Palworld Meat Cleaver Guide: Butchering Captured Bounties for Extra Loot

The Meat Cleaver is an early Technology unlock that becomes a late-game tool. Its item text is short and slightly grim: a knife for butchering Pals, and when equipped the Pet command becomes Butcher. It also carries the only warning that matters. Butchered Pals will be gone for good.

Meat Cleaver

Technology level 12

Knife for butchering Pals. When equipped, the Pet command becomes Butcher. Butchered Pals will be gone for good.

Unlock and craft

• Technology level 12, 2 Technology points. It is cheap and available long before you have a reason to use it.
• Craft cost is 5 Ingot, 20 Wood, and 5 Stone at a High Quality Workbench or a Production Assembly Line.
• Weight 10, which is heavy for a utility tool. Do not carry it on a gathering run you did not plan around it.
• Equip it and the Pet interaction on a Pal becomes Butcher. Unequip it and the command goes back to normal.

Why captured bounty targets are the right subject

Butchering is destructive, so the correct target is something you already intended to spend. A captured bounty target fits perfectly: you cleared the fight, you banked the token, and the capture itself is not a Pal you were going to build a team around. That makes the Cleaver a free second pass over loot you would otherwise leave on the ground.

• Capture the target rather than killing it outright, since the Butcher command needs something in hand.
• Do the butchering back at base or somewhere safe. It is an interaction, not a combat move, and getting jumped mid-animation is a waste.
• Keep the bounty token separate in your head. Turning in the token and butchering the capture are two different payouts from one fight.
• Anything that is a duplicate, a low-roll capture, or pure condenser overflow is also fair game.

The Splatterina multiplier

Splatterina's partner skill, Blade of Uncontrolled Passion, increases items obtained from the Meat Cleaver by 100 to 200 percent while she is in your party. That is the single largest swing available on butcher output, and it costs one bench slot. If you plan to butcher anything at all this session, she should be in the party before you equip the knife.

Splatterina

What you should never butcher

The command is permanent and there is no confirmation you will thank yourself for ignoring. Build a habit of checking the Pal before you swing, because the mistakes here are the expensive kind.

• Anything you have condensed. Those stars represent dozens of copies and the Cleaver does not care.
• Anything you have fed Life, Power, or Stout Fruit to. Vendor tokens went into that Pal.
• Breeding donors carrying the passive set you spent a week assembling.
• Any Pal currently doing a base job. Check the Palbox before you clear out what looks like spare roster.
• Rare hatches you have not evaluated yet. Read the passives first, butcher second.

Butcher or condense

Both systems consume spare Pals, and they compete for the same overflow. The rule of thumb is simple: if the spare is the same species as something you are ranking up, it is condenser fodder and worth far more there. If it is a one-off capture or a bounty target you will never see on your team, it is Cleaver material.