This is a guide for those who, instead of being classic adventurers, instead follow a higher calling- the life of a butcher. These legendary masters seek to butcher and prepare all the various beasts of Sosaria, and in the process, gain some of the beasts' powers.
TOOLS OF THE TRADE
Butcher's Knife: This is a tool for cooking. Take good care of your tools, don't break them by using them as weapons
(strikethrough)Meat Skewer: butchers don't use meat skewers
Pan: Great for making tons and tons of omelettes. Other recipes tend to use rarer ingredients, so don't come into play as often.
Baking Dish: The baking dish is actually the second most important tool in a butcher's arsenal, believe it or not. Roasting meat provides some nice benefits.
Weapon: Butchers use weapons? More on that below...
FOOD FIGHTING
All Butchers have moderate experience in the old art of food fighting, though not at the same level as in the more violent past. Back in the early days all fighters were also trained in the combat art of food and misc items. Improvised weapons used to be considered longswords, so you could, for example, flurry with a tomato. Sadly, these esoteric fighting arts have been lost over time. Modern butchers live a much more peaceful existence, and thus are unable to build rage or use rage specials when wielding food.
Meats are actually tinted with weapon tints. This gives them their color. For instance, the meat of a green dragon is tinted silver, which is why you traditionally see green dragon hunting vampires. In addition to being tinted, meat often grants +2 to a stat, eg. str, dex, int, vig, NV, MR, or AS(as in +2 weapon). You can then wield it to gain the stat boost/dmg boost. This makes monster meat one of the best improvised weapons around, along with ingots of attack. But this is a guide to being a butcher, not a blacksmith.
Here is a list of various meats and their abilities:
BUTCHERMANCY: Some of the above meats are actually not bad as weapons, though improvised weapons still have terrible dps.By utilizing his professional butchery skills, the butcher can further bring out the raw magical flavors of his ingredients. Just make sure not to char your food- the powers aren't as great. But what are you, a novice?Rat:
vamp, +2 weap
Giant rat:
no vis tint, +2 weap
Rabbit
veno, +2 dex
Chicken
veno, +2 nv
Turkey
crystal, +2 dex
Cow:
gold, nothing else apparent
Clam:
vamp, +2 nv
Sea horse:
blackrock, +2 weap
Giant squid:
no vis tint, +2 str
Shark:
blackrock, +2 str
Gazer:
diamond, nothing else apparent
Fire lizard:
vamp, +2 int
Vampire:
Absolutely nothing. (makes sense, because it's basically the corpse of a humanoid. Don't you know that vampires turn to dust when you kill them? Are you sure that man you slaughtered was actually a vampire?)
Spectral Reaper:
Crystal (gives 10 magic resistance), +2 vig
Devil:
Adamantium, +2 vig
Daemon:
Diamond, +2 weapon
Hydra:
No vis tint, +2 weap
Nightmare:
vampyric, +2 mr
Evil Bunny:
no visible tint, +3 vig
Drake:
Glass, +2 vig. Doesn't make for an effective weapon (Shatters without instakill)
Blue Dragon:
Glass, +2 int.
Green Dragon:
Silver, +2 AS (as in +2 weap)
Black dragon:
Copper, +2 str
Red Dragon:
no visible tint, +2 str
Ice dragon:
Adamantium, +2 MR
Roasting meat multiplies the stat boost by 17 when wielding it (+34 weapon is capped to +9, as usual). Just don't burn it, charring it only multiplies the stat boost by 9. In doing so, some weapons immediately stand out. Roasted rat, for instance, is now a vamp +9 weapon. Where this gets truly crazy, however, is with Ice Dragon (addy, MR +2) and Nightmare (vamp, MR +2) meat. Roasting the meat of these monsters grants an incredible 34 MR (680 magic resistance), more than twice as much as the much coveted Estorrath's Vestments. Sidenote: Ha, you thought this class was a joke, didn't you?
RACE
Choose whatever you want with race. I just put this here to say that no, you can't dual wield ice dragon meat as a half troll. Nice try.
MULTICLASSING
Though being a full time butcher is a lot of work, lots of butchers often find themselves also taking a secondary job with an adventuring class, to help with gathering ingredients. After all, to a butcher, freshness of meat is essential.
Monk: The ascetic path is one that chefs often find themselves drawn to for utility + aspects.
Priest: Probably the best secondary (as usual). It follows from monk that lots of chefs also find themselves devoted as priests, healing the sick and running soup kitchens in their spare time.
Necro: Despite living successful lives as seasoned butchers, occasionally some will find themselves drawn to the unsavory arts of the undead, for the main reason of increasing their hitpoints.
Fighter: The path taken by traditional butchers is not longer as good, since improvised weapons no longer are considered longswords.
EARLY LEVELS:
Being a good butcher is not something you are simply born into. You must first be initiated in Nord Jail, just like necromancers. Seek the Gremlin in nord jail and he will teach you the ancient Sosarian art of cooking. As soon as possible, roast the rat corpse you just butchered and wield it. The +9 vamp somewhat counters the poor dps of improvised weapons. Priest butchers who can heal themselves and would prefer to increase their damage output should seek to find the legendary sea horse next, for blackrock +9. From then on it is more or less a great quest to master your cooking skills and hunt for the mythical nightmare/ice dragon. With 680 extra MR and a vamp/addy weapon you can easily start hunting things at much lower levels than other classes.
SOLO HUNTING:
Your damage output is pretty bad compared to other classes, lacking spells or rage specials. Despite getting vamp or blackrock +9 weapons, the base dps of improvised weapons is still pretty awful. However, you can fight tougher monsters than most.
PARTY HUNTING:
With their incredibly high mr, Butchers can make good tanks in the mid to high levels. However, the 70/30 str/dex ratio means less hp than a fighter.
FINAL THOUGHTS:
Now that I'm posting this bug, I'm kind of sad to see it go. This is a bug that had escaped player attention ever since the cooking skill was added to EUO, around a decade ago. Not that I've known about this for that long. I only found out about roasting meat recently.
Butcher class used to be more OP though - you could wield meat as a fighter weapon, and back then +34 weapons weren't capped.
I wish there was something that had a flavor and mechanic like this- It's like a 70/30 melee focused fighter/explorer. It would be cool if there was a class that gained abilities by hunting down different monsters. Like a ranger, though relying on melee.