This content is part of the Atlas of Discovery Expansion.

The following guide is a general overview of barrier combat. It will explain the considerations that go into making a build, a progression path as well as notable drops along the way, then provide some example builds for specific content.

Every enemy in this expansion has a Barrier health bar as well as a regular health bar. Enemies health bars cannot be damaged in any way until the barrier is entirely removed. Only familiars are able to damage the barrier. The only exceptions are the Barrier Gem and Basic Barrier Gem which only have use in the very first barrier combat area.

Summoning is required for barrier content. The damage of both familiars you have equipped add together, so you should always have two tablets equipped at the same time. The summoning level required to do so should be considered a requirement for doing barrier content:

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Level 10

Due to the complexity of barrier combat, the use of the [Myth] Combat Simulator is highly encouraged. The builds provided in this guide will be capable of killing the content it is designed for, but except for the case of a toth geared player, it is impossible to assemble a list of gear and other combat modifiers that will be optimal for every player.

Barrier mechanics

Barrier combat is considerably more complex than other combat in this game, and some concepts are worth explaining. To start, we again note that the base barrier damage you do is a function of the sum of the max hits of your two equipped tablets.

Basic Mechanics

Most users will be satisfied with the explanations in this section. For users interested in optimization, read this section and the Advanced Mechanics section as well.

Summon Accuracy

Summons use your accuracy rating to determine their chance to hit. Include link to combat page explanation of accuracy rating here? Your accuracy rating is calculated after combat triangle modifiers, so taking advantage of the combat triangle is more important in barrier combat than other combat scenarios. Accuracy boosting gear such as Mithril Gloves and (U) Red D-hide Vambraces are very valuable in barrier combat and you should always attempt to include them in your build. This also means the Attack Style you choose for the weapon you have equipped may also have a large impact on your kill times. For example, ranged weapons can produce higher kill times in barrier combat on Accurate rather than on Rapid. If you are using a melee weapon, always select the highest accuracy style you have available, regardless of what combat stat you're trying to train. Doing otherwise will be a substantial blow to your kill times.

Importantly, Diamond Luck Potion and similar effects do not affect summon accuracy. These effects do not actually increase the player's accuracy rating, they instead are applied after the accuracy calculation. The summon hit roll does not benefit from this effect applied after accuracy is calculated.

Though two handed weapons have high accuracy ratings, their pitfalls continue to affect them in barrier combat: they are slow; most do not have any damage reduction; their damage output is not smooth. This last point is particularly important in barrier combat--if you do not get a swing off before a barrier regeneration tick(covered later) or you roll low on the few swings you get in the window you have lost a large amount damage. Two handed weapons have their niche in barrier combat but in general it is advisable to stick to one handed weapons unless a guide or combat simulator says otherwise.

Summon max hit and barrier max hit modifiers

There are three separate modifiers for the damage your summons inflict against a barrier: Summoning Maximum Hit % modifier (denoted here as SM), Flat Barrier damage added to Summon Familiar (denoted here as FB), and Summoning Familiar damage % added as extra damage to Barrier(denoted here as SB). The whole damage calculation is beyond the scope of this guide, but these three parameters interact in the following way:

[math]\displaystyle{ \small{ \begin{aligned} \text{Barrier Damage} ∝ \text{Sum of Base Summon Max Hits} \times ((1 + \text{SM}) \times (1 + \text{SB})) + \text{FB} \end{aligned}} }[/math]

As you progress through the expansion, you'll find FB and SB are far more plentiful than SM. The major consequence of this formula is when an SB and SM modifiers of equivalent values are compared, SM is usually more impactful. To see this, consider a build with SM = 0% = 0 and SB = 100% = 1 considering equipping either an item with SM = 10% = 0.1 or an item with SB = 10% = 0.1. Plugging into the formula, we find the SM item results in a 10% increase in Barrier Damage, while the SB item results in a 5% increase in Barrier Damage.

(B) Gear

Users will notice that most base game armors have an upgrade to a (B) variant, for example (B) Bronze Helmet or (B) Dragon Platebody. These items are essential to progression in barrier combat past a certain point so we will take a minute to discuss obtaining and using them. All (B) gear requires the consumption of Imbued Bars, such as Imbued Dragonite Bar, and of a small amount of a certain barrier gem, such as Barrier Gem. In addition, higher level (B) gear also requires the consumption of Shard items, such as Barrier Pure Shard. Like the upgrades to (S) and (G) gear in the base game, the quantities required rise as the tier of the gear grows more powerful. All AoD dungeons can drop imbued bars from their chests, and all shard items come from AoD dungeons. The imbued bar drops are usually supplemental sources of imbued bars, but if you don't have the smithing level to make the bar you need, a dungeon can be used as your sole source.

Barrier Dust is used with a base game metal bar to create imbued bars of the same type. Every barrier enemy outside of a dungeon drops barrier dust, and the amount dropped is proportional to the enemy's health. Acquiring barrier dust is by far the best way to create imbued bars, especially when combined with grinding for a useful item dropped by a barrier enemy. What grinds are useful will be covered later.

(C) Gear

This is a further upgrade to (B) gear. Although the crystallization effect it adds will be a small kill time boost in all combat scenarios, the effect is too small to justify seeking out. In addition, (C) gear provides no additional barrier damage compared to (B) gear. The main use of (C) gear is to kill enemies in the Crystal Depths, but as we will see later, it is unlikely to be a time save to craft the gear for that purpose unless the materials are collected farming other drops. If the materials are not naturally collected this way, (C) gear can be ignored until the completion grind, if the user is interested in that.

Summon Attack Interval

The base speed at which summons attack is 3 seconds. There are 3 items that may speed up that interval: Summoner's Blessed Ring; Summoner's Defender; and Knight's Summoning Defender. These items are almost always a large increase to your kill times but may be difficult to fit into your builds. There are edge cases where this is not true that will be covered in the Advanced Mechanics section, but these edge cases will not be a concern for general progression. All three items may be equipped at the same time with the use of the Combat Passive Slot for a total of 30% reduction, which results in a summon swing timer of 2.1 seconds. Obtaining these items is a very high priority for barrier combat.

Barrier Regeneration

In Combat Areas Lost Temple and after, and in dungeons Trickery Temple and after, and in all AoD slayer areas, barrier monsters will regenerate 25% of their barrier every 7 enemy attack turns. This regeneration effect can happen before and after their barrier is depleted to 0. In the case of a regeneration event occurring when the enemy's barrier is greater than 75% capacity, the excess is not stored. When the Enemy regenerates Barrier, they will gain a debuff that applies +5% Attack Interval, -10% Global Accuracy, and -10% Global Evasion, stacking up to 4 times. The enemy will continue to regenerate barrier after this debuff is fully stacked.

This barrier regen effect imposes a dps check on the player. If the enemy's barrier can not be depleted faster than it is regenerated, the player will never kill the enemy. The dps check is alleviated by the stacking debuff the enemy accumulates, but if you have to rely on that debuff you are probably not geared enough to farm that content. This effect is particularly oppressive in Underwater City and against Underwater Ruins monsters.

Barrier Burn

This debuff may be applied by the Dragon/Tortoise summoning synergy, by the Barrier Burn Shield and by the Barrier Burn Potion, with the chances of each stacking additively. A barrier burn does 50% of the enemy's barrier before damage reduction in damage to their barrier. This damage does not apply to the enemy's health bar if the barrier is depleted. Consider having at least one source of this debuff mandatory for doing the Underwater City dungeon. Having all three active is unlikely to be your best option in each slot, but having two is good.

Advanced Mechanics

For users that want to optimize their own builds, this section will be useful reading. Some of the mechanics in this section are not at all obvious.

Slows

We know later enemies regenerate barrier every 7 turns. The debuff applied by this slows the enemy by 5% each time, and when it does each barrier regeneration tick is further delayed. This is an effective dps increase, as there's simply less barrier your summon needs to burn through meaning more of your attacks connect. If we could apply an additional slow we could compound this effect. Fortunately, there are options available. For early game players, the Hinder Potion is often your best potion option, and mid game (god geared) players may also find it to be their best offensive potion option. The conditions for Hinder Potion to be a good option are as follows:

1) You don't need a Damage Reduction Potion to clear the content safely.

2) The enemy lives long enough for barrier regen to be relevant (hard to quantify but probably at least two ticks of it)

3) The enemy's barrier constitutes the majority of the time you spend killing it and Barrier Igniter Potion is not available or you are running Dragon/Tortoise or Barrier Burn Shield. (More on these in a bit)

There are other slow options as well. An early game player should consider the Ice weapons, such as Ice Sword. Both Cloudburst Staff and Water Pulse Staff apply slows, and are usually the player's best magic weapon when a shield is not needed. The combination of a slow and an evasion reduction make Tidal Edge, Ocean Song and Ancient Crossbow all very powerful options. The Quake spell's slow is extremely strong but the spell itself may not be a good offensive option. Engulfing Vortex Longbow is generally considered the best ranged weapon before Throne of the Herald content and it also applies a slow.

Other Crowd Control and Debuffs

Other crowd control effects can be used in barrier combat for offensive bonuses, though the effects are not as dramatic as slow. Of immediate note to the prior section, Frostburn applies an additional slow that stacks with the original slow effect. Unfortunately, it can not be applied before Throne of the Herald gear is acquired by which point it has little value in barrier combat.

Stuns, freezes and sleeps reset the swing timer of an enemy. Since the barrier regen counter only increases when an attack swing completes, this is also an effective dps increase. In addition, both you and your summons will benefit from the debuff increasing the damage the enemy takes. Unfortunately it is rare to find gear that applies these buffs and is also offensively useful. Notably, Water Pulse Staff also applies a stun.

Finally, let's revisit Barrier Burn. Note that this is distinct from regular burns: it affects only the enemy barrier. This effect does 50% of the enemy's total barrier before damage reduction as damage over 2.5 seconds. In other words, your best tool against large barriers is affected by enemy damage reduction, so using the few methods you have to reduce it is likely going to speed up your kills versus other options in those slots. Before toth, Fervor Scroll will likely be your only option in this regard. In addition, it was mentioned earlier that having two sources of barrier burn is good, but usually not three. In Underwater City a Damage Reduction Potion will likely be necessary to enable idling of the dungeon. This can be foregone if manual eating, though your summon swing timer resets when manual eating. If running Barrier Burn Potion and Barrier Burn Shield (likely in the passive slot) is possible and not a big loss, replacing Dragon/Tortoise with Tortoise/Occultist may be desirable, or consider toth summons if available.

Summon Swing Timer Desyncing

Combat sim highly recommended if trying to use this mechanic. Consider a weapon with a swing speed identical to the summon swing speed. Let's say both are 3s, which we shall call synced. When the swing timer finishes, your weapon will connect before your summon does, meaning your weapon will always do no damage until 3s after the barrier is depleted. Suppose instead you wear Heavy Boots to slow your weapon's swing timer to 3.1s. Now your swing timer is desynced with your summon swing timer. Now consider a situation where your summons are able to deplete the enemy barrier in one hit. Instead of your first damaging swing being delayed until 3s after the barrier is depleted, your weapon hits 0.1s after the barrier is depleted. If on average you need two swings to kill the enemy after the barrier is depleted and you deplete the barrier in one summon swing, you will kill the enemy on average in 6.2s with desynced weapon swing timers and 9s with synced weapon swing timers. In this scenario, taking what would traditionally be considered a dps loss is actually a large kph gain! Here are some criteria for when desyncing swing timers will be good:

1) The enemy will usually die between just over 1 and 4 summon swing timers. After that the desyncing effect wanders and is not distinguishable from a normal build.

2) Your summon's minimum hit and your minimum hit are both high. Ideally you want to guarantee the enemy will die within the window above, but if your minimum hit is not high enough, it may only be high probability that this occurs. A minimum hit too low will lose too much time for this method to be worthwhile.

3) You attain desyncing by putting on interval reduction rather than taking off your best weapon for a slower one. There's more wiggle room in this criterion. A 2h weapon may be a good choice, especially one like Big ol Ron which provides a lot of doubling or Ultima God Sword which can guarantee the enemy dies in the first swing after its barrier is depleted. However, normally you want to attain desyncing by putting on attack interval reduction or taking on or off summon interval reduction.

Taking off or putting on the three summon interval reduction items mentioned earlier are good ways to attain desyncing. In addition, you can use Heavy Boots, Knight's Defender (sometimes the non-summoning version may be more useful), Sand Treaders, etc.

One last note: Weapon special attacks usually have finite durations, commonly 0.2s but sometimes longer and not always stated in the tooltip. Combat simulator does not display this time in its attack interval stat, so if you are attempting this strategy, some light testing of special attack durations may be in order. Adding the special attack interval to the rest of the swing timer may make desyncing possible where it might otherwise seem unattainable.

Placeholders for now, stop reading here

Preparing for combat

What summons are appropriate at what point? Tortoise/Dragon is powerful but when is it worth crafting Tortoise?

Entry barrier equipment

Get barrier touch gem from Blind Ghost Get Lesser Summoning Amulet from ghosts Get sapping barrier gem from Vampiric Bat Get Barrier Sapping Gloves from vampiric bat

Useful Drops and When to Obtain Them

Dungeon Progression Path

Golem Territory

Req: Find Old Route Chart Draining Barrier Gem mandatory farm here. Need 10 for glove upgrade. Consider farming Rune Claw if low level. Familiar weapons can be useful, but is the grind worth it?

Unholy Forest

Req: Find Torn Scrolls If ancient+ geared, one clear now then come back for Doubling Gem If lesser geared, consider farming imbued bars for upgrades.

Trickery Temple

Req: Find Lost Cursed Text Stop here for some grinding including Summoner's Defender and Barrier Burn Shield

Cult Grounds

Summoner's Blessed Ring and Reduced Hitpoints Gem Finish Barrier Exalted Shard grind if not done from Trickery Temple

Underwater City

This area also requires

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Level 90

and