Barbarian
The Barbarian is one of the player roles of NetHack. He or she is a strong melee fighter who starts 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 classes for a new player.
In addition to starting with poison resistance, barbarians gain intrinsic speed at level 7 and intrinsic stealth at level 15.[1]
Barbarians can be either neutral or chaotic, and can be either humans or orcs.
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. Their Quest artifact is the Heart of Ahriman, which alas is not so useful, though you can #invoke it for levitation.
Equipment
A barbarian starts with:
- two-handed sword or battle-axe
- axe or short sword
- ring mail
- food ration
- 16% chance of an oil lamp
Barbarians receive an excellent two-handed major weapon and a weaker one-handed minor weapon. Fifty percent of new barbarians start with a two-handed sword and an axe. The other fifty percent start with a battle-axe and a short sword.[2] If you have the battle-axe, then it does a lot of damage and makes good practice for Cleaver. If you have the two-handed sword, then wield the axe to practice for Cleaver, but save the sword for difficult fights when you must give more damage.
Though ring mail is great, it is the weakest mail armor. Barbarians are strong enough to wear heavier and better armor. If you find other (not cursed) mail body armor in the dungeon, then you should switch to whichever gives you the lowest AC. Heavy armor like plate mail will limit how much loot you can carry, so your goal for the early game should be a dwarvish mithril-coat made from that light metal called mithril; look for dwarvish mithril-coats in the Gnomish Mines.
Though you start with only one food ration, that should not be a problem. Barbarians can eat most fresh corpses, even poisonous ones like kobold corpses, because they have poison resistance. You will notice the poison, but it will not affect you. (Remember which corpses are poisonous so you can avoid them while playing other roles without poison resistance.) 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. Human barbarians should avoid cannibalism by not eating any human (including Keystone Kop) corpses. Barbarians should not eat dog nor cat corpses unless they are desparate; they will gain aggravate monster, but that is not so bad if they have stealth.
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.[3]
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
| Max | Skills |
|---|---|
| Basic |
|
| Skilled |
|
| Expert |
|
| Master |
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.
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.
