TruthScape.com - Ultimate Power Barrows Guide

Part of what makes The Barrows so interesting is that there are so many ways to do it, even after you eliminate the really ineffective methods. There is no one single best technique, which means that those who choose to enter the haunted crypts will have to make choices and manage various tradeoffs, depending on their own priorities.

Many dozens of methods for doing The Barrows have been developed over time, and some of them are quite proud of the fact that they allow you to do it “on the cheap”, without requiring any prayer potions, for example. In contrast, my methods for doing The Barrows do not shy away from using supplies like Sara brew potions, prayer potions, super restores, super attack and super energy potions. In fact, not only do I suggest you bring these, I recommend you use them even if you could get by without them. Why is that?

The answer is simple: time is money. Methods that try to save on supplies generally do so by greatly slowing you down. For example, when I first started doing The Barrows last year, my method involved killing all of the melee brothers in the tunnels by flushing them out and then hiding in a safe spot. Oh sure, it worked, and yes, it was cheap to do… but it took me over 15 minutes per run. In the time I was dancing around in the tunnels I could have been opening extra chests, which also would have increased my chances of getting a Barrows item.

It doesn’t take much of a time savings to quickly pay for the cost of the supplies that speed up the process. As I showed in my analysis of Barrows costs and rewards, the average value of rewards from a chest is 90k. Now, let’s contrast a method that takes 10 minutes per run and uses 30k in supplies to one that takes 14 minutes per run and uses only 15k in supplies. It may seem like the second option is better, since it takes only 4 minutes longer but saves half the cost of supplies—but in fact, it is the first that wins. Your net gain per run in the first case is only 60k, but you can do six runs per hour for a total of 360k. The second, cheaper method yields a higher net profit of 75k, but you can only do, on average, four runs and part of a fifth, so the net return is around 320k. The first option also gives you more chances per hour at getting a really good Barrows item.

This is also why I started adding super energy potions to my recommended inventory lists, which I rarely use otherwise: you can get the runs done faster, which more than pays for their cost. (See the discussion of run energy below.)

There are two basic approaches to doing The Barrows: single run and multiple runs. With single run methods, you take only what you need to kill all the brothers and get to the chest once; you then teleport out, bank and start over again with a new trip. Multiple run techniques involve taking a larger number of supplies and equipment, planned out to let you do more than one run per visit to The Barrows. After you complete one run and open the chest, you go back out through the crypt where you entered, heal and take potions, and immediately start a new run.

When I first started The Barrows last year, my goal was always to try to pack as many runs as possible into each trip. It seemed obvious to me that the more runs I could do, the less time I would spend banking and running to The Barrows. Once I started testing various methods, though, It turned out that while this is certainly an important factor in selecting the optimal number of runs, it is only one of many—the overall situation is much more complicated and involves several tradeoffs.

One key issue here is inventory space. There are only so many slots available to carry potions and food, and the more runs you try to do in a single trip, the more difficult it is to find just the right balance among stat boosting potions, prayer restore potions, super energy potions and various types of healing. When you do just one run per trip there is no challenge because you can take all the potions you need and have plenty of room for food. With many runs, you need to resort to more advanced, “non-food” healing options like Saradomin brews and the Guthans set effect.

So why does it matter how you heal? Speed and flexibility. If you’re fighting Torag without prayer, for example, and he gets lucky and hits two 20s on you, if you have a bunch of sharks in your inventory you just eat two of them. But what if you are on your first run of nine planned, and you only brought 5 sharks for the whole trip? You can’t take a Saradomin brew without knocking your stats down, and Guthans is out of the question. You’ll probably eat one shark, watch your health carefully, and then try to heal up using Guthans in the tunnels. And yes, this works… but it’s more tricky, and using Guthans to heal is very slow compared to using weapons like an abyssal whip or godsword.

Other factors and tradeoffs come into play when considering the number of runs per trip, such as what equipment you have available, how you feel about doing lots of running, and your experience at The Barrows. As we’ll see later in this topic, the way you deal with Verac is also directly linked to the number of runs you do per trip, because of his habit of hitting through prayer.

Since there is no one right answer, I have described in this guide methods using one, five and nine runs. I chose the numbers five and nine because of the limit of four doses in a vial of super attack, super strength and other potions. Since you will often use one dose of various potions per run, this lets you make the most of your inventory space.

In general, a single run per trip is the easiest, cheapest and safest way to go. You have a whole inventory of space to devote to a single run, and don’t have to worry about healing as much because you will be banking between runs. Since you have lots of space you can use cheaper food, and you can restore prayer between runs so you save on prayer potions. It’s also a simple method because you don’t have to plan ahead, or even remember how to get back to your entry room from the chest.

The flip side, of course is that this method is slow (though not as slow as I originally thought it would be). After each and every run you have to teleport out, go to an altar, pray, take a portal back to Canifis, go to the bank, restore your supplies, and then do the whole run-through-the-dungeon-go-over-the-bridge-then-through-the-swamp routine. It’s not only slow, it is really quite tedious. Also, while you save on costs such as prayer potions, you have to use lots of super energy doses because of all the extra running. It’s still cheaper than five or nine run methods, but not by all that much, and since it’s slower you make less per hour.

With five run per trip methods you cut down on all of banking and running by carrying along the supplies necessary for four extra runs. Since this is still a relatively small number, you can bring all the potions you need to Barrow very quickly, but you still have enough room for food so you can fight Verac in his crypt without worrying about running out. It is also possible to do five runs per trip without healing using Guthans, which avoids slowdowns.

Costs are higher than in the single run method, because you must use prayer potions to restore prayer, and you have to use better quality food to get more hitpoints of healing per inventory slot. Again, though, these costs are more than taken care of by the extra runs you can do in the time you save. Five runs per trip is probably the best choice for most Ultimate Power Barrowers who want to get to the chest quickly and efficiently.

The next logical step is to extend to nine runs per trip, which is accomplished by bringing along even more potions, and relying on careful technique when fighting to conserve limited food. Verac is fought from safe spots to avoid taking damage from him and to conserve prayer potions, and most healing is done using Saradomin brews and the Guthans set. As mentioned above, tradeoffs come into play here: even though you bank about half as often as with five runs, on average this is actually just slightly slower than five run methods—this is mainly because of the time needed to flush Verac, and to heal using Guthans. On the other hand, if you don’t have easy access to Canifis, doing nine runs at a time can be faster than doing five. See? It all depends. J

If we go beyond nine runs we quickly reach a point of diminishing returns: you spend more time conserving supplies than it would take to just run back to The Barrows after banking. For example, since five and nine worked well, I tried 13 runs per trip. Unfortunately, I found myself constantly worrying about taking any hits, and having to heal up using Guthans. The extra runs per trip didn’t save any time at all—in fact, they made the whole process take longer than just banking after nine runs.

Dharok may be the most dangerous of the Barrows brothers, but Verac is easily the most irritating, because you cannot entirely protect against his attacks using prayer. Dealing with him greatly frustrated me as I was developing my methods. I quickly learned that no matter what I did, going in to fight him in his crypt meant I would nearly always take a lot of damage—as in Figure 422—which would mess up my routine. I’d have to consume my limited food too quickly, or waste a lot of time using Guthans to heal back up in the tunnels.

**Figure 422: Verac Hitting Through Prayer**
Very annoying, and one reason why many people prefer not to fight him in his crypt. I came into this fight over full health (because of a Saradomin brew), so he’s already hit me for about 40 points.

So, I came up with a new idea, which I called Verac avoidance. Simply put, I wouldn’t fight Verac in his crypt at all; I would only fight him using safe spots in the tunnels. Of course, this had its own drawback: it can be slow to get Verac to show up in the tunnels. So I wasn’t entirely satisfied with that either.

Unfortunately, there is no perfect solution, and I settled on fighting Verac in his crypt for some methods, and in the tunnels for others. In general, I fight Verac “upstairs” when using methods that involve one or five runs, because with these I have enough food and potions per run to be able to take care of him quickly and deal with the damage he does if he hits hard. When I use a nine run method, I practice “Verac avoidance” and kill him in the tunnels.

Overall, it is faster to kill him in his crypt and deal with the damage when it happens, but it is riskier and can be more annoying.

As I mentioned in my general description of The Barrows, the game will keep track of the total number of monsters killed in each run using a counter at the bottom right hand side of your screen. Deciding what kill count to aim for has been a subject of much debate in the RuneScape community, with some going for rather large numbers and others not bothering to kill monsters other than the brothers at all.

To make a long story short, my tests have indicated to me that the ideal kill count to aim for is 12. I used to use 15, but have not noticed any difference in my rewards by going to the lower figure. When I tried to use a kill count of 9 or 10, however, I immediately noticed that my rewards got far worse.. for example, I once did 12 runs with a kill count of 9 or 10 getting only 2 or 3 blood drops and no bolt racks. I didn’t consider this a coincidence.Kill count doesn’t affect your chances of getting a Barrows armor piece or weapon, but it does influence the more mundane rewards. The tradeoff involved here is simple: if your kill count is too low, then the game responds by cutting down not only on the number of runes and bolt racks you get, but also by giving you fewer of the more valuable rewards. On the other hand, if your kill count is too high, then this represents time you wasted killing bloodworms and rats that you could have applied to getting to more chests.

I should also point out that you are not required to kill all six brothers, and sometimes I do only five when I am trying to flush out Verac downstairs and he refuses to cooperate. It really is better to do all six, though.