When all Magic fails...

Hiding 41 38% perplexed

Let us break this down. The skill, Hiding, is self-explanatory. You're looking at your experience in hiding. The next number, 41 or 3 or 1008- whatever it is, that is your 'rank' in hiding. The 38% connotates how close you are to gaining another rank in hiding. The word after your percent, like 'perplexed' in this example, is your current state of mind. Generally, the higher your state of mind is, the more you're thinking about it, and thus the more experience will be granted when the game "tics." If you reach "mind locked" as your mind state, this means you cannot focus on this skill any further, and should move onto something else for a while.

Now that we have explained the general experience system, I will now explain the system of skills sets that each guild has. There are a total of five sets of skills in the game: Weapon skills, Armor skills, Magic skills, Survival skills, and Lore skills. Every true skill or trade inside the game falls into one of these five categories. Every guild in the game has the five skills sets divided in the following manner:

• One Primary skill set
• Two secondary skills sets
• Two tertiary skill sets

The higher the skill (and its skills set) is on this hierarchy, the faster the chosen guild will learn the particular skill. To use the previous example, Hiding is a Survival skill. Guilds that have Survival skills as their primary skill set (Thieves and Rangers) will learn hiding the fastest. How is this accomplished, exactly? Read on for an explanation, or skip to the advantages section if you're interested about learning about Barbarians.

The skill system is developed using what is referred to as "wall ranks." Wall ranks basically mean ranks that take twice as long to go up. This relates to the skill division by powers of two. Confused? To put it simply, there will rarely be any wall ranks in your primary skill set. There will be twice as many wall ranks in your secondary skill sets, and twice as many as that (four times as many total) in your tertiary skill sets. In other words, every guild will experience a wall rank every:

• Eight ranks in their primary skill set
• Every four ranks in their secondary skill sets, and...
• Every TWO ranks (every other rank!) in their tertiary skill sets.

To use Barbarians as an example, Barbs are weapons primary, survival/armor secondary, and magic/lore tertiary. This means that they will have trouble raising every eighth rank in weapons, every fourth rank in survival and armor skills, and every other freaking rank in magic and lore. Luckily, Barbs also don't use magic at all (unless you want to permanently lose some of your Barb abilities- in other words, they never do it), so they only struggle with lore. As a final, by-the-numbers example, we'll use Barb skills as an example.

Let's say John the Barbarian is training his primary weapon, staff sling (Lord knows why he chose this). John's staff sling is rank 15, and wow! He's learning it so fast! For some reason, however, it's taking twice as long to get past rank 16. This because 16 is a multiple of 8, and weapons are John's primary skill set. So getting past rank 16 will be twice as long.

Tired of flinging rocks at death squirrels, Jogn now begins to train Escaping (John has bad taste in skills, doesn't he?). He is rank 11 in escaping. How fun! So fast the experience comes! But wait.. he ranks, and now it is going slow again! That is because 12 is a multiple of 4, and escaping is a survival skill (one of his secondary skill sets). Ergo, John will have trouble raising his secondary skills twice as much as his primary skill. But wait! Poor John is not done yet!

Being a studious young barb, John decides to start braiding grass for mech lore. He's rank 3... but wait! Rank four is taking twice as long! John's getting the idea by now, so he tries again. To his satisfaction, he gets mech lore past 4 to 5. When it gets past 5, however.... oh Lord! He's having trouble again. Why, John asks? Because mech lore is a Lore skill (duh), and Lore is one of John's tertiary skills. In other words, it will take John twice as long to raise his rank EVERY OTHER RANK. Needless to say, this means that the tertiary skills of any given guild tend to be significantly lower than any other skills, since it takes a lot more time to raise them.

I hope this has cleared up any confusion about the experience system? Now... onto the advantages of being a Barbarian!

Advantages of Barbarians:

• Sheer power. Thieves can hide. Paladins are well-equipped. Mages can sling spells. Smart players can be killing machines with any guild (except the Empaths, of course), but none are more well-equipped than the Barbarians to be pure forces of chaos and destruction.
• Inner Fire. This is a measure of your fighting spirit, and it gives power to nearly every ability that you possess. All magic, while destructive, has a crutch. The power of the Moon Mages rises and falls with the moons. Warrior Mages, Rangers, Paladins, and Clerics are all suseptible to the limits of power perception. What does this mean? Every room has a different mana value for every different type of magic: moon, nature, life, and elemental. If caught in the wrong room, a mage's ability to fling powerful spells can be several decreased. Your fire goes with you everywhere and anywhere, however, and is determined only by yourself and how you use it.
• Berserks. The very first time you circle you're awarded your first berserk- Blood Berserk. Only the Barbarian, uncorrupted by magic and unhindered by codes of honorhonor, has the ability to truly lose himself to the madness of a battle. From the very beginning of your journey all the way to legendary heights of power that few have reached- there is always a new form of battle madness waiting to be learned. Your berserks are many and versatile, and some will make you nearly invincible if hunting at your level. The arguably most powerful of the Barbarian abilities, the highest berserks, are named after the very god of battle himself, Everild, and his many aspects. Max your stamina, increase the power of intimidation (roars), super-charge your agility and reflex: berserks do everything. Beware, however, and do not abuse these gifts. Nearly all berserks will send you into a battle madness. You will be unable to retreat until either the berserk wears off, or you are out of opponents to kill!
• Battle Dances. Berserking was not enough? You have at your disposal a dozen and more battle dances. The dances are the antithesis of berserking. Instead of raging, the Barbarian enters a state of mind similar to meditation. The dance is long, and you are always able to retreat if things should go awry. The barbarian mimicks the traits of animals, both noble and fierce, and they grant to him a variety of powers. While berserks all add to your power in battle, dances can help outside of it as well. One helps you hide. One boosts your perception, and helps you disarm traps better. And, naturally, there are a multitude which help you kill things better.
• Roars and Battle Cries. Berserks? Dances? You're not done yet! Throw in roars, and Barbarians have just as many battle abilities as mages have spells. Roars are fantastic abilities, and only one of them drains your inner fire! As such, you can use them in conjunction with berserks or dances nearly as often as you want. Some will make your enemies retreat from you in fear. Others will disarm your opponent, or lower their defense. The positive roars, the Battle Cries, give you and all your allies a boost. A couple of them are pretty helpful, but remember that you're no Paladin, with a whole set of abilities geared to helping groups.
• Magic resistance. Every stat point you pump gives you a small resistance to the wiles of the spell-flingers. The magic system has been overhauled, and the magic resistance has been down-sized quite a bit. Several years ago, Paladins had to be at least twenty circles higher to even hope to Halt a Barbarian. Mages whined. It was nerfed. This seems fair, though. Your resistance is still hardy, and will help you a lot against dodging spells if your fire is full.
• Weapon Mastery. Weapons are your heart and soul. You are the blade that slices flesh. You are the hammer that crushes bone. You master longbows faster than Rangers, and can wield knives more effectively than any Thief. If Paladins are the shield of Elanthia, then you are the sword. In other words, Barbarians are the only weapon-primary guild. If you don't wish for a life of constant trial by combat, then turn away. There is always time and need for book-learning, but the lessons and truths closest to your heart will be those found within your battered body, and along the tip of your bloody sword. You will learn to wield weapons like no others. This means you will be the undisputed master of physical slaughter... as well as...
• Forging. It also means that only Barbarians can forge capped (ie- strongest possible) melee weapons of any sort, be they blade, blunt, halberd, pike... you get the idea.
• Neck-Snapping. Baby or legend, it doesn't matter. Brawl. Then grapple with a creature. Now CHOKE. CHOKE again. If you can get them into a grapple, and are strong enough, they're dead on the spot. It is a thing of beauty.
• War Stomp. It's not the greatest, but it is still interesting. At higher circles, you get a freebie moves that serves to unbalance opponents. There is talk of improving it, changing it, or actually making a number of different stomps. We can only hope.
• Whirlwind. Holy Mother Hodierna. When you reach 200 ranks in a melee or pole weapon (so, not for a long time, all you dreamers out there), and have adequate statistics, you can use your weapon to hit ALL ENEMIES in range. All. Of. Them. Watch as four leucros all fall at once. It makes me weep every time. That's DIR BARBARIAN, commoner.
• Dual Load. This is not a Barb-only skill. Rangers, being masters of the bow, can also learn to load their bows with two arrows at once for double the carnage. We can't snipe like the stealthy types, but since two arrows means a lot more damage, Barbs can do it too, naturally. Like Whirlwind, don't expect to learn such a catastrophic skill until you've mastered your craft (200 ranks in a bow, plus 30 reflex and agility).
• Heightened Defense. Once again, not a Barb-only skill, but still a great asset to our battle skills. Basically, you gain an extra point to allot to your STANCE. As a young Barbarian, the effect is minimal: an extra two effective ranks in parry are not going to help you a great deal. This only gets more rewarding with time, however, as the increase is exponential. For example: at circle 20, you might have about 90-95 parry. Assuming you have something else (like evasion) set to 100%, you can use 82% parry as well (80 percent at circle 1-9, 81 at 11-19, 82 at 20, etc). In other words, you're using about 88 ranks worth of parry- an increase of about three and a half ranks. Fast-forward to circle 100. You've got 400+ parry. You can use 90% of your skill, instead of 80%. Do the math. That's an additional 36 ranks of skill being used! 36 ranks. Holy Geebus. That's like five extra levels of parry skill put into effect.
• 1337. I'm sorry. I really detest this leet-speak or whatever the heck it's called, but I can't help it. I love being a Barbarian so much. I have tried every other guild over the course of my long history with Dragonrealms. I was an Empath first. Then I attacked a rat, went into Empathic Shock for harming a creature, and died. Screw that. Training stealing is annoying, and I hate getting arrested. Bye-bye Thief. Bards, Rangers, Paladins, Warrior Mages, Moon Mages, Clerics.... they all have their particular moments of enjoyment. None of them matches the Barb, though. I would have to say combat and sparring are the most stimulating activities in any game, and being a Barbarian not only gives you a reason to be in combat all the time, but it makes it fun, too. So kick back, relax, and kick ass. You're a Barbarian. Be proud of it.

Though unrequited masters of slaughter, there must naturally be some sort of balance maintained in the power and functionality of every guild. There are sacrifices to be had if you wish to pursue the path of Barbarism, and I would point them out lest the unwary traveler finds himself (or herself) committed to a path he has not the strength nor desire to continue.

• No Magic. This is both a blessing and a curse. On a positive note, one of your tertiary skill sets is completely useless to you, meaning that you only need to slave over one group of skills (lore) to get it to advance further. On a negative note, however, Barbarians are the ONLY guild that pretty much has an entire set of skills (primary magic, targeted magic, power perception, harness ability, magical devices) closed off to them. This effectively lessens the number of TDPs that a Barbarian will gain in the long run. As a consolation, since weapons are your primary skill set, you've got a whopping sixteen skills to practice to make up for the lack of magic. If you want to make up for the TDPs you sort of lose for not having magical skills, train a few smaller weapons every now and again. It works well to give you more TDPs.
• Magic Resistance- Always. You resist all kinds of magic. This is wonderful when some silly mage is trying to hit you with his souped-up Fireball, but not so great when a Paladin tries to cast courage on everyone and you happen to be around (on a side note, let any Pallie who you group with know you're a Barb, and never join when they call for Courage). It can also be slightly negative when you're in the Empath's guild waiting to be healed and some nice soul decides to try and cast Zephyr to refresh them some. Area-effect spells like Zephyr make a check again your MR, and there is no way to disable this. Your Inner Fire is with you- always. I've often completely defeated the spell before, meaning the Warrior Mage casting it basically just wasted a bunch of mana. It does not happen often, but you should be aware that all positive spells people try to cast on you (like Courage or an Empath's Soap Bubble) will be resisted as well, possibly defeated.
• Stoopid Barb. There's no need to talk slowly and simply to roleplay an effective Barbarian; in fact, mine is rather graceful, a lover of literature and poetry. As far as game mechanics go, though, you take a big hit to learning lore. Mechanical lore, appraisal, scholarship (to help you earn faster), teaching, and Vocals/Instruments/Animal lore (should you choose to pursue them) are all learned ponderously slow. If you plan on forging later in your career, mech lore and appraisal will be very important; I suggest keeping them mind locked almost always when not in combat. Keep a full gem pouch to appraise. Listen to lessons as often as possible. Keep stones to count, or braid grass/vines, and later invest in origami to learn mech lore quicker. It's something that can be overcome with careful planning, but it's still problematic to learn lore so slowly. Of course, I'd much rather just learn mech lore and appraisal slowly instead of critical things like evasion, perception, skinning, hiding, stalking, climbing, swimming, etc...
• Heavy melee focus. Any combat-oriented guild like Barbs, Pallies, and Rangers (and possibly Thieves and Clerics) would be downright silly not to learn ANY melee weapons. However, almost all the berserks make retreating impossible, and almost every enemy in the game will close to melee before attacking. The Dances tend to help ranged weapons almost as much as melee ones, so ranged weapons are a definite possibility. However, Berserks are still a great chunk of the Barb's power, even if used only in a tight spot. I would highly, highly recommend having one melee weapon and one ranged weapon (like Heavy Thrown, Longbow, or a crossbow) as your two primaries. Several enemies, both creature and while sparring, will try to avoid entering melee combat with a Barbarian (a wise choice). Being able to hit from a distance as well is invaluable.
• Small Survival Penalty. Barbarians are a survival-secondary guild, not a survival-primary one. What does this mean? Skills like hiding and perception are not learned as quickly in our minds as in the minds of Thieves and Rangers. I have known several successful, note-worthy Barbarians who relied heavily on stealth. However, it is not a path I would recommend for an unexperienced adventurer. Being survival-secondary, you're more vulnerable to things like being stolen from, being hidden on, being back-stabbed, falling down during a long climb... etc. To remedy this, I would suggest training Perception (at the very least) as heavily as you train your main weapons. That way, thieves much smaller than you won't be able to run circles round you because you cannot see them! A small problem, but at least we don't have it as bad as Paladins and Warrior Mages... survival tertiary is just -asking- to be stolen from.

I hope this comprehensive list has been of some use to any adventurer pondering entering into the path of swords and battle. The path of the Barbarian is a simple one in scope, but do not make the same mistake as many and assume it is simple in conception, as well. The Barbarian, more than any other guild, is a primal force of nature. The Paladins guard, the Thieves hide, the Empaths heal, the Rangers thrive... but only the Barbarian devotes himself to the art of slaughter, and it is a gruesome, difficult path to enduring. However, it is also a highly rewarding path if given ample time. Watch your enemies fall like wheat before a scythe!

Barbarian Commands

As a Barbarian, you have your own personal commands just like any other guild. If you'e feeling frisky, let out a mighty BELCH. If you're in combat, give a hearty ROAR. Remember to SNUFF cigars like a proper Barbarian. And always, always CRUSH your boxes once you're done picking them. If you see a fellow Barb, why not SHAKE HANDs to greet them? After all, Barbs are best.