The Donkey is your main source of corpses in Graveyard Keeper 2, and its cart is what keeps your morgue stocked, your graveyard filling up, and your zombie workforce growing. The delivery is not pure luck. It follows a fixed timing loop with a hidden chance value that rises and falls based on what happened last time.
Quick answer: The Donkey attempts a delivery roughly every 2 in-game days in the evening. Each successful drop lowers the next chance by 15%, a missed drop raises it by 50%, and a full morgue pauses deliveries entirely.
Donkey delivery schedule and timing
The system runs a delivery check every 2 in-game days, and drops always happen in the evening. That evening window is about 15 minutes of real playtime, so you don’t need to sit and wait for long.
You can read the arrival time straight off the screen. Watch the sun marker as it moves down. When it lines up with the roof of the main estate, evening has started and a delivery may be on the way.
Birds flying off are a handy visual cue that evening is close, so use them as an early warning to head toward the morgue.
How the drop chance changes each cycle
The game does not deliver a body every single cycle. Instead it rolls against a chance value that moves up or down depending on the previous result. That is why long streaks of on-time deliveries are rare, and why a dry spell rarely lasts.
| Result | Effect on next chance |
|---|---|
| Successful arrival | -15% |
| Failed arrival (miss) | +50% |
| Morgue full (no roll) | +5% buffer |
A punctual cart reduces the probability of the next drop by 15% across the next two days. If a delivery is missed, the following opportunity becomes 50% more likely. Together, these rules ensure a body arrives at least once within every four-day span, preventing a completely empty stretch.
The cart arrives at the Crossroads, pulling a wooden wagon carrying the corpse across the stone bridge before it makes its way toward your base.
What happens when your morgue is full
If every morgue slot is occupied, the Donkey will not even attempt a drop. It won’t dump bodies on the ground as a workaround either, so no new deliveries happen until you clear space. During that lockout the game adds a small +5% chance buffer, which nudges the odds up for the moment you free a slot.
The practical takeaway is simple. Process, bury, or resurrect bodies to keep at least one open slot, otherwise you stall the supply line completely.
Corpse despawn timer after delivery
Once the Donkey reaches the morgue path, it sets a wrapped corpse down on the grass and turns back. That corpse does not sit there forever.
A countdown starts the moment the body lands. You have exactly 10 game days, which is around 1 hour and 15 minutes of real playtime, to pick it up and move it into cold storage. Leave it outside past that window and it vanishes for good.
A vanished corpse is gone permanently, so treat every new arrival as a priority and move it into your storage racks before doing anything else.
Walk up to the body on the ground and use the [E] Take prompt to pick it up, then carry it inside.
Can you make the Donkey deliver more bodies?
You cannot speed up the arrival timing itself. The two-day cycle stays fixed. What you can change is the number of bodies the cart brings, and that is tied to a quest chain with Agatha at the Crossroads.
At 10 reputation with Agatha, ask about her problem with the Donkey to begin the chain. Then raise Graveyard quality to 20 and repair the nearby Manhole with 2 Polished Bronze and 4 Polished Stone. Report both tasks, speak with Agatha again about restoring corpse delivery, and you can begin requesting the number of corpses needed for the week.
At 30 Agatha reputation, a further conversation about better corpses becomes available, opening a separate upgrade branch for higher-quality bodies rather than just more of them.
How to confirm the system is working
You’ll know deliveries are running normally when the Donkey appears at the Crossroads in the evening and leaves a wrapped body on the grass near your morgue. If nothing arrives for several evenings in a row, check your morgue slots first, since a full morgue halts the deliveries until you make room. Keep one slot open, watch the sun hit the estate roof, and collect each corpse well inside the 10 game-day timer to keep the supply chain steady.
