Butcher
Butchery is an important source of resources in 0.D (Danny), such as bones, sinews, bionics, hides, pelt, meat, and many other edible organ parts. As an added bonus, all forms of butchery also prevent zombies from coming back from the dead, but usually just smashing the corpses is less time-consuming.
Overview
You need a tool with "butchering" quality, a corpse, and some spare time. Butchering consumes a bit of stamina and slightly trains your survival skill; the larger the corpse, the higher the cap on training.
The higher your tool's butchering quality, the faster you butcher and the more items you can harvest. Higher survival skill also helps. The game automatically uses the item in your inventory with the highest butchery quality, so no need to worry about swapping out tools. Butchering success is also improved by your survival skill and dexterity. If your tool and skills are bad enough, you have a chance of completely destroying the corpse without harvesting anything.
Butchering time is mainly determined by the size of the corpse and your choice of butchery type, but a good butchering tool will also help. In 0.E (Ellison) nearby friendly NPCs will reduce the time slightly.
Butchering a human corpse will give you a major hit to morale, unless you are a Carnivore, Sapiovore, or Psychopath.
Butchery types
Press B while standing over a corpse to open the Butchering menu. There, you will have a choice of several options.
| Type | Time | Organs | Skin | Meat | Bones | CBMs | Corpse |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| B Quick Butchery | 1x | 20% | 50% | 25% | 50% | 0% | Destroyed |
| b Full Butchery | 6x | 100% | 100% | 100% | 100% | 0% | Destroyed |
| f Field Dress Corpse | 2x | 100% | 25% | Prepared for transport | |||
| s Skin Corpse | 2x | 100% | Skinned | ||||
| k Quarter Corpse | 1/4x | Destroyed | Destroyed | Split into four parts | |||
| m Dismember Corpse | 1/10x | 0% | 0% | 17% | 0% | 0% | Destroyed |
| d Dissect Corpse | 6x | 0% | 0% | 0% | 0% | 100% | Destroyed |
B Quick Butchery
Quick Butchery takes less time and yields less product, however, you also do not require any special tools. Compared with a full butchery, you get 25% as much meat, 50% as many bones, 20% as many organs, and 50% as much skin (0% skin from small corpses). Destroys the corpse and any CBMs inside.
b Full Butchery
Full Butchery yields everything the corpse can possibly yield (based on your skill and tools), except CBMs, but takes a long time. It destroys the corpse and any CBMs inside.
Full Butchery requires a tool with "cutting" quality in addition to a tool with "butchering". For medium and larger corpses, there are several additional requirements:
- You must have a tool with "wood sawing" or "metal sawing" quality.
- You must be near a flat surface (furniture with the 'FLAT_SURF' flag, or vehicle parts with 'KITCHEN' or 'FLAT_SURF') such as a Table or Leather Tarp. Notably, regular tarps will not work for the purposes of Butchering, only Leather Tarps.
- You must be near one of these:
- A Butchering Rack.
- A Metal Butchering Rack.
- A tree. To use a tree you must have a long rope, long makeshift rope, vine, or grappling hook.
f Field Dress Corpse
Field Dressing is the act of removing the internal organs from a corpse with the intent of preserving the body for transport. You gain all the internal organs from the corpse plus an average of 25% of the bones, and the corpse becomes a Carcass which is 25% smaller, 25% lighter, and spoils 25% slower. Full Butchery is faster on a corpse that has been field dressed, so you don't waste any time by field dressing a corpse that you plan to fully butcher later.
If field dressing is successful, all drops are left intact for further butchery, including CBMs. However, if your skill or tools are bad enough, you can damage the corpse. In this case, you'll still get the normal effects of field dressing, but you'll destroy any CBMs and further butchery will only yield (on average) half the meat and half the skin.
s Skin Corpse
Skinning a corpse takes the same amount of time as Field Dressing and yields the animal's skin, pelt or fur. Larger animals produce full hides, while smaller animals only produce scraps. Although the game makes note that you need a suitably precise knife, skinning can be done with as little as a steak knife. Skinning also reduces the corpse's weight and volume by 15%.
k Quarter Corpse
Quartering divides the corpse into four equal parts for transport, and can only be done on a previously field-dressed corpse. Tiny corpses are too small to be quartered. The process destroys CBMs and skin, but leaves other parts intact; each quarter has 25% the volume, 25% the weight, and can be butchered for 25% the yield of the original corpse. Ideal for big game.
m Dismember Corpse
Dismembering is available in 0.E (Ellison).
Dismembering a corpse completely destroys it, yielding 1/6 of the meat and turning the entire body into Butchery Refuse. It takes only a few seconds, and thus is most effectively used to prevent zombies from reviving.
d Dissect Corpse
Dissection is the only way to extract CBMs from corpses that contain them. Unlike other forms of butchery, dissection uses the "fine cutting" quality (from a scalpel or X-Acto knife) instead of "butchering", and trains first aid instead of survival. Success is based on quality of the corpse, tool quality, first aid skill, and to a lesser extent your electronics skill. Because quality of the corpse is a factor, it is best not to smash any corpses you want to dissect. This of course, is not without risk, as the shocker brute, might revive while you are working on it.
Dissecting a corpse takes a very long time, and is best used to inspect zombies for Bionics. It destroys the corpse and any other items that could be harvested from it.
Dissecting zombies can also result in getting zombie pheromones.
Results from butchery
The results you get from butchery depends on the size of the corpse, and various flags the monster had. Damaged corpses yield fewer items; "bruised" corpses give a full harvest, but "pulped" corpses have no usable organs or skin and only 50% the usual amount of meat.
Humans who have not become zombies yet give flesh which counts as cannibalism when eaten. Zombies and other infected monsters generate tainted meat and tainted bones, or tainted veggies in the case of plant based monsters. Monsters with bones also give sinew. The rest of the results are rather intuitive, a furry creature will give a fur pelt when skinned, humans give human skin, others normal raw hides etc.
The various plant based monsters can give Plant fibre fluid sacs, or tainted veggie.
Bionics from butchery can only be gained from corpses if the monster has one of the various CBM flags, such as the Zombie technicians CBM_TECH one. If you are unsure, check the monsters page for more info.
Some monsters also might have special butchery, or dissection results you can only get from those monsters, but this feature is mostly used for mods.