RuneScape veterans are well-versed in completing Barrows runs, and there’s no secret why. Barrows itself doesn’t require crazy high requirements, so it’s amazing how much gp you can make with casual combat.
Barrows is a combat-based minigame where you fight six Barrows brothers to claim a reward at the end. This reward mostly consists of runes and a chance to get a piece of Barrow’s equipment; some of the equipment pieces are currently going for 1m+ gp!
Recommended Read: How to Make Arrows in Old School RuneScape
Here, I’m going to walk you through in the simplest terms how to complete a Barrows run!
When completing Barrows in Old School RuneScape, the key is to have a high Prayer bonus and effective mage setup. For lower levels, you are okay with wearing regular dragonhide armour while casting a combat spell like Iban’s Blast or Slayer Dart. At higher levels, you can wear gear like the Void Knight Outfit, other Barrows gear, or even the Graceful set to speed your runs up. Then, just run through the crypt, complete the door puzzle, and loot the reward chest!
Table of Contents
- What are the Base Requirements for Barrows?
- Best Setup for Barrows
- How to Get to Barrows
- Guide to Completing Barrows in OSRS
- Tips and Tricks
What are the Base Requirements for Barrows?
For the purposes of this guide, we’ll go through the bare minimum needed to start flying through Barrows runs.
- “Priest in Peril” Quest Completed
- Decent Combat Gear & Stats (65 Magic, Range, Melee, Hitpoints Recommended)
- 43+ Prayer
- A Spade (one can be found at the entrance of Barrows)
Best Setup for Barrows
Below, you can find the best strategies for Barrows at low-level, med-level, and high-level.
Low-Level Barrows Strategy
The gear setup below, minus the untradable items, can all be bought for around 200k.
Even better, if you’re someone with much higher stats, this can be accomplished for much less.
The key points for low-level gear are this:
- Iban’s Staff for Iban’s Blast or a Slayer’s Staff for Slayer Dart can be used for cheap offensive magic.
- Ardougne Cloak can be used for Prayer bonus.
- Barrows gloves can be used for balance Attack and Defense bonuses. Can also be replaced with Dragonhide Vambraces.
- A God Book is used for added Attack/ Defense bonuses (depending on which one you bring. Here, I am using an Unholy God Book).
- Chest and Legs equipment can vary in dragonhide type based on your Range level, OR you can bring Rune armour instead.
- A Ring of Dueling is used to teleport to the Ferox Enclave straight after the run to rejuvenate your stats.
- 1-2 Prayer potions are needed to always keep prayer active.
Medium-Level Barrows Strategy
This setup relies on using the Void Knight Outfit’s set effect to maximize your Mage and Range accuracy and damage.
The neat thing about using Void Knight armour is you only technically need to switch your helm and weapon when fighting between the brothers and entering the crypts.
- The Void Knight armour provides a 10% attack and damage bonus to Ranged and Melee, and a 45% attack bonus to Magic.
- The Amulet of fury gives a +10 Attack and +15 Defense bonus across all styles, making it the most versatile necklace piece available.
- The Unholy godbook provides both a +8 Attack bonus across all styles and a +5 Prayer bonus.
- The Imbued god cape, Eternal boots, and Seer’s ring provides an extra +35 Magic attack bonus and 2% Magic damage.
- At this level, it is reasonable to bring a Trident of the swamp (also called a “Toxic trident”) for Magic, Rune/Dragon crossbow for Range and a Dragon Dagger/Abyssal whip for Melee.
High-Level Barrows Strategy
This method is all about speed!
For players with high enough combat stats, it is common to wear a full Graceful set to run in between the Barrows Brothers to make their trips as efficient as possible.
The strategy is maintaining your Prayer points with a healthy balance of Prayer-restoration potions and food; this allows players to complete a run and teleport straight back to the beginning without the need for a bank.
- The Graceful set speeds up the rate that your run energy is restored.
- The Amulet of fury, which carries over from the previous setup, provides excellent bonuses across all combat styles.
- The Imbued god cape, Eternal boots, Seer’s ring, and Book of Darkness provide a total +45 Magic attack and +5 Prayer bonus.
- To effectively speed run, your weapons should consist of a Toxic Trident, Toxic blowpipe, and Abyssal whip.
It is worth noting that the Barrows Brothers actually have 0 Magic defense, so although having a high Magic Attack is nice, it is not actually needed.
This is why lower-level players can get away with wearing tanky gear (i.e., Rune platebodies, d’hide armour, barrows gear, etc.) and still high consistently with Magic.
Therefore, bringing gear that either gives a high defense/prayer bonus or helps you restore your run energy is usually the priority.
How to Get to Barrows
To get to Barrows in OSRS, you will need to traverse the Morytania Swamp, which can drain your energy and possibly make your food rotten.
However, most players in Old School RuneScape trying to get to Barrows opt for using a Barrows Teleport (2k on the Grand Exchange) to go straight there!
Guide to Completing Barrows in OSRS
The key to a successful Barrows run is a high prayer bonus and effective mage damage.
In Barrows, you go through a crypt to kill 6 low-level bosses (the Barrows brothers) to loot the chest at the end.
Killing the Brothers
Once here, you will see six mounds of dirt for you to dig on top of and enter. You will also see the small shed out front to pick up a Spade if you forgot one.
All you must do is walk on top of a mound, dig with your spade, and search the crypt inside for a Barrows Brother to spawn. They are in the same location every time.
You may start with any of them, but the recommended rotation is Dharok > Ahrim > Verac > Torag > Karil > Guthan.
Dharok does the most damage off-prayer, so it is recommended to fight him first to make sure you have the maximum amount of prayer points.
After you kill one of the brothers, you may go back up a nearby staircase and move on to the next one. The main point for all of them is to always keep your protection prayers active.
All of them have a special ability that you will not have to worry about as long as you maintain your protection prayers (except for Verac, which I will explain).
Dharok the Wretched (Level-115)
- Attacks with Melee.
- Special Ability: The lower his hitpoints, the stronger he hits.
- Pray Protect from Melee AT ALL TIMES.
- Attack him with Magic.
Ahrim the Blighted (Level-98)
- Attacks with Magic.
- Special Ability: Gives a 20% chance to lower your Strength stat.
- Protect from Magic.
- Switch to your Magic Shortbow to attack with Range.
Verac the Defiled (Level-115)
- Attacks with Melee.
- Special Ability: Has a 20% chance to hit through Defensive bonuses and protection prayers.
- Protect from Melee, and don’t be alarmed when you’re still getting hit. Eat food as needed if your hitpoints get too low.
- Attack with Magic.
Torag the Corrupter (Level-115)
- Attacks with Melee.
- Special Ability: Has a 20% chance to lower a player’s energy.
- Protect from Melee.
- Attack with Magic.
Karil the Tainted (Level-98)
- Attacks with Range.
- Special Ability: Has a 25% chance to lower the player’s Agility.
- Protect from Range.
- Attack with Magic.
Guthan the Infested (Level-115)
- Attacks with Melee.
- Special Ability: Has a 25% chance to heal the same damage he deals to the player.
- You don’t have to worry about him healing if you keep your Protect from Melee prayer active.
- Attack with Magic.
Barrows Prayer Drain
During the fights, you may see a giant head of one of the brother’s heads appear on your screen like the image below:
When this happens, your prayer will go down around 10 points. Keep an eye on how many Prayer points you have and drink your potions accordingly.
Finding The Tunnel to The Reward Chest
While you are searching for the crypts, one of them will have a message like this appear in your chat box instead of the respective brother.
This means you have found the entrance to the dungeon below. Instead of going in, remember where it is, leave the crypt, and kill the remaining brothers before proceeding.
Entering The Crypts
When you go back to the tunnel you found earlier, you will find yourself in a 3×3 area with skeletons, bloodworms, and rats.
The goal is to reach the very center where the reward chest is, but not all the doors will open.
Simply highlight your cursor over the doors to see which one has the “Open” toggle and follow it until you reach the center.
Equip your melee weapon to prevent wasting spells or arrows.
Either while you are navigating the dungeon or while you are looting the chest, you will be attacked by the sixth Barrows brother.
After killing him, equip your melee weapon again, and kill monsters in the dungeons until the potential percentage is at least 87%.
The reason why players do not want their reward potential at 100% is that at 100%, you have a higher chance of getting Bolt racks, which are used with the Karil’s crossbow.
Although great for Ironman accounts, getting runes as a reward is actually worth more than the bolts, and you reach maximum potential for runes when you reach 87%.
There are ways to optimize the points you get by killing specific creatures a certain number of times. Including killing all 6 Barrows brothers, you can also kill the following to reach 87%:
- 2 Skeletons and 1 Crypt spider
- 2 Skeletons and 1 Bloodworm
- 3 Bloodworms and 1 Crypt spider
- 4 Bloodworms
Barrows Puzzle Solutions
Finally, you know you have reached the final door when you are presented with one of four simple puzzles.
They are straightforward, but just in case, here are the solutions for them:
Claiming Your Reward
After that, you can loot the chest in the center (making sure to kill any brother that you may have missed).
Use your Ring of Dueling to teleport to the Ferox Enclave and rejuvenate your stats.
Congratulations! You just completed your first Barrows run.
It can seem intimidating at first, but being able to do this with such low requirements is worth it.
In this run, I was able to go through all of Barrows in about 15 minutes and managed to get around 60k worth of runes.
The main appeal of Barrows is the chance to get Barrows equipment (which you have a 1/16 chance of getting per run), each of them ranging from 60k-3m!
Over half of the 24 different gear pieces are going for 200k and over, with 4 of them going for 1m+ gp.
Possible Rewards
Including Barrows Gear, here are the possible rewards you can get from the chest:
- Barrows Equipment (1/16): Dharok’s, Verac’s, Torag’s, Guthan’s, Ahrim’s, and Karil’s items.
- Coins (1/2)
- Runes (1/8): Mind, Chaos, Death, and Blood runes.
- Crystal Key halves (1/337): Loop half of key and Tooth half of key.
- Dragon med helm (1/1012)
- Elite Clue Scroll (1/29)
Note: The chances for these drops are not the chance to receive one when opening the chest, but the chance to receive one per roll in the reward chest. For each opening, there are 7 possible slots in the reward chest.
Therefore, the reward for something like a Dragon med helm, you technically have 7 chances to get a 1/1,012 drop for it.
Tips and Tricks
When completing Barrows, there are other things you can do to maximize your runs as much as possible.
- Players can bring a Ring of dueling or a Construction skillcape to teleport to a location with a rejuvenation pool to restore all of their stats at an instant before going in again.
- Extremely high-level and wealthy players can bring all of their max-gear across all combat styles and rely on DPS to kill the brothers quickly to save on Prayer and run energy. This could be in the form of full Ancestral robes, Dragon claws, Torva, anything to kill them as quickly as possible.
- Bringing a Rune pouch is also handy, especially for those who want to make multiple runs per trip to store any Chaos, Death or Blood runes that they get from the reward chest.
- If you forgot to bring a spade, there is always a spade in the hut just outside of Barrows for players to grab.
- It is always more beneficial to kill at 6 Barrows brothers before looting the reward chest, however for those who can’t finish a run and/or just want to earn gp and not care about Barrows items, you can simply find the tunnel that leads to the crypt, kill one Barrows brother and take the runes alone as a reward.
- The reward potential of receiving a Barrows item is around 1/16 per chest when all six brothers are killed. It is also possible to get more than one item in a single chest.
- Normally, you will not be able to use your minimap in the crypts below Barrows. However, if you completed the “His Faithful Servants” subquest, your minimap will work again in the Crypts.
In Conclusion
Barrows has been around for years, and ever since its release, it has continued to be a stable way of making money in Old School RuneScape.
On top of that, it has also been a stepping stone into gear upgrades for Ironman and other restricted accounts alike.
If you haven’t done a Barrows run before, I urge you to consider it to benefit your account’s bank value and earn some powerful rewards!
That is how you can complete a Barrows run in Old School RuneScape!
Have any input or suggestions for this guide? Let us know in the comment section below.
