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Graveyard Keeper Tips & Tricks: 6 Ways to Up Your Corpse Disposal Game

Managing a medieval graveyard is hard work, especially when there’s so many other things to do as well. Here’s how you can ahead in Graveyard Keeper.

Graveyard Keeper has charmed our hearts, and then extracted them (along with our skulls, skins, bones, and flesh). There’s a lot to do in this Stardew Valley-like, so here’s a bunch of tips to help you get off the ground running.

You can replace broken grave decorations instead of repairing them

Early on in the game, your graveyard will have several graves in poor condition. To repair these, you can use wood or stone repair kits. If you run out of these initial repair kits, however, it will likely be a while before you can craft them.

To get your graveyard rating up, a smart idea is to just replace the broken grave decorations entirely. You can do this by removing the headstone or fence, then applying a fresh new one.

Prioritise wood, stone, and metal production early on

Almost all the important things you need to build in the game require wood, stone, and/or metal parts. These can be produced in your workyard. Consequently, you should try and expand your workyard as soon as you can, to house all your production tools.

For producing wood parts, you will require:

• Sawhorse: to cut down large logs into smaller pieces
• Chopping spot: to turn wood billets into firewood or wedges
• Carpenter’s workbench: to create wood parts like planks, grave decorations and repair kits

There are more tools later in the game, such as the circular saw, for instance, but these are the most important early on.

For producing stone parts, you will require a stone cutter, which can be used to break down large pieces of stone into smaller ones. Smaller pieces of stone can further be cut into grave decorations and repair kits.

For producing metal parts, you will require:

• Furnace: to turn ore into ingots (using fuel)
• Anvil or wooden anvil: to turn ingots into metal parts

These can be upgraded later in the game, but these are most important early on.

You can buy stuff you that you can’t produce (yet)

Money is scarce in Graveyard Keeper, and you need to work for every coin. That said, if you don’t have an item you need, you should be able to buy it from the Village.

You can also sell produced items, but only to the appropriate buyer. Metal parts will be bought by the smith, for example, while wooden parts will be bought by the carpenter.

Whenever possible, though, you should work out a way to produce things on your own. Being self-sufficient is a huge help in Graveyard Keeper, as then you will be able to save your money for what really matters.

Put items in their relevant trunks

While you can put any item in any trunk, it is smarter to put items in trunks according to their use. For example, you should put wood, stone, and metal objects in the workyard trunk(s). Seeds should go into the garden trunk. Grave decorations should go in the graveyard trunk, etc.

Apart from keeping things organised, this actually aids your gameplay. When crafting items, the game will automatically count items stored in the related trunk.

For example, if you want to plant seeds in the garden, you don’t need to have them on you. They can be stored in the garden trunk, and the game will let you plant them as if you have them in your inventory.

There’s a shortcut to the village (and you can teleport, too)

Getting to and coming back from the village takes a lot of time. Not only can this be inconvenient, but it gets boring, too. You can speed up the process by using the underground shortcut, which is located in the tunnels below your home.

You will need to first clear the path and access the area where Snake is. After that, it’s simply a matter of following the path going right, the one that Snake actually enters the tunnels from. If you follow it all the way to the end, you will end up in the village.

Alternately, you can buy a teleport stone from the tavern keeper. This lets you teleport between from anywhere to your house, or to the tavern. Very handy, but it has a cooldown that takes a while.

Cremate the bodies you don’t want to bury (don’t toss ‘em in the river)

Although there are no penalties for throwing a body in the river, it is a better idea to cremate it. Doing so will earn you a burial certificate (I’m not sure why), as well as some ash. Ash can be used to make ceramic funeral urns, black paint, or flavor enhancers.

To cremate a body, you will require the Cremation technology, found in the Theology branch. You can then build a “Place for burning corpses” and light ‘em up. It takes a while for the corpse to burn, so go do something else, or sleep. When you’re back, there will be a fresh and crisp burial certificate waiting for you.

For more information on Graveyard Keeper, be sure to follow our ongoing coverage of the game, including a review, which will up soon. You can also find out more at the official website.