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For other meanings of the term, see The Butcher.
"Ah... Fresh meat!"

- The Butcher(src)

The Butcher

The Butcher is a monster encountered in Diablo I.

In-game[]

Diablo I[]

The Butcher is a Unique Overlord with a large Cleaver from Diablo I, 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.

For players possessing very low character levels, The Butcher is an extremely difficult creature and adversary 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.

Tips[]

Butcher

The Butcher outside his chamber

The Butcher's Strength does not allow an inadequately leveled character to face him in fair combat. It is advisable to gain some levels before taking The Butcher on. However, if the player wants to engage him from the outset, there are a number of tactics one can use.

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, like a Bow, from the other side of the stairway. Know that it will take a lot of shots to finish him off, depending on the character's damage output.

Another way is to lead him to a wall with bars. Find one in advance, then quickly walk through that door (if there is one), close it and get along the wall away from it to keep The Butcher in sight on the other side of the bars. He will just wander aimlessly left and right as The Butcher cannot open doors and his AI will not let him reach the opening either. Shoot with a bow or cast spells at him through the bars.

Finally, a player can open The Butcher's door and cast Firewall, then promptly close it again. The Butcher will walk into the fire and remain there. If you are lucky, he will die from the flames, or at least be severely damaged.

If a player seeks to fight The Butcher in melee, one would require 55 Dexterity to land consistent blows on him while only occasionally taking hits from him.

His melee attack is extremely fast and will most likely stun a player before they can attack. With a damage range of 2-20 (on Normal) and a melee speed of almost 1 hit per second, even a Warrior will find melee to be largely ineffective, unless that Warrior is better geared (possibly with a 1 handed weapon and a shield) and at a higher level (5 or higher).

Sorcerers and Rogues will definitely want to make use of Stone Curse (assuming the spell is available) if they intend on fighting him in an open environment with no protective barriers. If Stone Curse is not available, engaging The Butcher in this environment is highly lethal, unless the player has a very high level differential compared to The Butcher.

Only Rogues, with their high movement speed, can move faster than the Butcher.

Stats[]

Resistances: Fire, Lightning
Immunities: None
Life: 110
Dungeon Level: 2
Damage: 2-20

Quotes[]

  • "Ahh... Fresh meat!"

Development[]

Tome This page contains obsolete content
This article contains information that is no longer relevant to gameplay, but is kept here for informational purposes.

The Butcher's room and The Butcher himself came about late in the development of that in Diablo I. One of the artists had created a very bloody room as the tiles were being laid out for the stage design. Upon seeing the room, the designers started joking about it, and turned it into a butcher's shop. A joke then developed that they had to create a monster called "The Butcher." As such, the developers followed through.[1]

Originally, the quest to fight The Butcher was a bit more intricate. His room would be empty upon finding it, and returning to Tristram would trigger new dialogue for various characters. Wirt, in particular, would start speaking in a strange, backwards manner, mentioning a portal in The Butcher's room. Gathering more information on the townsfolk, particularly Adria, revealed that casting spells inside his room would cause "unexpected results". By returning inside his room and casting a town portal, a red portal would appear instead, directed to "Butcher's Chamber", which was a mini-level where the player would fight Fallen and skeletons, and The Butcher at the end. This alternate version of the quest, as well the Butcher's Chamber level, are present in the Diablo I demo, but were removed from the final release of the game.

Upon entering the lair of The Butcher in the Cathedral, a cinematic was to be shown of him hacking the body of a dead villager and hooking it onto the wall. Accounts differ as to whether this was present in early releases of the game, or simply never included.

Diablo III[]

D3 17thann butcher tf 14

The remodeled Butcher

In the Anniversary Dungeon of Diablo III, players can fight the Butcher again, and obtain his weapon as a transmogrification choice, as well as a non-combat pet version of him:

  • The Butcher's Cleaver drops from The Butcher himself at Level 2 (it's a Magic quality item, so very easy to miss)
  • Mini-Butcher is awarded if the player beats the entire dungeon in one go with a fresh level 1 character.

Videos[]

References[]

  1. 2015-06-13, David Brevik Answers a few Diablo Questions. Diablo IncGamers, accessed on 2015-06-18
Super-Unique Overlords

Diablo I: The ButcherBilefroth the Pit MasterBaron SludgeOozedrool
Diablo II: The SmithHephasto the Armorer

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