ToME Wiki
Getting There
It's the first principal dungeon, so it's easy to find; it's directly west of Bree, in the same map as Bree. Look for the purple >.
StarweaverBlue: In particular, panning the view around with the "look around" command (default shift-L), at the beginning or the first time you enter any town.
Physical Aspects
The walls of the Barrow-Downs rooms are granite, but everything else is a mixture of trees and mountains. Streamers of passable trees are present in the dungeons. The dungeon is flat, meaning that stairs occur on the edges of the levels, and both dungeon towns and shafts are not present. The levels range from 1 to 10. Also remember this is one of the four 'core' dungeons; Princess and Lost Sword quests are present here. The Lost Sword quest is sometimes colloquially referred to as a Fumblefingers quest.
Monsters
This being the first dungeon, the enemies are basic. Expect a few apprentice rogues/warriors/priests/mages and the like, along with lower end natural creatures. The monster population has a natural inclination towards undead creatures.
Module Variations
The Theme module adds fog to the Barrow-Downs; thick fog that you cannot see past or aim things through. It steadily gets thicker the deeper you go. If you're having trouble finding passages in the rooms thanks to fog, wait a few turns; fog in the doorways will change colour; walls won't.
The T-Plus 2.x module adds a guardian to the dungeon, who resides on level 10. He is Grima the Wormtongue, agent of Saruman. He isn't too tough for anybody who has reached this far; the greatest danger is his ability to cast cold bolts and poison balls, along with heal-self and set traps. His melee can also steal gold from you. He is carrying his artifact boots.
Chatter
MayLith: Um, since when was Wormtongue the guardian of the Barrow Downs? Is this a Theme variant? Or have I simply never noticed him since he was an easy kill?
SoulWynd: AFAIK, He is always found in Barrow Downs level 10... But I've never noticed any boots... I tried to check if I wasn't wrong, but I have no idea how guardians are set... I will just keep looking so I can tell for sure.
MayLith: In standard ToME, the Boots of Wormtongue are not a guaranteed drop in the Barrow Downs; they are native to DL40. Wormtongue himself is native to DL9. The bottom of the Barrow Downs is DL10. Ergo, he is not a guardian. He just tends to show up around that level.
FuriousOne: Wormtongue is not guardian of the Barrow-downs in ToME. He's only guardian in T-Plus, I've moved the guardian to 'Module-specific variations.'
MayLith: Ah-hah! I figured it was something like that. Thank you, Furiosity. (Or do you prefer FuriousOne?)
FuriousOne: I prefer furiosity, but this wiki required some creativity:)
MayLith: FuriOsity?
Actually, you can use it as-is, it just requires some extra typing. amaurea did it that way.
SoulWynd: Aha, so that was it. I knew it was sounding too cheesy, but I always find him on barrow downs level 10 anyway. Hmm, but I think I remember having some princess quest with him too, so yeah. Maybe his boots should be guaranteed to drop unless you can find them later. I don't think I ever found them.
MayLith: I disagree. There are plenty of items in the game that have a monster's name in it. I think some people would be pretty upset if they had to kill Gothmog before getting a chance to find Gothmog's armours and weapon. Etc....
SoulWynd: Oh, I said unless you can find them later
*points up* MayLith: I saw that. I'm talking about finding them earlier, i.e. before knocking said beastie off. After all, who knows... maybe some critter bigger and badder than you beat the stuffing out of Gothmog and stole his sword, without killing Gothmog, and sold the sword on the Black Market, whereupon you find it.... You see what I mean? *points....um, somewhere?
* Or.... to put a different twist on it... should you have to kill Bilbo or Frodo to get Sting? (Or whichever elf forged it, if it's a module prior to their being born?) Or kill Gandalf to get Glamdring? (same caveat.) SoulWynd: Oh, I know, maybe saying 'later' wasn't the better way to explain myself. I said later mostly because of the example of wormtong, but what I tried to mean is that they should be garanteed to appear if they can only be dropped by monster x, regardless of the dlvl of both monster and item. Since it's not the case, never mind. I'm not famous for fiding artifacts anyway, besides taking them from certain monsters, so I wouldn't know. I'm lucky with randarts tho.
MayLith: Once you get a little deeper, it'll get better.
BurbLulls: Ohhhh, T-Plus... whoops.