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Ultimate Power Barrows Guide - Strategy Issues in Efficient Barrowing Ultimate Power Barrows Guide - Special Combat Techniques

Another of the many areas where Barrowers frequently disagree is what is the best equipment to use for fighting the brothers, and for doing the minigame in general. Naturally, in devising my optimized methods I did a lot of tests with different types of equipment and supplies, before deciding on what I felt worked best.

My one, five and nine run Barrows techniques use many of the same items, so rather than repeating my explanations of why I chose particular items on those pages, I decided I would explain my reasoning here. This way you can read up on my research, or skip it and just read my equipment lists without clutter.

My techniques generally use melee for fighting Ahrim and Karil, and sometimes Verac. Melee is also typically used for getting kill count from the lesser monsters in the tunnels.

The usual, default weapon of choice for meleeing at The Barrows is the abyssal whip. It is the “old standby” for experienced players, combining good accuracy and high speed, and it’s also reasonably inexpensive. To get the most from it, the whip should be used in combination with a rune defender; I have tested the whip at The Barrows without a defender and it is noticeably slower. The whip’s main drawback is that it does poorly against monsters with high defence, and its special attack is pretty much useless.

An alternative to the abyssal whip is the new godsword. Having tested the godsword against the whip at The Barrows, I can state with great confidence that the godsword is better, period. In particular, it works better against Verac, and it will frequently two-hit monsters in the tunnels that take much longer to kill with the whip.

Of the four godsword types, the Saradomin version is by far the most useful at the Barrows; not only can it heal you, it can save you many prayer pot doses, as I describe in the section on the Saradomin godsword “spec and pray” technique”. In fact, it is so useful that I have described special variations of my five and nine run methods that make use of it. If you don’t have the rare and expensive Saradomin variant, other godsword types are also useful, though I advise against using their special attacks (save it for your DDS). As an added bonus, the godsword’s +8 Prayer bonus will make prayer last longer when it is in use.

The only real drawback with the godsword is all the people asking you questions about it while you are trying to fight. J There is one other minor hassle in some cases, though, if you also use the dragonfire shield. You will want to maximize your inventory space by equipping the shield and taking all the food you can carry. However, when you want to wield the godsword, you won’t have room to unequip your Slayer staff and shield. To deal with this, just temporarily drop something like a piece of food, switch to the godsword, and then pick it up when done. (You may also have to do this on your second run if your inventory is again full from chest rewards obtained on the first run.)

The last of the three primary weapons used in my various methods is Verac’s flail, which is used only in combination with his armor pieces to enable his set effect. See the next subsection for more.

In addition to your primary weapon, you may also use one or more secondary weapons, usually a Guthans warspear and DDS, depending on the method chosen.

It is no small irony that two different sets of armor/weapons from The Barrows are close to being “must haves” when it comes to doing The Barrows. I recommend using one or the other in all of my techniques, and in fact, at one time I used both.

The random special effect of the Guthans set allows you to heal hitpoints on a point-for-point basis with the damage done. The value of this should be rather obvious, especially when doing many runs on a single trip—you can restore points lost to damage despite having little food. The Guthans armor items also provide excellent melee and ranged defence.

My methods that use Guthans involve wearing the three armor pieces all the time, even when maging (a method called “Tank Maging”.) The Guthans warspear is kept in my inventory and brought out, only when necessary, to heal using monsters in the tunnels. (I will try to combine this healing with getting kill count so I don’t waste time “just” healing.) Note that the warspear is much slower to kill monsters than either a whip or godsword, so it should only be used as a secondary weapon.

The Veracs set is useful for two main reasons: its set effect that lets it hit through armor, and the very nice prayer bonuses provided by each of its pieces. The drawback of Veracs is that the flail is slower, overall, than a whip or godsword, and the armor doesn’t provide as good defence as Guthans. Of course, you also can’t use it to heal.

I consider the use of Veracs to be an alternative option, mainly for those who don’t have Guthans or don’t want to risk bringing it to the Barrows. It is also effective when doing only one run per trip. For larger numbers of runs, Guthans will make life a lot easier. As mentioned in my discussion of rejected methods, resist the urge to try to use Veracs on Dharok, Guthan and Torag; it will be slow, and the lower defence of the Veracs set will result in you taking a fair bit of damage.

Finally, in my five run Saradomin godsword method, I actually use pieces from both the Guthans and Veracs sets.

Maging is the best way to go for fighting the melee brothers. You will have to decide which spell to use; there are a couple of common choices and a few lesser-used options.

The spell most often used at The Barrows is Magic Dart (commonly called Slayer Dart), as seen in Figure 426. The first reason why is that with a high Magic skill level it can hit as high as 18 or 19, which is almost as good as the best normal attack spell, Blood Wave. Second, it is cheaper than the wave spells, because it uses death runes instead of bloods. Finally, since the death and mind runes it uses are two of the rewards from the Barrows chest; this means that when you get to the chest, there are two fewer possible rewards you have to make room for in your inventory.

The main drawback of Magic Dart is that you must have reached level 55 Slayer to use the required Slayer Staff. This shouldn’t be a problem for most high level players, though.

The usual alternative to Magic Dart is using Fire Bolt with the chaos gauntlets that you can get as a reward from the Family Crest quest. When the gauntlets are worn, the maximum damage from Fire Bolt is 15, which is pretty good given that it uses only chaoses as its “main rune”—almost as good as Wind Wave, in fact.

The main benefit of this method is that each cast is cheaper so you save money; you also don’t need 55 Slayer. The drawbacks, though, are numerous: it is slower than Magic Dart, so you will take more time and also take more damage or use more prayer potions. You will have to waste an inventory slot on either fire or air runes (using a staff for the other), and you can’t wear good melee gloves if you are wearing gauntlets.

Other alternatives include any of the blast (death) or wave (blood) spells. These will work, but all require extra inventory slots, and none is as cost effective as Slayer Dart or Fire Bolt (with gauntlets).

As I mentioned under my list of rejected methods, I strongly advise against using Ancient Magicks at The Barrows. It is extremely expensive and you don’t get particularly good XP from it compared to using the multi-target spells.

The new dragonfire shield (DFS) is an incredibly popular piece of equipment because it is so versatile. It confers superb defence bonuses when it is fully (or mostly) charged, which helps cut down the damage you take when tank maging Torag and Guthan without prayer. But what makes it even more interesting to Barrowers is its ability to periodically discharge a firebreath attack. In my tests with the DFS, I found using its special attack was extremely helpful in completing Barrows runs.

What’s particularly nifty about the DFS’s attack is that the game seems to treat it as an “extra” attack on top of your normal ones. For example if you are using Magic Dart and activate the shield, you can see the fireball from the DFS come out in between Magic Dart spell castings. This makes it effectively a free hit on your opponent. It’s also extremely accurate, hitting from 15 to 25 points about 90% of the time in my tests. Since the Barrows brothers only have 100 hitpoints, this can greatly cut down on how much it takes to kill one (Figure 427).

The best use of the DFS is when fighting either Dharok or Verac. If you are fighting Verac in his crypt, use it on him to make sure he dies as fast as possible. If you save Verac for the tunnels, use the DFS special on Dharok instead—this will virtually guarantee that you can finish him off with just one prayer pot dose, usually with enough points left over to do Karil, for example. You can also use the DFS on your tunnel brother if you find you need it. (Note that you can only discharge the shield once every two minutes, so you can’t readily use it on both Dharok and Verac; it would also require very frequent recharging if you tried this.)

There are some drawbacks to taking the DFS, of course. First, it is expensive; if you die, you will keep the shield but lose something else that you might have kept. Second, it is heavy (7 kg) which costs you run energy. Third, while the DFS provides a nice bonus to defence when maging the melee brothers, it has a -10 magic attack penalty which means an occasional extra miss with your spells. Finally, it takes up an extra inventory slot—if using a whip you could replace your defender with the shield, but the defender provides much better attack bonuses.

I recommend recharging your shield as soon as it has fewer than about 25 or so charges; here’s a quick tip for doing it quickly. Bank after a trip, make sure your prayer is full, and take out from the bank a gaming necklace, antifire potion and home teleport runes. Use the necklace to go to Barbarian Output and run south to the Ancient cavern, where the mithril dragon lair is. Jump into the whirlpool, and once in the cavern turn off auto-retaliate, take a drink of antifire, put on Protection from Magic and enter the cavern. A brutal green dragon will attack you with mage (as long as you stay out of melee range) and recharge your shield in a minute or two (Figure 428).

Potions are essential for doing The Barrows quickly and efficiently. They allow you to kill the brothers faster, heal damage, restore prayer and much more.

Here are the potions I generally use at The Barrows and why:

• Saradomin Brews: These useful elixirs raise hitpoints and defence while lowering attack skills. They are essential for healing in multi-run trips because they pack up to 64 points of healing in a single inventory slot. Even better, they can allow your hitpoint total to go above its current maximum, delaying when you need to eat after taking damage.
  
  
• Super Restores: These versatile potions restore lowered skill levels as well as prayer points. I always use them in combination with Sara brews to undo the negative effects of those potions while giving prayer points for combat. They also undo the effects of Karil’s agility-lowering attack.
  
  
• Prayer Potions: Used when you need prayer points but a super restore is not needed.
  
  
• Super Attack Potions: Greatly increases your chances of hitting in melee. They are essential for fighting Ahrim and Karil, and for meleeing Verac.
  
  
• Super Energy Potions: Restores run energy.Super Strength Potions: Increases damage done on the brothers; obviously useful, but when low on inventory slots I sometimes omit them without any great negative effect.
  
  
• Regular Restore Potions: Used when preparing for a trip, or in place of super restores when doing just one run per trip.

On a multi-run trip, my initial step before each run (except the first of the trip) is to eat food or take Saradomin brew doses to bring me up to full health. Then I take another Saradomin brew to go over full health and raise defence, a super restore to undo the negative effects of the Sara brew (or a regular restore for single run trips), then a super attack and possibly a super strength. I am then ready to go with my combat stats all maxed out. Additional prayer pot doses are used as needed, and so are super energy potions.

The type of food and the number you bring with for healing depends entirely on what you have available and how many runs you are trying to do per trip. (These are in addition to the healing of the Saradomin brews discussed above, of course.)

For a single run trip, you will have lots of inventory slots available, so you can use more cost effective food. I generally recommend lobsters or monkfish, depending on your level; they provide good amounts of healing at a low cost.

For multiple run trips, the best food to bring is either sharks or pineapple pizzas. Pineapple pizzas?! Yep.. they provide 22 points of healing in one slot, and they are easy to make (buy pizzas in the Warriors Guild and add pineapple rings to them.) Sure, the pizzas take two bites, but it’s rare to be in a position in The Barrows where you really need to heal super quickly. Sharks are faster but provide fewer points; they are certainly a viable option as well.

There’s one final food item that I also usually bring with: a basket of strawberries. One basket holds five strawberries for a total of 30 points of healing, so it’s a nice reserve in case a brother gets “extra lucky” on you and your other food is gone. Strawberries are also useful to top up health when you are down only a little. For example, if I have 92 hitpoints out of 98, instead of taking two Saradomin brew doses, I can eat one strawberry to get to my normal maximum of 98, and then one Sara brew to go over my max.

Another option to consider is to make super energy “mix” potions, using caviar from Barbarian fishing. For example, two super energy mix (2) pots are equivalent to one super energy (4) and a piece of food worth 24 hitpoints of healing. I have used these with mixed results (ha ha)—their downside is that if you need to heal but don’t need run energy, or vice versa, you are wasting some of their potential. I sometimes bring some of these along with conventional super energy (4) pots.

Last and probably least, a look at a few of the extra items you’ll need or want to bring along.

First, secondary armor items:

• Neck Gear: An amulet of fury is the best choice, as it increases attack and defence stats as well as prayer. An amulet of glory is a distant second best.
  
  
• Gloves: Wear the best gloves from Recipe for Disaster that you can get.
  
  
• Boots: The best metal boots you can find, preferably dragon boots from the God Wars Dungeon. For single run trips, I use boots of lightness instead to conserve run energy.
  
  
• Cloak/Cape: A trimmed skill cape of any sort is best, followed by an untrimmed skill cape. Lacking either of these, use an obsidian cape. Again, for single run trips, I substitute a spottier cape because of all the running involved.

And finally, some other miscellaneous items:

• Spade: Don’t forget it, or you’ll be going back to the bank. J
  
  
• Holy Wrench: Increases the number of prayer points you get from prayer and super restore potions. Worth taking along for multiple run trips.
  
  
• Ring of Life: Strongly advised for The Barrows. You could instead wear a ring that increases stats, like a Warrior Ring, but even a chance of being saved if you lag out is worth the ring slot to me. (Note that the Ring of Wealth has no impact on getting Barrows items from the chest.)
  
  
• Secondary Weapons: Slayer Staff or other staff for maging, and a DDS (“dragon dagger (p++)”) for spec’ing Ahrim.
  
  
• Teleport Tablets: These are necessary for single run trips (Figure 429). For multiple run trips they can also be handy as an “emergency exit” if you get into trouble, especially when you are learning The Barrows. I don’t use them any more as they take up a slot I can use for other things.
  

  Figure 429: “Home, Jeeves”

  Teleport tablets let you quickly get home, recharge prayer and bank in Canifis at the end of a run or trip.

  
  

Ultimate Power Barrows Guide - Strategy Issues in Efficient Barrowing Ultimate Power Barrows Guide - Special Combat Techniques