Graveyard Keeper 2: Ultimate Beginner’s Guide

Welcome to our Graveyard Keeper 2: Ultimate Beginner’s Guide.

Graveyard Keeper 2 introduces many more systems from the original Graveyard Keeper, such as crafting, automations, character progression, alchemy, cemetery management, zombies, faith, and interrelated quests. Not everything will be clearly stated in the game, but knowing these mechanics ahead of time can save you some unneeded grinding.

Here is an overview of some of the most critical mechanics to know about within your first couple of hours, such as how to get a sustainable food supply, access faith and sermons, utilize zombies and worker management, improve corpses using autopsies, manage insanity, fast travel, technology and inspiration trees, and cemetery management.

If you want to learn more about the game beyond this guide, click here.

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Follow the Quests Before Spending Your Technology Points

The quest log in your game acts as a guide in the initial stages. Instead of using all your technology points right away after getting them, follow your active quests until you hit a progression wall. If a quest requires an item which is not possible to craft, find out the technology and/or workstations that are required to do so. Focus on unlocking such technologies.

In doing so, you achieve two things simultaneously:

• Progress the storyline.
• Introduce the new characters, workstations and system that you require next.

For instance, if a character asks for pottery, use this quest requirement to know which crafting technology you have to unlock. You cannot mess up your progression with wrong choices of technology forever. You can try all the trees without ruining your game. But if you wish to progress effectively, you should follow quest requirements.

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Start Farming and Solve Your Energy Problems Early

Gardening is one of the best early technologies that you can learn to ensure a supply of food. To unlock the benefits of gardening, you will need to unlock the gardening technology and develop towards the millstone and bread technologies.

Here is one easy sequence:

Gardening -> Millstone -> Bread

If you do not have a farm yet, you can always rely on berries and mushrooms, but it is better to use bread which will give you additional energy. Simply buy wheat seeds from the right vendor, build the wheat farm and start producing your own flour and bread. Also, don’t forget to build your mill and fix the small kitchen. After getting the production chain of wheat into bread, you won’t need to buy any additional food or cook some more complex recipes for your survival.

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Understand the Day Cycle

There is a day cycle that influences when some actions become available. Make sure to keep track of what day it is in the upper left part of the screen. Some systems will become especially important on some days.

For instance:

Green Day – will be important for zombie actions, resurrection etc.
Red Day – will be important for preaching and faith production.
There can also be other actions depending on the day later in the game.

You won’t get a direct punishment for skipping something. You just need to wait until the appropriate day comes. Make good use of every cycle that comes. If there is a day for preaching, then preach. If there is a green day and a chance for resurrection of a zombie, then use this chance.

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Unlock Faith as Early as Possible

Faith becomes one of the most crucial resources in the game. It is used to study items, purchase some progression choices, boost Mastery, develop technologies, and progress other systems. The game does not make it apparent from the start, so it makes sense to focus on the quest chain that allows you to unlock your temple and sermons.

Complete Jack’s Quest Line

After escaping the zombie-infested starting area and reaching your new base, head south of the village. You will find the two brothers there, with Jack involved in the situation. Jack is the workshop foreman you met during the opening section of the game. Eventually, he appears at your house and begins the Jack in a Boat quest line.

Jack wants to build a boat so he can leave the area.

You need to provide:

• 5 wooden planks
• 5 bronze details

Building the boat is only part of the process. Jack also needs someone to row it, which brings the twin brothers Jeffrey and Heffrey into the quest line. Progress through the twins’ quests and convince them to help Jack. Once the boat is complete and the twins agree to row it, Jack eventually leaves. A few days later, you receive a letter from him. Jack does not return. Instead, he sends a nun back to the village. Go to the tavern and speak with her. Continuing this part of the quest eventually gives you access to the temple and the sermon system.

Why sermons matter

When you open up sermons, you get a dependable source of faith. You can carry out a sermon once per week on a corresponding sermon day. This faith earned can then be used to cover a huge part of your progress.

Faith is useful for:

• Learning about ingredients and objects
• Buying inspiration and progression choices
• Mastery increase
• Technologies unlock
• Other system progression

Don’t leave Jack’s quest in limbo for hours at a time. Getting it done fast allows you to start faith economy early.

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Build Town Gratitude Before Every Sermon

Town gratitude directly affects your sermons. The more gratitude you have, the more people attend your preaching. More attendees mean more faith and more money. Aim for at least 10 gratitude before performing a sermon.

How to gain gratitude

Quests and dialogue options automatically yield gratitude scrolls. Gratitude scrolls are available from vendors such as Januarius; however, sometimes, they can cost a lot. There is one more way that can easily go unnoticed by many players. Merchants can present a gratitude thumbs-up next to some trading conditions. They show the weekly possibility to exchange the certain amount of goods for gratitude.

For instance, a merchant like Horadric might need:

• 30 wheat
• 30 carrots

This will yield 4 gratitude and also some money for your goods. Every merchant shows the maximum amount of gratitude that you can get from this merchant in the current week. So, merchant trade requests become the great source of building gratitude without spending much money on gratitude scrolls.

Sermon loop

A helpful weekly routine is:

Quests/trade goods → gratitude → sermon → faith/money → use faith

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Fast Travel Saves Huge Amounts of Time

Unlock fast travel points as soon as you acquire sufficient faith. Go up to a milestone and pay the necessary amount of faith to unlock it. Milestones farther from your base will consume more faith to unlock them. You don’t have to unlock all points at once.

Focus on:

• The village
• Port area

You will frequently return to the village to buy things and give out the burial papers; the port becomes your next stop. The unlocking of these two points significantly decreases your walking time. You can unlock other milestones later when you have sufficient faith. The base of the Inquisition has its fast travel point unlocked by default.

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Learn How Alchemy and Runes Work

Eventually, you encounter the plague doctor in the dungeons underneath your house. Working together with him gives you access to the alchemy lab, and he gives you the formula for Dream Dust.

Alchemy is simple to grasp if you know how the rune system works.

Each ingredient in alchemy will have one of three rune types:

• Red
• Green
• Blue

Most of the ingredients do not give you their rune value right away in the game.

Study ingredients first

Take a new ingredient to the study table. When you study a new ingredient, it will reveal its runes forever. This is done through Science, and some ingredients will also require Faith.

You can get Science by breaking down items like:

• White paper
• Science Kits

The best thing about Science Kits is that you get more Science in one pack. Faith is mainly gained from sermons.

Crafting Dream Dust

Dream Dust requires:

• 1 green rune
• 1 blue rune

One of the easiest combinations uses:

• Blood
• Water

Study both ingredients first, reveal their rune values, and then combine them in Laboratory 1. The important principle is that alchemy recipes depend on the combined rune values, not necessarily on a single specific pair of ingredients. When you combine ingredients, their red, green, and blue rune values are added together. The resulting combination determines what you create. This means multiple ingredient combinations can produce the same recipe as long as their total rune values satisfy the required combination. Once you discover an alchemy recipe successfully, the game records it in your folio, so you do not need to memorize every rune combination.

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Unlock and Understand Zombie Workers

Once you get access to the alchemy lab and make Dream Dust, head back to the plague doctor. He will confirm the Dream Dust and give you two zombie workers at no cost. Initially, however, the zombies are seemingly not useful because they lack Mastery. The important trick is that tools provide Mastery.

Give zombies the right tools

A zombie with zero Mastery is unable to do any job requiring Mastery. Equip your zombie with the right kind of tool, which will provide sufficient Mastery for the job to be done.

This includes:

• Axe: Mastery in building and woodwork
• Shovel: Mastery in farming
• Shovel: Also good for cooking, since cooking involves Mastery in farming

The quality of tools also makes a difference.

Here are some examples:

• Rusty axe: 1 Mastery
• Bronze axe: 2 Mastery

Equipping better tools to your zombies as you obtain them increases Mastery in order to perform advanced jobs. The zombies naturally earn Mastery as they keep doing jobs.

Check the job requirement first

Every automated job has a required Mastery level. If the recipe asks for 1 Mastery, and your zombie has 0 Mastery, then adding the recipe to the queue will not cause the zombie to work. The zombie will need the required amount. If the recipe requires 2 Mastery, then the zombie will require 2. If it requires 3 Mastery, then the zombie will require 3. Tools, perks, and many other progression systems can raise this number.

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Build a Zombie Supplier Station

Once you have unlocked the zombie supplier station via the building tree, automation is taken to a whole new level. Allocate one of your zombies to the station and he will automatically collect and transfer materials required by your other zombies.

For instance:

Suppliers zombie → collects logs/materials → delivers them to storage → production zombie uses them → finished products go to storage

Thus reducing the hassle of transferring of materials manually.

Place supplier stations close to production

Pathing matters. A supplier zombie repeatedly travels between storage or resource repositories and your production stations. If you place the supplier too far away, it wastes time walking. Keep the supplier station and relevant storage areas reasonably close to the production facilities they serve. This small layout decision can noticeably improve your automation speed.

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How to Automate Cooking

The process of cooking is slightly different from others used to produce zombies. You have to make sure that all ingredients necessary for cooking are available. For instance, in case of making dough, store:

• Flour
• Water

among your resources or in your inventory as required by the workstation settings.

Queue the recipe of dough/bread and interact with the bench while looking at the workstation, not at the zombie. Periodical visits to the workstation to refill ingredients might be necessary. It is also necessary to make sure that there is enough amount of wood for fires. Provide the cooking zombies with the proper tool.

Cooking workers should also have enough amount of Mastery. For example, the bronze shovel can give 2 Mastery to a zombie, which allows performing recipes requiring 2 Farming Mastery.

Such a zombie will be able to do things like:

• Making flour
• Making dough
• Making bread

When everything is ready, you can queue production.

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Resurrect More Zombies

You can get up to multiple zombies. Two are given by the story. Additional zombies can be unlocked after the morgue level is unlocked and when far enough in the technology tree to construct a resurrection table.

To resuscitate a zombie, there should be a suitable body and:

• A collar (Bronze or higher)
• Reanimation Liquid

Zombie resurrection is linked to the right green day when all lightning conditions are met. A prepared body should be put on the resuscitation table with the collar and reanimation fluid.

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Prioritize Zombies With Red Skulls

Take care of the red skull bodies for the zombie workers. For zombie workers, the more red skulls you have, the better.

The number of red skulls shows how many perks a zombie can have. Like:

• 3 red skulls = up to 3 perks
• 4 red skulls = up to 4 perks

More efficient bodies and body parts will ultimately lead to more powerful zombies. This makes corpse management crucial for your automation process.

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Understand White and Red Skulls in Graves

The workings of the skull system differ if the corpse is buried. Where there are graves, then the white skull contributes positively towards the rating of the graveyard. Red skulls go against the rating of the graveyard.

A red skull becomes a hindrance that needs to be cleared before the positive potential brought about by the white skull can become useful.

Two separate priorities thus arise:

• Working zombie: Prefer red skulls.
• Burying corpse: Prefer white skulls and get rid of red skulls that are undesirable.

Not all corpses belong in the graveyard.

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Do Not Bury Every Body

One of the most useful early lessons is that you do not need to bury every corpse. Build the cremation chamber as early as practical. If a corpse has poor white-skull and red-skull characteristics, cremate it instead of spending resources preparing a grave for it.

Cremation provides:

• Ash
• Salt

Both can become useful crafting materials. This also lets you be selective about which bodies deserve your time and resources.

A simple corpse-management strategy

Prioritize corpses with:

• Strong white-skull potential for graves
• Strong red-skull potential for zombies
• Useful body parts for specific purposes

Cremate the less useful bodies. This prevents you from filling the graveyard with mediocre corpses and wasting resources on decorations and grave improvements that provide little benefit.

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Build Graves Around Their Actual Skull Potential

The cemetery rating is based on the correlation of the white skulls of your corpse and the decorations you have. You shouldn’t think that all graves should be decorated with as much decoration as possible. On the contrary, decorate graves with the help of decorations that correspond to the potential of positive skulls of the corpses.

For instance, if your corpse can have only so many points of positive skulls for wreaths, there is no need to use too many decorations. The main thing is to have good cemetery rating.

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Use Autopsies Strategically

Autopsies serve several purposes. It might be necessary to cut off or graft new body parts for the following reasons:

• Improving zombie;
• Graveyard upgrading;
• Getting crafting materials;
• Quests

But there are some risks connected with surgeries. For example, removing a skull can produce a surgeon error if your Anatomy Mastery is too low. In order not to risk all the time, increase your Anatomy Mastery temporarily.

Use Vegetable Salad for Anatomy Mastery

Vegetable Salad is one of the first recipes you can cook at the kitchen table. It gives you 1-3 Anatomy Mastery points based on the quality of the dish. If it gets a gold star mark, then you can get 3 points. This will be really helpful before performing difficult autopsies. To increase your chance of getting the desired body part from the zombie, you should eat the salad right before the operation. Moreover, later zombies can also prepare Vegetable Salads for you.

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Manage Insanity Before It Drains Your Energy

Insanity slowly diminishes your maximum energy. There are some gravekeeper tasks that boost it such as:

• Doing autopsies
• Disinterring the dead
• Dug graves
• Fill graves
• Gravestone crafting
• Fence crafting

Lack of sleep worsens the situation. If you don’t get enough sleep and get the lack-of-sleep debuff,, then spending your energy increases your insanity level.

Sleep is the first solution

Sleeping normally reduces insanity substantially. However, if you have pushed yourself too far, you may still have significant insanity remaining after sleeping. At that point, use food or alcohol.

Berry Pie

Early in the game, Berry Pie reduces insanity by 3.

Beer

Beer provides a much larger reduction. A beer from the tavern reduces insanity by 12. If you have accumulated a large amount of insanity, visiting the tavern for a beer can restore a substantial portion at once.

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Use Faith to Develop Your Mastery Trees

The talent trees give yet another aspect to your character development. By leveling up various fields, you complete their progression bars and earn points, which can be used to move up the levels of the Mastery ranks.

Initially, investing in more Mastery can be helpful for you to get the necessary requirements for crafting at higher levels. You can also specialize.

It means that you can choose such things as:

• Mining
• Fires
• Cooking
• And other fields related to production

It does not mean that there is only one way to go and choosing something else will ruin your character forever. Rather, think about what your current aim is and spend points in order to achieve it. If you have already earned bronze tools but need some Mastery points for specific tasks, invest them in Mastery. Or if you do mostly food production, developing the cooking branch can be better for you. It is true for all of the other branches as well.

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Faith Unlocks More Inspiration

Some of the inspiration nodes have a yellow symbol. They need Faith. Once you activate the church and sermon mechanism, give your sermon on a weekly basis to get the needed amount of Faith. You only need to pray once to get started with the process. Ensure that you construct your town gratitude beforehand so that more people will join in.

You can upgrade your church at a later stage by installing additional pews and accessing other prayers and upgrades.

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Build an Efficient Automation Layout

Physical configuration is important. You cannot simply take any item from the game and move it around.

In order to move a structure or workbench, you need to:

• Destroy the structure.
• Collect back the resources provided by the game.
• Construct it at another location.

Some objects can be rotated after destruction and reconstruction, while others cannot. Therefore, you will need to consider the physical configuration prior to constructing many production items.

Keep related systems close together

Zombie pathing is especially important. A supplier zombie that has to cross a large area repeatedly will spend more time walking and less time supplying production.

Keep:

• Storage
• Supplier stations
• Production stations
• Relevant resource repositories

reasonably close together. A compact production area makes automation more efficient and reduces unnecessary travel.

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Graveyard Keeper 2 becomes much easier once you connect its systems instead of treating them separately. Follow quests to unlock technology, establish wheat and bread production, complete Jack’s boat quest, unlock sermons and Faith, then invest in fast travel, alchemy, and zombie automation. Manage corpses selectively by turning good bodies into graves or zombies and cremating the rest.

Focus on building reliable production chains first, then let your zombies handle the repetitive work. Develop your Mastery and inspiration trees as needed, but do not worry about making perfect choices. The game gives you plenty of room to experiment. Once these systems work together, the game’s management loop becomes far more efficient.

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• Into Indie Games Homepage
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