Hi everyone,
The Butcher’s Block was the first part of the Butchery Overhaul. The next station is already well under way: the Smokehouse. Here’s what it is, how it will play, and where it’s at.
What the Smokehouse is
A station of its own, for Butchers. It has three parts:
- The work block, where you salt and cure your cuts, and where you carve the finished pieces.
- The smoke cabinet, with hooks for meat and racks for fish. You’ll see your pieces hanging inside while they smoke.
- The fire pit, joined to the cabinet by a clay pipe. It’s where the wood chips go, and smoke rises from the flue while it burns.
It opens at Butcher level 3. If you’ve reached level 3 as a Butcher and later change profession, you keep the use of it.
How it plays
- Load your cuts and the Smokehouse is yours until you’ve collected them. Nobody else can load in while your batch is in.
- Light the fire with wood chips, then walk away. Smoking takes real time: an hour for a kipper, up to three for a ham.
- Nothing ever comes out half-smoked. A piece only goes in if the fire you’ve paid for will finish it. If it won’t, the app tells you how many more chips it needs.
- Collect when it’s done. On a public Smokehouse anyone can click Collect for you, and the goods still go to you. On a colony’s Smokehouse they go where your colony has chosen.
- Your meat’s quality carries through. A Choice cut makes a Choice ham.
- You earn Butcher CXP for every piece you smoke, and for carving.
Choose your smoke
Every wood changes what you make:
- Oak: strong and savoury. More health.
- Cherry: sweet. More social, for sharing.
- Maple: mild and sweet. More energy, and a little sugar.
- Fir: sharp and heavy. The most filling, but it can turn your stomach a little.
Cold smoke keeps and flavours. Hot smoke cooks as it goes. Some things are only cured, never smoked.
What it makes
- Meat: smoked ham, smoked brisket, pastrami, smoked bacon, venison jerky, coppa and corned beef.
- Fish: smoked salmon, smoked sturgeon, kippers, smoked haddock, smoked mackerel, smoked trout, smoked eel and gravlax.
Small things like jerky, trout and mackerel you eat as they come. Kippers, haddock, bacon and corned beef come out raw, for the Cooks.
Big pieces are for sharing
A whole ham, brisket or side of salmon isn’t something you eat in one bite. You’ll have two choices:
- Set it out. Rez it on your table, and anyone can come and take a slice. The piece gets smaller as it’s eaten, and its label says who smoked it and which wood.
- Carve it at the work block into slices for the Cooks: sliced ham, a ham hock, bacon rashers, smoked salmon slices and more.
And because this is a roleplay game… food left out unattended can be tampered with. Anyone can slip a potion into a ham on the feast table. Sharp-eyed characters, high in Intelligence or Wisdom, may notice something is off. More experienced ones can tell what it is, and even deal with it. The rest of us find out the hard way. 
Where it’s at
- The game side is built and tested: the rules, the items and the app’s server.
- The station itself is being built in-world right now: the cabinet, the fire pit, the work block, the carving pieces and the set-out dishes, with their scripts.
- Next comes in-world testing, then a full guide and release.
Behind the scenes: our Citizen and World Builder members see every step of this as it happens. We post the progress on Discord, and sometimes here on the forums.
Feedback welcome
Questions or ideas for the Smokehouse (a wood, a cure, a product we’ve missed)? Reply here.
Next up after the Smokehouse: the Sausage Table. 