The Butcher in Deckard Cain's journal.
The Butcher is a Unique Overlord with a large cleaver in Diablo, and is the chief subject of the Butcher quest. He resides in a room strewn full of mutilated corpses, the remains of Tristram's townsfolk whom the Archbishop Lazarus intentionally led to their doom. If the quest is generated in a game, a dying townsman outside the church will ask the player character to avenge him and the others by slaying the Butcher. The game's Pencil & Paper RPG suggests that he is a servant of Andariel. When he is first encountered in his room full of impaled bodies, he utters the line "Ahh, fresh meat!". The demon leaves behind his cleaver, a unique weapon called The Butcher's Cleaver.
For players possessing very low character levels, the Butcher is an extremely difficult creature to kill. He will relentlessly pursue a player and attempt to force him/her into close-quarter hand-to-hand combat, savagely hacking away with his cleaver - which usually ends with the player's sudden death. Most Diablo players resort to cunning tactics to bring the Butcher down - or simply ignore him and come back for him when they have significantly upgraded their character levels. The demo version for Diablo included a single level with the butcher in it, needless to say it was very hard for the players trying this version to manage to best the demon.
He is also referred to in the description of Tristram from Diablo III, as a warrior describes the time he entered Tristram.
Tips
The Butcher outside his lair.
A common way to defeat The Butcher is to lead him to the set of stairs to level 3 of the Cathedral, get him trapped in between the stairway, and shoot at him with a ranged weapon from the other side of the stairway.
Another way is to lead him to a room which allows you to close the door and shoot a bow or cast spells at him through the bars, as The Butcher cannot open doors.
Stats
Resistances: Fire, Lightning
Immunities: None
Life: 110
Dungeon Level: 2
Damage: 2-20
Quotes
- "Ahh...fresh meat!"
- "Please, listen to me. The archbishop Lazarus, he led us down there to find the lost prince. The bastard led us into a trap, now everyone is dead. Killed by a demon he called The Butcher. Avenge us. Find this butcher and slay him, so that our souls may finally rest." --Dying man outside the church.
Trivia
- A Butcher monster can also be found in Warcraft III. In addition, the Warcraft-butcher will yell "Fresh meat!" in a similar way as the real Butcher. And if that was not enough, behind the Butcher is an item chest containing Wirt's Other Leg, a parody of Wirt's Leg.