Small Barbarian Mutterings

by Parn

Introduction

Hail mighty Barbarian! You rule the lands of Nork. You rule from the day you step out of the roller and into the game. You hit harder, fight longer, and singlehandedly defeat the greatest of monsters while other classes cower in the tavern. Grab a weapon, any weapon, and you will beat your opponent senseless with it.

But you will feel the pain. You will learn to love the pain. To embrace it like an old, dear friend. You will find yourself in the midst of vast, evil armies with no hope of survival. Yet, somehow, you will survive. And conquer! This is why in battle against every great lair beast, the battle plan is always the same: "Barbarians first, Others follow!"

If this bothers you, if you are the timid sort, if you value your hit points, stats and gear more than achieving greatness in battle, then find another profession.

Playing a barbarian is actually rather simple. You have few commands. You need very little gear. There is no tactical manuvering. You grab a weapon and go berserk. It is as simple as that.

This guide is good to get you up to level 18, skill 15. Beyond that, visit the DZ forums for advice, or DZ chat. Both are excellent sources of information from bigger barbarians.

In the Roller

RACE: City Dwellers have the best odds of getting good rolls across all stats. Mountain Dwellers can possibly roll a 19 in strength, and seem to be able to carry more coin than other races. Very nice for a barbarian! Outcastes also get high strength, but lousy rolls in most other things. On the plus side, the gear repair traders are all Outcastes and will give players of that race some extra care when repairing gear.

STRENGTH: 17 or higher. Perm STR pots are hard to find. High strength increases damage and the chance of an excellent hit (double damage). Gear and coins have weight that encumber you, causing misses with your attacks. High strength offsets this.

AGILITY: 15 or higher. Perm AGI pots are easier to find. Some people give them away. High agility helps to land a blow and ups the odds that opponents will outright miss with their attacks.

WILLPOWER: 17 or higher. Perm WIL pots are rare. This helps you resist the effects of certain psionic attacks.

CONSTITUTION: 10 or higher. One of the sellers in the Nork tavern will sell minor CON pots for 2,000 coin each. A minor pot will raise your con by +1 until 15. Buy and drink these right out of the roller. This is good enough to get started. The higher your CON, the better the odds of getting good hit point gains when you rest up a level. Major CON pots to take you to the max of 18 are a bit uncommon, but usually can be purchased from other players. The "majors" give +2 CON per pot. If you are level 1 when you drink it, you will get +1 perm hit point up to around 180 hits.

CHARISMA: ??. This is very difficult to repair in the game. It can help when it comes time to buy hit points at level 13. But no matter what, you will need a ton of coin to max at that level. Every point above 14 earns you an extra discount. Every point below 15 has no effect. You also get a discount at the weapon trainers. It really is a matter of personal preference. Many are very successful with lousy charisma.

All other stats are vanity stats. Forget about them. Save the time in the roller and go kill something instead. If you think too much about things, then you are not thinking like a barbarian.

Dedicating

The barbarian trainer is at the extreme east side of the Nork surface. Go to the east of town, cross the water to grassy field. Pass by the large building. That is the Tehru Prisons. Nasty place! Continue east until you bump into impassable mountains. A small building with a door on the south side houses the barbarian trainer.

Click on icon then his talk head to open the training box, then click the Dedicate button. Welcome to the most powerful class in the game!

Every 3 experience levels (3, 6, 9, etc.) make sure you return to the trainer and click the Class Train button. He will give you an extra attack die at each third level! Each die increases the odds of hitting, and inflicting damage when you hit with an attack.

First Gear and Hunt

Strip naked. This is a natural state for barbarians. Let the other classes stare in awe at your fabulously muscled physique.

Now choose a weapon. Halberd is cool and the most commonly used. Longsword is second most popular as you can also wield a shield. You can buy a halberd or longsword in one of the weapon stores in Nork town. You can buy a wooden shield in Volcano Town shops.

Descend into Nork-1 for your first hunt. This will be the first and only time you will not go berserk. You need to get some coin to buy instant heal potions. The blue mend bottles are good for healing when not zerking, but the "IH" bottles are the ones you need in your sack for your first zerk hunt.

Fill your sack with gems and helms. Go sell them. Kill something if you have the urge. When you have a bunch of coin, buy as many IH bottles as you can.

Look for a pair of gauntlets. Any will do. Keep 1 pair in your sack at all times. You can wear another pair if you want. I will explain the use of the sacked gloves in a bit.

Geared with just a weapon and a sack of IH pots, you are all set to hunt like a barbarian!

First Zerk

Find a secluded spot. A place with a remote trainer is ideal, like the barbarian trainer. Make sure NO player or wandering non-evil creature is visible. You will soon learn why. Now pull those spare gauntlets out of your sack and hold them in your right hand. You are ready to learn how to zerk.

Zerking is not complicated. You simply type the letter B and press enter. Keep doing this. You will quickly increase your battle rage. There are 6 stages of rage: fidgety, anxious, wild, crazed, out of control, frothing at the mouth. Froth is full zerk.

I have two macros assigned to my macro bar for the berserk command. One lets out a yell so nearby players know I am going berserk. Another does not yell, so I am not constantly yelling during a party hunt.

Here is the yelling macro. I have auto-return checked for it.

b;@+++ GOES BERSERK! +++

Nearby players will hear a message like:

From the northwest you hear:
Parn: +++ GOES BERSERK! +++

Here is the non-yelling macro. It also has auto-return set.

b

During this time, called 'zerking up', the odds of you leaping at and attacking something increases. At Froth, you will attempt to target or attack something on nearly every round. If there are red-tagged monsters about, they will be targeted first. If there are no red-tagged monsters, you will go after any target, including your friends. If you are testing this at the barbarian trainer, at some point you will see a crosshairs appear on his icon.

The unique feature of holding plain leather gauntlets in your right hand is that it prevents you from actually attacking the target. The target, if a player, will receive some scarey message like you are attacking them, but no blow is actually landed. This does NOT work for other items. You can hit and slay players with gems, scrolls and twigs while berserk.

So, when there is any danger of attacking another player while berserk, pull the gauntlets out of your sack and hold then in your right hand!

When you execute a B command, here are the things that can occur:

UnZerking

OK. You are all zerked up at the trainers and have the urge to kill something. Now what? First, you need to learn how to unzerk.

Drag a succor twig to the ground to twig back to town. Dragging succor twigs to the ground is one of the few things you can do while a full zerk.

Once in town, and before you do anything else, belt your weapon and hold your gauntlets. It is now safe to walk about town until you unzerk. I recommend you go to DZ chat and socialize a bit. Brag about the day's kills, or make up tall tales of your deeds. Barbarians have exceptional chat skills because of the need to unzerk.

Another option is to move to an easier part of a dungeon and use the attack macro rather than the berserk macro. You can continue to hunt while gradually unzerking. Just remember that auto-heal may not work well at lower levels of zerk, as the number of out-of-control rounds that occur will decrease.

Nork-1 Hunt

Walk to the stairs to -1. Enter CRITSORT ENABLE, draw your weapon (and shield, if you use one), then descend the stairs.

Walk cautiously until you see a red-tagged critter. Now press your berserk macro. As you climb up the levels of rage, you will eventually target the critter, and then attack it. Before you have the critter targeted, you can move away when the critter gets on your hex. This little dance will minimize the odds of the critter hitting you until you get zerked enough to target and attack.

DO NOT STACK ZERK COMMANDS! You can accidently kill a wandering player.

After each berserk command, you will get some feedback from the game as described earlier. Wait for it before entering another berserk command.

If there are no other players about, it is safe to continue to zerk until you slay the critter. If there is another player about, and only that one red-tag, then it is UNSAFE to kill it. Odds are you will slay the red-tag then retarget the player in the same round.

So this is the basic pattern. Move until you see red-tags. Zerk until 1 or 2 left alive. Then make sure there are no players about before finishing them off.

Level 1 barbarians start with around 45 hits. Using Parn's Rule for dungeon hunting (dmgx4), you should be able to autoheal effectively in dungeons that inflict 11 hits or less per round. That is a good description of Nork-1 except for the largest of mobs. You should find yourself autohealing soon after dropping below 1/3rd hits (15 if you have 45 hits.) I had no problem hunting naked thru N-1. My biggest problem was finding enough critters to challenge my awesome killing skills!

You hunt most efficiently against mobs of critters, where you can slay and auto-target in the same round. The mechanics of auto-targeting while zerked make hunting 1 critter at a time very inefficient. Each dungeon has something called a "zoo" room, i.e., a place where large mobs of critters tend to form. Most classes tend to quiver in fear in these areas. You, as a barbarian, need to seek them out.

It is very difficult to search corpses while zerked. I recommend purging the dungeon by moving from one end to the other. Then reverse direction, using the LOOK macro to view death piles that have rotted (you can LOOK without going out-of-control). The drag coins, gems and helms to your sack. (You can drag items to and from sack OK while zerked.)

At some point, you will want to return to town to sell some loot or park in a safe place before logging out. Belt your weapon and pull the spare gauntlets out of your sack. Twig back to town and go chat for a bit until you unzerk. Then you can sell your goodies. As long as you are holding your gauntlets, you can attempt to sell stuff, but it may take some time with all the out-of-control rounds that will occur.

Zerk Problems

Here are some common actions that can outright fail in your rage and cause you to attack and kill other players. Make sure you hare holding your trusty gauntlets before attempting them.

If there is nothing to target, you may throw down your weapon and pick up a magical item on the ground and attempt to break it. This can occur if you stack a bunch of berserk commands and kill off the last critter before all the commands are executed. It can be embarrasing to figure out where you might have dropped your weapon. So you must be careful when stacking commands.

TALK/SHOUT: Yup, you will have trouble talking in the game!

UP/DOWN: Going up or down stairs or climbs can be infuriatingly difficult! Be careful.

GEARING: Wearing or removing clothing can force you to loose control while zerked. This is why I recommend having a pair of gauntlets in your sack. If you try to remove them from your hands, then rewear them, you may attack something.

LOOTING: Searching corpses can lead to out of control rounds. You can use the LOOK macro, and you can also safely drag items from the ground to your hands and sack, or from your sack to your hands or ground. A common technique is to let the corpses rot, then use the LOOK macro button to view items on the ground.

SELLING: You may target and attack someone if selling something at the shop while zerked. Again, holding gauntlets in right will keep everyone safe.

Barbarian Skills

Barbarian skills are experience level based. The higher your experience level, the more fighting skills you get. Weapon skill is also important, but not as critical as it is to other classes like Paladins and Martialartists.

Level 1

Zerk Attack: Starting at level 1, while berserk you will do big damage with just about anything you hold in your right hand. The odds of you landing a blow increase dramatically while berserk.

Mini Charge: You will charge and attack opponents up to two hexes away from the start. Other classes have to get to SKILL 15 in a weapon to do this. You can do it immediately with ANY weapon, including your bare hands.

Autoheal: When you fall below 1/3rd your hit points, you have a chance to automatically drink an IH potion if you have one in your sack, and still unleash a full combat blow, even with BOTH hands holding something!

Break Experience: You get experience for breaking magical items: Scales, magical helms, rings. Hold the item and enter "BREAK itemname". Some helms and scales give a large amount of experience.

Psi Protection: You get a natural protection against psionic damage. It is about 4 points per level. So at level 10, damage from psi attacks will be reduced by 40 points. This is a big benefit. The largest of barbarians have been known to fight naked against dangerous psionic monsters that send other classes screaming in pain.

Level 3

Attack Dice: You get +1 attack die at every third experience level, starting with level 3. So at level 1, you have 1 attack die. At level 3, you have 2. At level 6, you have 3, etc. Attack dice increase the odds of landing a blow. When you land a blow, each extra dice gives you a chance to inflict more damage.

Level 16

Strength: You will get +4STR while fully zerked. So if your strength is normally 18, it will be 22 while fully zerked.

Level 18

Zerk Hits: You will get +50% hit points while fully zerked. So if your hits are normally 600, you will have 900 hits while fully zerked!

Gearing Up

ARMOR

When you are ready to venture beyond Nork-1/-2, consider a trip to yeti island to the south to kill and tan a yeti. Yeti fur is good starter armor. Barbarians are encumbered by scale and plate armor. You can wear it, but it will hinder your attacks.

With some help, consider big yeti fur from Frore ice plains. A big yeti wields a club or maul and hits a ton. This is the best Norkian armor for barbarians and is a psi-cutter (halfs psionic damage.) With this fur and your natural resistance, you will rarely take any psi-damage until venturing to the most dangerous areas.

ROBES

Here are a list of robes in approximate order you should obtain them.

A yellow robe from Maeling caves gives a good boost to fire protection. Not a must have item unless you start hunting fire dragons, but plan on a hunt for a couple.

A raksasha cloak, from killing and tanning a raksasha, gives a boost to assault attack protection, but not a must have item after you have gained a few levels since your natural psi-resistance absorbs small dungeon damage. Good to have when venturing to Nork-6 and deeper.

With assistance, consider venturing to the Maeling-4 tengu lair for a couple of super enmiss robes (SERs). This is a specialty robe that gives great enmiss protection for certain lairs. If this is beyond your means, a trip to the Frore Fate Pools can yield regular enmiss robes. These will do in a pinch, since you can rely on your natural barb protection and a large yeti fur to cut enmiss and espear damage.

Cloaked in a pair of SERs and a large yeti fur, you are ready for a slith hunt. This yields a robe with psicrush protection. There are variations of this robe depending on the class of character that completes the quest. One or two of these, and you are all set for the ultimate in barbarian apparel: reggie cloaks.

Put on your slith robes and gather a party for a reggie hunt. This is a big, dangerous lair raksasha on N-8. Its skin give a cloak with combat adds, psionic-mirror and on-contact energy shield that absorbs physical damage. Barbarians will wear 2 or 3 of these cloaks when hunting the biggest Nork lairs or the most dangerous dungeons.

HELMS

Heavy helms with face-guards that glow can be found everywhere. They offer combat stun protection and adds to hit points. You can get up to +40 hits with these helms. I have a few that give 30+, including a 39hp helm.

Frore King's quest yeilds a power helm that has great stun protection and is a psi-cutter. This and a large yeti fur are a nice combination for barbarians.

RINGS

Any ring with a gem inset into it will have some combat adds, either offensive, defensive, or both. You really need to get it sensed to see exactly what adds it has. You can find them everywhere. The tougher dungeons give better odds of getting better rings. I recommend you wear rings with the best defensive adds you can find. Def adds on rings really boost armor blocks against physical attacks, even if you are not wearing any armor.

SASHES, AMULETS, BRACERS, BOOTS

You can select these as specialty items depending where you are hunting. In the general dungeons, they are not critical. Consult any of the other excellent web-sites for info on the various items available in these catagories.

Weapons

The two most common weapons used by barbarians are halberd and longsword. Greatsword skill is workable. Recent changes in Nork make Mace skill a viable option also. Other skills suffer from lack of a decent high-end weapon, or inability to use weapon specializations.

At experince level 15, you can choose to specialize in a weapon. Hold the item in your right hand and tell the barbarian trainer, "specialize". This gives you to-hit and damage bonuses. At level 19, you can specialize in the weapon again. And at level 24, you can add a third specialization in the weapon.

Throw, bow and MA skills cannot be specialized.

HALBERD

Buy a halberd from one of the weapon shops in south nork. This will get you started. At some point, you will want to hunt the Tehru Prison minotaur to obtain the Mino Quest hally.

To prepare for the minotaur quest, skill up your halberd, then travel to Volcano Town with a hunting party and kill the VT griffin. Search its corpse and get the silver longsword.

Skill longsword to about skill 8 or so, then form a hunting party for the minotaur.

Use your silver longswrod to slay the minotaur and get its axe. Trade the axe for the quest hally in the basement of Tehru prisons. The quest halberd is +4, glowing and silver! It has a very good damage curve and willl serve you well for quite some time.

As you grow, you should consider a hunt of the Frore Hill Giant. It yields a +5 silver, glowing halberd that does a teensy but more damage.

Next step up is a Fire Giant hally from the Frore Fire Plains. This is a dangerous, exciting hunt through an unusual area. The FG hally is +6, silver and glowing, and has an excellent damage curve!

The ultimate Nork hally is the barbarian-only strength halberd. You need to gather items from the dangerous King Mino dungeon. Thats about all I know about the quest. I am told it has a wide damage range, and some seem to prefer the FG hally for general hunting.

LONGSWORD AND SHIELD

I am a LS and Shield user myself, and here is what I have found to work for me...

Buy an iron longsword from the weapon shop in south Nork. This will get you started until you can save some coin to buy the gemmed-hilt longsword in the Volcano Town weapon shop.

Once you have the gemmed-hilt longsword, ask around the Tavern for an enchant to +4 from a friendly Mentalist. This will serve you well for quite some time. A +5 enchant will make it glow, but some mentalists charge up to 1meg coin for the extra enchant in order to buy back the hit points they loose from doing the enchant.

Skill up longsword then slay the Volcano Town griffin to get its silver longsword. An enchanted gemmed-hilt sword has a better damage curve, but it is not silver, so you will need the silver ls for special hunts, like minotaurs.

There is a broadsword that is dropped in the Frore Fate Pools that is useful to play with, or you can go to Aleria and get a broadsword there and have it enchanted. I think the gemmed-hilt LS is a better weapon, but try it for yourself and see.

The Alerian Seldars drop a cool looking longsword that you might find interesting to play with.

By skill 13, and definitely by skill 15, you need to consider getting a meteoric longsword, also known as the Slicer longsword, after the name of the NPC on N-7 they wields it. This is a glowing weapon and it hits a ton (as does Slicer!) You will have trouble landing a blow on Slicer unless you are highly skilled, so you need to get a strong party to assist you.

Your ulimate goal is the legendary silver saber. You must defeat Uther and trade his evil sword for the good-aligned saber. Think about this at around skill 15. By then, while zerked, you should be able to hit Uther most of the time.

For shields, a simple wooden shield from the Volcano Town shops will do good service early on.

Next up, are steel shields. NPCs wander the Maeling surface with them, as do NPCs in Nork-6. If you ask nicely, you can probably get some one to donate a shield to you. Or make a death-defying run to Nork-6 to grab one from the dungeon floor. This is very good protection through Nork-5, so it helps to get one as soon as possible.

In Volcano Town, a hunt of the lair basilisk will let you exchange his tanned hide for a cool-looking red and black shield. A "basky" is an excellent blocker through the intermediate dungeons.

The top shield in the Nork lands, the Chaos Shield, is wielded by Breshard, a nasty lair NPC in Frore. You will need to have a strong party to complete this hunt.

An oddity is the Duke shield, so named because it is gotten from Duke Talinar of Aleria. This hunt requires a special quest to trigger the Duke into combat. It gives adds to hit points. Some barbarians prefer it to the Chaos Shield.

Shields can be enchanted by mentalists to boost their combat adds. I am not sure it makes them block any better. I think it just boosts your armor adds, so you might see an increase in armor blocks, as opposed to shield blocks.

Maxxing Hit Points

I consider maxxing at level 1 for a barb as a waste of time. If you have the CONs and Yellows, go for it. Otherwise, use the time to skill and coin for buying hits.

At experience level 13, it is time to buy hits from the hit point doctor in Volcano Town. This will be your first real test of your resolve to master the game and proceed to the next level of play. But if you put your mind to it, you should be able to max your hits in about 3-4 months of "reasonable" play.

What I did was roll a mentalist and develop that into a coiner. It was fun to play and at some point my area spells could level that dungeon. I used the barbarian to outfit the mentalist with dragon scales, a steel shield and some nice defensive rings and hit point helm. Combined with transmute, you should be able to gather enough coin to max a barbarian in about a month or two.

Best overall spot for fighter or mentalists is Maeling-2 dungeon. Certain ogres drop 5k coin, and the small black pearls can sell for over 12k each. Some helms can sell for 5k (or you can break them for excellent experience points). Mentalists might also consider Nork-5, as everything there dies real quick to area spells.

Once your barbarian is maxxed, it is important to pay attention to your CON stat before resting. You always wnat this to be 18 to get the best possible hit point roll. You should average about 18 hits a rest with a CON of 18. It could go as high as 26 hits, and I have frequently gotten hits over 20.

If you are subscribed to the Gold Plan and Upper Guild House for the barbarian character, there is a quest in the Nork Club House to max out your hits even more. Of course, you have to complete the Club House quest to get in the Club House. How to get into the CH is common knowledge and posted on many sites. The inner workings of the CH is a secret. You will have to gain access to learn the secrets for yourself.

Skilling

Weapon skill is important to a barbarian, but less so than experience levels. Your true combat power is unleashed through high experience levels. However, you do need to pay some attention to skilling. Here are some guidelines.

You gain most of your skill by killing. That's it. Forget about everything else. It's not worth the effort. The faster you kill, the faster you skill. Simple, eh?

But starting at skill 5, there is a cap on how much skill you gain per kill. So hunting extremely difficult dungeons in hopes you will get better skill won't necessarily work. What you will find is that you will be able to stay at the cap by solo hunting reasonable dungeons, say N-1 thru N-5, and M-1 and -2, until about skill 10 or so.

At that point, skill gained in those dungeons starts tapering off compared to the skill you need to continue to advance. The tougher dungeons show a dramatic step up in the hits needed to kill the monsters, so hunting solo there to get better skill won't help because it will take much longer to kill the monsters.

So by skill 10 to 12 or so, you need to develop your skill party abilities. This will help 2 to 5 players continue good skill advancement by quickly killing in tougher dungeons. Consult the forums for advice on forming and working effective skill parties.

Arg

A recent addition to the game is the ARG command. Using this instead of berserk dramatically increases the odds for an out-of-control round, while eliminating the rage increase rounds. This causes two opposing effects.

First, by increasing the chances of an OOC round, you increase the chances that you will autoheal when you drop below 1/3rd hits. (Big barbarians tend to have more control over their actions than small barbarians, so the OOC rounds they see tend to be fewer than for small barbarians.)

Second, by eliminating increased rage rounds, you will find it more difficult to sustain full zerk. You must pay special attention to notice when you are about to drop down a level of zerk and switch to the BERSERK command in hopes of increasing your rage and sustaining full zerk.

There is a game "anomoly" that can also occur with ARG. I call it the 'dead arg' syndrome. Basically, nothing happens. No message, no attack, nothing. The arg command just flat out fails. This is a leading cause of death to my barbarian. I don't want to stack commands, especially during party hunts, so I want to make sure I am not suffering from network lag. This means I need to let the critters attack me for one full round of combat messages before I am sure it is a dead arg.

I am told at experience level 30, the dead arg syndrome disappears. And, the ARG command gives an OOC round 100% of the time.

Lair Hunting

Once you max your hit points and get to skill 12/13 in your weapon, you will be effective damaging just about any Nork lair critter while at full zerk. So you should not be shy about volunteering for the major lair hunts before you reach level 18. At skill 13, I easily hit Uther and Reggie, to name some of the tougher critters to damage.

Barbarians are lair bait. That is your role in a lair hunt, to get targeted by the lair beast so others may hunt safely. You need to get used to this as it can be a bit unnerving at first, especially in lairs where just getting struck by the monster can cause experience, skill and hit point loss. The trick is to learn how to safely zerk up before entering the lair, then targeting the lair monster before others walk in. If you are getting hit and taking the damage, then you are doing your job in a lair hunt.

Until you get to level 18 and the 50% hit bonus, you need to be a bit selective about which lairs you will bait. If you are undergeared, and the critter is very hard hitting, you should relegate yourself to the role of just another stick. But with two reggie cloaks and a large yeti fur, you can bait just about any lair before you reach level 18, except the biggest damage ones like a mamma red dragon or a greatsword slicer.

The prefered bait method is to find a secluded area out of sight of the assembled party, and zerk until the hunt is ready to begin. Then you run into the lair, target the monster, and the others follow. By starting at full zerk, you have greater odds of autohealing if the healers are a bit tardy in getting into the lair.

Some lair critters are not red tagged until they attack you, like Uther and the Snowbeast. So if two or more barbarians rush the lair, it can be a challenge to get your crosshairs on the monster and not the other player. I usually enter the lair with my gauntlets in hand, run onto the hex of the lair monster, then enter F until I target it. I then sack my gauntlets and draw my weapon.

If you are not the bait on a lair hunt, consider entering the lair unzerked, targeting the non-red tagged monster, then zerking.

If you accidently target a player during the hunt, remember the gauntlets/hug trick, or move out of sight of everyone and zerk until you look for another head to smash.

During the hunt, be aware of lair terrain features that may cause the lair beast to go out of sight. This can be a problem with a lot of sticks attacking with proning weapons. I have hit the B macro just as the monster gets proned behind a column, and targeted and hit a player because of a battle cry round that allows me to target, move and hit in one round.

Some lair hunts begin at the bottom of stairs to the lair. If you are bait and the lair critter is especially nasty, start at zerk with gauntlets in hand and then try to go up the stairs. Other players should wait until you disappear up the stairs. Once up the stairs, target the beast or some red-tagged monster, then swap your gauntlets for your weapon.

As the hunt winds down, you need to exercise additional caution. If the monster is slain as you enter a zerk command, you will target a player, or possibly grab and break some gear from a deathpile or the monster. Remember that you can have a battle cry round that will give you two uncontrolled actions. Really big barbarians have much better control over their actions and can switch to a CHARGE or ATTACK command rather than B or ARG towards the end of a fight.

I don't try for the killing shot when I see the monster has just a sliver of heart left, especially if there are a lot of players attacking the beast. An option is to belt your weapon and draw your gauntlets and continue to zerk, so if the monster hits you hard, you can get an OOC round and autoheal.

Miscellaneous Mumblings

Spell Reflects and Retargeting

Reggie cloaks are great barbarian gear because of the weapon damage absorption, but the psimirror on them can be a huge pain in the butt. When a spell is cast at you and the cloak reflects it, you will autotarget the caster. In a battle with lots of spell casters, you can find yourself retargeting almost every round and not actually attacking anything! Very frustrating.

Skill Party Leader

When hunting in a skill party, know who the party leader is and make an effort to stay in shouting range. Zerking barbarians have a tendency to wander and if you get too far away from the party leader, you run the risk of getting ZERO experience and skill, even for the critters you kill. Also, as a general rule, barbarians should not be party leaders because if they wander too far, the rest of the party will waste their experience and skill.

Kill Shots in Partys

Zerk away until critters are dead until there are 1 or 2 critters left and near death. Then you need to back off or forge ahead and let other party members get in the kill shots. If the last critter dies just as you zerk, you may target and slay a party member.

If you have a goodly number of hits for the dungeon you are hunting, then consider going ahead, gathering a mob of critters, and dragging them back to the party. If you are just barely surviving in the dungeon, then you may want to forgo any strategy that requires you to avoid hitting the zerk button as often as possible. If you don't zerk, you cannot autoheal.

Healer Autoheal Disc

Inexperienced healers just obtaining the autoheal disc tend to go wild with it and cast it on players every chance they get. But the AutoHeal disc negates the barbarian ability to autoheal by drinking an IH pot. The healer disc triggers at 1/5th remaining hits, while the barbarian skill triggers at 1/3rd. You do the math. Inform healers that you do not want nor need their autheal disc, but the other protections are most welcome.

[End of Guide]