Last Updated on by Samuel Franklin
Idleon Barbarian Build Guide (Zow & Fishing)
Build your Barbarian for maximum damage potential or fishing with our Barbarian and fishing build guide for your newly unlocked talents. Advancing from the Warrior players can choose this class in W2 which combined with their fishing speciality makes them a staple of any Legends of Idleon account. Continuing with a specialisation in physical damage and spear like weapons the Barbarian expands your arsenal with new deadly active attacks, healing options, fishing skills and the popular meta apocalypse zow.
This guide to skilling your Barbarian is split between a fishing skilling build and the damage zow build for the Barbarian which is central to this character design and is even expanded in the next class advancement after Barbarian. This zow based build also makes the Barbarian a significantly more powerful fighter than the Squire counterpart who has a defensive focus to their talent build although still has a role to play in your Idleon account.
This Barbarian build guide is focused solely on the Barbarian talent tree, if you need help building your other talents refer to our warrior build or mining build articles. Guides for all other classes and skills are available on our Idleon builds page.
Idleon Barbarian Build – Zow Damage Build
Creating the best Barbarian build for your account can vary depending on your overall account progression which is why I always encourage you to place points 1 by 1 to determine what is giving you the best gains using your character stat window. Mechanics like the post office, alchemy, obols, family benefits and other background boosts are just some of the things that will impact on the min-max best option at any point in time. That being said the below is a good default starting position for a Barbarian to utilise and will be optimal in the majority of accounts in terms of priority order.
The Barbarian requires some initial setup to gain their damage compared to other classes as a key ingredient is the Apocalypse Zow skill which effectively gives you a percentage damage boost based on all the monsters you have killed 100,000 times (each commonly referred to as a zow stack in the Idleon community). Given this high bar many players may wait until they unlock W3 to start focusing on these zow stacks as there are useful mechanics there that give you multi-kill and make this significantly easier and are combined with the Monster Decimator talent. That being said there is nothing stopping you starting the process before this point it will just be significantly faster once you reach W3. Checking how many monsters you have killed of each type is available by clicking on the monster card when on your Barbarian. For example the below shows that I have 108k kills of mimics, giving me one zow stack for my trouble.
Players can earn just over two dozen stacks from W1 and W2 mobs for reference and each level of Apocalypse Now increases the maximum number of zow stacks you can use for damage. Note you will still want to max this skill though as the percentage damage gain increases every 33 levels (e.g. level 33 = 3% while level 66 = 4%). There are no real secrets to farming zow stacks as a Barbarian beyond waiting for W3 as noted above. For some minor optimisation you can hunt monsters with useful cards or resource drops first as they will give you progression in other areas alongside the zow farming.
The skill talent for your Barbarian build should be as follows:
- Bear Swipe: The first skill from your Barbarian talents that is an active swipe forward at enemies. Given this boosts your active and AFK gains you’ll want to make this and Axe Hurl below a priority for any points up until level 25 or 50 depending on how many total talent points you have available. This investment should be balanced against your other good starter option after your class advancement which is actually Back To Basics initially (see details below).
- Axe Hurl: Your second active skill unlocked when playing as the Barbarian and you should follow the concept noted above and level it alongside Bear Swipe when these active skills are giving you the most gains (and don’t forget to equip them both on your attacks bar).
- Back To Basics: Giving you additional points for your Warrior tab is actually surprisingly strong depending on your progression in talent points that come from a mixture of class levels and skill levels as there is a lot of value in those initial Warrior talents early on that you might not be able to max without this skill. It allows you to boost some of your key warrior talents that provide weapon power, damage and AFK gains although once you already have sufficient points to max your Warrior talents without Back to Basics this is obviously not required with those points shifted to other Barbarian talents instead that are noted below.
- Monster Decimator: With your goal as Barbarian to maximise your zow stacks this is an important talent to obtain early on as it means every kill you make will simply go further. This skill boosts every monster kill for the purposes of opening portals and also effects your progress towards zow so while it is not needed once you’ve finished with zow stacks it still has some use to push through maps faster if desired.
- Apocalypse Zow: Focus on levelling this in 33 intervals so that will be 33, 66, 99, 132 (and beyond) if you have the library available to increase the max level of talents which is a W3 game mechanic. If you haven’t acquired many zow stacks (or can’t hit the next 33 breakpoint) yet you can skip points in this for now and invest them into one of the talents below instead.
- No Pain No Gain: A large damage boost at the cost of your maximum health and taking double damage this talent needs to be considered carefully as it may impact on your survivability (check this in the AFK info screen). If you can survive with the loss of health this is your next best source of damage as a Barbarian.
- STR Summore: Strength is your next Barbarian talent priority to provide some small increases to your damage with strength only increasing in potency as you progress through the various Idleon worlds that makes it better in time. Note that this in itself does not increase strength and only increases the maximum level of Fist of Rage so you do need enough Warrior talent points available to get the benefit of this.
- Strongest Statues: The last of the core damage focused talents and the lowest priority as it is only giving you a small damage boost by improving the bonus provided by your power statues that you’ve handed into the W1 statue.
- Beefy Bottles: A minor talent overall that gives you the option to gain more critical damage from Critikill in your Warrior talents that does factor slightly into AFK gains although this is primarily going to be a boost to active play and unlikely to be critical to your kill speed so it’s absolutely last when you have already maxed every other talent available. You should also consider Fistful Of Obol before this if you happen to have strength based obols on your Barbarian although these are not what your target obols should be.
Idleon Barbarian Build – Fishing Build
The skilling build of the Barbarian which is important to fishing and key to your broader Legends of Idleon progression given the various usage of fish mid game progression crafts and other mechanics. With this fishing guide to your build you’ll be able to reserve one of your talent presets for catching as many fish as possible. In brief fishing is similar to other skills with the Barbarian having talents that allow you to catch more fish and improve fishing experience gained in the process. Fishing can only be accessed at one of the various fishing holes to the left of the W2 town Yum-Yum Desert and each of these locations has a unique mixture of fishes across the four tiers. Using fishing accessories (line and weight) you can further modify your fishing prowess to target specific fish types.
A Barbarian fishing build is primarily focused around your tab 3 talents but also requires appropriate tab 1 and 2 talents as follows (maxed in order shown unless noted). You can also obtain the health related talents to boost your mining gains although this kill is generally best left to your Squire instead:
Tab 1: Brute Efficiency > Idle Skilling > Fist of Rage > Lucky Clover
Tab 2: Firmly Grasp It (1 point) > Absolute Unit > Firmly Grasp It (max) > Tempestuous Emotions (only when you want EXP) > ‘Str’ess Tested Garb
Note that you can also prioritise Haungry For Gold as the first tab 2 talent to max when you have the applicable golden food for fishing (not available until world 4). With the above setup you’re ready to create your Barbarian fishing build with the following tab 3 talents:
- Catching Some ZZZ’s: Boosting your away gains for fishing is a good initial priority to boost the number of fish you earn for your time away from your fisherman. Level 50 is a good initial investment as beyond that you’ll see sharp diminishing returns. Eventually though you’ll be coming back to max this talent after you get some points into Worming Undercover and Bobbin’ Bobbers.
- Worming Undercover: An active skill that requires that it be on your attack bar to have effect on your fishing gains. I recommend maxing after you’ve invested the 50 points noted above as there are not significant diminishing results from this talent investment.
- Bobbin’ Bobbers: As your minigame high score in fishing grows so does the power of this talent, at level 100 you need a game score of 38 for maximum benefit which should be relatively straight forward with practice. If your score is lower than this then limit your point investment to max your high score. For example if your high score is 21 then level 48 is the first level of this skill that has a cap of 21. After you have this maxed or points equivalent to your minigame score finishing maxing Catching Some ZZZ’s above.
- All Fish Diet: Experience gained on fishing means additional talent builds for one of the other Barbarian builds shown here and also helps you progress to the higher tier of fishing rods so a worthwhile investment, albeit last of the core fishing build.
- STR Summore / Strongest Statues: For leftover points you can invest them in strength or fishing power improving talents (through buffing statue gains) although the impact of these is marginal so leave these until last.
