Graveyard Keeper is a fantastic new game from Lazy Bear Games and tinyBuild. Think of it as Stardew Valley with corpses. At least, that’s how most people describe it. But in reality, only a small portion of your time will be spent in the autopsy room.

In this incredibly deep game full of crafting, gardening, grave digging, winemaking, and more, there is a lot to do and very little hand-holding. It is easy to get stuck, severely sidetracked, or simply miss a feature that could make your life easier. So I’ve put together a few tips and tricks that I think will help you find your footing in the early stages of the game.

Pay Attention to Your Early Build Paths

I actually had to restart my game due to this one.

In Graveyard Keeper there are plenty of workspaces you can build to craft materials. But if you aren’t careful, you can find yourself in a precarious chicken-and-egg scenario where you can’t craft the materials you need in order to build the workspace needed to craft those materials.

Confused? Don’t worry.

I’ve put together a handy guide that will help you establish the essential workspaces needed to get you started. The ultimate goal of the guide is to build headstones, but once you have those workspaces setup you’ll have everything you need to pursue just about everything in the game.

I want to give a huge thanks to Hoja Lateralus for making me aware of the “correct” build path and saving me from getting utterly stuck. You can find his original guide here.

Pay Attention to Your Stuff

Graveyard Keeper does a fantastic job of making trunks available just about everywhere. The best part is, once you throw all your stuff into the trunk, you can walk over to a workspace like the furnace and it will automatically pull materials from that trunk. Empty pockets, easy day!

But be mindful of which trunks you are tossing things into. Workspaces will only pull from trunks located within their area. Cooking areas will only pull from the trunk in the kitchen, yard areas will only pull from the trunk in the yard, etc. So try to establish a clear organization system early on, otherwise, you will be spending precious daylight running between all your trunks trying to figure out where you stashed the nails.

Speaking of daylight…



Pay Attention to the Days

At first, I dismissed the days as a convenient way to turn day into night and let the bats know when to come out. But in Graveyard Keeper, there’s more to it than that.

Many characters and vendors only come out on certain days. For example, the Bishop only visits on “sun” days while the Astrologist only shows up on “moon” days. There are also characters who only come out at night, etc.

So if you’re waiting on a particular day to roll around for that main storyline objective and you get distracted baking sweet rolls in the kitchen, you’re going to miss your window and be forced to wait another in-game week.

While I’m still piecing together details myself, here’s what I have so far on the characters and their days:

Bishop: Sun day

Inquisitor: Pointy Symbol Day

Astrologist: Moon Day

Singer: Female Symbol Day (That’s the one with the circle on top and the line going down. I only know this because of Pokemon.)

Snake: Nighttime, Multiple Days (Since nighttime has an overlap between two days, I’ve had a tricky time pinning this one down. Mostly because I haven’t spent the time running to the basement every night to track him.)

Merchant: Half-Circle on a Stick Day

Donkey: Every couple of days depending on when you emptied the autopsy room.

Feel free to let me know in the comments if you have any more info and I will update this list as we go. Or, more importantly, let me know if some established lingo pops up for naming these days. I’m making it up as I go.

Don’t Pay Attention to the Fire

Fun fact: once you toss some dough in the oven, or an ingot in the furnace, you can walk away with no consequences. In fact, I usually toss them in before going to bed and everything comes out fine.

That being said, you definitely don’t want to leave bodies unattended. In fact, I recommend playing with the sound on so you can hear the little bell the donkey plays when he arrives with a fresh corpse.

Which conveniently brings me to my next point…

Look Before You Cut

Yes. You can do wrong by a dead body. (Put that on the list of things I never thought I would write in an article.)

In Graveyard Keeper, the actions you take in the autopsy can negatively or positively impact the quality of the body, and thus the quality of your graveyard. This won’t matter a too much at first, but as you progress through the game that graveyard quality will have a big impact on your ability to progress, and it costs a lot of money to exhume a body, so don’t bury anything that isn’t up to snuff.

If you want a full guide on how to approach an autopsy, I recommend checking out Rayune’s autopsy guide on Steam.

My advice: don’t pull skin from a body to make paper. Unless you are planning to throw the body in the river. In which case, go for it. Get the goods.

And if you don’t have time to deal with bodies, don’t leave them on the street. They will just rot and ruin their stats. Dump them in the morgue and leave them there. The donkey won’t come so long as your morgue is full, and the body won’t decompose so long as it is on the table. Thanks again to Rayune for that tidbit.

Think Before You Eat

Now that we are done talking about corpses, let’s talk about food!

For one, don’t chow down on your food every chance you get. Yes, I know all-nighters are fun, but that’s just a waste of food. As with most all-nighters, you’ll pay for it later. When it comes time to fight some bats, or you’re pushing against some deadline before a character disappears for the day, you’ll wish you had that spare food to eek out the last bit of energy you need.

And when it is time to chow down, make sure you drag your food into that handy panel on the bottom of the screen for easy access. This will be especially handy in fights.

Don’t Be Afraid to Experiment

As I said at the beginning, Graveyard Keeper is an incredibly complex game. While guides are incredibly handy to avoid or get out of pitfalls, there is no one “right” path to build up your world. Do what you want. Have some fun. Experiment.

Along the way, I’ve learned that you can “carry” two logs at once (pushing one along the ground), and I’ve learned that there is a pack of bats that shows nightly just north of my house, which is quite convenient when I need to make some paper.

So go forth. Explore. Let me know if you find any diamonds in the rough.

And if you find yourself stuck on something specific, check out this FAQ wherein I try to answer some of the most common questions players get stuck on.

Or if you’re still on the fence about buying Graveyard Keeper, keep an eye out for my review which will be coming soon.

Until then, happy grave keeping!