From left to right: Ahrim, Dharok, Guthan, Karil, Torag and Verac (Akrisae not in picture) Introduction This guide is aimed to people familiar with the Barrows minigame, its layout and how to get there. If you have any questions about these topics, any guide on a Runescape fansite should do. However, the skill requirements are modest, and do not require the possession of high herb/prayer levels. The guide itself merely focuses on recommended setups, tips and tricks that may prove useful in other situations as well. NPC weaknesses Dharok: fire spells Verac: earth spells Torag: water spells Guthan: air spells Karil: stab Ahrim: arrows Akrisae: bolts Recommended Skill Requirements Melee: 80+ attack, strength, defence Magic: 75+ Range: 80+ Gear Requirements Melee with good range defense Dual wield stab weapons OR 2h stab weapon Magic gear Magic staff or wand + accuracy book (e.g. Ankh) Runes Range gear Range weapons: one bolts, one arrows type Important: Drakan's amulet (banking + free lp restore by accessing a bank) Ring of Wealth (improved chest rewards) Example (ABS provides unlimited air runes): Note on abilities Mashing abilities until your foe is dead counts as one strategy, and for most low level monsters, this might just be the thing to do. But at Barrows, a great deal of importance lies in which abilities you use, when and how you use them. First of all, do not underestimate auto-attacks, especially for magic they can add nice damage and with some practice you can sync your abilities to add in between successive auto-attacks. As soon the attack animation starts for an ability, press the hotkey for whatever ability you want to use. What happens is that both the auto attack as well the ability damage are registered. An example is given in the following picture: First hit is a leftover from Combust, the next two are an auto-attack and Wrack, synced to the auto-attack. The set used for the method discussed involves: Magic Wrack: the bread and butter ability, this ability deals 125% of the active spell damage, and 157% if the target is stunned; Impact: stuns target for 3 seconds, and binds for 20 seconds; Dragon Breath: deals 188% of active spell damage, despite its common use in multiple target areas, its damage multiplier is a motivation to use it in single way combat as well (due to inaccuracy issues, its best not to use this ability in the Barrows minigame); Combust: while a DoT spell, it is an accurate ability that delivers a nice chunk of damage, spread over 6 seconds and equaling 100-125% active spell damage (100% minimum); Asphyxiate: launches 4 attacks in 6 seconds, each hit possible of dealing up to dealing 250% active spell damage. Ranged Piercing Shot: deals 125% of the active spell damage, and 157% if the target is stunned; Binding Shot: stuns target for 3 seconds, and binds for 20 seconds; Fragmentation Shot: fragments over the target and causes them to take damage equal to 100-188% weapon damage over 6 seconds; Rapid Fire: deals damage equal to 250% of 6 seconds of auto-attack damage to their target, channeled; Bombardment: deals 200% weapon damage to all adjacent targets. Melee Slice: slice your target for up to 125% weapon damage and 10% chance increase of scoring a critical hit; Kick: stuns for 3 seconds; Sever: deals up to 188% weapon damage and reduce any damage your opponent deals by 10% for 10 seconds; Havoc: instantly attacks with both weapons for 125% of both of the weapons' damage; Slaughter: causes the target to bleed for up to 250% weapon damage over 10 seconds, and triple damage if the target moves location; Destroy: deals damage to a target equal to 219% weapon damage over 6 seconds and stuns the target for that duration; Assault: deal damage to target equal to 219% of 6 seconds of auto-attack damage, channeled. In the next section, we go into the details of the action bar and how the spells in a combined order can swiftly take down the Barrows brothers. Action bar setup Before going to the actual bar setup, let me point out that you can switch bars using a key combination. If you right-click the number of your action bar (1-5), you can select Customise Modifier Key and choose between Shift, Alt and Ctrl. For example purposes, we will assume the key modifier is Alt. To switch to the third action bar, one would type: Alt-3. Magic Magic will be used to defeat all melee brothers. Each brother is weak to a different elemental spell, and it is heavily recommended to bring the runes for each elemental spell. The sequence goes as follows: The explanation for this rotation is straightforward: you start off with a stun called Impact, proceed to sidestep and blast a damage spell called Wrack, dealing extra damage for a successful stun (with a considerable magic level, magic gear, and using the weakness this should not fail). If the stun/bind fails, trap the melee brother and wait for cool-down (15 seconds). Players conserving adrenaline in between runs may choose to use 1-2 auto-attack/Wrack combo's, launch Asphyxiate, and then recast Impact. Once bound, you will launch a series of basic abilities synced to auto-attacks to maximize damage output. Whenever a circle on the graph above has "auto" near it, it means you wait for the auto attack animation to occur and then launch the ability shortly after (anticipate upon the attack allows one to cast it in perfect synchronization). You launch the Wrack ability, followed by the DoT effect called Combust and launch two more Wrack abilities, summing up your adrenaline over 50%. Players with a good connection and fast response time can cast an extra Wrack ability. This can be helped further by re-clicking attack on your target short after clicking for the sidestep movement (resulting in the typical shuffle-cast animation). Now Asphyxiate is unleashed, often killing the melee brother. This powerful ability guarantees an easy 2-4k damage or more when hitting criticals (more probable when using a seers or seers(i) ring). When Asphyxiate wears off, the stun will have ended from Impact. Confident people will choose to finish off using Wrack and Dragon Breath, or if the adrenaline permits it, Wild Magic. If the brother is not near death at all, stun again using Impact and repeat. The last slots give quick access to elemental spells and a range weapon. The last ability is called Regenerate and can be used in between kills to restore health using up whatever adrenaline is left. The use of Anticipation will become apparent later on. Around 2k lp can be restored using a full adrenaline bar. Veterans will have noticed that ice spells are no longer used for taking down the melee brothers, despite their ability to bind the opponent for 5-10 seconds. After testing, damage output was much higher using the appropriate elemental spell than it was using ice spells. Furthermore, the Impact and Asphyxiate abilities do a splendid job at maintaining distance to avoid damage. For faster kills, go with elemental spells. Range The action bar for ranging is similar to the one for maging. A stun called Binding Shot is provided in the first slot, then a DoT effect (Fragmentation Shot) followed by an increased damage shot (Piercing Shot). The threshold ability Rapid Fire occupies the fourth slot, followed by a second threshold ability, Bombardment, commonly used to KO an opponent. Similar to the magic action bar, quick access to the Anticipation ability and a mage weapon is provided. The range bar is included when fighting two brothers: Ahrim and Akrisae. While the same principle as for the melee brothers hold for Ahrim, a lot less stress is put onto binding. With range armor, Ahrim will rarely, if ever, hit you with his spells. Therefore, focus on damage spells using a bow type. When around 50% lp, unleash Rapid Fire and finish off using basic abilities and Bombardment. Keep in mind it is possible to sync abilities to range shots as well, increasing your damage output. For Akrisae however, the story is different. Akrisae prays against whatever combat style you are using. If you switch combat style, Akrisae will change his protection prayer accordingly after being inflicted over 1500 damage. As such, two styles must be used, the recommended styles being range and mage, considering Akrisae is a mage. In order to deal with Akrisae swiftly, a range weapon using bolts is highly recommended (black salamander can be used, but keep in mind the adjacency requirement for Akrisae). [spoiler=WARNING: outdated part] The good news is that Akrisae can be safespotted. Despite dealing magic damage, Akrisae must be withing melee range to hurt the player. Run directly to the grave coming from Verac and click the tomb, then trap him behind one of the rocks present near his tomb. The positions of the rocks are given in the picture below, independent of his spawn location, running directly behind the rock in the back (yellow path) will always trap Akrisae. Two possibilities. Successful trap, proceed to kill. Wear magic armor and initiate combat with magic. It is advised to use auto-attack combinations for two reasons. Firstly, as discussed before, more damage per second can be dealt. Secondly, with practice, perfect synchronization will allow players to perform both auto-attack and ability damage on Akrisae, even when the auto-attack would have been enough to force Akrisae to change prayers. When Akrisae switches, press the hotkey to swap to your ranged weapon and press Alt-#, with # the number where your ranged action bar is located. Ideally, in each round, either Asphyxiate or Bombardement is used, as it can easily make Akrisae switch prayers without the player losing valuable damage output. Continue this cycle by swapping weapons whenever Akrisae prays against your current style followed by switching to the action bar for your alternative combat style. The rotation is: with B short for basic ability and T for threshold ability, E stands for whatever hotkey allows you to swap weapon. The remaining adrenaline after the fight can be used to recuperate life points if Akrisae was able to inflict considerable damage at the start (often around 1500 damage). One way to improve the scheme would be to start each cycle with auto-attack/basic abilities combo's until just below the 1500 damage border, and then to unleash the threshold ability. This way, the player must switch less often to kill Akrisae. Melee The only brother to use melee against is Karil. Quite frustratingly, he's also the brother to potentially deal the most damage. Therefore a scheme is required to try and minimize the damage as much as possible. Because the ideal scheme makes use of 3 threshold attacks, a large pool of adrenaline required. If one starts from 0 adrenaline, the best option of to make use of the Sever ability early on. This ability will limit the damage taken. For a short pause, Kick can be used to stun the target (keep in mind that once a stun ability has been used, all stun abilities are on cooldown). The abilities Slice and Havoc will help build adrenaline. The real meat lies in the two threshold abilities, Slaughter and Destroy. Slaughter applies a DoT effect with tripled damage if you target moves (just once, it must not be continuously moving). When activating, walk under your opponent as soon as you see your character start the animation. The ability Destroy has great damage output, and on top of that, Karil will not be able to hurt you while it is in effect. The last threshold ability, Assault, is basically the same as Destroy, but without the handy stun effect. The goal is to use the Slaughter and Destroy abilities. If Karil is near death after these two, use Havoc to finish, otherwise launch Assault first, then Havoc. Another method makes use of the powerful base attack values of a 2hander (e.g. Zamorakian Spear). The action bar: The routine consists of stunning Karil with Backhand, attack with the 125% damage modifier of Punish. Adrenaline is then built up using Slice synced auto-attacks, combined with Sever after the first Slice attack to negate 10% damage. Once 50% adrenaline has been reached, employ Assault. If Karil is not down by this time, continue with Fury or more synced auto-attacks with Slice. Experienced Barrows players will have conserved adrenaline from previous runs and get to use the threshold abilities much sooner. How to do so, will be explained in the next section. The Barrows Run The actual Barrows run requires you to defeat 6 brothers, and finish off the last in the tunnels. Like pre-EoC, there is a rotation scheme that is inherent to the proposed method. Because Karil and Akrisae deal the most damage, they are placed early with Verac/Dharok/... in between to heal up. The proposed scheme with expected adrenaline values after dealing with a brother is: Akrisae (75-100%) -> Verac (85-100%) -> Dharok (85-100%) -> Guthan (85-100%) -> Karil (55-70%) -> Torag (85-100%) -> Ahrim (75-100%) Akrisae and Karil will deal the most damage to your life points, which can be regained using the Regenerate ability. If you're practising, it is possible Verac and Dharok can inflict above average damage. For this reason, Ahrim is scheduled last, for he will hardly damage the player, and the obtained adrenaline can be used for a last healing before heading in the tunnels. Experienced players that can deal with the melee brothers swiftly may run directly from one brother to another in order to preserve adrenaline and switch to threshold abilities earlier on in the fight. To counter drain, read the next subsection. Adrenaline maintenance Running from one tomb to another occupies a time span that is larger than 15 seconds, the exact time when your character leaves its combat stance and starts draining its adrenaline. Because of the desire to heal through adrenaline or have a stash available to launch multiple threshold abilities, one may wish to prolong the combat stance. An easy way to do so, makes use of the Freedom and Anticipation abilities, which require no target to activate. On average, when you are about to run uphill near the tomb of the next Barrows brother, you should activate it. This will add an additional 15 seconds to your timer. Health maintenance Excess adrenaline may be used to heal up before engaging combat with a next target. Simply activate the Regenerate ability and preserve leftover adrenaline with Freedom or Anticipate. This will stop Regenerate and halt adrenaline drain for 15 seconds. The tunnels Not much has changed concerning the tunnel dynamics. However, when having Akrisae as your tunnel, be aware of your environment. If in the proximity of a safespot, use it, otherwise leave Akrisae for a later encounter in a more controlled environment (the torches in the main room can be used to trap him easily). Immediately start the routine proposed in section Action bar setup:Range. Do not pay any attention to surrounding npc's. It is important to note that if the player decides to utilize ice barrage, this will make skeletons/crypt spiders/blood worms/... aggressive and you will be attacked by multiple foes. Due to the limited sight in the paths in between rooms, a player may wish to disengage combat to a spawned barrow brother and continue forward to the main room. Considerations Players not well versed in combating Akrisae may cut out the brother from the routine. They must however realize that the brother may be encountered navigating the tunnels, the combination of having Karil as your tunnel and not killing Akrisae may be dangerous due to the combat triangle. Ignore Akrisae and trap him in the main room before he can inflict much damage. No ultimate abilities are used in the proposed method, partly because there is not enough time to build up the required adrenaline, or because threshold abilities are more useful. Often an ultimate ability will finish off a brother, and leave the player with no adrenaline left for healing using Regenerate. If an ultimate ability if used, it is recommended to use Omnipower for magic. For ranged, use Incendiary Shot, this ability in particular comes in handy when Akrisae is resisting damage (adrenaline builds up) and may ko him for 4.5k damage. Rewards Lastly, a short note on the consensus that the Barrows community has reached on how killcount impacts the rewards you get: For maximum chance of a Barrows drop, kill all brothers, the creatures kill count has no effect; Ring of Wealth improves the chance of obtaining a Barrows piece; If you want to improve the loot when you do not get a Barrows drop (i.e. runes, racks, ...), kill creatures (5-12). Acknowledgements Extra thanks goes out to following people for offering advise on improving the guide: Sciferthesky chenw Ginger_Warrior