Mantid Artifact Sonic Locator

As of 5.4 this is no longer working.

The Mantid Artifact Sonic Locator was introduced in 5.1, provided that you are exalted with the Lorewalkers, one Restored Artifact will get you a locator, good for one day. Having this in your inventory turns all digsites in Pandaria into Mantid dig sites. This is useful for getting Mantid Sky Reaver and Sonic Pulse Generator, excellent weapons for leveling your alts. Beyond this, there is another use that may or may not be intended. By having this item in your backpack, you can reset the dig sites in Tol'vir by zoning in and out. This is huge for completing your Tol'vir artifacts. Sometimes it might take a few zone in and outs to get it to work, but it'll save you a lot of time over having to fly all over Kalimdor hoping a Tol'vir dig site will pop next. Go solve those artifacts and get your Crawling Claw and Scepter of Azj'Aqir! This is also where you can learn Recipe:Vial of the Sands, but you need to be an alchemist.

Double your alt Druid/Monk/Ret/War/Dk's leveling dps with archaeology update

I wrote about Spear of Xuen in October, you can now upgrade it. After it's upgraded it becomes ilvl 471, it can still be used by level 85 characters and retains it's BOA property.

Double your alt Druid/Monk/Ret/War/Dk's leveling dps with archaeology

If you're leveling an alt that can use polearms you should go do some archaeology first on your main. One of the new artifacts in Pandaria is the Spear of Xuen. This is already a good entry level lfr/raid weapon, but notice that it is bind on account and useable at level 85. When compared to an 85 equip like Kiril, Fury of the Beasts (lfr version in this example for ease to obtain), you see that the damage per second stat is nearly doubled. You will hit like a truck with this spear, a bit unbalanced for battlegrounds (Alterac Valley call to arms this weekend, you gain 6-11% of your Xp bar per win), so enjoy it while it lasts.

I recommend this agility weapon even for plate dps because most melee attacks do a % of weapon damage (crusader strike, mortal strike, obliterate). It really doesn't matter that agility is only good for a slight dodge and crit increase, the weapon damage upgrade over say Gurthalak, Voice of the Deeps more than justifies using it. You could use this at 90 just to get started on heroics but I would ditch it as soon as a comparable strength weapon drops.

This took me a few solves to get, it popped up right when I hit 600 skill level. It is a 180 Pandaria Archaeology Fragment rare solve, so try to focus on pandaren dig sites, most of the sites in Jade Forest yield Pandaria Archaeology Fragment.  Consider using Lorewalker's Map to reset dig sites if none are available in Jade Forest. Depending on your luck you may see it a lot earlier or later than me.