Graveyard Keeper is a management simulator where players tend to a graveyard and a church. The game is much like Stardew Valley, but spookier. Set in a fantasy medieval world, players can farm, dissect bodies, preach in church, and more. NPCs help drive the plot and guide players through tasks seen in many other farming simulators, but also give unique quests, such as stopping cultists and witch burnings.
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There are tips and tricks that players going through the game for the first time may not realize until later. Walkthroughs can help move beginners through the plot, and context can give clues. However, some things are not obvious until the late game unless looked up.
Updated September 30, 2022, by Patrick Armstrong: Fans of farming and life sims who are looking for something a little more macabre than the typical options will find a lot to love about Graveyard Keeper. Maintaining and expanding a graveyard may not seem like happy work, but the challenge of balancing this grim business with one’s own needs and the needs of the townspeople makes this game easy to sink many hours into. It’s easy for beginners to struggle, especially in the opening hours, when staying organized enough to deal with the delivery of even a single body can feel like too much. With a few quick tips, however, this whole process becomes much easier to deal with, and the player will be a body-burying, grave-digging expert in no time.
13 Manage Your Days
Time management is an unusual, confusing, and critically important part of Graveyard Keeper that can be hard for newcomers to get their heads around. One day in the game lasts for nine real-world minutes, and each week consists of six days, each named after one of the Seven Deadly Sins (Greed is omitted). Each day is also associated with one of the game’s six key characters.
Knowing what day is associated with what character is important, because it allows the player to plan key actions ahead of time. Miss Charm visits the Dead Horse Tavern on the day associated with Lust (and marked with the Venus symbol), so if the player wants to talk to that NPC, they can check the day and make sure everything they need to do is taken care of at an appropriate time, with time left over for fishing at the end.
12 Deal With Corpses Promptly
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In Graveyard Keeper, bodies are delivered to the character via a talking donkey with a cart. Though this delivery method is extremely strange, it’s vital to understand it, since one can’t keep much of a graveyard if there are no bodies to keep. One of the simplest but most important factors involving bodies is decay. It’s common sense that a body left to its own devices will begin to decay, and that’s the case in Graveyard Keeper, too.
If the player leaves a corpse on the ground after it is delivered, it will begin to decompose. Its status is marked by a dwindling percentage marker above it, and the lower the body’s condition, the bigger the problem. If a body falls below 90% quality, it will begin to gain Skull markers and cause problems when buried. The faster the player can autopsy and bury a body after delivery, the better.
11 Attend Every Sermon
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The Bishop will attend the church every Pride Day (marked with a sun symbol), and the player will be given the opportunity to attend a sermon. Sermons earn the player Faith, which the player needs to progress throughout the game, and few things are as frustrating as missing a sermon and having to wait an entire week for the opportunity to come again.
Since the church is so easily accessible, it’s hard to miss a sermon as long as the player is paying attention. That said, there’s a lot going on at once in Graveyard Keeper (just as there is in most great sims), and it’s easy for the player to get sidetracked or distracted by a side quest and miss their chance. It’s advisable to always keep an eye on the passing days, and as soon as Pride Day comes around, players should make sure that there’s plenty of time left to get to the church.
10 Collect Essential Resources
Two of the game's most abundant and necessary items are wood and stone. They're needed to craft tons of items in the game, so gather as much as possible and don't sell them. These items don't disappear from the ground, so harvest a lot since they regrow slowly.
Trees and rocks drop larger item blocks that have to be carried by hand instead of going into the character's inventory. Players can form these blocks into a line and push them along the ground, speeding up the process. Unlocked later down the technology tree, zombies at workstations can carry these items to the player's house automatically.
9 Build Storage Spaces
Start building and upgrading workstations as soon as possible. This is one of the reasons gathering stone and wood is so important. Items such as a stone cutter or anvil make all the difference in turning raw materials into crafting ingredients. Some stations are even worth making several of, like furnaces.
But crafting these takes a lot of materials, and the player's inventory can only hold so much. Make as many trunks and mortuary racks as possible, but not just for things like wooden planks. Items that seem less important in the early game should be hoarded for later because everything has a use once enough crafting blueprints are unlocked.
8 Don't Forget To Farm
The garden is just below the character's main house, and allows players to grow a variety of crops. Carrots, for example, are useful for giving to the donkey that delivers corpses, because they won't drop off bodies otherwise. Some crops have bronze, silver, and gold stars, and growing higher quality crops will let them sell for more later. Farms can grow higher quality crops or produce crops faster if players unlock blueprints for fertilizers.
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Crops can be turned into food for the player. They can also be sold as food at The Dead Horse Inn, The Talking Skull, or even in bulk crates at the trade office. Selling crops in one form or another is one of the best ways to make money in the game.Unlike many other farming simulators, these crops don't have to be watered, and zombies can eventually be resurrected to do the work for players.
7 Upgrade The Graveyard And Church
When getting started, players should improve the quality of the graveyard, so the church will unlock. Faith points are needed throughout the game and the easiest way to earn them is to create quality sermons. Along with adding fences and headstones to the graveyard, the church can be upgraded on the inside.
These upgrades increase the faith points and money made every church day. One way to do this is by lighting candles and incense. Candles need beeswax to be crafted, so players should start a bee farm as soon as possible or trade with the Beekeeper in town.
6 Harvest Body Parts
Players can remove body parts from corpses, which has many uses. Flesh can be used to make meat, blood is a key ingredient in energy potions, and fat can be turned into oil. This will lower the quality of corpses though, so don't bury a body in the graveyard if most of its organs are missing.
Instead, build a crematorium to burn the bodies and trade the death certificates in town for money. Two body parts that can always be removed are blood and fat, which remove a red skull and add a white skull to improve the corpse.
5 Talk To NPCs
In Graveyard Keeper, there are six days of the week. Some NPCs are in town all the time, but others only appear on one day. It is important to remember which days are associated with which characters, because questlines may require players to talk to a specific person. If the player misses the day the NPC is in town, they'll have to wait another week before talking to them.
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The NPCs are the main source for quests and backstories, so players should make sure not to skip through the dialog. Also, they'll want to keep in mind that it's only possible to talk to these characters when they aren't walking.
4 Explore The Map
Look around the map for interesting locations. There are tons of shops in town, characters out on farms, a quarry to find, and fishing spots to spend time at. Not only will players unlock new quests, but they can learn all the personalities of the NPCs scattered around the world.
There are obstacles in the player's path at the beginning of the game to limit this. As soon as possible, fix bridges to find new locations and move rubble out of the way to create shortcuts and save time.
3 Experiment With Alchemy
Players should store collected items in the morgue, whether they be body parts or plants. Many items that will be needed in surplus must be made through alchemy.
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Fertilizers of quality and speed are made this way. Elixirs like fresher are needed to make incense for the church. If players want to make energy potions or zombie resurrection juice, this is where they will need to do it. Other useful items to keep on hand are black and white paint.
2 Unlock The Tech Trees
Players early in the game should focus on certain technology tree sections. Categories like book writing should take the back seat to others that will help craft better tools or upgrade the graveyard.
The tech tree uses three colored points: red, green, and blue.Blue points will come later in the game, mainly from a study table under the church, so don't worry if they seem lacking compared to the other two colors for a while. Most of the technology players will want to upgrade early on don't require many blue points.
1 Manage Energy Levels
There are two ways players can get energy: by sleeping or eating. There are many options for food and drink, and with enough to eat, players will barely need to sleep at all. One way to do this is by drinking energy potions, but these require blood. If blood isn't on hand, then the only way to get them is to go out into the swamp and trade with Clotho.
Another way is to craft food items. Better quality food means players will get more energy, but some require lots of ingredients. There's also the option of a liquid diet, where players mainly drink things such as wine or mead. Alcohol requires very few ingredients to make, but players do have to wait for it to brew. All these options have their pros and cons. Players can sell burgers at witch burnings, booze at their tavern, and give carrots to the donkey. As long as some of these items are set aside for those tasks, the rest can be eaten freely.
Graveyard Keeper is available on Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, iOS, and Android
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