Sekhmet's Barbarian new player guide
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This is the guide for new and returning Barbarians. If you haven't familiarized yourself with the General new player guide, it is highly recommended.
Getting Started
Who Are We
The first thing that needs explaining is what the Barbarian Guild stands for, in short, weapons.
The Barbarian Guild is primarily focused on fighting battles through mundane attacks and relying on the inner power known as Inner Fire. They have a full set of self-improvement abilities, and a narrow number of roars that can affect your enemies. If you're looking for a guild which doesn't have to rely on the waxing and waning of mana or blowing themselves up with spells, then the Barbarian Guild can be your home.
First Steps
First you are going to need to name your character and pick a race. When you log in you will be prompted on how to create your character.
Any race has potential to make a great barbarian. However, when picking a barbarian's race, its generally easiest to play a race with a strength and/or stamina bonus. Many of our abilities rely on a FEAR contest which leans heavily on Charisma, and Strength. Discipline is also an important ability to consider when picking a race. If you are very new to the game a Gor'Tog, Human, Kaldar, Dwarf or S'kra Mur will probably be the easiest barbarian out of the gate.
Getting to the guild
Now that you've picked your race its time to go talk to a barbarian guild leader and ask him to JOIN the guild.
If you are feeling lost remember you can type DIR BARBARIAN and it will begin to give you directions. I'd also recommend taking a look at a map of the Crossing and possibly printing it out for reference.
Once you get there and try to join, Agonar may say certain STATs are lacking when you try to join the guild. If you want Agonar can train these stats for you (it is slightly more expensive to take this route). For now let's just accept Agonar's training and listen to his words of wisdom.
The Guild
Inner Fire
Lets first talk a little bit about Inner Fire.
Inner fire is our power, its what fuels all our abilities. It is also a trainable skill, which we will specifically differentiate by calling the Inner Fire skill. Our four main supernatural abilities that we can train are Warding, Augmentation, Debilitation, and Inner Fire.
Inner Fire replenishes very slowly over time, but will never entirely fill in a passive state. In order to get more Inner Fire a barbarians need to fight and kill stuff, though once they slacken in their killing, it will start to drain towards the passive maximum.
First Ability
The first ability you receive is Mediate Flame, and you get it for free. When using this ability, it will give you some basic information about you, such as how full your Inner Fire pool is (based on the size of the fire), how many learning slots you have, and how many you've learned from various paths.
Now it's time to select your first optional ability. At the start it is best to choose a Berserk or a Form, because this will allow us to train TWO of our four supernatural abilities. The first couple circles (we call levels circles) will go fast and we will be able to choose a roar soon, don't worry.
One of the favorite starting choices is Berserk Avalanche, which will help you not get so tired when you are swinging away crushing face. In order to choose berserk Avalanche try to type STUDY AGONAR and it will explain the commands that can be used. If it is too confusing, then simply type CHOOSE AVALANCHE.
Let's start it up. Try typing BERSERK AVALANCHE or just BERS AVA if you are into brevity.
As long as that berserk is running you will periodically see some messaging of the effect. Berserk avalanche periodically refreshes your fatigue, which can drop severely when attacking quickly or with heavy weapons.
Also type EXP and see that you are now training two supernatural abilities (Inner Fire skill and Augmentation). Be careful though, running abilities will eat up our precious Inner Fire. The good news is we can get more Inner Fire doing what barbarians do best, and that is killing stuff!
If you ever need to remember which abilities you have, type <ability type> LIST, for example: BERSERK LIST to see your berserks.
Gearing Up
Depending on your race choice you probably have a mishmash of gear and potentially a funny looking hat.
You should follow the General new player guide, Gear and Preparation Walkthrough to understand how to exchange gear at the Veteran, buy equipment, and what pieces you need to fill the gaps left by free armor.
There are four types of trainable armor, you can look them up in more detail in other areas of the website. The four armors are LIGHT, CHAIN, BRIGANDINE, and PLATE.
Generally speaking newer barbarians should consider starting in lighter armor. Stick to chain, leather, or chain/leather combo unless you are a more experienced player and want to train Plate and Brigandine. Also, don't forget to get a small shield.
When you ask a barbarian what weapon to train, you'll receive ten different answers. In the end, most players eventually train all of them to some degree, but starting out only experienced players try for more than three or four. If you type EXP WEAPON 0, you see there are quite a few weapon options available, early on we are required to train at least two different types of weapons. Remember WEAPONS are our PRIMARY skill-set this means you learn weapons faster than any other guild in the game. Take advantage and train em. Its also fun to try new things out from time to time. OK time to train our stats. I'd recommend picking a nice trusty broadsword and a scimitar to start.
Stat Training
Let's first get your stats rounded out. To start out with, you can type INFO to see what your current stats are. Right near the middle you should see a line that says TDPs, which stands for Time Developement Points, or how many points you currently have to improve your stats.
You should go research all the various attributes and think about how you want your Barbarian to train. However, its really important early on to get some decent strength and stamina. Barbarians hunt, and they hunt a lot. This makes for lots of wounds, and lots of wound making. Stamina protects the intrepid Barbarian from dying as the wounds pile up, as well as letting them swing weapons for long. Strength helps the Barbarian hold and wield bigger weapons, as well as outright enhancing the damage they do.
Stat training is very RACE dependent, however, generally speaking I would try to get your strength and stamina both to 20. Do this first. Gor'Togs may even go to 24 in each. Early on I generally recommend neglecting Charisma as a Barbarian. Charisma is a very important skill later on for our roars and most importantly PvP, but if you had to pick a stat to neglect for the first couple circles Charisma is a good one to skimp on early.
One of the more popular ways to train is to train whats cheapest first. If you are a Gor'Tog you train Strength and Stamina. Set milestones, such as all skills to 30. Bring your cheapest ones there first, followed by your middle ones, followed by your most expensive. An entire guide could be spent on how to spend your TDPs, for now just pump some Strength and Stamina so you can kill stuff.
Training
Combat
This is best explained in the general new player guide.
Supernatural Skills
Supernatural skills are surprisingly easy for us to keep moving. The key is to remember that approximately five minutes after activation, both Berserks and Forms cease to teach, and must be restarted for learning.
Augmentation, Inner Fire, Warding are all taught by using the continuous abilities.
Debilitation is learned via Roars and can only be learned in combat, and only when used against something that is challenging.
Advanced Subjects
Abilities
There are five categories of abilities: Forms, Berserks, Meditations, Roars, and Masteries.
All abilities have two kinds of requirements, the number of slots they cost, and how many previous abilities in the path must be known. For example,
- Berserks are one of the more expensive abilities, requiring a large chunk of Inner Fire at start and periodically draining more. They tend to be powerful and short. Their effects are instantaneous with no roundtime to start.
- Forms are long lasting duration abilities, they cost nothing to start but do reduce the maximum Inner Fire regeneration level and periodically drain.
- Meditations are moderate lasting abilities, they cost to start but do not require any Inner Fire cost to maintain.
- Roars are one of the few offensive abilities we have, attempting to scare our opponents to various effects. They take a negligible amount of Inner Fire to work, but they also pull from another pool, the voice pool, which has a limited amount. Over time the voice pool will passively fill, so through pacing roar timing it is possible to keep roaring throughout an entire combat.
- Masteries are entirely passive abilities that require a large number of other abilities to get. Unlike all other abilities, Masteries are only taught by Pit Masters, and not the guildleaders.
Ability Progression
I hope you had fun slaughtering rats and what have you. Eventually in between the carnage and bloodshed, you will want to map out some type of plan for your barbarian. Many of our abilities are really really nice, unfortunately we will never be able to choose all of our abilities so tough decisions have to be made!
Early on we have some good choices, this is the order I generally choose my skills. Sooner or later later you are going to need to select a roar so you can train your Debilitation skill. Also you need to work towards getting a skill that trains Warding. Personally I don't love the first Warding skill available, famine, so I tend to skip that one and gun for either Swan or Flashflood. Its cheaper to go towards Flashflood (you can get there using less ability slots) and the skills leading up to it are very valuable even at the end game. (Furthermore, many people at endgame have little use for swan.)
- Berserk Avalanche - Pulsing fatigue regeneration.
- Everild's Rage - an easy early roar choice, debuffs opponents defense.
- Berserk Tornado - Shield skill and Stamina bonus.
- Form Eagle - Bonuses held bow, crossbow, or throwing weapon.
- Berserk Flashflood - an anti stun berserk, but most importantly a good warding trainer.
After this point the Skill Trees are wide open for you to do what you want. There are other areas on this site that list everything out with nifty flow charts. Using my starting points; you have a debilitaation Trainer in Everild's Rage, you have a Warding/Inner Fire trainer in Berserk Flashflood, all the other skills train Augmentation/Inner Fire.
EXPERTISE and you
Barbarians have a unique skill called EXPERTISE, you can see it by typing exp expertise. We need to train this skill as a circle requirement
There are two ways to train expertise, ANALYZE and MANEUVERS
Barbarians have a unique set of tactical combat using the ANALYZE verb. You can look up a list of these moves in other areas of this site. The one you want to start with is Analyze flame.
Lets go to shiprats and try it out. If you haven't found the shiprats in the crossing they are a little SW of the temple, you have to go through the gate to get in there. I'll wait till you get there.
Found it? Great. Ok now while holding the broadsword we bought earlier type ANALYZE FLAME. What happened? You need to do each of the moves in that order, whether they land or not, after you complete the moves you will get a nice chunk of expertise learning.
Another way to train Expertise is to use Maneuvers. You can look up what weapon type uses what maneuver later. For now lets try CLEAVE. Still holding the broadsword, type MANEUVER CLEAVE. Woa! pretty cool right. Keep smashing.
THE FIGHT!
A couple thoughts on our favorite thing in the whole wide world of Elanthia, fighting!
Since we are currently in ship rats, lets stay here and play with them a bit. By now you probably have your armor experience ticking up, Evasion, Shield, Parry. All good stuff. There is a whole bunch of ways to fight in DragonRealms and this guide isn't meant to cover those details. Here are a few tips however that will have you top barbarianing in no time.
A. Early on always keep up at least one berserk or form. Preferably two, one that is Augmentation, and one that is Warding.
2. As soon as you get your first Roar, use it! Use it every couple of minutes. Personally I like to ROAR QUIET RAGE every 3 minutes or so. Roar quiet means it hits all critters engaged with you at pole and melee range. Its important to train debilitation and this is the best way to do it. You can learn it from listening to other players classes but then what fun is that?
d. Maneuver often! Also use the analyze verb to keep that expertise pumping.
j. Play with your stances a bit, you should make sure shield, parry and evasion are training roughly equally. Type STANCE. You can shift the numbers around, Try to start with Evasion 100, Shield 40, and Parry 40. To do this simply type Stance Evasion 100, Stance Shield 40, Stance Parry 40. There is a maximum amount of points you can allow, and you may have to lower one to get your stance in another one set. Now lets save that stance as our custom stance. Type STANCE CUSTOM SAVE. Great! Now if we want to play around we can always just get back to our 100/40/40 stance by typing stance custom.
I like to plan for the future; endgame ideas
OHI you metagamer you. You look cute in that shirt. So here is what I think is a pretty solid late game build
From the path of the Horde you know the Masteries: Titan and Strategos. From the path of the Flame you know the Masteries: Powermonger. From the path of the Predator you know the Masteries: Tribalist.
From the path of the Horde you know the Berserks: Wildfire. From the path of the Flame you know the Berserks: Famine and Cyclone. From the path of the Predator you know the Berserks: Tornado and Flashflood.
From the path of the Horde you know the Roars: Anger the Earth, Death's Embrace, Serpent's Hiss and Wail of Torment. From the path of the Flame you know the Roars: Death's Shriek. From the path of the Predator you know the Roars: Everild's Rage.
From the path of the Horde you know the Forms: Dragon and Python. From the path of the Flame you know the Forms: Monkey, Bear, Turtle and Swan. From the path of the Predator you know the Forms: Piranha, Eagle, Owl, Wolverine and Panther.
From the path of the Horde you know the Meditations: Tenacity. From the path of the Flame you know the Meditations: Flame, Power, Contemplation and Serenity.
This build leaves 8 points free... add it to dervish mastery or warstomp or something else, or add more magic resistance forms that are more specific. Hey the world is your oyster.
Finding More Help
Finding your community and additional IC (in character) and OOC (out of character) help is much more easier now. You can join the DR Discord at any time and secure an invite to a Guild Discord or you can find any of the following characters below that have volunteered their time to assisting new and returning characters:
- Volunteers may sign up or remove their names at will.