Barbarian Assault

Barbarian Assault is a team-based combat Minigame located at the Barbarian Outpost. A team of five players must work together to battle 10 waves of Penance and on to finally defeat the Penance Queen.

There are no requirements for this minigame, although a player with a higher combat level will generally perform better. This is a safe minigame, so you won't lose any items if you die.

Starting off
Go to the Barbarian Outpost and talk to Captain Cain to begin the tutorial. After you've watched all of the lessons, you will need to deposit all of your runes and bronze to mithril arrows. It is also a good idea to empty your inventory, ridding yourself of everything except armour and a good weapon. If you're planning to be an attacker, take a weapon that can attack accurately, defensively, aggressively, and controlled. The best choice would be taking both a scimtar for agressive, a whip for the other three styles, and a draggon dagger/battleaxe for special attack. If you are not planning on doing the attacker role, the wisest weapon would be the excalibur, for its defence boosting special attack.

There are 10 waves of Barbarian Assault, and you must play them in order. To start playing, go into the basement of the Barbarian Assault lobby. There are eleven rooms in here, one for each wave, as well as a "quickstart" room. Either enter the room with a 1 on it or the quickstart room.

It appears that Worlds 6 is particularly popular with players of this minigame.

Equipment Strategy
Rune, or Granite armour is recommended. Monsters on waves 1-9 attack with ranged and melee, and the penance queen attacks with ranged.

Weapons such as Spears and Axes should not be used in Barbarian Assault, except in combination with another weapon. Weapons such as these lack the ability to encompass all attack styles, and will either leave the Attacker no option but to kick for aggresive or wait on controlled.

Player Roles
Unlike Castle Wars, Pest Control, and Trouble Brewing, you are bound to a specific role when you play Barbarian Assault. Each team has five players on it, and must have at least one player to each role. It is recommended that a team either has 2 attackers or 2 healers.



The Quickstart Room
The quick start room is used to auto-match teammates rather than them having to do it manually. On entering the room, simply choose one of the roles (or say "I'll do any role"), then enter the room. Once there is at least one person doing each role and at least five people in the room, the game will start, using the lowest wave for the people playing, so if a person is on wave 1, then the game will start on wave 1. If someone is killed or someone leaves, all other players will start back on the wave that was played, even after leaving the quickstart room. If the wave is completed then the team will be able to advance to the next wave after leaving the room. It is, however, not recommended to use this room because it is usually empty.

The Numbered Rooms
To start a game in the numbered rooms, one person must take a recruitment scroll from the table and use it on four other players. They will then be able to choose their roles, and the recruiter will see their level in that role and be able to accept or decline their offer. The recruiter must also write down their own role.

Once the recruiter has their team, the wave will start after the recruiter has climbed down the ladder. The recruiter becomes the team captain and can decide whether or not to keep their team after each wave. If nobody leaves or gets fired, the next wave will automatically start after 60 seconds. One way of skipping the 60 second wait is for the recruiter to temporarily exit the room, come back in and go straight down the ladder - the next wave will start immediately. This is commonly known as the Quick Start, and is abbreviated as QS.

Gameplay
The key to this game is teamwork. If just one team member doesn't do their job, then the whole team fails. The game ends when someone quits by climbing up the ladder or dies. You do not lose any items when you die, but you don't keep anything that you acquired through the minigame. The object of the game is to defeat all of the Pennace.

Horn
Everyone will get a horn in their inventory to contact their teammates about what they should do (this is very important for the game to work.)



The horn is separated into different functions. At the top right of the screen it comes in this layout for example.


 * DO what is next to the EAR icon
 * TELL / SHOUT out what is next to the MOUTH icon.

Depending upon role, when right-clicked the horn will give options for what to tell your partner:
 * attack style,
 * egg colors,
 * poisoned food, or
 * food to lure.

In the example, the Defender's Horn interface on the screen shows that the Defender needs to TELL (MOUTH icon) the partner (Healer) to use Poison meat to kill the Penance Healers by right-clicking the horn and selecting the Tell-meat option. The EAR icon shows that the partner (Healer) is telling the Defender what to DO: use Tofu as bait in order to lure Penance Runners to the trap. Using the horn is called calling, and it should be prioritized over anything else, because your partner cannot do his/her role if you don't call for them.

Action items change about every 30 seconds, after which a player will need to call again. A player will need to check the Horn interface for changes and tell the partner any changes as well. It is important to tell the partner what to do as the player and team will lose points for every: However, since collecting wrong eggs and using wrong poison do not actually cost a lot of points (about 1 point per 6 wrong eggs and 1 point per 4 wrong poisons), the collector and the healer should always guess the type of eggs and poison in case the attacker and the defender do not call. This is because waiting for a slow call (as collector or healer) is an unnesecary waste of time, and sacrificing a fraction of a point to save time is the most logical option.
 * wrong attack style, plus damage to attacker
 * wrong bait used which allows runner to get through
 * wrong egg picked up which explode and cause 5 damage to the collector
 * wrong poison used

If you need healing, right click the horn, then click on Medic alert the healer to your low hp.

There is also a "horn of glory" in the corner that can be used to call for everyone. It is, however, not recommended to use it, even if you are done with your job. Instead, you should help fire the cannon on other penance monsters.

Waves One Through to Nine
There are four different types of Penance in these waves: Fighters, Rangers, Healers, and Runners.

The Attacker
It's the attacker's job to kill the Penance Fighters and rangers. Runes and arrows are available from the attacker machine near the entrance. However, since you do not gain any experience (other than cast exp) at Barbarian Assault, you are recommended to melee all waves.

The attacker must also use their horn to tell the collector which coloured eggs to pick up.

The Penance Fighters and Rangers will be weak against one type of attack at any given time. Using the wrong attack will cause you to lose 2 hp and hit no damage, and, most importantly, will cost you points. The collector will tell you which attack they are vulnerable to with their horn.

The four attack types are: Controlled/Wind/Bronze, Accurate/Water/Iron, Aggressive/Earth/Steel, and Defensive/Fire/Mithril.

Unlike the healer and the collector, the attacker is not supposed to guess calls in waves 1-9 under any cicrumstances, as you lose 2 * ( F - 1 ) points per wave as attacker, where F is the number of wrong attacks.

Having a high combat level as an attacker is a significant advantage in the game.

A smart tactic to follow to prevent wrong attacks is to count your attacks. Each call is 30 seconds, and each attack is 2.4 seconds. Since it takes some time for collector to call, and some time for you to change style, each call should fit about 10~11 attacks. Thus, you are recommended to count 10 attacks then move away from the penance to prevent attacking with the wrong style on call switch. Also, you should have Auto-Retaliate off at all time.

Finally, the attacker is recommended to bring potions and special attack into barbarian assault. This is because the higher waves have so many monsters with high HP levels, and you need higher damage per second and defence to be able to dispatch them before you get red-barred, thus, lessening the stress on the healer of your team. A solo attacker is heavily recommended to always use super potions in BA. As for special attack weapons, the best options are the dragon dagger and the dragon battleaxe.

The Collector
The collector gathers eggs dropped by killed penance monsters and loads them into the cannon that any teammate can fire.

The collector must also tell the attacker which attack style to use with their horn.

There are three different coloured eggs: Red, blue, and green. They are dropped by dead Penance. At any given time, only one colour of egg can be picked up. The others will explode if you try. The attacker will tell you which colour you should pick up using their horn. However, if the attacker does not call for you, it is recommended that you guess the type of egg.

You will be given an egg bag to store extra eggs in. The higher your collector level is, the more you can store in that bag.

When you shoot enemies with the egg launcher, you can use blue eggs to stun them for a few seconds, red eggs to deal 3 damge, and green eggs to poison them (1 damage per hit). However, it is extremely important that you only shoot red eggs, as green eggs cancel the poison on healers, and blue eggs make the players unable to interact with the penance, and can cause some glitches.

Contrary to what some people believe, the cannon does NOT make you lose points. There is even a quick chat for that on real game.

The Defender
The defender must drop the food the healer tells them to drop in order to lure the Penance Runners into traps. This is done by laying the food in a line that the runner can follow. Bait can be found in the defender machine near the entrance.

The defender must also tell the healer which poisoned food to use on the Penance Healers with their horn.

There are three types of bait: Worms, tofu, and crackers. The runners will be attracted to one type of bait at any given time. The healer must tell the defender which one to use with their horn. The defender will then drop that type of bait on the trap and make a small trail leading to the north caves. With luck, the runner will follow the trail and get killed by the trap.

A hammer and two logs respawn at the north end of the cave. These are used to repair the traps (each trap can only kill two runners before it breaks) and build barricades at the caves, which stops the Penance from appearing for a few seconds. Building barricades is usually not worth the trouble since they delay the players (including the defender himself) from performing their roles effectively. The defender is better off concentrating on the runners.

This is the role that most players find confusing, and watching youtube guides for defender could make the role easier to perform.

I would personally recommend Shir277's guide, as it is the most coherent and easy to understand.

The Healer
It's the Healer's job to make potions to heal their team and use poisoned food on the penance healers. Food and a healing vial can be found in the healer machine near the entrance.

The healer must also tell the defender which bait to use with their horn.

To heal yourself, drink from the healer spring to heal your hitpoints and cure poison. To heal your teammates, you must use the healing vial on the spring to fill it up, then use it on them.

Use poisoned food on Penance Healers to poison them. This poison hits rapidly, upto four damage on them per hit, which gradually fades away. The defender should use their horn to tell you which poison to use. This will change as time goes on.

Healers should use more than one food on each penance healer to speed up the kills. On waves 6+, one food is no longer sufficient to kill a penance healer, because penance healers have more HP (52 HP+) than one poison food can deal before the poison fades away (50HP).

Wave 10
After you get through 9 Waves, you can then fight the Penance Queen in Wave 10. She is impervious to normal attack and must be killed by shooting her with an omega egg. Each person in the team must do their part to make the egg.

The wave starts out normal, but you'll notice that there is only one egg launcher instead of two. There are also poison springs, lava craters, and spiked mushrooms dotted around the edges of the room. One will notice that the levels of the Penance Attackers and Rangers have reduced levels compared to the Penance in Wave 9.

You must defeat all of the Penance Fighters, Rangers, Healers, and Runners before you can damage the Penance Queen, so it is best to defeat them as quickly as quickly as you can before the Penance Queen actually appears.

When the Penance Queen does appear, she will be Level 209. She has a long distance ranged attack that can hit everyone at once. She will be accompanied by Level 63 Queen Spawn, which can be defeated by anyone with any attack.

Once the Penance Queen arrives, you need to make omega eggs. You can give the yellow eggs to other players by using them on them.


 * The collector needs to gather yellow eggs that the queen drops. They then need to pass these eggs to the healer.


 * The healer needs to dunk the eggs in the poison pools at the side of the arena, once done, they need to be given to the attacker.


 * The attacker needs to add spikes to the egg from the mushrooms at the side of the arena. The eggs need to be passed along to the defender.


 * The defender dunks the eggs in the lava pools at the side and hands them back to the collector who places them in the cannon ready to be fired.


 * Remember the order: CHAD: Collector, Healer, Attacker, Defender and back to Collector.

Around 8-12 omega eggs are needed to kill the Penance Queen. Omega eggs may not be used by a player until they have dealt with all of their other allotted monsters.

When fighting the Penance Queen, the healer probably has the most work to do - most players will need far more healing than in earlier stages, they have to do the eggs and everything they normally do as well. For this reason it is recommended that the fifth member of the team be an extra healer.

It is also helpful if the attacker and defender wear Barrows Armour otherwise known as Full Guthans so that they don't need to be healed as often. Once all other enemies are dead it is also useful if players gather near the Healing Pool so that the healers don't have to run as far. Attackers and defenders should help the collector fire the cannon at this stage.

Gameplay strategy
The game is not as straightforward as it sounds, and there are many ways your team can maximize the points earned. The following strategies outline some tactics for your team to earn high points each round, but remember the basic rule: Always call out the correct action each time it changes. If you don't call, you and your teammates get penalized.

Attacker
Although using a slower weapon may hinder your ability to kill quickly, it helps prevent penalties due to incorrect attack styles, since you cannot stop fast weapons quickly enough when the attack styles change. Auto-retaliate should also be turned off to prevent accidental incorrect attacks. Killing monsters slowly also allows the collector to collect all the eggs before they disappear. Remember to call out when it changes if you want the collector to call back. The recommended weapon is a battleaxe or a mace if you have fast reflexes to stop all attacks. Scimitars are also a weapon of choice by lower-leveled players. Lower-leveled players should remember to use a shield so you don't die easily. High leveled players can also bring a set of Guthans for emergency healing when the healers are busy healing other near-death players. (When healing, you can only use the controlled or defensive styles. However, if it is a real emergency, you can use the spear when the attack styles are accurate or aggressive. You still get healed even if you don't do damage, but it costs your team honour points.) After you kill most of the monsters, gather near the healing pool and allow the healer to replenish your HP as you get hit for more honour points per round. in wave 10, you can switch to a faster weapon because there are no penalties. The attacker level does not matter much, since the damage still depends on your strength level. On higher waves, it may be wise to first attack and kill off the rangers, as this will then prevent enemies from being able to target players if they are on the hill, allowing for every other role to stay safe from danger, and allows a healer(s) to focus on healing one target rather than 4 or 5.

Collector
The honour points earned in this role should NOT be used to level up your collector level, since the collector levels are all but useless. By collecting as many eggs as possible, you earn honour points, so collect blue eggs anyway even if they have no practical use. Call out to the attacker when the style changes if you want the egg color called to you. When you have 5+ poison and explosive eggs, deposit into the egg launcher for the defender and other idle teammates to use against the penance runners. If you have a full inventory but cannot deposit into the egg launcher since it's full, use the egg converter to rid yourself of most of your eggs. (This is another reason why you should not level up your collector level; the egg destruction method works best at level 1.) During Gameplay, it is important that the egg launcher be used to kill runners whenever possible, to prevent high penalties of runners gotten away. The egg launcher is absolutely useless against other monsters (Except omega eggs by the Penance Queen) due to their high HP. During wave 10, before the queen comes you can stand at the horn of glory to call out, and it would be great if red eggs are deposited into the hopper to kill runners since you cannot attack the queen unless they are all killed.

Defender
This is perhaps one of the most difficult jobs to master. One way to stop runners from reaching the lure cave is by dropping a straight line of random types of bait parallel to the south wall, as it is almost an impenetrable barrier that stops runners from getting past. There is no penalty for using the wrong type of bait, and there is also no penalty for using the egg launcher, so you can put up a line of bait and use explosive/poison eggs instead. Two explosive eggs or 5 poison eggs kill a runner. Remember to call to the healer frequently. You can also block the caves when you are finished dropping the baits, since it makes the game much less chaotic. In wave 10 you can lure the runners to the lure cave instead, since no penalties are given for runners that got past. It is also a lot faster and easier to do so.

Healer
The healer level is only second in importance compared to the defender level. The amount of HP restored per dose can greatly affect a team's survival chances. If the team does not have two healers, it is important for you to heal first and kill healers later. You can drop a poison pack into healers once in a while when you are near one, but by concentrating on healing you ensure the team's survival. On a team with two healers, the higher leveled healer will concentrate on healing while the lower leveled healer kill the penance healers. On every wave except wave 10, the more hitpoints healed, the more honour points earned from healing. (It's capped at 511.) On wave 10, two healers all but an absolute necessity since the penance queen damages very frequently, It IS possible to survive with one healer if they are good enough, however there is a significant amount of pressure on healing then as the healer has to do eggs and heal the whole party on their own which can be very difficult for one who isn't vigilant. The higher leveled healer will heal the players as they gather around the healing pool, while the lower leveled healer will make the omega eggs. Killing healers will be easier since you can just try the poison packs instead of waiting for calls. Rather than dumping poisoned packs on a single healer, spread the food out, it still does poison damage over time and allows players to drastically increase damage output. On waves 1-5 a single poison pack can kill a healer, wave 6 onwards, healers will require at least 2 packs to kill, provided the food is spread out rather than focused on one. For this, it would be best to wait for the healers to be down to 50% hp before giving them another dose of poison, this should kill off any healer at this level of health over time. This should kill the penance healers must faster using this strategy since it will be hitting multiple healers at once rather than just killing off one, and in turn will make the fighters job a little bit easier.

General

 * Healer's food poisons over time, however, if a green egg is fired at a healer that has been poisoned by a human healer before hand, then the poison damage from the healer will be completely overridden, resulting in a significant loss of damage.
 * If a role has been completed by a player (or players) and other roles are having trouble, the egg launcher can give a little bit of support to those who are having trouble.
 * If there are team members who aren't calling, it may be best to have somebody call out the attacks on the horn of glory to speed things up and avoid losing further honour points from penalties. This is not viable on wave 10.

Rewards
Players gain honour points as they play. The amount of Honour Points that a player receives is based on their performance and how well they worked with their team, along with the difficulty of the wave.

Each team member gets points based on the team's performance plus points based on their own role. A player not TELLING (MOUTH icon) their partner what action to DO (EAR icon) may result in penalties for the entire team.

Players may spend these honour points by talking to Commander Connad, who can be found in the Barbarian Assault entrance hall, near Captain Cain. They can choose to:


 * Upgrade their Barbarian Assault skill levels
 * It costs 200 points in a particular skill to upgrade a level the first time, then 300, then 400, then 500.


 * Purchase specific equipment
 * Fighter torso
 * Fighter hat
 * Healer hat
 * Runner hat
 * Ranger hat
 * Runner boots
 * Penance gloves
 * Penance skirt
 * Granite body
 * Gamble their points which can yield items up to a Dragon chainbody
 * You can gamble low, medium or high costing 200, 400 and 500 points. however, you must have already beaten the Queen once in order to gamble 500 points. You do not however need to kill the Queen more than once for all the other items that require a "Kill Queen" point.

List of known gambling rewards

 * Low:
 * Flax
 * Unicorn horns (10, noted)
 * Sweetcorn seed (25)
 * Guam seed (49)
 * Guam Leaf (17,19,20 noted)
 * Raw Tuna (83, noted)
 * Oak Logs (394, noted)
 * Uncut rubies (7, noted)


 * Medium
 * Cadantine (5, noted)
 * Blue d'hide chaps

Please note that the odds of getting a Dragon chainbody are pretty slim (about 1 to 300,000), seeing as it is a very rare and valuable item. As quoted from Jagex, "About the same odds as Zamorak suddenly deciding to give up his evil ways."
 * High
 * Loop Half key
 * Teeth Half key
 * Magic shortbow
 * Dragon chainbody
 * Rune scimitar
 * Rune full helm
 * Rune battleaxe
 * Rune pickaxe
 * Rune platebody
 * Adamant full helm
 * Ranarr weed (50, noted)
 * Ranarr seeds (70)
 * Tuna potatoes (28, noted)
 * Raw swordfish (64, or 119 noted)
 * Teak logs (23, noted)
 * Teak plank (22, or 46 noted)
 * Uncut rubies (70, noted)
 * Iron ore (62, noted)
 * Blood runes (44)
 * 24,975 Coins
 * Death runes (37)(107)(119)
 * Yew logs (168, noted)
 * Rune Kiteshield
 * Dragon medium helmet
 * Lava battlestaff
 * Magic Tree Seed
 * Rune 2h Sword
 * Berserker helm
 * Granite Shield
 * Adamantite ore (35)
 * Raw Shark (55)
 * Archer Helm
 * Dragonstone
 * Dragon bones (15, noted)

Music

 * Assault and Battery
 * Pirates of Penance - Wave 10 when Penance Queen appears