Graveyard Keeper 2 organ red and white skulls: every body part value

What do the red and white skull numbers on an organ do?

Every body part in Graveyard Keeper 2 carries two integers, and a zombie’s totals are the sum of those integers across every part in its inventory. Red skulls are the ones that matter for a worker: each one is a perk slot, covered in corruption and red skulls.

The number is per part, not per corpse, so two quality-3 hearts are worth twice what one is. The shipped data never states what the white-skull number on a part does. What it does record is the arithmetic: totals clamp between 0 and 999, and your collar decides how high a total you may hold.

How many red and white skulls does each organ give?

The item data holds 42 main-organ records, six of them failure parts, leaving 36 real organs: six organs times six variants, split across three quality tiers, two variants per tier. No organ exceeds +3 red or +3 white in either direction.

Item id	Organ	Quality	Red	White
skin_0_0:1	Skin	1	0	0
skin_1_0:1	Skin	1	+1	0
skin_1_2:2	Skin	2	+1	+2
skin_2_0:2	Skin	2	+2	0
skin_1_3:3	Skin	3	+1	+3
skin_3_0:3	Skin	3	+3	0
bones_0_0:1	Bones	1	0	0
bones_0_1:1	Bones	1	0	+1
bones_1_1:2	Bones	2	+1	+1
bones_2_1:2	Bones	2	+2	+1
bones_1_3:3	Bones	3	+1	+3
bones_3_1:3	Bones	3	+3	+1
skull_0_0:1	Skull	1	0	0
skull_0_1:1	Skull	1	0	+1
skull_0_2:2	Skull	2	0	+2
skull_2_2:2	Skull	2	+2	+2
skull_0_3:3	Skull	3	0	+3
skull_3_2:3	Skull	3	+3	+2
heart_0_1:1	Heart	1	0	+1
heart_1_1:1	Heart	1	+1	+1
heart_1_2:2	Heart	2	+1	+2
heart_2_2:2	Heart	2	+2	+2
heart_0_3:3	Heart	3	0	+3
heart_3_1:3	Heart	3	+3	+1
brain_0_1:1	Brain	1	0	+1
brain_1_0:1	Brain	1	+1	0
brain_0_2:2	Brain	2	0	+2
brain_2_1:2	Brain	2	+2	+1
brain_0_3:3	Brain	3	0	+3
brain_3_1:3	Brain	3	+3	+1
guts_0_0:1	Guts	1	0	0
guts_1_0:1	Guts	1	+1	0
guts_2_2:2	Guts	2	+1	+1
guts_2_1:2	Guts	2	+2	+1
guts_1_3:3	Guts	3	+1	+3
guts_3_0:3	Guts	3	+3	0

Source: gamebalance_full.json → itemDefs[] where isMainOrgan == 1 and isOrganMistake != 1, fields id, redSkulls, whiteSkulls, quality, build 25509347. The organ, red and white values encoded in each id match the fields on 35 of 36 records.

Which organ variant should you actually keep?

Only one variant per organ carries the +3 red, and for four of the six it costs white skulls to get there. Skull is the interesting one: its +3 red variant is also its highest white variant. Skin and guts are the opposite — you can take their +3 red and leave white at zero.

Organ	Best red variant	Red	White	Variant with the most white
Skin	skin_3_0:3	+3	0	skin_1_3:3 at +1 red, +3 white
Bones	bones_3_1:3	+3	+1	bones_1_3:3 at +1 red, +3 white
Skull	skull_3_2:3	+3	+2	skull_0_3:3 at 0 red, +3 white
Heart	heart_3_1:3	+3	+1	heart_0_3:3 at 0 red, +3 white
Brain	brain_3_1:3	+3	+1	brain_0_3:3 at 0 red, +3 white
Guts	guts_3_0:3	+3	0	guts_1_3:3 at +1 red, +3 white

All six best variants together come to 18 red and 5 white, and you need not strip a body to hit that — the “Change organ” operation swaps one variant for another in one step, checking the collar limit only against the difference.

How do you get 8 red skulls on one zombie?

You need the Golden Zombie Collar first: the collar’s maximum is a hard border, and crossing it fails the operation. Bronze stops at 5 red, so 8 is unreachable with it. Three organs get you there; four parts get you there with no white attached.

Part	Red	White	Running total
skull_3_2:3	+3	+2	3 red
heart_3_1:3	+3	+1	6 red
bones_2_1:2	+2	+1	8 red, 4 white
Alternative: skin_3_0:3 + guts_3_0:3 + Blood + Fat	+3, +3, +1, +1	0	8 red, 0 white

Source: gamebalance_full.json → itemDefs[].redSkulls / whiteSkulls and itemDefs[].redSkullsMinCollar / redSkullsMaxCollar, build 25509347. Collar borders are enforced in ItemDef.SkullsInBorders() and ZombieWgoData.CanAddItemToBody(); the error string is localization/lng_en.csv → ui_operation_failed_desc.

Collar	Red skulls allowed	Base price
Bronze Zombie Collar	0 to 5	100
Golden Zombie Collar	0 to 10	1,000
Steel Zombie Collar	0 to 99	9,000

White skulls are not capped by the collar at all — all three leave the white bounds unset, so only the red total is checked. The theoretical ceiling is 20 red and 6 white: 18 from the six best organs, plus Blood and Fat at +1 red and Flesh at +1 white. Steel’s 99 ceiling sits far above that.

Where do blood, fat and flesh fit?

Three body parts sit outside the six-organ system and are still worth taking. Blood and Fat are +1 red each with no white attached, making them the cheapest red skulls in the game. Flesh is the mirror image — no red, +1 white.

Part	Red	White	Removal operation at the autopsy table
Blood	+1	0	Remove blood
Fat	+1	0	Remove fat
Flesh	0	+1	Remove flesh

Source: gamebalance_full.json → itemDefs[].redSkulls / whiteSkulls and crafts.csv rows fake_blood_craft, fake_fat_craft, fake_flesh_craft, build 25509347. All three run at autopsy_table_1 and autopsy_table_2 for 1 tick. The shipped game data does not record where these operations route their result, so the totals above are the values on the items themselves, not a confirmed drop path.

What does a Surgeon’s Error cost you?

A failed operation replaces the organ with a mistake part, and all six main-organ mistake parts carry the same penalty: −1 red and −1 white, replacing whatever the organ was worth. A failed remove therefore costs twice — the part is gone and the body is worse off.

Two extra mistake items differ: the flesh one adds a red skull rather than removing one, and the optional one costs a white skull while leaving red alone.

Mistake item	Replaces	Red	White
surgeon_mistake_skin	Skin	−1	−1
surgeon_mistake_bones	Bones	−1	−1
surgeon_mistake_skull	Skull	−1	−1
surgeon_mistake_heart	Heart	−1	−1
surgeon_mistake_brain	Brain	−1	−1
surgeon_mistake_guts	Guts	−1	−1
surgeon_mistake_flesh	Flesh	+1	+1
surgeon_mistake_optional	—	0	−1

Source: gamebalance_full.json → itemDefs[] rows where isOrganMistake == 1 (8 records), fields redSkulls, whiteSkulls, build 25509347.

Failure is the bottom of a three-step roll, not a coin flip. Each operation compares the ticks you completed against a gold and a silver threshold: hit gold and the organ comes out clean, land on silver and it is lost entirely, fall short of silver and you get the mistake part. Thresholds scale with tick cost, so the brain is the least forgiving to work on.

Organ	Ticks per operation	Gold threshold	Silver threshold
Skin	6	5	3
Bones	8	7	4
Skull	10	9	5
Heart	12	11	6
Brain	14	13	7
Guts	12	11	6

Source: gamebalance_full.json → craftDefs[].goldLevel / silverLevel / duration for the 108 records with ids starting extract_, insert_ or change_, build 25509347. Values are identical across the remove, add and change operations of the same organ.

Does every organ item’s name match what it gives?

No, and one record is worth knowing before you build around it. The item id encodes organ, red count and white count, and that naming holds on 35 of the 36 real organs. The exception is the quality-2 guts part, one red and one white below what its name claims.

Item id	Id says	Fields say
guts_2_2:2	2 red, 2 white	1 red, 1 white
guts_2_1:2	2 red, 1 white	2 red, 1 white

Guts has only two quality-2 records and neither carries 2 red and 2 white, so a 2/2 quality-2 guts does not exist in values — guts_2_2:2 is the weakest quality-2 part in the game, not a strong one. Read the fields, not the name.

How do you unlock the better variants?

The gate is Anatomy, and it rises with the organ’s quality tier rather than the organ itself. Quality-3 skin costs 6 Anatomy and quality-3 guts costs 13, while a quality-1 part is reachable almost immediately — so an early body can be fully stripped and the same body later becomes a wall.

Per-organ, per-tier levels and the tick, energy and insanity cost of each operation are in autopsy mastery requirements. Bodies come from how to get zombie workers, a collar that refuses the operation is covered in zombie resurrection errors, and what the red skulls buy is in zombie mastery and perks.