One of the necros in the discord did reasonably rigorous testing of this, and the results seem to be (note - all errors are mine; I am summarizing based on memory):
>Anyone have any, at this point?
Not really beyond the obvious.
>is it better to butcher at-combat-level stuff (closer to Thana/FA skill, but gets more beat up during the kill) or go a bit lower to kill faster/damaging fewer body parts, therefore butcher more?
I don't think folks noticed much difference in learning rate between butchering at level stuff and "backtraining" butchery as it were. If you're looking to only train butchery then that suggests backtraining just to get more kills to process quickly.
>Also, does it seem better to just 'perform butcher on x' or target the butchery with 'perform butcher on x <body part>?
Don't think it matters.
>For that matter, does extracting brains or eyes teach better than extracting the whole head?
I would assume it's better to do eyes+brains than head because that's just extra butcher attempts on a given corpse.
Basically, a given butchery attempt is a binary (trinary): most of the time you get nothing, sometimes you learn something (+1 to butchery) and sometimes you learn a lot (+2 to butchery). So what you want to maximize are number of butchery attempts, to get the max number of chances of rolling a +1 or a +2. AFAIK, there's nothing you can do to increase the probability of a skillup (like butchering a more difficult creature type and/or body part), but nobody's done sufficient testing to truly know for certain.
