Barrows is a PvM based minigame in which players attempt to steal valuable items from the Barrows Brothers crypts. Players will need to enter 6 different crypts and search the sarcophagi, 5 will spawn a barrows brother and the 6th (randomly assigned) will lead to the tunnels beneath the crypts that lead to the final chest.
Killing as many of the brothers on your way to loot the chests increases your likelihood of desirable loot considerably. In order to receive a specific armour or weapon you must have killed the brother who it belongs to before looting the final chest.
How to get to Barrows in OSRS?
The barrows minigame is located in the Morytania region, to the east of Mort’on. To get there the fastest method is using a barrows teleport in the arceuus spellbook. This requires 60%+ favour with Arceuus. Alternatively, you can buy barrows teleport tablets from the grand exchange and use those or build a barrows teleport in your PoH (50+ construction requirement).
Other methods of reaching the area include:
- Morytania legs 3+ to Burgh de Rott and running to Mort’ton then travelling east.
- Mort’ton teleport scroll and run east
- Shades of Mort’ton minigame teleport and run east
Multiple methods of getting there can be seen in the below image.
Gear Setups for Barrows
To complete barrows efficiently, players will need to make use of all 3 combat styles. No food is required as each brothers attacks can be 100% negated with the use of protection prayers. For end game players, they will be able to regenerate prayer points at the PoH and teleport back after every full barrows run. An example of different setups based on tier and budget can be seen below.
Max Gear Setup
Mid-tier Gear Setup
Budget & Ironman Gear Setup
How to complete Barrows
In the minigame players will want to take on each of the barrows brothers, then make their way to the rewards chest to collect their treasures. You can follow this simple step-by-step guide to complete the barrows brothers efficiently:
- Use your spade on top of one of the six hill’s to dig into a brothers crypt.
- Once inside open the sarcophagi, if a brother spawns, kill him. If you get a chat message asking you to follow the passage below the crypts, ignore it for now.
- Continue to do this on all 6 of the crypts.
- Eventually you will have killed 5 brothers and located the barrows tunnels entrance
- Return to the crypt that gave the chat box earlier and click yes to enter the passage below.
- Make your way through the tunnels to the rewards chest.
- Complete the puzzle combination on the entrance to the rewards chest.
- Collect your loot and tele out.
Puzzle Combinations
The door that leads to the main rewards chest room is locked with a very simple puzzle. In total there are 4 different puzzles and solutions that must be solved to progress. The answers are shown in the image below, although they may appear in different positions of your screen. As the order of the answers is randomised every time.
It is very important you dont get it wrong, so take your time if you need. As if you answer incorrectly, the doors and ladders in the tunnels will shift around again. Meaning you have to navigate back through the tunnels to find the new main entrance door to the rewards chest. If you are using runelite you can enable a plugin that will auto-highlight the correct answer.
The Brothers
As previously noted, in total there are six brother to face in the Barrows minigame. Each has its own special ability and they use a variety of combat styles. 4 of the brothers attack with melee, there is 1 ranged brother and 1 magic brother. A breakdown of each of the barrows brothers can be found below.
Dharok
Dharok is the most powerful of the Barrows Brothers, as such make sure you have protect from melee on. His max hit is 64, and has a special ability allowing him to hit higher at lower HP. He is weak to magic, so use your best mage weapon here.
Ahrim
Ahrim’s is the only brother to attack with Magic, so, use protect from magic when he spawns. His special ability allows him a 20% chance to decrease your strength level by 5 (only on successful hits). Kill him with melee or ranged, he is weak to both.
Karil
Karil is the only ranged-based brother. Use protect from ranged and kill him with either magic or melee, he is weak to both. His special ability allows a 25% chance to decrease your agility level by 20%, also only on successful hits.
Guthan
Guthans has a special ability to heal himself on any successful hits. He has a 25% chance to heal, although with protect from melee this is negated, along with any damage he could do. Although, Guthans is one of the weakest barrows, so protection prayers are optional. He is weak to magic, so be sure to use your best magic weapon.
Torag
Torag attacks with a melee attack, that has a 25% chance to lower your energy by 20% (on successful hits). However, his attacks are very accurate, with a max hit of only 24, so protection prayers are optional if you want to conserve resources.
Verac
Verac is the only brother you do not need to use protection prayers against. As he has a special ability to hit through prayer and defence. He attacks with melee and is weak to mage, so you can hit and run if you’re a low level.
Looting the rewards chest
When you loot the chest, the barrows brother whose crypt the player entered through will spawn and begin attacking you. If he was not already killed in the tunnels. Click the chest again if you did not receive your loot as it requires two clicks, one to open and a second to loot.
As soon as the player loots the rewards chest the arrangement of doors and rooms will switch around. Meaning the path you used to get to the chest will likely be different now. Additionally, the tunnels will start to shake and begin collapsing, causing occasional damage to the player.
If you did not kill any of the brothers they will be guaranteed to spawn when you open one of the doors, if you plan to escape manually via one of the ladders. The most efficient way to escape is to just teleport. When you teleport or leave up the ladders, the minigame will automatically reset and you can kill the brothers from the start again.
Capping reward potential
At 880 points you will receive the maximum amount of runes and remove the chance of receiving half keys, dragon med helms and bolt racks. This improves the average value of each loot and can be done by killing the following:
- 6 barrows brothers, 1 skeleton, 1 giant crypt spider and 1 crypt spider will reward 880 points.
- 6 barrows brothers, 1 skeleton, 1 giant crypt spider and 1 bloodworm will reward 876 points.
- 6 barrows brothers, 2 skeletons and 1 crypt spider will reward 878 points.
- 6 barrows brothers, 2 skeletons and 1 bloodworm will reward 874 points.
- 6 barrows brothers, 3 bloodworms and 1 crypt spider will reward 880 points.
- 6 barrows brothers and 4 bloodworms will reward 876 points.
It is worthwhile to note, if you are doing barrows for a long period of time it is advised to complete the hard Morytania Diary. As completion of this diary tier will grant an additional increase in the amount of runes you will receive each run by 50%.