Crafting the Perfect Corpse: A Graveyard Keeper’s Guide to Optimal Burials
The best body to bury in Graveyard Keeper is one that achieves the highest possible graveyard rating, maximizing your profit and progress. This typically involves a corpse with as many white skulls as possible and, crucially, zero red skulls. The ideal corpse will have a +4 rating or higher when combined with a stone gravestone and stone fence. Achieving this requires a combination of careful autopsy, strategic organ removal, and judicious use of embalming fluids. The goal is to manipulate the skull balance of the corpse to reach a point where its inherent value, combined with grave improvements, yields the most lucrative and reputation-boosting burial. Let’s delve into the intricacies of achieving this macabre masterpiece.
Understanding Corpse Quality
Before we dive into the specifics of autopsy and burial, it’s crucial to understand the underlying mechanics of corpse quality. A corpse’s quality is represented by a skull rating system. White skulls are good, contributing positively to your graveyard rating. Red skulls, on the other hand, are bad, detracting from the rating. Green skulls are usually related to DLC content. The ultimate goal is to maximize white skulls while eliminating red skulls.
Several factors influence a corpse’s initial skull rating:
- Freshness: A fresher corpse generally has a higher potential for achieving a better skull rating, as decay introduces red skulls.
- Initial Skull Distribution: Some corpses will naturally spawn with more white skulls than others. These are obviously prime candidates for burial.
- Cause of Death: While not explicitly stated, the manner of death seems to influence initial skull counts, although this is difficult to quantify.
The Art of Autopsy: Manipulating Skull Ratings
The autopsy table is your laboratory for improving corpse quality. Here, you can remove and add body parts, altering the skull rating. Strategic autopsy is crucial for transforming a poor-quality corpse into a burial-worthy specimen.
Here’s a breakdown of the key autopsy techniques:
- Removing Body Parts: Removing certain body parts can shift the skull balance. For example, removing blood and fat are common methods for eliminating red skulls. The heart and skull can also be strategically removed, depending on the corpse’s initial skull distribution.
- Embalming: Using embalming fluids is another way to alter a corpse’s quality. Lye injections, glue injections, silver injections, and gold injections can all increase the number of white skulls. However, each corpse can only receive each type of injection once. Therefore, these must be used wisely. Lye injections are usually the first injection to try.
Autopsy Strategies
Here are some proven autopsy strategies for maximizing corpse quality:
- Red Skull Elimination: If a corpse has red skulls, prioritize their removal. Removing blood and fat is the most common method. If this doesn’t completely eliminate them, consider removing the heart or skull, depending on the skull changes shown when selecting the body part.
- White Skull Enhancement: Once the red skulls are gone, focus on increasing the number of white skulls. This is where embalming fluids come into play. Silver and gold injections are generally the most effective for increasing white skulls.
- The Perfect Body: Ideally, you want a corpse with at least 4 white skulls and no red skulls. This will give you a +4 rating when combined with a stone gravestone and stone fence. Sometimes a corpse with long life meter and high freshness will add a +1 bonus.
Burial Practices: Grave Improvements and the Graveyard Rating
The quality of the grave itself also contributes to the overall graveyard rating. The basic components of a grave are the gravestone and fence.
Here’s a breakdown of grave improvements:
- Gravestones: Stone gravestones are a good starting point, adding +1 to the grave rating. More elaborate gravestones, such as marble gravestones, provide higher bonuses.
- Fences: Stone fences also add +1 to the grave rating. Upgrading to more ornate fences can further increase the rating.
- Grave Decorations: Additional decorations, such as flower beds, can also contribute to the graveyard rating.
By combining a high-quality corpse with quality grave improvements, you can create a burial site that significantly boosts your graveyard rating and income.
Conclusion: The Cycle of Death and Profit
Mastering corpse preparation and burial is essential for success in Graveyard Keeper. By understanding the mechanics of skull ratings, autopsy techniques, and grave improvements, you can transform a dilapidated graveyard into a thriving enterprise. Remember to experiment with different autopsy strategies and find what works best for each individual corpse.
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Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
1. What body am I supposed to exhume at the beginning of the game?
You can choose any corpse to throw into the river at the beginning of the game. Yorick tells you to exhume one from the lower right corner, but this is just for narrative purposes. The action is the important part, not the specific corpse.
2. Should I throw the body in the river?
Yes, throwing a corpse into the river is part of the initial tutorial. There are no negative consequences. Gerry will appear and teach you about cremation afterward. However, note that you will not receive a burial certificate for corpses you dispose of this way, leading to a financial loss.
3. Do bodies decompose in the morgue?
Yes, bodies decompose in the morgue, but at a slower rate than if they were left outside. Placing them on a pallet or autopsy table further slows decomposition.
4. Do bodies decay on the autopsy table?
Yes, corpses on the autopsy table still decay, but the decay process is slowed compared to leaving them on the floor.
5. What should I remove from the body during autopsy?
Start by removing blood and fat to eliminate red skulls. If red skulls persist, consider removing the heart or skull.
6. What happens if I throw too many bodies in the river?
There are no known negative consequences for throwing multiple bodies in the river, beyond the loss of potential burial certificates.
7. How do I make a good body?
Start by removing red skulls. Use lye, silver, and gold injections to increase white skulls. The goal is a corpse with at least 4 white skulls and no red skulls.
8. What is the best autopsy method?
A good starting point is to remove blood, then skull, then fat. Alternatively, you can remove blood and fat if that removes all red skulls. Experiment to see what provides the best results for each corpse.
9. Is there a penalty for dying?
If you die, you respawn at your bed with full health and all items. There is no significant penalty.
10. Can I play Graveyard Keeper after the ending?
Yes, you can continue playing after the ending. Simply load your latest save.
11. Can you embalm multiple times?
You can only use each type of injection (lye, glue, silver, gold) once per corpse.
12. What happens when all the graveyards are full?
When your graveyard is full, you will stop receiving new burials until you expand the graveyard or find alternative methods of disposal, like cremation.
13. What is the best body part to remove?
There’s no universally “best” body part to remove. Removing blood and fat is a good starting point to eliminate red skulls. However, the optimal choice depends on the corpse’s initial skull distribution.
14. What can I do with extra body parts?
Extra body parts can be used for alchemy, crafting, researching tech points, completing quests, reducing waste, upgrading zombies, building zombies, and improving graveyard ratings.
15. Do skulls affect zombies?
White skulls increase zombie efficiency (speed). Red skulls have no effect on zombies.