When I first started playing patch 9.1 of Shadowlands, I was a little confused on how the new currency, cataloged research, worked. With many hours in Korthia now under my belt, I figured I would write a quick guide on how to farm this odd currency. Let’s walk through how you can obtain and farm cataloged research and some WeakAuras and addons that can help.
What is Cataloged Research?
Cataloged research is a currency introduced in Shadowlands patch 9.1 associated with the Archivist’s Codex faction. It is used to upgrade conduits and catch-up gear and buy sockets. To earn it, you need to turn in relics to Archivist Roh-Suir in Korthia at 62.74, 22.56.
But, how do you find relics to turn in?
In the rest of this guide, I will walk you through each way you can acquire relics in Korthia. This includes daily treasures, daily quests, rares, All-Seeing Crystal mobs, one-time quests, weekly quests, covenant assaults, and through the Oribos vendor.
1. Daily treasures
One of the first things you will notice in Korthia is a large number of treasures to collect. These can be collected daily to receive more items to redeem for cataloged research.
Unfortunately, these treasures limit how many you can collect each day and still receive relics. Here are the daily caps for each of the treasures:
| Treasure | Daily Cap |
|---|---|
| Invasive Mawshrooms | 5 |
| Nests of Unusual Materials | 5 |
| Mawsworn Caches | 3 |
| Pile of Bones, Shardhide Stashes, Relic Chests | 5 |
| Riftbound Caches | 4 |
| Anima Vessels | 5 |
| Helsworn Chest | 1 |
If you want to track how many of each treasure you have looted today, you can use something like this Korthia checklist WeakAura. It works by showing you how many you can still collect for the day.
The best way to find these treasures is to roam around the zone, looking for the chest icon on your minimap. Once you have collected them a few times, you will notice a pattern in which they spawn.
These treasures are also a good source of Soultwining Crescent, an upgrade item for conduits. If you still have conduits that need upgrading, you should definitely check out my guide to upgrading conduits in patch 9.1.
2. Daily quests
On top of the treasures, you can also earn cataloged research from daily quests. These can be picked up in Keeper’s Respite and award about 300 research every day.
At the time of writing this, I have a quest that gives you 2 Perplexing Rune-Cube for completion. Getting that 300 research for a quest that takes about a minute is great!
3. Rare mobs
In addition to collecting relics from treasures, you can also obtain them from killing rare mobs. Rares in Korthia and Desmotaeron, the new Maw area north of the Beastwarrens, can be looted every day to get more cataloged research.
Instead of listing out the location of each of the rares, I highly recommend you download the HandyNotes and HandyNotes: Shadowlands addons. These will make your life so much easier by placing skulls on your map at rare spawn points.
And, if you hover over the skulls, it gives you detail on how to summon/find the rare. Even better, once you defeat a rare for the day, HandyNotes removes it from the map until everything resets the next day!
Rares in the Rift
As an important side note, there are several rare mobs you can defeat in the Korthian rift. This “rift” is an alternate reality in Korthia that requires you to use a Repaired Riftkey on a rift portal. You can get a Repaired Riftkey as a drop from rare mobs in Korthia or purchase them with 100 cataloged research after obtaining Tier 4 rep with Archivist’s Codex.
After getting a key, you can enter a rift portal. The location of the portals is shown in the HandyNotes addon. Once you enter the portal, you will have 15 minutes to explore Korthia and the Maw before it wears off.
Some rares in the rift will require you to “pull them out.” This means that you can click on them to take them back to the non-rift Korthia. If you do this, you will also leave the rift and the remaining time on your riftkey.
As an alternative to using a Repaired Riftkey, you can obtain an item called Collapsing Riftstone. This will allow you and a party or raid group to enter the rift.
The best source of Collapsing Riftstone is Zovaal’s Vault. This large chest is found in the rift that can be dragged behind your character and opened after reaching the bridge between the Beastwarrens and Ve’nari’s Refuge (44.7, 51.5). You can do this daily, but it does require a Repaired Riftkey to obtain in the first place.
4. All-Seeing Crystal mobs
Once you reach rank 2 with the Archivist’s Codex faction, you can purchase a Research Report: All-Seeing Crystal from Archivist Roh-Suir. This will allow you to “see” mobs carrying relics. You can kill 15 of these mobs every day to net yourself more relics.
I have to be honest; I purchased this at rank 2 and then forgot about it. The animation that indicates that a mob will drop relics is very subtle.
To help you out, I found an example of what the mobs look like and recorded this 5-second video clip:
From my experience, it is primarily humanoids that carry the relics around. So, if you are serious about farming research, make sure to defeat all 15 mobs each day. The number you have killed is also tracked in the Korthia checklist WeakAura I mentioned earlier.
5. One-time quests
Another last way you can obtain cataloged research is through single turn-in quests. These are quests to return large artifacts to Archivist Roh-Suir. There are a total of 20 of these quests, and each one rewards 250 cataloged research.
The number of items you can collect is based on your Tier reputation with Archivist’s Codex. When you reach the next tier, you can collect more artifacts.
Where you get the artifact quests from also changes based on your tier. For the first tier, you can simply collect the artifacts from the location. At tier 2, you need to purchase keys from Archivist Roh-Suir to open chests. For the 3rd tier, you will need a Teleporter Repair Kit to enter one of the two chambers in Korthia.
At tier 4, you will find the artifact quests in the rift. And finally, tier 5 requires you to complete several puzzles after purchasing Research Report: Ancient Shrines from Archivist Roh-Suir.
You can find a detailed guide to each of the quests on Wowhead. For now, here is a summary of each artifact, tier requirement, waypoint, and other requirements. Sorry if the table looks a little funky on mobile, I am working on a better solution…
| Artifact | Tier | Way | Other |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Mad Witch | 1 | 30.2, 54.9 | |
| Celestial Shadowlands Chart | 1 | 45.3, 56.0 | |
| Damaged Talisman | 1 | 40.5, 41.3 | |
| Pouch of Rune Chits | 1 | Pile of Bones | |
| Singing Steel Ingot | 1 | 61.9, 56.8 | |
| Guise of the Changeling | 2 | 41.2, 43.2 | Korthite Crystal Key |
| Gorak Claw Fetish | 2 | 43.3, 57.7 | Key of Many Thoughts |
| The Netherstar | 2 | 33.0, 41.9 | Key of Flowing Waters |
| Ring of Self-Reflection | 2 | 43.7, 77.0 | Key of the Inner Chambers |
| Drum of the Death Loa | 3 | 39.4, 52.4 | Teleporter Repair Kit |
| Everliving Statuette | 3 | 39.4, 52.4 | Teleporter Repair Kit |
| Obelisk of Dark Tidings | 3 | 45.0, 35.6 | Teleporter Repair Kit |
| Sack of Strange Soil | 3 | 45.0, 35.6 | Teleporter Repair Kit |
| Cipher of Understanding | 4 | 28.9, 54.0 | Repaired Riftkey |
| Enigmatic Decrypting Device | 4 | 51.8, 52.5 | Repaired Riftkey |
| The Tormented Sorcerer | 4 | 60.8, 34.8 | Repaired Riftkey |
| Unstable Explosive Orb | 4 | 51.3, 20.3 | Repaired Riftkey |
| Bulwark of Divine Intent | 5 | 18.5, 38.0 | Research Report: Ancient Shrines |
| Lang Family Wood-Carving | 5 | 24.4, 56.5 | Research Report: Ancient Shrines |
| Shadow Slicing Shortsword | 5 | 39.4, 42.5 | Research Report: Ancient Shrines |
6. Weekly Quest
Patch 9.1.5 introduced a new weekly quest that awards 1,000 catalogued research for players who have reached tier 4 with the Archivists’ Codex. It is called Lost Research and requires you to enter into a rift portal to collect 25 Korthian Repository.
My best advice for finishing the quest quickly is to focus on looting the 4 caches and killing rares. If you kill non-rares, you will find that the drop rate is extremely low and you might not finish within the 15 minute limit of your rift key. You can always form a group if you can’t kill the rares alone because they will almost always drop the quest item.
7. Covenant Assaults
You can also get cataloged research from completing the bi-weekly covenant assaults in the Maw. These require you to complete 4 quests and a short scenario quest at the end.
The first of these assaults starts on Tuesday and ends Thursday night on NA servers. You can then work on the 2nd assault from Thursday to Tuesday. Upon finishing my 2nd covenant assault this week I received 300 cataloged research!
So make sure you are completing both assaults each week if you are trying to farm more research.
8. Oribos Vendor
If you are not into farming rares and treasure chests, and only want cataloged research, you can also purchase it from a vendor named Ko’tul in Oribos. You can find Ko’tul standing next to the guild bank near the Great Vault at 63.8, 36.0.
Ko’tul sells 500 cataloged research in the form of a Bundle of Archived Research in exchange for a single Attendant’s Token of Merit. These tokens are obtained through your weekly vault selection. Instead of choosing a piece of gear, you can select 3 Attendant’s Token of Merit each week.
As an important note, obtaining research through the vendor doesn’t give you rep with the Archivist’s Codex at the time of writing. Hopefully, that changes through a hotfix or in the next patch!
Final Thoughts
If you are looking to farm cataloged research, the best thing to do is focus on collecting treasures, killing rares, and completing quests every day. It is a pretty slow currency to obtain but fortunately had the cap removed in a recent hotfix so you can stockpile it. I hope this was helpful!
Thanks for reading!
Great stuff! Appreciate the work, returning player here and was doing some last minuet catch up as I quit in S1/SL so very helpful thanks! Hope to see you continue the guides in DragonFlight!
Great article! You can also buy them at the vendor by the vault in Oribos with the currency that’s available the alternative choice in the vault.
Thanks, and thank you for that tip. I will update the article for future readers!