Corpses and Organs, Part by Part

In Graveyard Keeper 2 a corpse has no quality of its own. Its red and white skulls are the sum of the six organs and the pocket items inside it, and every change you make on the autopsy or embalming table moves that sum. This guide goes through a corpse part by part: where the skulls actually sit in each tier of body, how an operation turns out, what the organs you take out are good for, and how to put together the best possible grave or zombie. Everything here is read from the game’s code and data tables. Where something follows from the code but has not been checked in play, it says Unconfirmed.

For where bodies come from and the autopsy table’s basics, see Corpses; for graves and decorations, see Graveyard. This page is about how the parts work together.

The one rule: skulls add up

Every organ and every pocket item carries a fixed number of red and white skulls. The corpse’s skulls are simply their totals, and neither total goes below 0. A grave then scores:

Grave quality = gravestone + fence − red skulls, but never more than the white skulls.

The corpse above, under a Wooden Cross I (2) and a Wooden Fence I (1), scores 3 − 4 = −1. Take the two Blood and two Fat out of its pockets and it has 0 red and 4 white, so the same grave scores 3.

What follows from this:

• Anything you take out takes its skulls with it, good or bad. Removing a white-skull organ lowers the grave’s ceiling.
• Anything you put in adds its skulls: an organ in an empty slot, or an embalming mixture in a pocket.
• Graves and zombies want opposite things. A grave wants white skulls and no red; a zombie gets one talent slot per red skull.

Where the skulls sit in each tier of corpse

Bodies come in tiers. All start at the first tier, and later quests raise it up to the fourth. Each tier draws at random from a fixed list of bodies:

Tier	As delivered	After taking out Fat and Blood
First (15 bodies)	0–4 2–5	0–1 2–5
Second (9)	3–5 3–5	1–5 3–5
Third (9)	4–6 4–6	2–6 4–6
Fourth (9)	5–8 4–7	3–7 4–7

In first-tier bodies the red skulls are in the pockets, not the organs. Most of their organs carry nothing or a single white skull, and every red skull left after emptying the Fat and Blood comes from one organ. So in the early game, picking the pockets does almost all the work, and it never fails and needs no mastery. Flesh carries a white skull, so leave it in.

From the second tier on, the red skulls move into the organs, and a grave only gets better if you take those organs out or cancel them. Higher tiers carry more white skulls, but more red ones too, so an untouched higher-tier body is not a better grave.

Operating: what you can touch and what it takes

An organ slot shows as unknown until you learn its technology, and you cannot touch it or see its skulls until then:

Organ	Technology	Mastery to remove or insert (grade 1 / 2 / 3)	Tech points for removing
Skin	Skin and Bones	1 / 3 / 6	1 + 1 / 2 / 3
Bones	Skin and Bones	2 / 4 / 7	same
Skull	Skull and Teeth	3 / 5 / 8	same
Heart	Autopsy, Advanced	5 / 9 / 13	same
Guts	Autopsy, Advanced	9 / 11 / 13	same
Brain	Autopsy, Master	8 / 10 / 13	same

Autopsy, Master sits behind Embalming I, so the brain is the last organ you can work on. Autopsy Table II runs exactly the same operations with the same requirements as the first table.

Only a perfect operation does what you asked. Removing an organ gives it to you only on a perfect result; a fair result destroys it, and a bad one leaves a Surgeon’s Error in the slot (−1 red, −1 white) that can never be removed. Putting an organ in takes it from your backpack when you start, and it only goes in on a perfect result.

At or above the requirement, every operation is perfect. Below it, each swing only has a chance to count, and a perfect result allows just one miss, so being even one point short usually costs you the organ. Treat the requirement as a hard line.

Anatomy mastery comes from several places, and they add up:

Source	Anatomy
The Anatomy branch of the talent tree	up to +5
A surgeon’s kit on your hotbar: Butcher’s Kit, Surgeon’s Kit, Master Surgeon’s Kit	+1 / +2 / +4
The perk Expert anatomist, at the autopsy table only	+4
Third Eye Salt, for 7½ minutes	+2
Vegetable salad, for one day	+1 to +3

The talent tree, the best kit and Expert anatomist add up to exactly 13, the requirement for top-grade hearts, guts and brains. The perk Surgeon, next to Expert anatomist in the tree, starts every operation with 2 cells already done, which makes a perfect result easier when you are short. Each kit is made at the Jeweler’s Table from a Leather Scroll or more, which is made from skin, and each unlocks with one of the autopsy technologies above.

What organs are good for

Not money. Every organ has a base price of 0, and a trader never pays more than an item’s base price, so organs sell for nothing. Of everything in a corpse, only Flesh has a price (35).

Studying. The first organ of each kind you study at the Study Table pays a large one-time sum of tech points. Studying keeps the item and only uses up the science and faith.

Study	Costs	Pays
Skin	5 science	10 10
Bones, Skull	5 science each	10 10 each
Heart	3 science, 3 faith	10 20
Guts	3 science, 3 faith	10 20
Brain	3 science, 3 faith	30
Fat	5 science	10
Blood	1 science	5 10
Flesh	1 science, 1 faith	10

Crafting. A few parts feed other workshops:

Part	Becomes	Where	Used for
Skin	4 Leather Scroll	Writing Desk	Clean paper, notebooks, all three surgeon’s kits
Skull	1 Tooth	Formulation Bench	Alchemy (1 1)
Fat	4 Melted Fat	Distillation Cube	Oiled planks and beams, polished stone, ink, incense, Paint, Lacquer, Solution and Injection for Corpses
Flesh	2 Minced Meat	Millstone	Cooking; also baked meat at the oven
Blood	—	Laboratory	Alchemy (1)

Alchemy. Top-grade hearts, brains and guts carry runes and go into the laboratory once you have studied that organ: a heart is 1 2, a brain 3, guts 1 2. Lower grades have no runes. See How Alchemy Actually Works.

Other bodies. An organ you took out perfectly can go into an empty slot of another corpse or zombie. This is how you build a body to order.

Organ Improvers: any organ, top grade

The technology Practical Potions (100 100, after Alchemy, Advanced) reveals two alchemy products and twelve recipes for the Formulation Bench. Each recipe takes one organ of any grade and one Organ Improver, and gives back the top-grade version of that organ:

Organ	With Organ Improver (white skull)	With Organ Improver (red skull)	Mastery
Skin	1 3	3 0	5
Bones	1 3	3 1	5
Skull	0 3	3 2	5
Heart	0 3	3 1	7
Brain	0 3	3 1	7
Guts	1 3	3 0	7
All six	3 18	18 5

The improvers themselves are brewed in any laboratory from two ingredients: the white one is 4 (two Flour), the red one 4 1 (a Stone and a Copper Nugget). The grade of the organ you put in does not matter, so the cheapest donor is any first-grade organ from a first-tier body.

An improved organ still has to go into a body, and top-grade organs are the hardest to insert: 6 for skin, 7 for bones, 8 for skull and 13 for the heart, guts and brain.

Building the best grave

The best decorations, Marble Cross II and Marble Fence II, add up to 14. A grave reaches 14 only if the body has no red skulls and at least 14 white ones. There are two ways there.

Through the pockets. The Embalming Table I puts a mixture into a free pocket slot, and a body holds up to six pocket items. Solution for Corpses adds 1, 2 or 3 white skulls by its star grade; Injection for Corpses removes that many red skulls and adds as many white. Take a first-tier body, empty the Fat and Blood (0–1 red, 2–5 white), and add three or four top-grade Solutions: 14 white, no surgery at all (Unconfirmed in play). A body with one red skull left needs one Injection as well.

Solution for Corpses comes with Embalming I and is mixed at the Formulation Bench from Melted Fat and Preservative. Injection for Corpses needs Embalming III, deep in the resurrection branch, and a Comet’s Tail on top. Both are star crafts, so their grade depends on how the mix goes (see Stars).

Through the organs. Six white-improved organs give 3 red and 18 white. Cancel the 3 red with one top-grade Injection for Corpses and the body has 0 red and 21 white: a 14 grave with room to spare. This route costs far more work than embalming and needs Anatomy 13 for three of the inserts, so it mostly matters when you want the organs anyway.

Below the marble tier the same rule gives smaller targets. A grave under Wooden Cross II and Wooden Fence II (5) needs 0 red and 5 white, which some first-tier bodies already have once the Fat and Blood are out.

Building a zombie

A zombie wants the reverse. Every red skull is one talent slot, and white skulls do nothing for a zombie in the game’s code, whatever the tutorial says about them (Unconfirmed in play). The collar caps the red skulls: a Bronze Zombie Collar takes up to 5, a Golden one 10, a Steel one up to 99. Every later organ change must keep the zombie inside its collar’s range.

• A zombie needs all six organs and no Surgeon’s Error. One slip on a body you meant to raise ruins it for that purpose.
• Six red-improved organs give 18 red skulls, which only a Steel collar takes. First-tier bodies, with 0 to 4 red as delivered, all fit a Bronze collar; don’t pick their pockets if you mean to raise them, since Fat and Blood are red skulls.
• On a zombie you swap organs instead of removing them. The swap needs a perfect result; otherwise nothing changes and the new organ is lost.
• Removing red skulls from a zombie switches off its most recently learned talents, and the tech points spent on them are not refunded. They come back if the red skulls do.
• Solution for Zombies adds 1 to 3 red skulls through a pocket slot, without surgery.