Butcher is Slept on
Butcher is the most slept on role in this game. Most rounds I get this role for free because nobody realizes how powerful it is. You get your own little house and you get an effective monopoly on FOUR resources (Milk, Chicken Meat, Eggs, Butter). While it IS possible for players to get these resources, they don't spawn with access to animals and it's a huge pain in the ass for them because they need to craft bait and RNG pray that an animal they want spawns.
Interacting with animals
Feeding:
All animals are able to eat Wheat Grain or Oats, Goats and Saiga can additionally eat apples. You can manually feed animals by clicking on them with the food or you can just dump it all on the ground with a sack and they'll eat from there.
Milking:
Female Cows and Female Goats will generate milk once they've been fed, simply go over to them with a bucket on Fill intent use it on them over and over again.
Breeding:
When animals (Goats, Saiga, Cows) are fed and they are near an animal of the opposite sex, they will make a baby animal sometimes, I am not sure the specifics.
Chickens are different, once they are fed they need a nest to lay an egg in. The Butcher starts with a few nests, but if they don't, simply leave ONE (1) fiber on the ground near the chickens, not a bundle of fibers! They will make a nest with that one fiber once they are fed and lay eggs occasionally. Some of the eggs will eventually hatch and become chicks, some won't and go rotten, I am not sure the mechanics of this either unfortunately. DO NOT STEP ON THE EGGS.
Butchering
The animals (except Chickens for some reason) will get PISSED if you hurt one of them near the other animals, I recommend crafting a Bed (1 fiber, 1 short log) somewhere away from the other animals, either inside of your shack or out of seeing distance. Place the animal on the bed and they will not be able to move and you can kill them easily with a few strong slashes to the neck!
PROTIP: If you use Shove Intent on the lower part of a female Cows sprite, it will tip them over and they can't fight back while you cut them up. This doesn't work on Male Cows or Goats.
Once the animal is dead, hold your knife and without any intent selected, middle click the animal to butcher them. Blood and Guts will fly everywhere.
What each Animal Drops:
Unfortunately, I have never counted specifically, I will update this later with in game data:
| Cow | 6 steak, 2 hides |
| Goat | 4 meat, 2 fat, 2 hides, 1 fur |
| Chicken | 1 fat, 1 chicken meat |
| Saiga | 4 meat, 2 fat, and 4 hides |
The Gameplan
Now that you know the basics, here's what you do.
- Wait for the Soilsons to farm enough grain to feed the animals
- If there are no Soilsons, you should have picked Soilson instead, otherwise, grow some damn wheat
- Get a sack and dump it in with the cows
- Milk the shit out of them
- Make a bed somewhere to Butcher them
- Once you've bred one or two more cows, drag them to the bed, shove the lower part of their sprite and kill one of them
- Butcher them
- Use the drying rack, put hide on it, use knife on hide
- Use 2 cured Hides and a Stone to make a whip
The whip can attack from THREE TILES AWAY, now you won't get your chest fucking caved in next time you try to butcher a Goat. With a whip in hand and grain to feed them, you just want to breed animals, periodically butcher them, gather eggs and sell Meat/Eggs/Hide/Fur to the Stockpile.
How to calm down pissed off Saiga
You don't. They just get pissed off for no real reason and are basically impossible to calm down, maybe a Druid can do it with their 'calm animals' spell, but who knows? Some people say holding an apple and right clicking a Saiga to beckon them with the apple helps, but I haven't seen it. I genuinely do not fuck with the Saiga unless someone wants one bred as a mount. You get decent riding skill as a Butcher, but I think Saiga riding can be useful if you're a very slow race/class like Dwarf, but you aren't much faster than walking if you have regular speed and it uses your own stamina to run for some reason and if the Saiga gets spooked it'll fucking maul you to death, I am sure this will be reworked eventually.
Conclusion
Butcher is a good role. You can easily make a LOT of money from butchering animals and dumping the materials into the Stockpile. Since you don't have to babysit crops like the Soilsons do, you can easily head out and stock the pile for them and share the money because your role doesn't have much responsibility, the animals can never die from lack of feeding or attention. You can craft cool stuff with hides like Leather Cloaks, Satchels, Belts, Fur Cloaks, Whips and Saddles. Especially with the changes to hides, it's VERY easy to make leather armor and satchels and belts. A lot of classes don't start with good leather belts or satchels for storage.