire.

The profession quests can only be completed once during each Darkmoon Faire and will grant 5 skill points.

Quick summary of item requirements for Darkmoon Faire profession quests

Additional items required:

Alchemy ( 5 Moonberry Juice )
Inscription ( 5 Light Parchment )
Leatherworking ( 10 Shiny Bauble, 5 Coarse Thread, 5 Blue Dye )
Tailoring ( 1 Coarse Thread, 1 Red Dye, 1 Blue Dye )
Archaeology ( 15 Fossil Archaeology Fragments )
Cooking ( 5 Simple Flour )

No item requirements:

Blacksmithing
Enchanting
Engineering
Herbalism
Jewelcrafting
Mining
Skinning
First Aid
Fishing

The nearest vendors to the Darkmoon Faire portals are Kuruk (H), Innkeeper Farley (A) for the Moonberry Juice and Shadi Mistrunner (H), Tharynn Bouden (A) for all the other trade goods. You'll have to collect the fossil fragments yourself. If you forgot to bring your fishing rod with you, Tatia Brine on Darkmoon Island sells fishing supplies.

Comment by coreycubed

If you're like me and leveled your Archaeology to 75 to do this quest, do yourself a favor and remember to train Journeyman Archaeology before you turn it in so you can actually get the five skill points!

Comment by 48985

I'm maxed in archaeology, have tons of fragments, took the quest and now can't turn it in. I've abandoned it twice. The last time I went and got 20 new fragments. Still no dice. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!

Comment by 315828

You must have 15 FOSSIL fragments. Just open up your archaeology tab to see how many you have/need.

Comment by 682691

And if you have all 5 rare fossil artifacts on behalf of Blizzard I would like to congratulate you with a jolly HAVE FUN COMPLETING THIS QUEST! since you won't be seeing another fossil digsite for a long time.

Comment by november

As with all the Darkmoon Faire profession quests, you need a skill of 75 in that profession to be eligible for the quest.

Comment by Travy

Oddly today when turning in rogues decks, the darkmoon fortune teller offered me this quest before the fair was even up.

Comment by DeadMAX

I find this quest impossible to finish, because of 2 things i think.

1. I've got full archeologi AND i have all rare fossils found.
2. Because of number 1 i have no fossil sites.

I've been trying to find fossil digs sites for like 2-3 months and without success. Anyone has this "problem" as i do? 3 tokens would come handy.

Comment by Anuba

The "doh" factor: So you've completed your fossil fragment quest and return to the faire to turn it in, only to find that it's not complete anymore.... Next time, don't solve it before turning it in!

Comment by Martika

DMF for this month started and this quest is not being made available to me. Maxed arch, even have the fossil frags ready to turn in - but nothin'! Definitely didn't do it already, 'cuz as I said DMF for the month JUST began.

Comment by 202991

In terms of skill up value, this is cheap, about half of making a typical common for the same 5 skill-ups, and ...
When commons no longer skill you up, this will still skill you up.
It is always 15 fossil fragments, so it is convenient to keep 15 fossil fragments unused and available when Darkmoon Faire gets near, ready to turn in.

Comment by Aquifel

With the added digsites from the 5.04 patch, this quest has become tremendously more difficult :/, with the heavy favoring of non-fossil digsites.

Comment by lavadrop

WTH...
Thaddeus Paleo just appeared next to the Inscription trainer in Darnassus offering this quest and vanished before I could accept the quest.

Comment by QuickBASIC

Now possible to complete this quite easily if you don't have any fossil digsites. You can farm two or three Restored Artifact with Pandaren and Mogu achaeology and trade them in at Brann Bronzebeard for Crate of Fossil Archaeology Fragments.

Comment by Tikitak

With 160 skill, I found these in Un'Goro Crater 32, 77. Use Survey skill

Comment by Korwynd

I'm noticing that this NPC is no longer offering this quest.

Comment by clerkboy

He still does offer this quest to some of my toons but not all. I don't know if its a bug or blizz has changed the minimum skill lvl from 75 to something higher to qualify for his quest. Haven't figured it out yet.-----Okay update on quest. I put in a ticket and the reply from the GM was that there had been other reports on the same problem and that he was turning it over to the Q and A dept. They in turn would look at the problem and turn it over to the tech people who fix the bugs. Probably won't be changed until the next patch or hotfix comes out. Sooo. there it is. Hopes this helps.

Comment by Reddervish

still bugged - not offered - for me.

None of my 11 alts were able to get this quest last month (after 6.2) and as of my first toon into DMF this month, still not getting the quest. I have all diff levels, factions, races, etc.. tried everything, nothing works. no pattern that I can see. Submitted a bug report last month.

Comment by rubyrabble

This quest is showing up as a completed weekly for me as of Tuesday. Although, Darkmoon Faire was three weeks ago (where the quest was also not offered to me). Darkmoon Faire starts this weekend. A bit puzzling.

Comment by ToriaURU

I get the quest on some characters and not on others. What's odd is it doesn't seem to matter how many fragments I have on certain characters, they just don't see the quest. Others have more than the required number of fossil fragments and see the quest. But a few others that also have more than the required number of fragments *DON'T* see the quest. Also I have a couple that have less than the number of fragments required and they see the quest. No rhyme or reason it seems. Odd, indeed. Filled out a ticket. (P.S.) Yes I have about 15 toons that do archaelogy :P

Comment by Reddervish

I had a chat with support about not being offered this quest. They said:

this is a pretty well-known issue at the moment. Right now we're compiling reports, and I can submit another report up about this as well. And QA is definitely aware of the issue, it's just a matter of when they're able to get to it, priority-wise

Comment by draconicman

This quest is currently bugged and doesn't reset each month.

Source: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/18710646630#3

Comment by Mondoblasto

After the patch last month that was supposed to fix it at that time, it didn't work then, but is now working for this month. ~~Guess we'll see if it holds and resets properly next month.~~ Thankfully the fix held and now the quest is resetting once more.

Comment by Alfa

I saw this quest on the docks during the battle of Strands of the Ancients..

Comment by sadistic12345

they could atleast make you find those fragments on that island

Comment by cremor

The 5 skill points in Archaeology reward works fine even if you already learned BfA Archaeology. So this is the only remaining Darkmoon Faire profession quest that is useful for BfA profession levels.

Comment by Nadiv

Updated/fixed macros that shows if character completed profession quests (macro prints all professions names. Red color means that quest is completed):

Primary professions:
/run a=29506 c="\124cff" d={a,'Alch',a+2,'BS',a+4,'Ench',a+5,'Eng',a+8,'Herb',a+9,'Insc',a+10,'JC',a+12,'Min',a+11,'LW',a+13,'Skin',a+14,'Tailo'} for i=1,22,2 do print(C_QuestLog.IsQuestFlaggedCompleted(d) and c.."ff0000" or c.."00ff00", d) end

Secondary professions:
/run local d={29507,'Archaeology',29509,'Cooking',29513,'Fishing'} for i=1,6,2 do print(C_QuestLog.IsQuestFlaggedCompleted(d) and "\124cffff0000" or "\124cff00ff00", d) end

Quick macro - shows if ANY profession quest (primary of secondary) was completed (can be used to see if your current toon visited DMF island this event). Result is "Completed" or "Not Compelted":
/run a=29506;d={a,a+2,a+4,a+5,a+8,a+9,a+10,a+12,a+11,a+13,a+14,a+1,a+3,a+7};r=nil for i=1,14,1 do r = r or C_QuestLog.IsQuestFlaggedCompleted(d) end print(r and "\124cffff0000 " or "\124cff00ff00Not ", "Completed")

Comment by sallypantsiscool

I received this quest from Professor Thaddeus Paleo who can be found in a tent next to the sandbox by the big roller coaster in Darkmoon Faire.

Other users have said you need to be at least Archaeology to 75 to do this quest, so if you cannot get this quest and are below 75, that could be why. It is also recommended to train Journeyman Archaeology before you turn it to get the 5 skill points from the reward.

To complete this quest, you must have 15 fossils from archaeology digs to donate to Professor Thaddeus Paleo. These can't be just any fossil pieces, they must be the pieces literally called "fossil," not pieces called Ogre, Night Elf, Dwarf, etc. When looking at your archaeology skill modal, my fossils were on the second page.

I was able to obtain these fossils by digging in the Quagmire Fossil Field in Dustwallow Marsh, not too far from Darkmoon Faire. I assume that dig sites listed as fossil sites, such as Dunemaul Fossil Ridge or Abyssal Sands Fossil Ridge will also yield the fossils needed for this quest. I acquired 20 fossils in 3 digs and just completed that site since I was there. Make sure you have 15 unused fossils as you will need them to turn in to complete this quest.

Important: When you turn in the quest, you are "donating" these fossils, so they will be removed from your archaeology "inventory" and no longer available for you to use. If you use them all to complete an artifact, you cannot complete this quest. You must have 15 fossil pieces available and unused.

Comment by Siomir

Horde: Un'Goro Crater has fossils that will work for this quest. Not a long trip from Mulgore.

Comment by stoneweather

they really, really need to make this quest so that you dig for quest fragments on the island, or switch it to 15 of ANY type of fragment... if your arch isn't high enough and you can't trade in Restored Artifacts for fragments of your choice, you might be digging for quite a long time just to get a fossil bank to spawn.... to that end you'll gain a lot of arch points in the process, but if you're bouncing from alt to alt and just want to get the quest done this really slows things to a crawl sometimes. e.g. on one character, at the point of picking up the quest, went from 242 to 329, because no fossil sites were spawning >.<.

Comment by Chiusure

BfA-2020
I traded "Restored Artifact" into "Crate of Fossil Achaeology Fragments".
(before that I tried it on different excavation sites - without getting fossil fragments D: )

Comment by biscitz

i got these from Terror run Fossil Field, Un'Goro Crater. (from silithus port / magni its fast)
they wont show up in your bag but they will show on quest log.
only takes 3 digs
i have zero skill in archeology and had no clue, but wanted the REP for darkmoon.

Comment by Taraezor

The problem for Horde is that the Eastern Kingdoms is the best place for Fossils. That said, I've listed the ones I have found on Kalimdor.

Thankfully they are located to the south so a nice quick portal from Orgrimmar to Ramkahen will get you into the action soon enough.

During Darkmoon Faire times, you can get a quick portal to Mulgore from Orgrimmar and then its just a short flight due west to Desolace.

Sites I can guarantee are Fossil dig sites on Kalimdor:

* Kodo Graveyard in Desolace
* The Valley of Bones in Desolace
* Quagmire of Dustwallow Marsh
* Wyrmbog of Dustwallow Marsh
* Abyssal Sands of Tanaris
* Southmoon Ruins of Tanaris
* Lakkari Tar Pits in Un'Goro Crater
* Marshlands in Un'Goro Crater
* Screaming Reaches in Un'Goro Crater
* Terror Run in Un'Goro Crater

Sadly, you'll need to grind out all the others in order to force one of these to spawn. One should do you with more than enough Fossils for the hand in.

Comment by Lumifox

I have 34 Archeology and this quest is available to me.
Screenshot: https://i.imgur.com/qDs7qbZ.jpg

Comment by wyckd

HOW TO COMPLETE THIS QUEST:

1. Open world map and enable "Show Digsites."
2. Mouseover all the shovel icons and look for digsites named "Fossil Field" or "Fossil Bank" and maybe "Excavation Site". There may be others but it will have "Fossil" in the name.
3. Go to the zone and survey the digsites for Fossil Archaeology Fragment.

ALTERNATE METHOD:

1. Open your archaeology book and see which ones you can "solve" now.
2. Solve it and you may get a Restored Artifact.
3. Take the Restored Artifact to Legion Dalaran's Archaeology NPC and trade it for Crate of Fossil Archaeology Fragments.
4. Open the crate for a random number of Fossil Archaeology Fragment.
5. Repeat until quest is ready for turn-in.

A BUGGED METHOD. MAY NOT WORK. IT HAS WORKED FOR ME ONE TIME; NOT A SECOND TIME; THERE WAS NO THIRD TIME.

1. Trade a Restored Artifact to Legion Dalaran's Archaeology NPC for any of the Create of Archaeology Fragments.
2. This trade will immediately complete the quest.

Comment by capwhanda1

Any level archeology can do this ! Go to Tanaris and dig at the fossil site - works just fine. My level of archeology is only 16 .

Comment by solitha

You only need to have learned Archaeology to pick up this quest now. However, to complete it, you must have 15 Fossil fragments.

There are two ways to acquire these.

One is to check digsites on Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms. Look at your map of the continent and you'll see four little shovel icons. If you mouse over them, they'll show the name - particularly, you're looking for fossil fields. If you have no fossil fields, go do other sites - once you complete a site, a new one will spawn somewhere on the continent (and if you're lucky, it's fossils).

If you're on a high-level character, and are near or above 600 Archaeology, you can instead to go to Mists of Pandaria or any later content. Completing artifacts in those expansions will give you either an artifact you can crate, or a "pristine" artifact. Crated artifacts are currency you may trade in for fragments of any type (including fossil, at 5-9 fragments per box). Pristine artifacts give you a quest to return them for display, and reward you with 3 crated artifacts and a keystone relevant to whatever type of pristine artifact you turned in.

Here is the item you're trading for, and who "sells" them. You can only trade in crated artifacts at 600+ skill, but as I said before, any content MoP or later will allow you to crate artifacts for later trade.

Of note: in Draenor you must have a level 3 garrison to have a place to turn in pristine artifacts.

My own choice lately, with max-level characters, is Legion. All the digsites are in a single zone; you sometimes get a spawn that drops even more fragments; the display area for pristine artifacts is already there (unlike with a lvl 1 or 2 garrison). You can do the quest if you like. One of those quests rewards a mount.

Comment by Hollye

HOW TO DO THIS AS OF 2023:

1. You can pick this quest up at the Darkmoon Faire, if you have Archaeology, regardless of skill.
If you want the quest, go learn it first from a trainer.

2. You require your Darkmoon Adventurer's Guide to be in your inventory.
To check, go to your primary bag slot's search bar and type in "Darkmoon Adventurer's".
If it's not there, check your bank, and search the bank's search bar the same way.

3. If you do NOT have the Darkmoon Adventurer's Guide, go to
Selina Dourman in the Darkmoon Faire (who is only attainable to visit during this time).
Darkmoon Faire coords: 55,54 (the first tent on the left when you get to the fairgrounds)
Ask her for a replacement copy (there is no charge).

4. Open your world map, and search for shovel icons on the continent.
According to WoWHead, the best digsites are Tanaris and Un'goro Crater

5. Hit P on your keyboard to bring up your professions, by selecting the "Professions" tab at the bottom.
Find the Survey . Add to an action bar to make it easier.

6. Fly to one of the zones such as Un'goro or Tanaris on Kalimdor side when you see the shovel icon.
Go to the area where you see the shovel.
In your mini-map, you should see it turn transparent-red indicating you are within a dig site.

7. Click the Survey shovel.
Note the direction that your surveyor scope is pointing.
Follow that direction to continue digging.
If red, your target area is far away.
If yellow, your target area is closer, but maybe several yards away.
If green, you are within yards.
Once you are within green, and walking in the direction of the surveyor scope and you see a bright glowing ball, dig.

8. Once you dig in an area where an orb-like glowing unit is, the fragments appear near you to click on.
Click the cogwheel when you hover over the fragments to collect them.

For this quest, fragments such as Night Elf or Troll Fragments DO NOT count.
They must be specifically FOSSIL fragments.

Comment by LIONESS9000

If you're offered this archaeology quest you should see a shovel/dig site icon on your map (for example, Eastern Kingdoms - Blasted Lands or Kalimdor - Desolace were both showing for me today).

Go to the Mage Tower in Stormwind and talk to one of the NPCs half way up the tower to be teleported to the Dark Portal.

Once there, fly a short way to the "FOSSIL" dig site at Dreadmaul Post. You'll get all 15 fragments there. If you dig up any other kind of fragments, ie dwarven/draenei/troll etc, they will not be accepted - you must have FOSSIL fragments.

Comment by greencatspryte

Important to note as MotherofDanbo says, go to a fossil site, only fossil fragments will fulfil the quest.

Links

Fun for the Little Ones

Bring 15 Fossil Fragments collected with Archaeology to Professor Thaddeus Paleo at the Darkmoon Faire.

	Collect: Fossil Archaeology Fragment (15)

Description

Children are always full of questions about what an archaeologist does and how it works, so I prepared a demonstration for them.

I take artifacts and fossils and bury them in the sandbox beside the tent. The children get to dig and make their own discoveries, learn how bones fit together, and see how archaeology can teach them about history.

If you have any spare fossils, would you consider donating them to my side project?

Progress

Completion

Rewards

You will receive:

	Darkmoon Game Token		Darkmoon Prize Ticket

Gains

Upon completion of this quest you will gain:

250 reputation with Darkmoon Faire
3 skill points in Archaeology

See if you've already completed this by typing:

/run print(C_QuestLog.IsQuestFlaggedCompleted(29507))

Guides

Darkmoon Faire Made Easy Darkmoon Island, Let the Adventure Begin!!! Guide to Professions at the Darkmoon Faire Wowhead's Darkmoon Faire Guide