Burer

A Burer is a type of mutant encountered only in S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat.

Lore

The result of Secret Service genetic experiments on criminals, under the program of human telekinesis development. A humanoid creature of hypertrophied complexion, clad in shreds of shabby overalls. Afraid of bright light, the Burer dwells in dark and gloomy undergrounds and caves. Feeds on dead bodies.

General information

Burers are stocky, almost dwarf-like monsters that tend to stick to underground sections, avoiding light at all costs. They can be mistaken for bandits at long ranges due to their propensity for wearing long black trenchcoats, but are a far greater threat, able to paralyze and break an opponent's armor and weapon at a whim. (Though they cannot do so in the game.) Definitely not an easy opponent even for experienced stalkers, made even more difficult due to their preference to travel in pairs or groups.

Aside from fan-made modifications, Burers are only present in Call of Pripyat.

Games

Shadow of Chernobyl

Burer Hand (Icon)

Burers can only be enabled via the use of modifications, although they appear in Build 1935. They possess a powerful melee attack, as well as a 'shotgun' like telekinesis attack which damages everything in a cone-area in front of him - doing enough damage to kill a player if one is unfortunate enough to take it point blank. Burers however do not have much health compared to their later versions, and half a magazine to the skull with even a starting assault rifle should be enough to disable them.

Flashlights are theorized to repel them, and it does cause them to often turn their back to the players, which, while obscuring their face, allows a player a bit more time between attacks.

Burers are one of the types of mutants which may randomly carry a mutant-related item when killed. For Burers this item is the Burer Hand.

Clear Sky

Much like Shadow of Chernobyl, they can only be enabled via the use of modifications. There is no noticeable difference, only that they are slightly more resilient and, oddly, weaker attacking.

Call of Pripyat

The player will most likely first find them in the tunnels just north of Jupiter Factory as a part of Trapper's Mutant Hunter quest line. There is one more in Yanov - under the Volkhov AA Complex, spawns as soon as the player picks up the Lt. Sokolov's Note - and more in Pripyat: One in the Old Customer Service Centre guarding the Calibration Kit and no less than four in the X8 lab. Once the player kills them as part of Trapper's quest, they will start spawning randomly in Yanov and in the Old Customer Service Centre in Pripyat.

Burers are extremely hard to deal with. While the PDA places them as the third most dangerous mutant in the Zone (behind the Pseudogiant and Chimera) they have a variety of special attacks as well as very high health making them more demanding opponents.

Telekinesis: Their standard method of attacking, identical to the attack used by Poltergeist except that the Burer can see you even when you're not moving. Burers can also control a larger number of objects at once with this ability than Poltergeists are able to. Long range.
Shockwave: You can easily predict it because "smoke" will appear on your screen and if you don't get behind something in about three seconds you'll lose a good chunk of health. If there's debris in the line of attack and it hits you as well you can even get killed in one shot. Medium range.
Telekinetic shield: The Burer raises its arms and projects a shield around itself, making it immune to damage for a short period of time. Happens almost always when you damage it. However, when a Burer does this it is unable to attack you.
Stamina sap: Drains your stamina, relative to the amount of equipment you are carrying. For all but the most lightly equipped stalkers this will typically drain your stamina completely, leaving you unable to retreat.
Weapon pull: The Burer pulls the weapon from your hands, dropping it to the ground. This effect is part of the "stamina sap" ability described above, but is not dependent on your stamina level; weapon weight determines how likely it is for the weapon to be dropped, and the knife cannot be taken from you by this ability. It is strongly advisable to recover dropped weapons as soon as possible, as they can be used by the Burer's Telekinesis attack or sent flying up to several hundred meters away by its Shockwave attack.

Combat Tips

Dealing with Burers can be a real pain, especially because you will fight most of them in dark, closed or semi-open spaces. Because of the telekinetic shield you want to deal as much damage as possible per attack. Do not attack when the telekinetic shield is up, since the Burer is invincible during this period. This leaves you with shotguns, sniper rifles, or 40mm grenades. A single VOG-25 or M209 grenade will take out most of the Burer's health or, if you're lucky, kill it outright. The RG-6, RPG-7, and even the Gauss Rifle are obviously even better options, but their availability is questionable. You CAN kill Burers with normal rifle rounds, but it will take a lot of time because of their high health. Either way, cover is essential; remember you can lean around corners if there's nothing else, because there usually isn't. Leaning also doesn't cause weapon sway like simply strafing from behind a corner would. Using weapons within a Burer's attack range is rather risky, since a Burer can yank the weapon from your hands and toss it away.

A completely opposite tactic is to take out the Hunting knife and charge in slashing. Burers can't steal your knife (as it can't be dropped) but they DO have a melee attack, so be sure your armor is up for it before trying. Generally any "military" vest(Berill or better) should do. They generally take six to eight slashes to take down. A similar tactic can be applied with the Eliminator shotgun. Use your light, aggressively charge, taking quickshots at it's head. It will turn it's back to the light, as well as it will try to to move to it's preferred combat range, keeping it from attacking or shielding. Apply buckshot.

If you happen to meet Burers on semi-open areas, although this works in closed spaces as well. I'd recommend a pistol (Black Kite or another high damage dealing pistol, or any pistol for that matter) and Psy-block since the Pistols are light enough so that the burers yank attack doesn't work with a Pistol. The Burer will try to yank your weapon and push you (Psy-Block blocking this), shoot it in the head a few times before it brings it's shield up. Wait for it to go down while aiming on it's head, as soon as it lets the shield down fire away. Repeat this two-three times (depending on Pistol damage etc) and the Burer will exist no more. One Psy-Block gives you time to deal with up to three Burers this way without taking too much damage.

The trio of Burers in X8's "secret floor" are a special case - because of a bug in scripting they have extremely high health regeneration active unless the player is in the room. As such, they can be only killed from outside of the room with very high damage weapons, such as the Gauss Rifle or the RPG-7. If you don't have these you need to enter the room and deal with them with a knife, rifle grenades or a shotgun but be warned that it's one of the more dangerous fights in Call of Pripyat. A good tactic is to drop into the pit just inside the door, and then make hit-and-run attacks by running up the stairs and shooting them, then taking cover at the bottom again.

Wild - that is randomly spawned - Burers are not much of a problem in Yanov as they can simply be taken down from long range or avoided completely. They do not pose a threat at long range.

Voice mimicry

A peculiar ability of Burers appear to be their ability to mimic the cry of a child to lure curious prey. Although only one Burer in the entire game uses this: the one in lab X8's cafeteria. thumb|300px|right|The Burer crying.

Notes

The Burers that spawn at the Jupiter plant, guarding the fine tools often might have been killed already by the anomalies there.

Trivia

The Burer is often called "Yoda" by fans because of its diminuitive size and the overall appearance of the mutant.
If you look at a Burers left foot you can see that his toes have seemingly ruptured through the front of his shoe. It could be suggested that these were the shoes that the subject was wearing when he underwent the vile transformation into a Burer and his feet grew to such a large size that they (probably quite painfully) burst through the front of the shoe.