Ah yes, archaeology. Do you even remember it exists? One of the biggest rewards from the Cataclysm-introduced side profession is a troll sword transmog. It was pretty rare back then, and it seems it still is today, as one player took 14 years to get it!
The Long Dig
Zin’rokh, Destroyer of Worlds, is quite the special one. Introduced in Cataclysm’s 4.0.3 patch, the sword requires a LOT of time spent in archaeological dig sites. The problem isn’t gathering the needed 150 fragments from Troll digsites, it’s actually getting the project to show up in the first place. Archaeology randomly offers you a project to work on once the last one is completed, and Troll projects are rare to begin with. Every time you solve a Troll project, you have a chance to see the sword show up.
A Breakthrough
And so we come to TheIncredibleBulk777. It’s been a long 14 years working on those Troll digsites, as the random number generation just did not play nice. There are many reports of players getting it with wildly different numbers of solves. One player “only” needed to solve 75 Troll projects, while others needed over 500! We don’t know how many solves exactly it took TheIncredibleBulk to get this one, but it can’t have been a small number. Luckily, the process can be sped up with gold, since the fragments are purchasable on the Auction House.
The sword itself is pretty special at this point. A lot of players see the art above and fall in love, but the in-game model is a little different from the awesome concept art. It’s fairly low-resolution since it’s, well, old, but it’s still very unique-looking. Not to mention it’s actually the second iteration of the sword. The original came from Zul’Gurub back in Vanilla and was removed with the Cataclysm world revamp.
There are even players forming entire transmog sets around it!
And here’s a naive post from a decade and a half ago asking if the search is worth it. The player definitely didn’t count on it potentially taking 14 years, but yes, technically it is 100%!
A Trick That Might Speed Things Along
In case you’ve been chasing the sword yourself, or just decided to go for it now, there is a way to make things easier on yourself. Aside from just buying any fragments you come across on the Auction House, you may want to instead/also head to Pandaria. The method itself (which some of you may already be familiar with) involves using Mantid digsites and converting all Mists of Pandaria digsites into them with the 
Mantid Artifact Sonic Locator, which then lets you have plenty of 
Restored Artifacts to trade for whichever project you’re going for. You can check out our old article on the method here.
What’s been your longest farming endeavor in WoW? Would you embark on a long search for a cool sword like Zin’rokh?
