My partner and I have been playing through S&S as a duo, and have been stuck on this scenario for the past few weeks. We've come *very* close, down to the last dice roll falling short by 1 or 2, but other times we just get trashed by the Shrine of Norgerber or the Torture Pit.
Half of the time we didn't even realized we had to include an additional location, so imagine our surprise that we were playing on 'easy mode'.
There's a ridiculous amount of luck required in order to corner Barbaras without getting annihilated on the way -- by the time we actually fight him, we've depleted our decks and cannot finish him off.
We're playing a Duelist Jirelle and a Brawler Meliski (Bard). We're almost to the point of giving up and just starting Wrath of the Righteous instead.
Any strategies for this? We've both accumulated 2-3 Blessings of Norgerber each and hit the Shrine first, together, to try and share the damage while we dig through it. Then, we usually split up and try to corner Barnabas in the Gannet Island in order to use our ship to our advantage, but that ends up blowing 2d4 blessings from the blessings deck if we fail. Oy.