Barbarian

Barbarians are strong melee fighters who start the game with poison resistance. Because barbarians can fight their way through situations that would kill other players, and because they need not worry about poison, they are one of the easier roles for a new player.

Barbarians can be either neutral or chaotic, and can be either humans or orcs. According to the guidebook:

              Barbarians  are  warriors out of the hinterland, hardened to
         battle.   They  begin  their  quests  with  naught  but  uncommon
         strength, a trusty hauberk, and a great two-handed sword.

Starting inventory

Each barbarian starts with the following:

• Either of these cases (50% chance each):
  • a +0 two-handed sword and a +0 axe
  • a +0 battle-axe and a +0 short sword
• a +0 ring mail
• a food ration
• an oil lamp (16.7% chance)

Intrinsics

Barbarians gain intrinsics at these experience levels:

• Level 1: poison resistance
• Level 7: speed
• Level 15: stealth

Skills

Barbarian skills
Max	Skills
Basic	Weapons: dagger, saber, flail, quarterstaff, bow Combat: two weapon combat, riding Spells: attack, escape
Skilled	Weapons: pick-axe, broadsword, long sword, scimitar, club, mace, morning star, spear, trident
Expert	Weapons: axe, short sword, two-handed sword, hammer
Master	Combat: bare hands

Quest

Main article: Barbarian quest

Strategy

Barbarians should sacrifice corpses at altars until they receive Cleaver, their first sacrifice gift. Cleaver is an artifact battle-axe that goes well with the barbarian's melee style.

Equipment

Barbarians receive an excellent two-handed major weapon and a somewhat weaker one-handed minor weapon. Fifty percent of new barbarians start with a two-handed sword and an axe (1H). The other fifty percent start with a battle-axe (2H) and a short sword (1H). A barbarian wielding a battle-axe will be able to dish out copious amounts of damage, and will most likely be skilled with axes by the time he receives Cleaver. Barbarians that start out with a two-handed sword often wind up saving it for those special occasions, and instead use their one-handed axe as their primary weapon in order to prepare for Cleaver.

Although your ring mail will get you by in the beginning of the game, it is the weakest mail armor, so you'll do well to keep an eye out for some heavier and better armor. Defense-wise, whichever armor gives you the lowest AC, is the best. Every moon has a dark side, though. Heavy armor (like plate mail) will limit your loot-carrying capacity, so packrats are ultimately better off searching high and low for a dwarvish mithril-coat (these are often found in the Gnomish Mines) in the early game.

Later in the game, Cleaver becomes a risky weapon to carry, since if it becomes cursed, it will leave you with no hands free to get it uncursed. Prayer is a workable strategy in the upper dungeon, but this is no longer available in Gehennom, and the pace of the endgame is to hectic to rely on being able to pray. Most barbarians, therefore, will wish to replace or augment Cleaver with a one-handed artifact weapon. Frost Brand is one possibility, although selection should be driven by play style and available resources.

Neutral barbarians who are not averse to wishing for quest artifacts may find The Orb of Fate a worthwhile use of a wish. The Orb provides valuable enhancements to a combat-reliant character, confering half physical damage and half spell damage, as well as doing a number of other useful things. It is, in short, everything that the Heart of Ahriman isn't (including very heavy-a downside factor).

Nourishment

Barbarians start off with but one food ration, but this is generally not a problem. Most fresh corpses (even the poisonous ones) will slide down a barbarian's gullet like an eel in a waxed tube. However, like other classes, barbarians need to avoid eating old corpses (including any corpse of a mummy or zombie) and the corpses of their dead pets. Cannibalism does not fly as far as human barbarians go, so human corpses (including Keystone Kop) should not be consumed unless you are willing to suffer the consequences. Barbarians will also gain aggravate monster if they eat dog or cat corpses (this won't be too much of a problem if you have stealth, though), so this should be avoided in all but the most desperate times.

Spellcasting

Barbarians use their intelligence stat to cast spells, but because their intelligence is low, they are restricted in most schools (though can reach skilled in attack spells), and as a role they hate magic, so spellcasting is close to impossible. They do have one special spell, haste self, which is easier than the others.

Barbarians are unlikely to do any spellcasting until the late game. Once they gather an ascension kit with a helm of brilliance and no metal nonmagic armor (for example, a dragon scale mail, gauntlets of power, speed boots or jumping boots, no shield), it might be feasible to enchant the helm of brilliance and start casting some spells, especially haste self and attack spells like force bolt.

Skills

The most obvious strategy is to fight with Cleaver (using the axe skill). The problem is that Cleaver is a two-handed weapon, and that becomes annoying in Gehennom when monsters start cursing your stuff. Barbarians should also aim for two-weapon combat, but Cleaver will not allow that. You could try to alternate between Cleaver (or another artifact) and fighting bare-handed. A better solution for that late into the game is to sacrifice for more gifts until you receive a good artifact sword such as Frost Brand (using the long sword skill). Once you have Frost Brand at skilled, then start fighting with two weapons, preferably with a silver saber or silver spear (which, if enhanced to skilled, does damage equivalent to a saber at basic skill level) as your secondary weapon.

Going on the Quest

The Barbarian quest is not especially difficult, although it does have a couple of wrinkles. There will be a very large number of trolls on the quest, which can form an almost perpetual swarm around the character, rising from the dead faster than they can be permanently disposed of. There are far more of them than even a hungry barbarian can eat, so a tinning kit can be extremely helpful in this situation, as can a wielded cockatrice or chickatrice corpse. If your character is not strong enough to yawn at trolls in melee, they can be the biggest hazard on this quest.

The Barbarian's quest is also full of magical loot-scrolls, potions and wands-presenting both an opportunity and a challenge, since the swarms of ogres and trolls will be trying to use these items against the character. Attacks from a Wand of sleep can be very dangerous to an otherwise strong combatant. These risks are eliminated if you postpone the quest until you have reflection, or at least a good assortment of intrinsics.

Another reason to delay going on the quest is the lack of incentive from the quest artifact:the Heart of Ahriman. The Heart is infamous as one of the most useless quest artifacts. It is a luckstone, but one is also guaranteed at Mine's End. It provides stealth, but the barbarian gets that for free at Level 15 (one level after the quest even becomes an option). You can #invoke it for levitation, but this particularly quirky form of levitation is only slightly preferable to the potion of levitation, and much less desirable than that provided by other means. The most potent use of the Heart may be as an artifact sling stone, which isn't saying much.

The real reward for the quest is certainly the Bell of Opening, which is required to win the game. But this is, perhaps, another argument for going on the quest late rather than early. Until you obtain the bell, it is safely in the possession of your quest nemesis. Once he's dead, the bell is your responsibility.

SLASH'EM

A droven Barbarian is an easy race-role combination for SLASH'EM players. At the start of the game, a droven Barbarian should immediately unwield the weapon ([w][-]) and fight bare-handed. This gains access to the drow's very useful melee sleep attack, an immense help for the difficult melee environment at the start of SLASH'EM. The ability to repeatedly put your opponent to sleep should compensate for bare hands doing less damage than good weapons! To train your axe skill, wield your axe or battle-axe against monsters with sleep resistance. Eventually, you will be fighting primarily with Cleaver, alternating to bare-handed only when you need it.

Drow cannot two-weapon, but fighting bare-handed should more than offset that.

Encyclopedia entry

They dressed alike -- in buckskin boots, leathern breeks and
deerskin shirts, with broad girdles that held axes and short
swords; and they were all gaunt and scarred and hard-eyed;
sinewy and taciturn.
They were wild men, of a sort, yet there was still a wide
gulf between them and the Cimmerian.  They were sons of
civilization, reverted to a semi-barbarism.  He was a
barbarian of a thousand generations of barbarians.  They had
acquired stealth and craft, but he had been born to these
things.  He excelled them even in lithe economy of motion.
They were wolves, but he was a tiger.
        [ Conan - The Warrior, by Robert E. Howard ]