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Ultimate Power Barrows Guide - Rewards, Costs, Profit and Etiquette Ultimate Power Barrows Guide - Tradeoffs and Choices

Standing between you and your treasure are the ghosts of six fallen heroes, along with some additional annoying monsters. The key to success at The Barrows is “getting to know” the six Barrows brothers—illustrated in Figure 418—and learning the best ways to attack them and defend against their attacks. It’s time take a look at each one, so you can get a handle on the challenges involved.

You may also wish to review my strategy discussion on kill order.

And now, without further ado, let’s meet our contestants…

Wielding his awesome greataxe, Dharok will try to take you apart with infrequent but powerful blows. Here are his key stats:

• Name: Dharok the Wretched.
  
  
• Level: 115.
  
  
• Hitpoints: 100.
  
  
• Aggressive: Yes.
  
  
• Attack: Melee.
  
  
• Special Attack: Does more damage the lower his health.
  
  
• Maximum Attack Damage: Over 30 when at full health; up to 58 when nearly dead.
  
  
• Immunities: None.
  
  
• Weaknesses: Magic attacks.

Usually the most feared of the six brothers, Dharok is actually pretty easy to handle if you know how to deal with him—and the way to deal with him is the Protection from Melee prayer. Simply put, you must keep it on at all times when fighting Dharok head to head. This is easier said than done, of course, since prayer drains when in the crypts or tunnels. Even worse is the fact that if you are having bad luck and your prayer runs out, it will likely be when Dharok has few hitpoints and is most dangerous.

Accordingly, there is only one really safe ways to fight Dharok in his crypt: when you have more than enough prayer to be sure you can kill him. If using Magic Dart (aka Slayer Dart), you can usually kill him with one prayer pot dose, but not always—two is safer, and then you can use the extra prayer on another brother. If you try with just one, be ready to take an extra dose if you start to run low, and recognize that if you lag at the wrong time, you are in big trouble.

In the tunnels, the best way to deal with Dharok is to mage him from a safe spot (Figure 419). If you are going to take him on head to head you will likely need a minimum of two prayer pot doses; this is because you will usually be there after killing the other five brothers so prayer will drain a full 13 points every 15 seconds.

Like the other melee brothers, Dharok has very high defence against melee and ranged attacks, but is extremely weak to magic.

Verac is the one brother that has the ability to annoy the heck out of even the most seasoned Barrowers; in fact, how you deal with him is a primary way by which I divide Barrows methods into categories. Here’s his résumé:

• Name: Verac the Defiled.
  
  
• Level: 115.
  
  
• Hitpoints: 100.
  
  
• Aggressive: Yes.
  
  
• Attack: Melee.
  
  
• Special Attack: Attack can hit high despite good defence and can hit through the Protection from Melee prayer.
  
  
• Maximum Attack Damage: Approximately 28.
  
  
• Immunities: None.
  
  
• Weaknesses: Magic attacks; somewhat weaker to melee than the other melee brothers.

Players hate Verac for the exact same reason that they love his Barrows set: his flail has a chance to ignore your defence bonuses and even hit through protection prayers. For this reason, even though Verac cannot do as much raw damage as Dharok, he is arguably the most difficult of the six brothers to fight: there is no way to prevent taking damage from him if you are in melee range, prayer or not.

There are two main strategies for fighting Verac: either face him head to head and do whatever is necessary to kill him as fast as possible, or mage him from a safe spot. He is as weak to magic attacks as the other melee brothers, and has less defence against melee, making him the only melee brother who can be fairly readily meleed by a high level player. Despite this, he is the only brother whose crypt I sometimes recommend skipping; for more details, see my discussion of the tradeoffs involved in dealing with Verac.

Do you find the ability of the Guthans Barrows set to heal in combat useful? Well so does Guthan himself! J Here are his vital stats:

• Name: Guthan the Infested.
  
  
• Level: 115.
  
  
• Hitpoints: 100.
  
  
• Aggressive: Yes.
  
  
• Attack: Melee.
  
  
• Special Attack: Attack can occasionally heal him a number of hitpoints equal to the number of points of damage done.
  
  
• Maximum Attack Damage: Approximately 24.
  
  
• Immunities: None.
  
  
• Weaknesses: Magic attacks.

Guthan’s special attack is the “pink swoosh” that Guthans set users are so familiar with; when it activates, he is healed by the number of points of damage that he does, which can really drag out killing him if he gets lucky. This healing effect can even work if you have Protection from Melee activated; even though you aren’t damaged, he’ll be healed by however much damage he would have done if not for the prayer.

Fortunately, Guthan’s attack is not very accurate, and the game seems to give him fewer specials than players generally get when using his set. This makes him far less dangerous than Dharok or Verac, and he can generally be “tank maged” without prayer. With good armor and a decent defence level you’ll only take a lot of damage if he gets lucky; it does happen, but not often.

Torag’s twin hammers will try to put the hurt down on your platemail armor. Here are his specs:

• Name: Torag the Corrupted.
  
  
• Level: 115.
  
  
• Hitpoints: 100.
  
  
• Aggressive: Yes.
  
  
• Attack: Melee.
  
  
• Special Attack: Attack has a chance to drain some of your run energy.
  
  
• Maximum Attack Damage: About 24.
  
  
• Immunities: None.
  
  
• Weaknesses: Magic attacks.

Torag is generally considered the least dangerous of the four melee brothers, mainly because his special attack is rather uninspiring. (While keeping run energy high is important at The Barrows, losing some is not a big deal compared to what the other brothers can do to you.) Like Guthan, he can normally be “tank maged” without prayer.

Don’t be fooled into complacency when fighting Torag, though. If you have bad luck or your defence level is too low, he can do considerable damage—arguably more than Guthan.

The eldest of the six Barrows brothers, Ahrim is the mage of the group and can be a real challenge—don’t be fooled by his two-digit combat level. Here are his key stats:

• Name: Ahrim the Blighted.
  
  
• Level: 98.
  
  
• Hitpoints: 100.
  
  
• Aggressive: Yes.
  
  
• Attack: Magic.
  
  
• Special Attack: Various spells that can continuously lower your Attack, Strength and Defence levels.
  
  
• Maximum Attack Damage: 20.
  
  
• Immunities: None.
  
  
• Weaknesses: Melee and Ranged attacks.

Ahrim can cause big problems for Barrowers for two reasons. First, his basic attack is a fire spell that can do up to 20 damage, and he can hurl it rather quickly. Second, and perhaps worse, he unleashes a variety of debuffing spells that can reduce all of your melee combat stats. The damage spell can be blocked using Protection from Magic, but the other spells cannot.

Following the combat triangle, Ahrim is weak to either melee or ranging; you should not try to mage him. Traditionally, the advice has been to range Ahrim, but high levels can do fine meleeing him, and this saves dragging with the ranging gear. Whatever method you pick, you want to kill Ahrim as fast as possible, not only because of prayer draining, but also so he has less time to drain your stats.

The best way that I have found to deal with him is to put on Protection from Magic, then unload eight attacks using the special of a poisoned dragon dagger (DDS). He is very weak to this weapon, as shown in Figure 420, which in some cases this will kill him entirely just using the specs. If not, he’ll be mostly dead, and will be finished off after one or two hits from your primary weapon—if the poison doesn’t get him first. With a Saradomin godsword, Ahrim can be handled very nicely using the “spec and pray” advanced technique.

Last but not least, the Ranger of the group: Karil. While his Barrows set is often mocked as being far less useful than the others, Karil the ghost is a very dangerous adversary. Here are his stats:

• Name: Karil the Tainted.
  
  
• Level: 98.
  
  
• Hitpoints: 100.
  
  
• Aggressive: Yes.
  
  
• Attack: Ranged.
  
  
• Special Attack: Attacks have a chance of lowering your Agility by 20%.
  
  
• Maximum Attack Damage: 20.
  
  
• Immunities: None.
  
  
• Weaknesses: Melee attacks.

Karil can be quite dangerous; his attack is very fast, and very accurate even with a Ranged defence bonus of over +350. If he gets lucky, he can do 40 to 50 damage in a short time, so using the Protection from Ranged prayer is advisable, if possible. Fortunately, his accuracy seems to tail off for those who have high Defence levels, especially if it is boosted using super defence or Saradomin brew potions. Accordingly, Karil is often meleed using “leftover prayer” from another brother; for example, I will often start him with Protection from Ranged on, using points left from killing Dharok; when prayer runs out I just try to finish him off fast and eat afterwards if he gets some lucky shots in. Often I just “tank” him, meleeing him without prayer entirely.

Incidentally.. while many people joke about the Agility reduction special effect of the Karils set being useless to players, it’s no laugh when he pulls it on you at The Barrowing. When your Agility level is lowered it will take much longer to recover run energy, and this can have a big impact on your ability to run around the tunnels quickly.

Every time you open a door in the tunnels, there is a chance that any brother you have not already killed on the current run may appear and attack you. It is also possible for this to happen more than once, though, which can be exceedingly dangerous. These “twins” have a habit of showing up at the least opportune times, and you must be prepared for them.

For example, suppose you have Ahrim left and he spawns in the tunnels after you open a door. You hope to avoid “wasting” a prayer pot dose, so you figure you’ll spec him with your DDS, fight him until he gets you down in health, then just run back through the door and wait until the poison finishes him off. Great plan, but what if another Ahrim pops up on the other side? I’ve not only had this happen, I actually once had no fewer than three Karils all going after me at the same time! So, consider yourself warned.

Incidentally, you get no benefit or increased chance of a Barrows item from killing a “twin”—only one kill for any brother counts. Thus, if you do see twins, just kill one and run from the other.

The Barrows brothers would probably get lonely without company, so Jagex kindly put into the tunnel maze a variety of pests to make your life just a bit more fun. You will want to kill a small number of these to increase your kill count, and those using Guthans can utilize them for healing as well. However, some of the monsters are easier to kill, so they are far better for these purposes than others. Regardless, none of them drop anything aside from bones, so unless you have to kill them for kill count or Guthans, they should just be avoided as much as possible.

There are six different types of monsters, each of which “lives” in one of the side rooms that may potentially lead to the chest room, as shown in Table 93.

Of these six monsters, three can show up when you open a door: skeletons, bloodworms and crypt rats (regular, not giant.) Since the bloodworms and crypt rats are the best monsters for raising kill count or Guthaning (Figure 421), this makes opening doors a viable way of obtaining “fodder” for these purposes.

Figure 421: Raising Kill Count

Regular crypt rats and bloodworms are the fastest and easiest to kill.

Ultimate Power Barrows Guide - Rewards, Costs, Profit and Etiquette Ultimate Power Barrows Guide - Tradeoffs and Choices

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