TruthScape.com - Ultimate Power Barrows Guide - General Description of How The Barrows Works

Now that you understand the basics of The Barrows, it’s time for us to delve deeper into the specifics of how to master this minigame. Read on for an explanation of how to get to The Barrows, a general description of the six crypts, the tunnel maze and the reward chest room, and important information about the doors leading to the chest and the puzzles on them.

The Barrows is located in the heart of Morytania, due east of the town of Mort’ton. It is northeast of Burgh de Rott, southeast of Mort Myre swamp, and west of Meiyerditch. Access to the area is via a dirt road leading from a bridge that connects The Barrows to the town of Mort’ton. This sounds easy enough, but the challenge is getting to that bridge: the closest banks are in Burgh de Rott, in Canifis well to the northwest and in Port Phasmatys far to the northeast.

There are no teleports that can get you any closer to The Barrows than Canifis, and Burgh de Rott itself is as far from Canifis as The Barrows itself. To make matters worse, all the access routes to the Mort’ton / Burgh de Rott area require travel through Mort Myre, where ghasts can attack you and rot your food, so you want to go through the swamp as quickly as possible.

Since there is no single, obvious “best” route, a number of different alternatives are used, some more common than others. For reference, I have drawn all of these in the map shown in Figure 405, to which I will refer in the text that follows.

**Figure 405: Routes to The Barrows**
This custom annotated map shows all of the typical routes to access The Barrows. The most common is the red route, which uses shortcuts from *In Search of the Myreque* to provide fast access from Canifis to The Barrows. Instread of going directly, you can sidetrack to bank in Burgh de Rott, as shown in yellow. Alternatives include using the fairy ring that leads to the tunnels near Canifis (orange); walking from Canifis to Burgh de Rott through the swamps and then to The Barrows (pink, then yellow and then red); or going straight from Canifis to the Barrows (pink, light blue and then red). Less used paths include walking from Varrock (blue to pink) or Port Phasmatys (purple to Canifis, then one of the other routes).

The fastest route requires that you have a reliable way of getting to Canifis (such as a portal to it in your house) and that you have finished the quest In Search of the Myreque. If so, you can follow this route (the red path in Figure 405):

On this route, no matter how quickly or efficiently you click, at least one ghast will take a swipe at you, and there is a chance that one of your food items will be rotted by it (Figure 406). Try to run as fast as possible to avoid more than one getting an attack in. Even if you lose a food item, this is the route I recommend because it is far quicker than the others.

**Figure 406: Annoying Ghasts Rot Food**
Whenever you travel through the swamp there is a chance a ghast will get one of your pieces of food. Annoying, but not the end of the world.

If you can access Canifis but don’t want to risk having your food rotted, and you have completed In Aid of the Myreque, then you can instead choose to go to Burgh de Rott and bank there before heading to The Barrows. One option is to take the route above and then go to the bank first; this is depicted in Figure 405 as the red path with a yellow “side trip”. You can also follow this alternate route (the pink/fuschia path):

Taking a blessed silver sickle and druid pouch to protect yourself in the swamp would be a good idea; you can deposit these back in the bank at Burgh de Rott.

If you do not have easy access to Canifis but have done In Search of the Myreque and A Fairy Tale Part II, you have a workaround. Go to Edgeville, take out a dramen staff or lunar staff, and walk to the fairy ring just east of there. Teleport to the Lost City, then enter code “CKS” and you will end up in the same dungeon under Canifis that is entered through the trap door behind the pub (this is the short orange spur to the red path in Figure 405). You’ll have to go through two passages to reach the main tunnel that heads southeast to the swamps. Then continue to go over the three-section bridge and on the boat as before.

If none of those options will work, then you’ll have to improvise. One option is to use your ectophial to go to the Ectofuntus and then walk to Canifis from there—you can use the Farming patch on the way if you like—and then use either of the two routes above (purple path in Figure 405). Another is to walk from Varrock; if you do this, then going to Burgh de Rott first is sensible, using the alternate route I mentioned above (blue path to the pink path). Otherwise, you will have to take the really long way: walk all the way from Varrock, through the swamp, through the up-and-down maze to Mort’ton, and then to The Barrows (blue, pink, then light blue paths in the map).

So, which should you choose? See the discussion “Selecting a Bank and Travel Route” in the topic on strategy issues for an analysis of the pros and cons in choosing between these routes.

Once you get to The Barrows you will immediately notice the six prominent hills, laid out in a double chevron pattern, that contain the six crypts. Each brother will only be found in his particular location; for example, Ahrim is always in the center crypt and Dharok is always in the northeast one (see Figure 407). Clicking a spade when on top of one of the crypts will cause you to dig into it, and you’ll find yourself standing in a (very pink) tomb containing a sarcophagus. If you click the coffin, the ghost of the brother contained within it will appear, complain with outrage that you “dared to disturb his rest”, and immediately attack you. If there are multiple players in the crypt, look for the ghost with the flashing yellow arrow over his head, as that one is “yours” (Figure 408).

**Figure 407: The Barrows Crypt Layout**
This figure show the location of each of the six crypts, along with the name of each brother, his level, combat type and special attack.
(Credit to Jagex for the original diagram that I modified.)

**Figure 408: Yellow Arrow Indicates “Your” Brother**
The Barrows is a busy place so you’ll have to keep an eye out to find which ghost is the one you need to kill. Remember to move if your brother spawns over another player’s.

Each time you come to The Barrows, the game will randomly select one of the brothers to be your “tunnel brother”. When you open the sarcophagus of that brother, instead of his ghost appearing and attacking you, you’ll get a message saying you’ve found a secret tunnel (Figure 409). This leads into the tunnel maze, which we’ll discuss momentarily.

**Figure 409: Karil Has Stepped Out at the Moment**
I came into Karil’s crypt ready for action, but he’s in the tunnels.

There are no safe spots in the crypts where you can attack the brothers without them attacking you in return. It is, however, possible to hide on the other side of the coffin from the brother once he has spawned. You may wish to do this if you are getting hit particularly hard and need to heal; some people also do it to give the brother time to die from poison. Also see the discussion of sidestepping in the topic on special combat techniques.

To make matters a bit more challenging, Jagex programmed The Barrows so that your prayer will automatically drain away every 15 seconds, any time you are in any of the crypts or tunnels, whether you are fighting or not. The number of points drained is equal to 8 plus the number of brothers you have killed in this particular run. For example, if you have killed Dharok and Karil and are now fighting Ahrim, then every 15 seconds you will lose 10 prayer points. (On high detail you will see a mocking ghost face when this happens.) The amount of prayer lost is a lot, of course, so you only want to go into the crypt when you are ready to fight, and then you want to kill the brother as quickly as possible.

Note that you can click the stairs in a crypt at any time to leave if you are having trouble, but you’ll have to start over from scratch with that brother when you go back. Be sure not to click the staircase until you’re sure the ghost is dead!

I’ll discuss the particulars of fighting the brothers themselves in several other topics later in the guide.

Once you are done with fighting in the crypts, you’ll go to your “tunnel brother” and enter the tunnel maze of The Barrows. This maze has nine rooms: four corner (“ladder”) rooms, four side rooms and a central room where the Barrows chest is located. Each time you make a run for the chest, you will start out in a randomly selected corner room. From this room there will only be one door that works; the other three will be inoperable. Likewise, the game will choose one of the four side rooms to contain the single door that leads to the chest for you on that run. The other side rooms will contain false doors that can’t be opened in the places where their doors to the center should be. Your goal, then, is to leave your start room and travel through the tunnels to find the door that leads to the center room where the chest is. See Figure 410 for an illustration of the tunnels.

**Figure 410: The Barrows Tunnels**
The tunnels consist of nine rooms in a grid pattern connected by a series of tunnels. The outer tunnels connect the four corner rooms, each of which can potential contain the ladder to the crypt used to enter the tunnels on that run. The green and red lines indicate doors; the red ones are possible puzzle doors leading to the chest room.
(Credit to Jagex for the original diagram that I modified.)

The room you start in, the door that leaves that room, and the room where the door to the center is located are all random. This means the distance you must travel is random as well. If you’re very lucky, the side room containing your door may be right next to the room you entered the maze in; conversely, you might have to run or walk nearly all the way around the maze to get to it. See Figure 411 for an example of what I mean.

**Figure 411: The Randomness of the Barrows Tunnels**
This is a modification of Figure 410 to show you how a slight change in door location makes a huge difference. Suppose your ladder room is in the northwest as shown, and the door to the chest for this room is in the western side room (circled in light blue). Now, if the door out of the ladder room is one of the yellow doors, you have a short walk to get to the chest. Conversely, if it is either of the red doors, you are going to have to walk all the way around the maze to get to the chest room, and then possibly walk all the way back again too.

Once you find your door, clicking it will bring up one of several door puzzles; these are discussed in the following subsection.

It can be easy to get confused when in the tunnels since the doors and rooms mostly look alike, and your mini map is blacked out. Pay attention to your compass so you don’t become disoriented. It can be useful to write down on a piece of paper which corner room you started in and which door you went through to leave that room; this will help you remember how to get back.

If you get to a side room and it doesn’t have a real door to the center room, drop your camera view angle low and look towards the center room. Move your mouse around and you might be able to find which room has your door by looking for the “Open Door” option.

This maze, of course has its own challenges. First, prayer will drain here in the same way that it does in the crypts; in essence, then, you will be without prayer pretty much the whole time you’re in the maze unless you drink a prayer potion just before a fight. Second, there are aggressive monsters in the tunnels: “permanent” monsters in the side rooms and extra monsters that spawn every time you open any door and attack you immediately; these are discussed at the end of my coverage of the Barrows brothers and other enemies. Third, every time you open a door, there is a chance that any brother you didn’t kill in his crypt may appear and attack you without warning.

This matter of the brothers popping up unexpectedly is perhaps the greatest danger in The Barrows. You should make sure your health is kept high any time you are in the tunnels and at least one brother is still alive. Of course, you can only kill five of the six brothers in their crypts, so you must watch out for your “tunnel brother” until you’ve killed him. Note also that the same brother can appear more than once, even on the same side of a single door, which represents a very dangerous situation, especially if you opened that door to get away from the first copy!

The tunnels are single combat but with a bit of a twist, in that the brothers always have priority over the lesser monsters. Thus, if you open a door and a brother shows up, you can attack him even if already in combat with a bloodworm or skeleton.

Once you enter the chest room you’ll see the stone rewards chest. If your “tunnel brother” is still alive, when you click the chest to open it, he will then pop up, call you a thief and attack you (Figure 412). If you’ve already killed your “tunnel brother” then no other brothers will appear, even if they haven’t been killed yet. For example, suppose your tunnel entrance is in Guthan’s crypt, but you went into the tunnels without killing Verac. If Verac appears while you are searching for your chest room door and you kill him but Guthan doesn’t show up, Guthan will appear at the chest. However, if Guthan popped up as you traveled the tunnels and you killed him, Verac will not appear at the chest.

**Figure 412: “You Dare Steal From Us!”**
If you have not killed all six brothers by the time you get to the chest, the last one will appear and complain that you dare to steal from them.

Well yeah, I guess I do dare. Seeing as they’re ghosts and all and don’t really need the stuff, do they? J

Once you have disposed of any ghost that shows up at the chest, click it again to search it and get your reward. If your inventory was full, be sure to check on the ground at your feet to make sure you didn’t miss anything important. For some reason, if there’s only one slot free in your inventory, the game likes to put coins in it and drop the rare Barrows item on the ground (Figure 413), so check carefully! J

**Figure 413: Watch the Ground at the Chest**
When your inventory is full or nearly so, the game dumps anything from the chest that doesn’t fit right onto the ground. And if only some items fit, it likes to put mundane stuff like coins and runes in your inventory, and any Barrows items you might get on the floor! So look carefully after each chest you open.

Once you locate the proper door to enter the chest room for the current tunnel maze, you’ll find it is “locked” with one of several puzzles. These require you to look at a series of images and choose the one that follows logically from the pattern. After you click the right answer, a message will appear saying you “hear a mechanism” move, and the door will be open.

The good news about the puzzles is that they are not hard. There are only four different puzzles, and it is simple enough to memorize the right answer to each. As you do The Barrows, over time, you will find that you recognize the puzzles and know immediately which answer to choose; for reference, I have shown all the puzzles with their correct answers in Figure 414. Note that while the correct answer to the puzzles remains the same each time, the game shuffles the order of the possible answers, so you must not assume it will always be in the same place. I

**Figure 414: Barrows Chest Room Door Puzzles**
In this figure you can see the four possible puzzles that can show up when you click your chest room door. The correct answer is always the same for each puzzle, but the location of the right answer changes, so look carefully before you choose.

The bad news about the puzzles is that the game makes it somewhat difficult to choose the right answer. This is because monsters will keep attacking you while you try to deal with the puzzle, each time closing the puzzle window. The next time you click the door, a different puzzle will show up.

More bad news: if you answer incorrectly, you will be punished by the maze shifting: your tunnel door and your entrance ladder room will both change, forcing you to start the maze all over again.

The best way to deal with the puzzles is to click the door just as you kill a monster, while it is going through its “death throes” (sinking to the ground and fading.) Another option is to engage a monster on the opposite side of the chest room door and then run to the door; you’ll have a few seconds until the monster catches up with you.