u/Boukly

Swapping relic powers has been a consistent and valid complaint for as long as Archaeology has existed. Because of the associated cost of swapping relics (and ignoring how tedious it can be, but that deserves a post of its own), players feel inclined to either stick to one activity, swap only the necessary relics or never swap the loadout at all.

Considering that the main benefit of training Archaeology is the relic powers, this feels like a missed opportunity for the skill's primary reward space. I don't have any data beyond the trade volume of chronotes, but I wouldn't be surprised if the majority of the player base rarely swap their relics, if at all. A step in the right direction, IMO, would be to reduce current chronote cost by 80%, down from 20 per monolith power to 4 per, then halving that if you're using a loadout. At most, swapping your relics would cost 2600 (1300 with a loadout) chronotes instead of the current 13000 (10400). There's also an argument for making it completely free, I'm just not sure if it can be somehow exploited.

Archaeology being a gathering skill, that also incorporates its own artisan skill in its design, leaves chronotes as its main and really only resource to tie it to the rest of the game. So naturally, that has to be taken into consideration when requesting better Monolith management, which brings me to my next point:

The Archaeology Guild Shop serves mainly as a one time chronotes sink of 855K, after which it becomes mostly purposeless. I want to suggest a few additions that will hopefully prove popular enough to justify reducing or entirely removing the chronote cost for swapping relics.

• Fixate charge token (3000 chronotes): Instead of removing them from the game, add them to the shop.
• Restored artefact replicator (5000 chronotes): This has the potential to be very OP. It would essentially create buyable collections, meaning infinite tetracompasses and everything that the casket holds, including complete tomes or other rewards from completing collections like dungeoneering tokens. It'll have to have limited supply or disregard this one completely.
• Excavator’s Primer (2000 chronotes): A consumable, this will temporarily provide you with a 25% chance of finding an extra material while excavating at material caches.
• Archaeologist’s Conservation Manual (2000 chronotes): A consumable, this will temporarily provide you with a chance not to deplete the material cache, similar to the old resourceful aura but this will have to be more powerful.
• Antiquarian's Binder (5000 chronotes): A consumable, this will temporarily increase your chances of finding lore and mysteries items. To extend its usefulness, it could also apply to lore drops from bosses and other non-archaeology activities.
• Archaeologist's Biscuits (2000 chronotes): A consumable, this will temporarily increase your chances at finding tetracompass pieces, complete tomes, pylon batteries, torn blueprint & rex skeleton fragments and potion recipe fragments while excavating. (While on the subject, please add a setting to the archaeology tab to auto-destroy tomes for those with 200M XP.)
• Ranging Poles (3000 chronotes): A consumable, this will temporarily increase your chances of finding the ultra-rare drops from excavating, such as Balarak's sash brush pieces and Spear of Annihilation tips.

All of my suggestions focus mainly on providing utility to archaeologists because I don't find tokens an appealing way to tie Archaeology into other areas of the game but if anyone has any ideas for useful shop additions, useful to archaeologists or otherwise other types of players, or general chronotes sink, please do share them and I'll add them to the list.

I'm confident that you can balance the cost of any new additions against any extra influx of chronotes from these suggestions alongside the loss of the monolith sink to maintain a healthy equilibrium.

TL;DR: Reduce or entirely remove the chronote cost of swapping relic powers, and instead shift the sink towards the archaeology guild shop.