Graveyard Keeper 2 Zombie Mastery & Perks

A zombie has the same five masteries as the keeper: Building, Smithing, Farming, Book Writing and Anatomy.

For any recipe, its mastery is three things added together: the nodes it has bought on that mastery's tree, the bonus of the tool in its hand, and any zombie perk for that kind of work.

Each tree can add at most +9 mastery. Recipes still gate on the total — a zombie below the requirement will not start the job — though star crafts and autopsy work only need mastery 1.

Zombies earn coloured tech points of their own. They come from completed crafting batches and from battles the zombie wins, never from the keeper's pool.

The payout depends on the job. A Board at the Sawhorse pays 1 red; a Wooden Plank at the Woodworking Workbench pays 2 red; Flour at the Millstone pays 1 green; Clean Paper at the Writing Desk pays 2 red and 3 blue; a Simple Candle at the Formulation Bench pays 1 red and 1 blue.

So a zombie levels the colour of the work it does. Put a future writer on paper and a future builder on planks from day one.

Earning points does not buy anything automatically. Open the zombie's Character and Perks panels and purchase the node you want.

So a worker that has been busy for weeks can still have no nodes bought, sitting on a pile of unspent points.

Check your longest-serving zombies after every few in-game days.

Building: 17 nodes, 4,600 red in total. Smithing: 17 nodes, 4,450 red. Farming: 17 nodes, 4,650 green.

Book Writing: 19 nodes, 1,500 red plus 835 blue. Anatomy: 15 nodes, 1,500 red plus 1,075 blue.

The first step is cheap. Building and Smithing mastery nodes start at 50 points of their colour, while Writing and Anatomy start at 25 blue.

Every node uses one red-skull slot, whether it is a mastery step or a perk. A zombie can buy a node only while it has more red skulls than nodes.

If its skull count later drops below its node count, some nodes stop working until the skulls are back.

That is why corrupted bodies make better workers, and why the collar matters: Bronze collars hold up to 5 red skulls, Golden up to 10 and Steel up to 99.

A zombie's collar can be replaced later with one that has a higher limit, so a good worker is never stuck at its first collar.

Tools are the fastest mastery you can buy. By tier they add roughly +1 (rusty), +1 to +2 (bronze), +2 to +4 (iron) and +4 to +6 (steel).

Compare that with a tree that tops out at +9 over thousands of points, and a tool swap is usually the right first fix for a recipe that is just out of reach.

Spend nodes on the mastery a zombie will keep using; use tools to bridge the gap to the next recipe.

There are 49 zombie perks across the five trees. A few cheap ones pay off immediately.

Excavator (50 red): clay at the Clay Digger Stand and sand at the Sand Digger Stand take 6 ticks instead of 8.

Dead Alchemist (50 blue): a 40 to 80% chance, set per recipe, of one extra item on 27 recipes.

Master Carpenter (500 red) is the big one for wood work: +4 Building mastery when working with wood.

No. There is currently no way to refund or reset a zombie's perks, so plan each worker's role before you spend.

What you can change is the body: swap organs at the autopsy table or fit a better collar to raise the skull limit.

Organ swaps are one-way — the replaced organ is not returned — so decide on the upgrade before you commit.

Give each zombie one job and one colour. Hand it the best tool you can spare for that job.

Buy the first mastery node on its tree as soon as it has the points, then save for the perk that speeds up its station.

Keep weak, low-skull zombies on work that needs no perks, such as porter duty or the Factory Carousel, and put your corrupted bodies on the benches that reward mastery.