Barrow-wight

• General
• Combat

Barrow-wight
Basic information
Spawning locations	Barrow-downs
Rideable	No
Eats	Nothing
History
Added in	Public Beta 25

Barrow-wight
Combat statistics
Health Points	50 (25 x )
Attack Strength	6 ()
Armour	None
Armour Points	None
Drops	Bones, Barrow Blades, Skulls, Bronze and iron equipment, Dungeon loot

“	Cold be hand and heart and bone and cold be sleep under stone: never more to wake on stony bed, never, till the Sun fails and the Moon is dead. In the black wind the stars shall die and still on gold here let them lie till the Dark Lord lifts his hand over dead sea and withered land.	”
–Barrow-wight, Fog on the Barrow downs, The Fellowship of the Ring

Barrow-wights are fearsome creatures who dwell in the Barrow-downs. They were sent by the Witch-King of Angmar to occupy the Barrows, the resting place of many ancient kings of Cardolan, one of the three ancient realms of the North.

Spawning

A Barrow-wight is spawned when a player first tries to open the chest in a Barrow. Aside from this, they also spawn (usually in pairs) randomly on unlit grass blocks in the Barrow-Downs. They can also be spawned manually in creative mode, with a spawn egg, or with a Monster Spawner. The presence of Barrow-wights causes the famous fog of the Barrow-downs.

Behaviour

Barrow-wights will attack any and every NPC besides their own kind. They also target the player on sight. Going within a certain range of a Barrow-wight causes a foggy effect. A common misconception in the mod is that fog spawns the wights; on the contrary, the Barrow-downs are never foggy unless the player ventures near a wight. As the wight moves toward the player, the screen will go black around the edges and the FOV will change. They have decent reach and apply the wither effect upon striking their target. Instead of the typical mob death animation, Barrow-wights simply float upwards and fade when killed.

Killing a Barrow-wight earns the player the achievement "Cold be Hand..."

Drops

Typical loot in a treasure chest of a barrow.

Barrow-Wights drop the same things that can be found in barrows, most commonly bones and arrows, as well as some article of silver, bronze swords and daggers, iron armour and weapons, or barrow blades. As rarer drops, however, they yield gold and larger coins, Arnorian armour and weapons, and, very rarely, they may drop Mithril nuggets or Mithril Armour and Weapons.

Combat Methods

First off what you want to do is be careful of the ones not in the barrows, as they are very hard to kill in the open due to their reach and the FOV change. If, by chance, you are chased by a Barrow-wight, and you have nowhere obvious to run, you can do the following: Pillar jump up three or four blocks (so that you are standing on the top one), so the barrow wights will not be able to grab at you. That way, if you have a pike or other longer-range weapon, you will be able to kill them without them being able to hit back.

Another of the Barrow-wights' weaknesses is their height. Standing at the same height as a Wither Skeleton, Barrow-wights can be fought with the same techniques, as they cannot fit through a two-block high gap. Their height can be used against them in the three-brick-tall confines of the barrows' doorways, where even a one-block-high barricade will stop them from coming at the player.

Trivia

• On one special day of the year, they have a name.
• In Update 36, Barrow-wights were given a significant retexture. The old texture is shown to the right.

The One Wiki to Rule Them All has an article on: Barrow-wights

The Tolkien Gateway has an article on: Barrow-wights