Graveyard Keeper 2 beginner guide: your first priorities

Your next steps

1. 01

   Empty the starting chests in the yard, graveyard and house before you do anything else.

2. 02

   Put the rusty axe, pickaxe, shovel and hammer on your toolbar.

3. 03

   Buy the cheap early technologies: Bronze Works, Gardening, Chopping, Woodworking I, The Concept of Stone.

4. 04

   Pick a pocket and bury your first body to unlock the talent tree.

5. 05

   Plant wheat early for Herm’s quest; it grows while you do other jobs.

6. 06

   Sleep before two in-game days pass, and never leave a grave open overnight.

What you start with

You walk in with a Rusty Pickaxe, a Rusty Axe and 100 copper, which is one silver. The rest of your kit is in chests, and new players regularly play an hour without finding them. Check all three spots on day one.

Those three Wooden Signs matter. Your first few graves need a headstone, and signs are the cheapest one there is. The bread and berries are your early energy food; the beer is your early insanity cure.

Your first technologies

The early tree is cheap, and a handful of nodes unlock almost everything the opening quests ask for. Buy them roughly in this order. Bronze Works is the gateway to nails and details, which turn up in nearly every early build. Gardening opens beds for Herm’s wheat. Woodworking I gives you Wooden Planks, the most-requested early material.

Then grab Skin and Bones and Skull and Teeth on the Anatomy side once it opens. They let you remove those parts cleanly, which matters for both graves and research.

Field note: Blue points are the scarce colour early. Every pocket you pick at the Autopsy Table gives one blue point and cannot fail, so pick every pocket before burial.

Graveyard Keeper 2 release date trailer

The early mastery gates

Mastery comes from tools on your toolbar and from talent nodes, and rusty tools only give +1. Building mastery 3 is needed for wood wedges and pieces of stone, so keep both the axe and the pickaxe equipped even while you are doing something else.

Your first talent points come from inspirations, which count ordinary work. Fell 5 trees for Lumberjack and smash 3 rocks for Rock Breaker to earn the first Building node. Smash 5 barrels or trash piles and craft Bronze Nails three times for the first Smithing node. Pick one pocket and bury one body for the first Anatomy node, which also unlocks the talent tree itself.

• Building +1: Lumberjack level 1 (5 trees) and Rock Breaker level 1 (3 rocks).
• Smithing +1: Junk Fighter level 1 (5 barrels or trash) and Bronze Crafter level 1 (nails 3 times).
• Anatomy +1: Pickpocket level 1 and Last Respects level 1 (one burial).

Your first body

Pick at least one pocket on the Autopsy Table before you bury anything. Remove the Fat and Blood, which carry red skulls, and leave the Flesh, which carries a white skull. Keep the Fat for melting and hold on to the Blood: you will want it for Dream Dust and the Magic bell.

Dig and fill the grave on the same day, because an open pit costs 3 graveyard quality. Put your best headstone and fence on it straight away. Herbert’s Grave Expectations needs graveyard quality 10, and no grave can be skimped on the way there.

Your morgue starts with room for one body. When Certificate, Please is done, the donkey brings bodies at 13:12 on Gluttony, Lust and Pride, and it will not deliver to a full morgue. A Corpse Pallet I (4 Boards, 4 Bronze Nails) adds one more slot.

Energy, sleep and insanity

You start low on energy, and the bed will refuse you while your energy bar is full. Eat the house bread and berries early, and save the beer: it removes 12 insanity, which is a lot at this stage.

Sleep at least every two in-game days, which is fifteen real minutes. After that you get Lack of sleep, and every point of energy you spend also adds half a point of insanity. Insanity matters because every point of it lowers your maximum energy by one. Grim work adds it: 0.2 per swing digging or filling a grave, 0.3 per swing at the Autopsy Table. Normal sleep does not lower insanity; only sleeping off Lack of sleep removes 20.

The game saves when you wake up. That is your save point, so sleeping before a risky autopsy is not a bad habit.

Money and the village

Your first income is Burial Certificates. Januarius at the tavern buys them for a silver each, and the first five each week also add a point of happiness. That is enough to buy Herm’s Wheat Seed for his quest and some Bronze Scrap for nails.

Plant the wheat as soon as Gardening is unlocked. It grows while you are busy making the twins’ clay plates, and Planted and Delivered plus Two Peas in a Pod together push village reputation toward the 10 that several early quests require.

Habits worth forming early

Let quests choose your research. Look at what the current quest is missing and work backwards through the shortest chain to it, rather than buying whatever looks interesting in the tree. Many trees near your base are one-offs and do not respawn once the stump is cleared, so do not clear-cut the area for the sake of it.

Queue jobs before you have the materials; benches start on their own once inputs arrive. Keep food on the hot bar so you are not opening the backpack to eat. And learn the week: battles on Sloth, resurrection on Envy, sermons on Wrath. Missing a day is never permanent, it just costs you a week.

Common questions