TruthScape.com  9  TruthScape Monster Secrets       9  TruthScape Monster Secrets - Ultimate Power Barrows for Experts

Ultimate Power Barrows Guide - Tradeoffs and Choices Ultimate Power Barrows Guide - Combat Equipment Analysis and Selection

The difference between doing The Barrows “any old way” and doing what I call Ultimate Power Barrowing has to do with the matter of efficiency. My goal in creating this guide was to figure out the best ways of killing the brothers, getting through the tunnels and to the rewards chest as fast as possible, and using only as much food and potions as absolutely necessary.

Along the way, I had to do many experiments over dozens of runs, testing numerous strategies to see what worked best. The results of these experiments are reflected in the single, five and nine run methods I have documented later in this guide. I wanted also, however, to share with you not just the end results, but also what I have learned from my tests. This way, you’ll know not just what methods I decided on, but why I selected them, and this extra knowledge may well help you in your battles.

I will also share with you a brief list of methods and variations I tried and then rejected, because they were too slow, annoying, expensive or dangerous.

Be sure to also see the related topic that deals with equipment choices.

In my general description of The Barrows, I described the various routes available to The Barrows in the section “Location and Access to the Barrows”. Of course you will want to know: which is the best?

If your goal is to get to The Barrows as fast as possible, then you should use a portal to Canifis in your house, bank in Canifis, and use the In Search of the Myreque shortcut to get to the bridge near Mort’ton (Figure 423). This provides the most direct access to The Barrows. This method has two drawbacks, however. First, there is about a 50% chance that a ghast will rot one of your food items on the way through the swamp; that’s not a huge deal since most methods don’t rely heavily on food, but it can be annoying. Second, you will arrive at The Barrows nearly out of run energy, which can slow you down as you start your runs.

The main alternative to this option is to use your portal to Canifis, and then instead of loading up your inventory to go straight to The Barrows, take the path to Mort’ton and then continue southwest and bank in Burgh de Rott. There you can load up with food and know that none of it will rot, and also restore your run energy so you have more to start The Barrows. The drawback is that this will take an extra minute or two—how important that is depends on your priorities and how many runs you do per trip.

If you don’t have a portal to Canifis, then using the fairy ring network is the only decent option. If you use this method, I recommend banking in Burgh de Rott before going to The Barrows, so you don’t carry around the dramen/lunar staff as you do your runs; it wastes space and adds weight.

If you haven’t done the quests necessary to take the Canifis shortcut and/or use the fairy rings, then I recommend.. doing those quests! J If you insist on still doing The Barrows without them anyway, then your only good route is to walk to Burgh de Rott, bank there and then go to the Barrows. In this case, you will definitely want to use one of the multiple-run-per-trip options.

The strengths and weaknesses of the Barrows brothers are based loosely on the RuneScape combat triangle: magic is supposed to beat melee, melee to beat ranging and ranging to beat magic. Ideally, then, you should use magic attacks on Dharok, Verac, Guthan and Torag; melee on Karil; and ranged on Ahrim. I mostly follow these guidelines, with a couple of exceptions.

The first is that I use melee on Ahrim. If you have high melee stats like I do—over 95 Attack and Strength—you can usually kill Ahrim quite quickly with melee. Being able to do this saves several inventory slots, cuts down on weight (so you conserve run energy) and also minimizes equipment swapping. In particular, Ahrim seems to fall quite nicely to a full unloading of eight DDS specials, so I “save” my special bar for him in most methods.

The second exception is that I sometimes melee Verac, because he has the weakest defence against melee attacks. When I combine a powerful weapon like the godsword or the full Veracs set with super attack potions and the Piety prayer, I can often kill him in as few as three hits, which is faster than using magic. (It doesn’t always work, of course.)

I’ve read certain “idealized” Barrows guides that recommend that you bring melee armor for fighting in the tunnels and killing Karil, and ranging armor for killing Ahrim, and magic robes for maging the melee brothers. Sounds good in theory, but all that equipment takes up half your inventory slots and weighs so much that you’ll be walking instead of running all the time. Swapping among all these sets is time consuming and confusing. Plus, if you ever are unlucky enough to die, you’ll lose a lot of stuff.

No thanks. I prefer keeping things simple, and that’s why I stick to only one set of armor, which is either Veracs or Guthans, depending on the technique chosen. This serves well for melee fighting and also for maging: the Barrows melee brothers have very low magic defence so you can easily mage them in armor (see the discussion of “tank maging”). As for ranging armor, this is one reason why I don’t bother ranging Ahrim. He dies just fine with melee, and I usually fight him with Protection from Magic on so the magic defence penalties of my armor don’t matter much.

Incidentally, I used to use a method that involved taking both the Veracs and Guthans sets; I’d normally wear Veracs for its special ability and prayer bonuses, and switch to Guthans to heal. I no longer consider this worthwhile: it weighs too much, you have to swap too often, and you lose a lot of expensive Barrows pieces if you die.

You don’t want to just show up at The Barrows and start entering crypts at random—there are several factors that dictate the best order for fighting the brothers. These include your level of prayer, how much health you have, and also the tendency of some brothers to reduce certain stats. Another issue is that you may use a different order on your first run of a trip (when prayer is full), and that you can’t control which brother’s crypt contains your tunnel entrance, which can affect how you fight the others.

Some of the major factors that determine the order I use are the following:

• Dharok must be fought entirely with prayer on; if it runs out before he’s dead you can get hit for over 50 damage.
  
  
• Ahrim must generally be fought with prayer on, though you can get away with finishing him off without prayer. He lowers melee stats, so you want to kill him quickly and if possible, avoid fighting him before brothers you plan to melee.
  
  
• Karil can be fought without prayer, but if he gets lucky he’ll do a lot of damage, so prayer is preferred. He can lower agility, which affects run energy restoration speed.
  
  
• Verac can hit through prayer, so you want him dead fast. If meleeing him, he can be killed much more easily if you have enough prayer points to use Piety.
  
  
• Guthan and Torag can be fought without prayer and don’t affect combat stats.

Weighing these factors, and after much experimentation, I have settled on the following combat orders, which I use most of the time:

• Fighting Verac in His Crypt: Dharok, Verac, Ahrim, Karil, Torag/Guthan.
  
  
• Fighting Verac in the Tunnels: Dharok, Karil, Ahrim, Torag/Guthan

When Verac is fought in his crypt, he always comes after Dharok, since he requires prayer, full health, and if meleeing, maximized attack statistics. Leftover prayer from fighting Verac is used for Ahrim, or I take an extra prayer potion dose if needed. Karil is fought using left over prayer or tanked without prayer. When Verac is in the tunnels, Karil is again fought using left over prayer (from Dharok) and then another prayer pot dose is used for Ahrim. One advantage of this latter approach is that you don’t have to worry about Ahrim knocking down your melee stats before fighting Karil. If Karil is in the tunnels, I usually just tank him, as in Figure 424.

The order changes when using the Saradomin godsword because of its unique special ability:

• Fighting Verac in His Crypt with Saradomin Godsword: Dharok, Karil, Verac, Ahrim, Torag/Guthan.
  
  
• Fighting Verac in the Tunnels: Dharok, Karil, Ahrim, Torag/Guthan

Again here, Dharok gets a full prayer potion dose and Karil is fought using “leftovers” or tanked without prayer. If Verac is fought upstairs a prayer potion dose is used for him as well. Ahrim is killed using left over prayer or using the “spec and pray” technique.

Note that I actually experimented with killing Karil before Dharok, without using prayer. The reason was that I could afford to do some extra healing before Dharok, since before I fight him I use Saradomin brews and super restores to heal and raise defence levels. I thought sneaking Karil in first would be a good way to conserve prayer for Dharok and Ahrim, but after several tries I concluded it is better to do him after Dharok.

For more details, please see the specific technique descriptions for one, five and nine run trips.

As I found ways of killing the brothers more effectively, a problem crept up that had never been an issue for me before, when I used to take 15 minutes to get to the chest: run energy. Since I was finishing off the brothers, going between crypts and running through the tunnels more quickly than I had before, I didn’t have as much time for my run energy to recharge between runs. I soon realized that it didn’t matter if continued to find more advanced ways of killing the brothers or getting to that chest as fast as possible, if I spent the time I saved walking instead of running!

The solution turned out to be simple enough: super energy potions. I had never used them at The Barrows before, but they are now a staple of all of my methods. One drawback is the cost of the potions, but again, this boils down to a matter of time versus money, and running saves time. Another drawback is that these take up space you could otherwise use for healing.

Even using super energy potions, though, you may have issues with your run energy giving out at inopportune times. This is especially the case for techniques with many runs, or if the door to the chest room is far from your entrance ladder. Here are a few tips I have found helpful in this regard:

• Once you arrive in Mort’ton, walk to The Barrows so you start off with more run energy. (This slows you down, though, so I now try to avoid this by bringing extra super energy pots.)
  
  
• Try to walk more at the start of the run. Having run energy is more important in the tunnels than when going between crypts.
  
  
• If Karil has knocked your Agility way, way down, you might consider using a super restore dose to bring it back up. Just use it at a time when the prayer points you get from the potion won’t go to waste.
  
  
• If you are lucky enough to get a heavy Barrows item like a platebody from a chest, consider ending the trip early to bank it after that run.
  
  
• Save some run energy for after you open the chest—you don’t want to waste time walking while monsters are attacking and the ceiling is caving in on you.
  
  
• If you run out of super energy potions after only a few runs, end the trip and start over.

By the way, here’s another efficiency tip if you want to make your own super energy potions. Once in a while when going to The Barrows, instead of going straight from Canifis, leave there with your blessed silver sickle, druid pouch and empty inventory. As you head through the swamp, pause and use your sickle to get some mort myre fungi. When you have a full inventory of mushrooms, stop by the Nature Altar to recharge prayer, head to Burgh de Rott, make some super energy pots, then load up for your next Barrows trip.

You only have 28 inventory slots, and this can be a problem, especially when trying to do multiple runs per trip. You will want to fill those slots with as many potions and pieces of food as possible, but once you open that first chest, you are going to have a bunch of gold coins, runes, bolt racks and possibly other items. Where are you going to put them?

There are several options for dealing with this. One approach is to leave some empty inventory slots when heading to The Barrows, so there is room to carry the loot. Another idea is to take extra food and just eat or drop the food if the space is needed for rewards. Finally, you could just leave some of the rewards behind.

All of these options are wasteful to some extent. My preferred method is to leave for The Barrows with no empty inventory slots, and enough food that I can operate under the assumption that I will eat two or three pieces when I get to my first chest, if necessary. These extra food items aren’t strictly required by my methods, and having them provides flexibility. For example, if I know I am going to need to use up 40 points of healing anyway, then I can probably fight Ahrim without prayer, saving prayer pot doses for later runs. The extra food also means that if a ghast gets me, it’s not that big a deal.

If I don’t use up enough food to have slots for all of my items at the first chest, I will usually leave the gold coins behind, and eat food items so I have space for my runes. Also, since I don’t use any ranging gear, bolt racks can be stored in my quiver to save space.

Usually after about two or three runs I will have used up enough food and potions that I will no longer have inventory space issues until the trip is over. That can change, of course, if I am lucky enough to get Barrows armor items from the chest, especially early on. If that happens I just eat some extra food or keep dropping my coins… either way, it’s a nice problem to have! J

Later in this guide, you’ll read about the methods I chose for the Barrows as being the most efficient and effective. I thought, however, that you might find it interesting to read about some of my failed experiments, including methods that I felt didn’t work well and variations that didn’t improve upon the techniques I ended up choosing. These will help you understand my decisions better.

Here are some of the methods I tried that I felt were not worthwhile:

• Veracs, Melee Only: Many high level players use full Veracs on all of the melee brothers in addition to Ahrim and Karil, counting on that set’s special ability to cut through high melee defence. It works, but it is slower and much more frustrating than using magic on the meleers. Also, if you end up with Dharok or Verac in the tunnels you waste a lot of prayer pot doses and/or food getting rid of them, since you can’t use safe spots.
  
  
• Godsword Melee Only: Even with the godsword’s very high bonuses and the use of Piety and super attack potions, it is still faster and more convenient to use Magic Dart on the melee brothers.
  
  
• Veracs Avoidance Without “Flushing”: The drawback of fighting Verac in the tunnels is the time it takes to get him to show up, so I tried just avoiding him entirely and killing only the other five brothers. This saved little time and I got worse rewards because I wasn’t killing all six.
  
  
• More Than Five Runs Without Guthans: Every time I tried to do nine runs without bringing Guthans, I ran out of food half way through.
  
  
• Ancient Magicks: This is considered one of the “standard” ways of doing The Barrows, though why that’s the case is beyond me. I tried it, and it was by far the worst method I’ve ever used. Sure, it saves you prayer pots if you freeze the brothers, but you use quadruple the cost of the potions in runes when fighting them, and you sometimes still need prayer for Ahrim and Karil anyway. Overall, it is expensive, dangerous, inconvenient, and not any faster than standard methods.
  
  Even as I was testing methods to write this article, I saw some guy dancing around in a tunnel room in mystic robes, without prayer, Dharok flailing away at him while the player tried to freeze him with an ice spell. No thanks!
  
  
• Using Godsword Special Attacks: I tried using the special attacks of three of the godswords: Armadyl, Bandos and Saradomin. The first two do not help as much as saving your spec bar to DDS spec Ahrim. The Saradomin godsword, however, has a spec that restores health and prayer, which can be very effective in The Barrows. (See the appropriate section in the topic on special combat techniques.)

Finally, you will rarely see people using a cannon at The Barrows. It can only be used in the crypts, not the tunnels, though. I can’t consider this a “rejected method” because I have never tried it—and that’s because every time I see someone do it, I kill my brother in less time than it takes the cannon owner to do 30 damage. It also wastes a fortune in cannonballs that hit zeroes (see Figure 425). Don’t bother.

Figure 425: A Waste of Cannonballs and Time

This guy was using a cannon in the crypts. “His” Torag was down to about 30% health when I entered and started fighting mine; as you see, I’m done, while he’s still waiting and watching zeroes. Don’t bother with a cannon at The Barrows.

Ultimate Power Barrows Guide - Tradeoffs and Choices Ultimate Power Barrows Guide - Combat Equipment Analysis and Selection

---

Home - Table Of Contents - Contact Us

TruthScape.com (http://www.TruthScape.com) - Information about RuneScape You Need!
Last Update: May 21, 2008

© Copyright 2007-2008 Charles M. Kozierok. All Rights Reserved.
All information is provided for free use at your own risk. Not responsible for any loss resulting from the use of this site.
WARNING: All content on TruthScape is protected by relevant copyright laws in the United States and other countries, and may not be reproduced in any form without expressed written permission. Violators will be prosecuted to the maximum extent permissible by law.