Graveyard Keeper 2 Best Perks

The Keeper has five talent trees: Building, Smithing, Farming, Book writing and Anatomy.

Doing that kind of work fills an inspiration bar of the matching colour. Each full bar gives one point, and every node in that colour's tree costs one point.

A node needs every node above it that it connects to, so the order you take them matters. Filling a tree costs 16 Building, 18 Smithing, 21 Farming, 18 Book writing or 20 Anatomy points.

Keeper perks and zombie worker perks are separate systems — our zombie mastery guide covers the worker side.

Carrier lets you carry more items on your head. It sits in tier 2 and only needs the first Building mastery node.

Steam players call it "probably the best perk in the game": you hold 4 to 5 logs at once, several trade goods packages for Town orders, and it speeds up moving zombies to and from battles.

Lumbering is slow without it, so take it before anything else in Building.

Researcher makes studies at the Study Table faster and cheaper. Zombie Goo, for example, drops from 8 ticks to 5 and from 2 energy per tick to 1.

The Study Table is your main source of tech points, so this perk speeds up the whole tech tree.

It is tier 2 in Anatomy, right after the first mastery node.

Priest makes ceremonies grant extra Faith. Faith is scarce early and pays for tech, sermons and even claiming some experience rewards.

Hardcore Gamer calls it "probably a first pick". Cardinal, next to it, adds money to ceremonies instead.

Further down the same tree, Good fellow raises your zombie limit without the PR penalty — see our zombie limit guide for why that matters.

Fireman raises furnace output: Bronze Ingot at Furnace I or II gives 3 instead of 2, or 5 instead of 4, and gold and iron ingots get the same kind of boost.

It is tier 2 in Smithing and pays off the moment you start smelting iron in bulk.

If you pan for gold, Gold Digger (tier 3) adds a 40% chance of an extra Golden nugget at the Sluice Box.

Compost Chemist doubles Peat: 4 instead of 2 at the Compost Pile, 10 instead of 5 at Compost Pile II. That feeds every fertilizer recipe.

Surgeon starts all 108 autopsy operations with 2 successful ticks done. Iron Will (Smithing tier 5) stops insanity rising above 70%.

Farmer and Farmer II each add 1 crop per harvest on 9 crops.

wikily.gg tested each node and found five perks that changed nothing at launch. Patches have since fixed two of them.

Still dead: Green Thumb (planting is unchanged), Master Brewer (Mead and Beer unchanged) and Artist (its 13 Stonemason recipes start from the first tick anyway).

Fixed: Sommelier now boosts wine crafting (patch 1.008), and Son of a butcher now applies its bonus to organ surgery (patch 1.009).

They still cost a point each, so only take them when they unlock a node you want below them — Green Thumb, for example, leads to Farmer and Compost Chemist.