Graveyard Keeper – Tips for A Fast Starting Early Game

by Falagar / Articles, Misc. Guides / 17 Aug 2018

1. Starting a new game, dig up Gerry, and before talking to donkey and progressing further, you can actually explore the game world to get familiarized with the map layout and talk with the various npcs to get an idea of who is what.

+++Time will not start to progress until the bishop tells you to pick up your tools from the graveyard trunk.You can also pick up a few quests during this time frame to be completed later on and read the garden and graveyard signs.

2. Take the corpse in the morgue, cut the flesh, and go in the backyard. Once there, go to the sign on the left. It’ll tell you to talk to a member of the inquisition.

+++You will probably do that during the first week, but make sure you get there BEFORE the sun is in or past the middle of the sundial because, while time is frozen during cutscenes, npcs can still move, and the donkey spawns exactly when the sundial indicates past the sun, behind the stables the merchant sits by.

3. Bury the corpse. The bishop will tell you to fix the graveyard, but do not bother cleaning it up of bushes yet. Only remove bushes that are in the way of your graveyards.

+++You will want to leave 2 tiles of space between most graves in tight formation, since there’s limited space to build flowerbeds (5 slots in the starting space), and those cost 2 red flowers, 1 peat and 2 stone, and provide +2 gravescore each. Getting the materials to build one and noticing where they can be built can help with this.

+++Keep the F key pressed after harvesting something with your tools, you will either automatically walk to the other ones and dig up a MUCH greater chunk of them, possibly instantly, based on how long you kept F pressed before you got to them, or you will get to decide where/what to dig, conserving time and energy. This doesn’t work for things that don’t require tools, like berry bushes and mushrooms.

++Your tool durability will decrease based on actions performed, and not time spent on actions, thus you will neither lose nor save on durability with this trick.

4. Talk to the bishop about the certificate, after which the day timer actually starts ticking. Get your tools from the chest, go to the tavern and talk to Horadric about the garden, the contract, and the meat, and then trade him the contract.

+++Try not to exhaust unnecessary dialogue options as they could provide you with stories later on after unlocking a cheap blue point tech.

5. Go to the blacksmith, give him the letter, sharpen your sword, try to be energy efficient when dispatching the slimes, hp doesn’t matter as long as you don’t die, just line them up so you swing at both at once, and then turn the quest in.

+++Now with the sword there are 4 barrels that can be destroyed around the village, for flitch and possibly iron parts.You will have spotted them earlier when exploring the village.There’s 2 extra guaranteed in the tavern, talk to horadric to get beer, destroy those 2 barrels and look in your inventory. If you managed to aquire 6 metal parts, you can go home, otherwise try to buy some from the blacksmith.

++You can give the beer to Gerry the next time you get into the morgue.

++On the way back home, Gerry will tell you about your basement.

6. Sleeping has been changed since the alpha, and it now no longer matters when you sleep. Sleeping is the most cost efficient way to regain energy and should always be preferred instead of eating foods, unless the player character is far from home or in a hurry.

+++DO NOT TOUCH YOUR BASEMENT YET (waste of energy and time)! If you were to clear the basement with the starting axe, it would cost more than a full energy bar, as oposed to barely 20% if done with an iron axe.

7. Now your goal should be clearing the bushes around your work area, and getting 10 sticks. Unlock the first wood technology and place that down. Afterwards, go to the North-East and gather berries from all the bushes.

+++DON’T touch honey trees until you can actually use the honey to cook, or are really close to unlocking the church.

+++You will be eating raw berries mushrooms and apples when you need energy early game.

8. Go cut the grove of trees on the way from your house to the morgue, that’s gonna be your primary source of trees. Make sure to dig up the stumps too, that will ensure the trees will regrow and provide you with enough red points to unlock “soft spares”.

+++For green points, harvest any and all mushrooms and berry bushes, and if really desperate, look for vine bushes that can be dug up for 5 green points each(they eat a lot of energy and shovel durabilty though).

+++Always try to be by the lantern when dusk comes (when it lights up). If the donkey arrives with a corpse, get that corpse ASAP and put it on the autopsy table in the morgue. This will prevent the corpse from decaying badly. You can then sleep if you need energy, sharpen your shovel if it’s below 12%, or operate on the corpse if you have more than half your energy bar.

+++If you’ve slept before autopsy, you can simply reload if you mess up now. Before leaving the house area, make sure your shovel is above 15% durability, if not sharpen, then go to the morgue and commence autopsy.

++IMPORTANT!: as of version 1.022, there is still a BUG in the game where if you exit and reload a savegame without properly restarting the game first, npcs might have their inventories frozen (they won’t restock) and if loading an entirely different savegame, they might arrive on the wrong days too.

++Removing blood and fat is a given, since they improve the corpse (-1 red +1 white skull each).

++The starting corpses will be crappy 1red/2white corpses, after removing fat you will get them to -1red/4white. You can’t see the negative red on the corpse, but burying them will result in a grave that starts at 1 quality and can go up to 4 max.

++If you have unlocked Important parts later on, before removing fat and blood from the corpses, you can try removing the Heart, then the Brain, then the Intestines in that order. For all corpses, only 1 organ is the correct one to remove, the others will damage the white skulls a lot. If you pick the wrong one, try the others to see which was the correct one, then restart the game, the organs will have the exact same effects for that corpse. This is however not recommended early game as the chance to “fail” at removing organs properly is really high.

Falagar

He is the founder and editor of Magic Game World. He loved gaming from the moment he got a PlayStation 1 with Gran Turismo on his 7th birthday.
View all posts