Graveyard Keeper is a simulation game, much like Stardew Valley, but with a darker twist. Available on both Steam (PC) and on the Nintendo Switch, you can live out your spooky graveyard keeper life while exploring the strange medieval town you find yourself in.
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Between maintaining your own graveyard, expanding into witch-burning festivals, and becoming a self-acclaimed preacher, you might find yourself overwhelmed by talking skulls and whiny donkeys, but here are some tips to getting acclimated to your new lifestyle.
10 Familiarize Yourself With The Days And Time
Just like any other management sim, time management is of utmost importance. In Graveyard Keeper, there is a six-day week, each consisting of its own color and symbol to represent the day.
As you play along, you will find that specific NPCs only appear during designated days, which you'll be able to learn both through in-game dialogue as well as the NPC screen menu. You will also want to get used to knowing when NPCs will arrive or leave their designated location, as you cannot interact with them when they are moving.
9 Develop Your Technology Tree
Graveyard Keeper also features a technology tree where you can unlock new recipes, new abilities, as well as passive perks. To begin with, you will want to focus on getting the foundations of your building, theology, and smithing branches for easier progression and expansion of your graveyard.
Sorted into seven categories, the technology tree uses red, green, and blue technology points to unlock, with the exception of the seventh tab being the Cookery. This tab shows you all the recipes that you have discovered and are able to make, and with over 30+ recipes, you get to prepare a range of different foods for your character and to sell.
8 Don't Fret About Blue Points
As you go about your game, you might see that you're gathering red and green points, but missing out on the blue ones. These are primarily going to be gathered through tasks involving the morgue, graveyard, writing, and alchemy; however, they aren't options until later on.
You'll be able to start gathering them in around one to two hours of gameplay. After a bit of progression with the storyline, you'll be granted access to the church and its basem*nt, where you will find the study table, which will be your primary source for blue tech points early on. For now, just unlock what you can and focus on progression — blue technology points will come soon.
7 Pay Attention To Dialogue
Unlike most simulator games where dialogue tends to be fairly repetitive, Graveyard Keeper's dialogue is a mix of dark humor, livelihood, and most importantly, game information.
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As there isn't really a 'tutorial' when you launch the game, most of the game's advice and guidance comes from characters' dialogue. Try to read what your townies say, as it'll involve details about when and where you should go, who to talk to, and overall just fun content that makes the world of Graveyard Keeper so much more enjoyable!
6 Understand The Corpse Mechanics
Managing and dealing with corpses is your day job now, and with that comes a whole new level of management and process you have to go through. The corpse rating system is determined by red and white skulls, which is further explained in-game as Gerry — your talking skull companion — teaches you.
One thing to remember is that there is also corpse decay. The longer your body sits in the open and isn't treated or buried, the worse the quality of your corpse will be. As expected of the resident Graveyard Keeper, getting bodies treated and buried should be your first priority to guarantee a higher quality graveyard, while you spend your downtime getting the hang of the rest of the game.
5 Invest In Carrot Seeds and Farms
One of the first areas you'll unlock is the garden, which is southeast of your house. After repairing the blueprint table, you'll be able to start farming and growing your own crops. Between the initial selections of beets, cabbages, carrots, and wheat, investing in carrot seeds and establishing a carrot farm will benefit you greatly throughout the rest of your gameplay.
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Carrots are a vital component of the Graveyard Keeper experience. As you progress in-game, the donkey who delivers your corpses will begin to demand carrots in return for the corpses; without supplying them, you won't get any more deliveries. Throughout the game, carrots will be your primary source of food and energy, your primary currency for corpses, as well as a product that can be sold in bulk further down the line when you unlock the Merchant's store operations.
4 Repair Everything
When exploring the world around you, you'll come across signs that, when interacted with, will allow you to repair bridges, clear rubble, and fix up blueprint tables. Bridges will be vital to repair as soon as possible since they give you easier access to areas, which you'd often have to walk two to three minutes to get to. Although most areas in Graveyard Keeper are accessible at the beginning, having these shortcuts will make your journeys less time-consuming.
Clearing rubble connects your network of basem*nts between your house, the church, and future locations, which allows for a much quicker travel time between these locations instead of having to walk the journey above ground. Repairing blueprint tables whenever possible allows you to delve into other mechanics in the game, such as unlocking the farm, the bee sanctuary, the quarry, and much, much more.
3 Gather Resources In Bulk
When you begin to expand your yard and crafting skills, you will notice that there are two essential resources: wood and stone. These are gathered in log form and stone block form respectively, which work differently from the other items in the game. Instead of becoming a drop that you can pick up and put into your inventory, these bigger chunks of resources will have to be manually picked up and transported back onto their respective storage building.
These two resources are not only a time-sink when it comes to gathering, but they also are used up fairly quickly, especially when you are crafting more materials to expand and progress in your game. One mechanic to learn is to gather and line up these bigger resources, as you can push them around with your character. When you line these up, you can push up to six or seven of these resources back home in one journey, instead of having to go back and forth for just one block of material.
2 Hold Onto Your Flesh, Don't Cook Them
One of the first mechanics given to you allows you to obtain flesh from your corpses. You'll learn soon after that in order to sell flesh for profit, you'll have to get a certification stamp that is unfortunately fairly out of your beginner pocket's budget. The only other use you'll have for it is to cook it for food, and as tempting as it may be to get that early inventory of expendable energy, it's better to hold onto them and store it.
This is because you should have a farm where you can plant crops that can be cooked into food instead; and when you finally reach the point in-game where you can start selling flesh, the amount you should have from hoarding flesh should be enough to boost your wallet a significant amount. This is going to make your future gameplay go a lot smoother as money is a scarce but important resource in Graveyard Keeper, and having the boost of around one to two pieces of gold will allow you to start purchasing materials and items that you need.
1 Explore The World
The world of Graveyard Keeper might be overwhelming when you are first introduced to it. However, feel free to walk around and explore the land, as you'll encounter some new NPCs and questlines, find different areas to farm resources, and locate fishing spots that you'll be able to interact with when you unlock fishing in your quest progression.
If you limit yourself to just your area and the town, you'll find yourself missing out on other characters that make the town of Graveyard Keeper so much more charismatic and humorous, as well as miss out on shops that allow you to purchase specific resources and items that would help you out with both your daily tasks and your quests.
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