Graveyard Keeper 2 corpse deliveries: a missing donkey

What to check, in order

1. 01

   Confirm Certificate, Please is complete; deliveries do not start before it.

2. 02

   Check the day and time: 13:12 on Gluttony, Lust or Pride.

3. 03

   Make sure at least one morgue slot is empty before 13:12.

4. 04

   Bury, cremate or river-dump a waiting body to free its slot.

5. 05

   Build Corpse Pallets to add capacity.

6. 06

   If deliveries moved to Agatha during the strike, collect at her house at the Crossroads.

The schedule

Bodies arrive three times a week, at 13:12 on Gluttony, Lust and Pride. Nothing arrives before Herbert’s Certificate, Please quest is done; that quest is what turns the schedule on. The donkey drops bodies at the Corpse Dumping Point outside the morgue while the morgue door is still broken, which it is for a while, since fixing it needs an Iron Detail.

Day lengths are short, 7.5 real minutes, so 13:12 comes around quickly. If you were asleep or across the map, check the dumping point when you get back.

Morgue capacity

At the start your morgue holds exactly one body: the Autopsy Table counts as one slot and nothing else is built. If a body is on it at 13:12, the donkey does not come. That is the single most common reason for a missing delivery.

Every Corpse Pallet I adds a slot, and costs 4 Boards and 4 Bronze Nails. A Crematorium I adds one too. Two pallets early on give you breathing room for a day when you cannot get to the morgue.

Build the first pallet as soon as you have Bronze Works and a few boards. Bronze Nails come from Bronze Scrap at the Wooden Anvil, six nails per scrap, and Herm sells the scrap cheaply. It is one of the best early investments you can make, because every delivery you miss is a week of lost certificates, blue points and Blood.

Field note: Removing organs never frees a slot. The body has to leave the morgue: burial, cremation or the river.

The delivery chance

Having space is necessary but not always enough. Every visit rolls a delivery chance that starts at 100 percent. Each successful delivery lowers it by 15 points. Each miss raises it by 50. A visit cancelled by a full morgue raises it by only 5.

In practice this means an occasional empty delivery day is normal, and the next one is very likely to bring a body. If you see several misses in a row with space available, that is unusual and worth looking into. If they happen with a full morgue, the morgue is the problem, and each cancelled visit barely nudges the chance up.

• Start: 100 percent.
• After a delivery: −15 points.
• After a miss with space: +50 points.
• After a full-morgue cancellation: +5 points.

Freeing space: bury, burn or dump

Burial is the best option when the body can make a decent grave: it raises graveyard quality, pays 2 red points each for digging and filling, and gives you a Burial Certificate to sell. Cremation turns a body into 5 Ash and 1 Salt, pays 1 red and 2 blue technology points, and adds nothing to quality. The river is the fastest, with no reward, and is best kept for emergencies.

Whatever you choose, pick the pockets first. Each pocket gives a blue technology point, never fails and needs no mastery. Then decide the body’s fate.

The donkey strike

At one point in the story the donkey goes on strike. During that time Agatha delivers the bodies instead, from her house at the Crossroads, on the same Gluttony, Lust and Pride schedule. If bodies seem to have stopped completely around that part of the story, go to Agatha’s house before you assume the system is broken.

Later, the Lots of corpses option lets a single visit bring up to two bodies. Turn it on only when your morgue can take both.

What actually arrives

The game has 51 different bodies spread over five tiers. Tier 0 has 15 of them and tiers 1 to 4 have nine each. Every body has the same six organs, skin, bones, skull, heart, brain and guts, and higher tiers carry better-quality organs. Each also has one to four pocket items, usually Fat, Blood or Flesh.

Some organs are hidden until you research them. Skin and Bones reveals skin and bones, Skull and Teeth the skull, Autopsy Advanced the heart and guts, and Autopsy Master the brain. Until then those parts show as unknown and cannot be taken out, which is fine; you can still bury the body.

Burial Certificates follow the tier. Tier 0 bodies give Burial Certificate I, and higher tiers give higher grades, which Januarius buys like the others.

Why steady deliveries matter

Bodies feed almost every early system. They are your main source of blue technology points, Burial Certificates for money and happiness, Blood for Dream Dust and the Magic bell, organs for research, and later the raw material for zombies. A morgue that is always full quietly starves all of that.

Bodies left lying around outside also disappear after 75 real minutes out of sight, with no reward. So the rhythm to aim for is simple: by lunchtime on each delivery day, the morgue has a free slot.

Common questions