How to get Faith in Graveyard Keeper 2

What to check, in order

1. 01

   Finish Holy Moly! by bringing the church to quality 10; your first service can happen the same day.

2. 02

   Carry a prayer in your backpack. Prayers are reusable and never consumed.

3. 03

   Before Wrath, check happiness and church quality; attendance is the lower of the two.

4. 04

   Pick a prayer your attendance can actually start, ideally one you can guarantee.

5. 05

   Preach at the lectern on Wrath and pick up the Faith that appears near it.

6. 06

   Refill happiness during the week so the next sermon is full.

Opening the church

Agatha the Nun gives you Holy Moly!, which asks for church quality 10. The church starts as a wreck. Clear the 13 broken pots, repair the 4 blockages with a Bronze Detail and a Board each, and place 3 Interior Benches. Rubble and pots each cost 2 quality, and each Interior Bench I adds 3, so cleaning up matters as much as building.

Once the quest completes you can hold your first service immediately, whatever the day. After that, sermons only happen on Wrath, the sixth day of the week, and only once per week. Herbert’s next quest, Fighting Spirit Required, wants 3 Faith, so that first service is worth doing straight away.

Field note: The church needs four Bronze Details. Make them in the same anvil session as the ones for Jack’s boat and the tower blockage.

Attendance decides everything

Parishioners equal the smaller of church quality and happiness. Each sermon then costs happiness equal to the number who came. Faith and money are both paid per parishioner, so attendance is the number you are really trying to raise.

That gives you two levers, and the weaker one is always the bottleneck. A beautiful church with 6 happiness preaches to six people. A happy town in a quality 8 church preaches to eight. And happiness itself is capped by town quality, so the ceiling moves as the town gets rebuilt.

• Low happiness: use Town Gratitude after the last sermon, sell Burial Certificates, sell goods to Herm.
• Low church quality: clear rubble, add benches and decorations.
• Both high but capped: raise town quality through Linda’s green scrolls.

How a sermon pays

Every prayer has two thresholds: the number needed to start and the number for guaranteed success. Between the two, the odds of success are your parishioners divided by the guaranteed number. Below the start number you cannot preach that prayer at all.

Faith has a base part, paid per parishioner whatever happens, and a success part, paid per parishioner only if the sermon succeeds. Money works similarly, except the success bonus is multiplied by your graveyard quality rather than attendance. Depending on the prayer, each point of graveyard quality adds 5 to 30 bronze to a successful sermon.

A worked example

Take Basic Prayer with ten parishioners. It needs 4 to start and is guaranteed at 8, so ten people means certain success. The base part pays 0.25 Faith per parishioner, which is 2.5 rounded to 3 (the game rounds each part separately). Add the success part on top and you land at the 5 or 6 Faith most players see from their first full sermons.

Now try the same prayer with six parishioners. You can still start it, but success is only six in eight, a 75 percent chance. When it fails you get the base part alone. That is why it is worth pushing attendance to the guaranteed number before moving on to a bigger prayer: a guaranteed small payout beats a coin flip on a large one.

The money side works the same way, except the success bonus is multiplied by graveyard quality. A tidy graveyard quietly turns every successful sermon into a decent paycheck.

Choosing a prayer

There are 58 sermons in the game. Early on you will only have Basic Prayer, and with nine or ten parishioners it pays 5 or 6 Faith, enough for Herbert’s quest. As attendance grows, move to prayers whose start number you clear comfortably and whose guaranteed number you reach, so the success bonus is never left to chance.

Some prayers also grant a buff on success. God of the storms lets the resurrection device work on any day, God of nature speeds up crop growth, and God’s fury adds damage in battle. These can be worth more than the Faith itself in the right week.

If you are over your zombie limit, most prayers lose 0.1 to 0.9 Faith per parishioner. Prayer for Protection, Prayer for Imagination and Prayer for Music are immune.

What to spend Faith on

Faith is a currency you carry. It has to be in your backpack, not a chest, whenever something asks for it. The main sinks are teleport stones, inspirations, a handful of studies and carved stonework.

Field note: The Priest perk boosts Faith from sermons. If your talent points are spare, it pays back every single week.

A weekly Faith routine

Treat Wrath like a fixed appointment. Spend Gluttony to Pride raising happiness and polishing the church, check both numbers on Pride evening, choose the prayer, and preach first thing on Wrath. Then use any Town Gratitude you have been holding to refill happiness for next week.

Skipping a sermon is the most expensive mistake in the Faith economy, because there is no catch-up. The six-day week is only 45 real minutes, so a reminder helps; the week planner on this site exists for exactly this.

Common questions