Dumped into a medieval world overflowing with corpses and priests, you become the graveyard keeper and parish priest in Graveyard Keeper. Earning a ticket home means plenty of hard work, and we’re here to help. First up: master the art of autopsy—trickier than it sounds.
To produce a perfect corpse you’ll need anatomical know-how, tight time management, and a dash of luck. Below you’ll find everything required for flawless dissections and for torching the rejects. Study it well and take the next step on the long road home.
Table of contents
How to get more corpses
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Your graveyard offers only two ways to obtain bodies: dig up ones already buried on the premises or wait for the Donkey to deliver a fresh one—provided there’s space in the morgue.
Once the graveyard is full, no new bodies arrive. Exhume older corpses and dispose of them to free plots, expand the graveyard, or start cremating remains instead of burying them.
How to perform an autopsy
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Every corpse arrives at 100% freshness but decays fast in the open air, so you have limited time to prep it for burial.
Pick the body up and carry it inside the morgue, then place it on the preparation table to start the autopsy. As you unlock new tech, you’ll gain access to more organs to harvest and ways to slow decay.
A perfect corpse carries only white skulls—as many as possible. Achieving that means making as few mistakes as possible, though luck also plays its part.
In the base game the maximum skull count per corpse is 12; expansions raise the cap to 16 and then 26.
What to remove
The table below lists the effects of removing various tissues and organs during autopsy.
Skin: adds one red skull, removes one white skull.
Fat: adds one red skull, removes one white skull.
Bone: no effect.
Brain: randomly removes red or white skulls—proceed at your own risk.
Heart: randomly removes red or white skulls—proceed at your own risk.
Intestines: randomly removes red or white skulls—proceed at your own risk.
Dark Brain: removes four red skulls and one white skull.
Dark Heart: removes four red skulls and one white skull.
Dark Intestines: removes four red skulls and one white skull.
If you harvest something by mistake, you can replace the organ to cancel its effect.
A Surgeon’s Mistake occurs randomly, can’t be removed, and lowers overall corpse quality.
For every 10% freshness lost the body gains a sickly green skull. Such corpses can’t be resurrected and their quality drops. To halt decay, either place the body on a pallet to slow it or use injections to restore or completely stop decomposition.
How to dispose of a body
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After autopsy you have several options for body disposal:
First, bury it in the graveyard and decorate the plot to boost graveyard rating. This is the standard approach, but later you can unlock cremation and burn remains on a funeral pyre.
Second, resurrect the corpse as a zombie to work the graveyard. Carry the body to the resurrection table and create your undead helper. You won’t earn a burial certificate, but you gain free labor. This feature is available only with the “Breaking Dead” DLC.
Finally, if none of the above suit, simply dump the body in the river. It’s the fastest way to get rid of it, but you’ll take a financial hit—no certificate means no sale. Strip anything useful before you toss it. This method is best reserved for corpses you’ve completely ruined during autopsy and can’t salvage.
