A day at Barrows – RuneScape Reflections
The Barrows is a very popular placeDangerous, challenging minigame in the huge online game called RuneScape. Many players make a lot of money at Barrows, but many, even seasoned Barrowers like me, risk losing millions on items due to bad luck or not being vigilant.
I’m barrowing a lot to bring my wizard level and rank to 99 (currently rank 96, wizard 97, combat 91). Barrowing is great wizard training, as the chest loot often provides me with the runes needed to cast Magic Dart of Slayer (Slayer level 55 required). So far I have done more than 100 runs in the Barrows and have acquired more than 3,000 Boltracks and Blood Runes and around 8,000 Chaos Runes. I don’t keep track of mind runes or gp, but I never run out of necessary runes.
The most precious loot I have obtained so far from The Barrows is:
* Torags Platebody
* 2 Guthans Helmets (sold for 3.35 million gp each =))
* Helm of Veracs
* Veracs bracelet
* Veracs plate skirt
* Karils skirt.
Not to mention all the half keys, at least 4.
Most people pray Protection against melee attacks and therefore they don’t have to hide and run like I do, they just activate the prayer and let their character automatically attack with a magic spell that they have set. So these players spend a lot of prayer potions to take down the brothers in the crypts. When you enter one of the crypts (shovel required) your prayer will run out in about 10+ every 10 seconds or so. Without the sip of a prayer pot, Barrows would be impossible to do except for those very high-level tales.
My way of barrowing is very risky but it saves me money on prayer potions. I have a moderately high level of combat with 70 defense, but I only do mage and reach Barrows since I stopped training melee altogether. Here is a simple description of how I do Barrow racing.
I stock up on runes for entanglement spells (79 magic required) and magic dart spells (55 assassins required). I don’t use prayer on melee brothers at all, I just search their grave and instantly entangle the emerging brother. Then I run out a couple of squares and attack with magic darts. The entanglement spell holds my enemy in place for 15 seconds, long enough to launch 4 magic darts. Before the entanglement spell is broken, I run behind the grave and wait 5 seconds before repeating with a new entanglement. After a retention spell has been cast and disappeared, your enemy will be immune to any retention spell for 5 seconds! Therefore, it is important to stay away from body-to-body contact with siblings if their prayer is off; his “hugs” are not exactly like the ones he receives in mother’s arms = p
Killing the Melee brothers like I do is very risky. You must know how to hide behind graves in the proper way. I use a technique that is similar to “stepping to the side”, two of the corners of each grave give this possibility. The side step is used by the high echelons who fight closely with the brothers; When they need to eat and regroup, they have positioned themselves in a corner of the chest in such a way that when they only take one step away from their enemy, they will get stuck in the corner of the grave.
I keep getting questions and comments about why I don’t use hand-to-hand prayer like everyone else. My initial thought was to save on prayer pots, so I started using ancient magic. Again without praying melee. With my high level of magic, I can use the ice bombardment: it holds the enemy for 20 seconds and deals massive damage. Ancient magic turns out to be very expensive, so I would start with Ice Barrage and then continue my attacks with Ice Bursts. I made a profit anyway (I guess I was lucky with my looting), but I prefer to use my blood runes for proper pk’ing.
After some experimentation and testing, I decided to continue with Modern Magic instead, and have not regretted it since. The risk has increased, but it only makes it more entertaining. If I die and lose my Ahrims mage outfit or Guthan’s helm, well I hope the seeker is happy = p. I’ve been lucky so far, I bought the Veracs plaque skirt yesterday! Now I only need Veracs Flail for a complete Verac set.
Aaaa – the satisfaction of getting free stuff! This happened the same day I got the Veracs skirt!
I was at Dharok’s grave preparing to take him down, as always with butterflies in my stomach, killing Dharok without melee prayer is VERY DANGEROUS (that guy can deal at least 58 damage in one hit when his health bar is close zero).
Suddenly I see a player taking massive hits to his character, it happens so fast that he has no chance to escape. And voila! On the ground are the remains of this poor player, and what riches he dropped! Collected: Obsidian Shield, Black Mystic Top and Bottom, 200+ Runic Arrows, Berserker Helm, Black Ranger Set, etc. My inventory was full of lobs and unfortunately I had to see that some of the things this poor player dropped were picked up by others as I couldn’t gobble them up in the lobbies fast enough.
With a freshly “looted” obby shield and a new Verac plate skirt in inventory, I decided to teleport to the nearest bank and take a break from the game. No need to try my luck anymore = P
Anyway, Dharok will still be waiting for my return to The Barrows.