Hi Guys

Im new to he game. Can anybody give me some tips on defeating the butcher at the beginning of the game?
Im a rogue btw

Greets

Hi, as the Butcher will chase you, run towards the stairs down to next level, circle the stairs a few times until he is on the opposite side of you. If you then stop the Butcher will get stuck and you can safely shoot him at your leisure.

Another tactic that works well is to find a place that has grating or bars for walls. Run inside the room, shut the door in the Butcher's face. He cannot open doors, so you just stand behind the bars shooting at him. This requires a room with doors that are not blocked by corpses, of course.

Or, keep running while taking potshots at him. Takes forever, but it is doable. I went the "trapped-behind-the stairwell"-route myself.

The Butcher is REALLY tough, initially. It can never hurt to just proceed downstairs, level up a bit, then return to his room.

If you're a rogue, you're a bit faster then he is... and if you've been paying attention, you'll have hopefully found a fenced area with a gate. One thing to realize is THE BUTCHER CANNOT OPEN DOORS. I have no idea why not, but he can't.

So, if you can get yourself (with a full bow... or more than one... and maybe a few long-range spells) on the other side of a fence (which you can shoot through, remember) AND get the gate closed, you can take him out as a rogue when you first meet him.

If you can't... just skip him, level up a bit, and come back. In my most recent "Warrior" playthrough, I went down to finish level 5 before going back to level 2 to face him. I was able, at that point, to kill him with three swings of my (vastly upgraded) sword, and only minor health and armor damage (due to some great special armor you find as a warrior... "Arkane's Valor.")

TRIVIA... in the very first Demo of Diablo released by Blizzard... on a PC Gamer demo disk which I still have... The Butcher shows up on LEVEL ONE. And yes, pretty much everyone gets killed by him immediately.

In addition to the above suggestions, you can also soften him up by quickly opening the door to his room, casting a fire wall immediately inside, then closing the door. He will roast until the fire wall burns out. With high enough fire wall spell level, this may be all you need.

Good luck.

My favourite tactic is to "fry some bacon".

For this you need one of the following:
- A Scroll of Fire Wall
- A Book of Fire Wall (and enough Mag to read it and cast the spell).

When you get to Butcher's Lair, stop right behind the door.
Prepare your spell (select the spell through your Speedbook),
open the door, and IMMEDIATELY cast the spell on the other side and slam the door shut.
Then wait for 15 seconds and listen to him moan for a while.
If he doesn't die from the spell, he should be weak enough for you to defeat him with ease.

If you can't or doen't want to use this "cheesy" tactic then it is a bit harder. Butcher has a fast attack speed so he is not the easiest foe to defeat in close combat because he can easily stun-lock you if you don't have high enough armour class to evade his attacks or don't have high enough "% to hit" to stunlock him. Some equipment that makes this fight almost trivial are:

A weapon with one or more of the following attributes:
Knockback
%to hit
+Dexterity

A piece of armour with:
Fast, Faster or Fastest hit recovery

A Shield with:
+Chance to Block

And a few healing potions.
If you don't have any of these or mess up with the spell, you can leg it to a wall with grates and close the door so that he can't follow you, and take care of him with ranged weapons "the hard way".

That's how I beat him as the Rogue. :)

By the time I got to Diablo, I was able to basically stunlock him and he couldn't come near me. When my friends and I first played the game way back in the day, my friend had a bow with knockback that kept the butcher at a distance, and that's how he beat him.

The most tried and true method is to walk around a staircase until he gets trapped. Then kill him with a bow and/or magic.

The fastest and most straightforward method is to use the firewall, but no door shenanigans.

Run inside the room, stand in a corner/back to the wall, let butcher come face-to-face, set him on fire, start smacking. He'll be dead in a few seconds, much faster than your health potions could run out.

Sorry guys. trided some methods, but still didnt kiled the butcher.
i gotta atmid i only played a few minutes and when it didnt worked, i quit.
im a little but older now (37). played my whole life games so im no much of a long time behind my screen gamer.
but i keep on trying. maybe i gonna kill him someday, maybe when im 80 :)
thanks guys for the help

Greetz

google 10 ways to kill butcher

best link :P showing all the mechanics

Yep... as a Warrior, the only real way to engage Diablo is to run from him (healing as necessary using potions) and hide around a corner. As he rounds, start hacking at him with a weapon with "stunning" capabilities. Once you're in that situation, assuming you have good armor and weapons and general stats, as you should by the time you reach level 16... he's actually a lot easier than the hoard of enemies protecting him.

The main issue with Diablo is his ranged fire attack, which seems to slice off half of my hitpoints with each hit, and never, ever misses... and "stuns" me as well. And he can hit me from distances where I can't even see him. So, I have to clear out his supporting fire teams, as much as possible, first... and then lure him to a place where I can engage him at close (melee) range.

I can't imagine how I'd defeat him as a solo-play Rogue.

I don't get it Fabio. The Butcher isn't that hard to kill especially if you are a higher level character. I just skipped him on my first playthrough and came back to kill him easily after leveling up more. I wonder what games you were playing before if you can't even spend more than a few minutes on him and beat him. I'm around the same age as you so I know that isn't a good reason.

The Stair trick listed above and trapping him behind a door with open windows and hitting him with arrows is another alternative. If you want to take him 1-1 with Warrior you would at least need lvl 8 - 10 to be able to defeat him. Any lower than than you will probably need very high Dex and tons of potions to kill him.

The Butcher is mlvl 6 and deals 6-12 damage per hit. To avoid ever being stunned by his attacks, you need at least clvl 12. Alternately, you could plan to block his attacks, which would be better anyway. To guarantee you block every attack, if you are clvl 6, you need 100 dexterity. This is almost certainly beyond reach for a new character. If it is your very first game, you need only 70 (as a warrior) or 80 (as a rogue) due to the blocking bonus. As your clvl increases, your required dexterity will decrease. If you are satisfied with blocking only some attacks, the dexterity requirement will be lower.