How to Fix Insanity in Graveyard Keeper 2

Insanity in Graveyard Keeper 2 is a resource like energy or money, and it works against you in exactly one way: it lowers the ceiling on your energy. The whole relationship is one line of arithmetic, and everything else about the mechanic follows from it.

The game’s own tutorial puts it the same way, and it does not fire until you cross 30 insanity, which for most players is well past the point where the days started feeling shorter. If you have been wondering why you run out of energy faster than you did on day one, this is why, and nothing in the interface connects the two.

Some actions generate insanity. When you are tired, any action will generate insanity. / Insanity reduces your maximum energy.

Tutorial: Insanity, two panels in

Autopsies are the real source, not gravestones

A hundred and sixty seven recipes raise insanity while you work them, and they split into three rates. The one everybody blames is the smallest of the three.

A hundred and nine crafts run at +0.3 per tick, the worst rate in the game, and a hundred and eight of them are autopsies: every skin and organ extraction at the Autopsy Table I, six to fourteen seconds each. Upgrading does not help, because the same hundred and eight run at the same rate on the Autopsy Table II.

Taken apart completely, one body costs 18.6, and that figure barely moves across the sixty eight bodies in the game or their five tiers. From the starting 10 that is four corpses to the cap. A long session at the table is how players arrive at a twenty point energy bar without ever noticing the moment it happened.

Forty three crafts run at +0.2 and forty one of them are graveyard work: gravestones, wooden and marble crosses, stone and marble fences, urns, signs, and the removal actions that undo them. The other two are Tooth and Leather Scroll, and the scroll is made at the Writing Desk, the same bench as the only crafts that pay insanity back. Fifteen more run at +0.15, and despite sitting in the same bracket they are zombie collars and organ improvers rather than decoration.

The table below lists the named recipes and their rates. The autopsy extractions are not in it, because the game gives them no display name of their own, so there is nothing for a table to list. Everything in it is named after what it produces, so both story improvements read as Story recipe and the organ improvers read as the organ they work on.

36 entries

Name	Duration	Insanity / tick
Bones III (1 red, 3 white) recipe	6	0.15
Bones III (3 red, 1 white) recipe	6	0.15
Brain III (3 red, 1 white) recipe	8	0.15
Brain III (3 white) recipe	8	0.15
Bronze Zombie Collar recipe	8	0.15
Golden Zombie Collar recipe	12	0.15
Gravestone I recipe	8	0.2
Gravestone II recipe	8	0.2
Guts III (1 red, 3 white) recipe	8	0.15
Guts III (3 red) recipe	8	0.15
Heart III (3 red, 1 white) recipe	8	0.15
Heart III (3 white) recipe	8	0.15
Leather Scroll recipe	3	0.2
Marble Cross I recipe	12	0.2
Marble Cross II recipe	12	0.2
Marble Fence I recipe	12	0.2
Marble Fence II recipe	12	0.2
Skin III (1 red, 3 white) recipe	6	0.15
Skin III (3 red) recipe	6	0.15
Skull III (3 red, 2 white) recipe	6	0.15
Skull III (3 white) recipe	6	0.15
Steel Zombie Collar recipe	16	0.15
Stone Fence I recipe	8	0.2
Stone Fence II recipe	8	0.2
Story	10	-1
Story II recipe	12	-1
Story III recipe	16	-1
Tooth recipe	4	0.2
Unholy Idol recipe	2	-3
Urn with Ashes I recipe	4	0.2
Urn with Ashes II recipe	4	0.2
Wooden Cross I recipe	4	0.2
Wooden Cross II recipe	4	0.2
Wooden Fence I recipe	4	0.2
Wooden Fence II recipe	4	0.2
Wooden Sign recipe	4	0.2

Four recipes remove it

Only four crafts in the game run at a negative rate, and they are worth knowing by name because nothing signposts them. The Unholy Idol has the best rate at -3 per tick from one Wooden Billet, three times anything else and the largest single value in the game. It runs for two seconds, though, so it removes only 6 in total, costs ten energy, and pays 6 back.

The other three are stories at the Writing Desk, all at -1 per tick. Story takes three Faith, two Clean Paper and one Ink over ten seconds; Improve story I turns two Stories into one better one in twelve; Improve story II does the same again in sixteen. The rate runs for the whole craft, which makes those durations the point: Story clears 10, Improve story I 12 and Improve story II 16, so the longest of them removes nearly three times what the idol does.

That makes writing the only productive work in the game that pays insanity back down while you do it, instead of costing you a night. The game half agrees in its own text, where strings sit for an inspiration called Back to Normal, “Reduce your insanity without sleeping”, with no inspiration defined behind them. Nothing tracks it, so the habit is yours to keep.

Fourteen consumables lower it and seven raise it

The tutorial says only that “some consumables can reduce insanity” and leaves it there. Twenty one items carry an insanity value when used, and the spread is wider than the tutorial suggests.

Drink is the strong end. Krotowuha is -50 in one go, Wine III is -35 against -25 for Wine I, Chocolate is -20, and Beer is -12 from the Brewing Stand, five Hops, five Water and ten Fuel for five cups.

Below those, Cognac is -15, Mead and Blueberry Cider are -10, Apple Cider is -7, Croissant is -5 and Berry Pie is -3. None of this needs a perk or a technology, only a kitchen or a brewing stand.

Two perks help, and two more do not exist

Iron Will is the one most players find. It drops the ceiling from 80 to 70, which is ten permanent points of maximum energy rather than a cure.

Grave Builder is the one that matters more and nobody mentions. It takes 0.1 off the rate and 1 off the energy cost of gravestones and grave fences, and those crafts run at +0.2, so it removes half the cost of the entire graveyard decoration line. It finishes the craft two ticks sooner as well, so the lower rate and the shorter run compound.

Son of a butcher does the same job for the bigger source. It is 0.1 off the rate and 2 off the energy for autopsies, against a base rate of +0.3, so it takes a third off the hundred and eight recipes that cost you the most.

There is also a buff called God of sane, and its description is the strongest line written about insanity anywhere in the game: “You do not get insanity at all.” It is a buff rather than a perk, so it is temporary, and it is the church that hands it out.

Prayer for Purity turns it off

Preach the Prayer for Purity at the church tribune and a successful sermon grants God of sane, which stops insanity accruing at all while it lasts. It comes in three tiers, and the only thing separating them is the size of congregation you can draw.

Purity I asks for twenty parishioners against a difficulty of 50 and runs half an hour. Purity II wants fifty at difficulty 100 for a full hour, and Purity III wants a hundred at difficulty 150 for just under a hundred minutes. Each one also pays Faith and a few coins into the donation box, so the sermon is not charity.

The tribune offers the opposite as well. Prayer for Insanity grants God of insane, which gives you more of it rather than less, and it asks for smaller congregations at fifteen, forty and eighty.

What to actually do about it

Sleep is the intended answer and the tutorial says so outright: “Sleeping when you’re tired is the best way to reduce insanity.” It is also free, which none of the alternatives are.

When you cannot afford the night, drink first. A Krotowuha is -50 on the spot and Wine III is -35, and neither needs a perk or a technology to make. After that a writing session clears 10 to 16 and leaves you a story you wanted anyway, while an idol is 6 for a single Wooden Billet.

The habit that prevents the problem is batching differently. Autopsies and gravestones are both jobs you do in runs, and a run without sleep in the middle is where the ceiling drops, so break them up rather than clearing the whole corpse pile in one night.

Insanity questions