Graveyard Keeper 2 Zombies

The game gives you your first two worker zombies through the Dreamdust questline rather than through a crafting recipe. Everything after that pair comes from the Reanimation technology in the tech tree.

The Dreamdust quest has you making Dreamdust for the Plague Doctor. Partway through it, a locked trapdoor appears in the back room of your house. Open the hatch and head down into the dungeon-like basement, where you will find the Plague Doctor pinned under rubble.

Clear the rubble to free him. Doing so unlocks the Abandoned Tower on your base, which comes stocked with benches and workstations — far more than you need to deal with right away.

Only two of them matter for this quest. At the Study Table, study Water and Blood. Then at the laboratory flask table, infuse Water with Blood to produce Dreamdust.

Hand the Dreamdust to the Plague Doctor. He leads you down to the basement of the Abandoned Tower and gives you two zombies for free.

This is the single most missable thing in the opening, and it is inside the demo's scope, so you can have zombies before the full game even launches.

The Zombie Supplier Station is built from your workbench, and it is what turns a pair of idle zombies into a working line. Exactly one zombie goes on the station itself, and it does not craft anything — it is the courier.

That supplier zombie pulls the required raw materials out of your chests, carries them to whichever crafting station has a queue, then collects the finished products and returns them to storage. Any zombie can take the role, including one you were previously using to smelt bars.

The chest does not have to sit on the same build square as the station. As long as it is inside the same area — the resource building zone, for example — the supplier can reach it, because its action range covers every crafting station placed in that zone.

One consequence catches a lot of players out: materials sitting in your own character's inventory are invisible to the supplier. Everything the line needs has to be in a chest.

Every recipe carries a Mastery requirement, and a zombie below that number simply will not craft it even when all the materials are present. A zombie sitting at 0 Work Mastery is the default state: drop it on a workstation as-is and nothing happens at all. On the wooden workbench the ladder is visible: wooden planks need 2, oiled planks need 4, and wooden trinkets need 6.

The way to raise Work Mastery is to equip the zombie with a tool or a weapon. An axe, for instance, lifts the Mastery that woodworking recipes ask for, which is what lets a zombie that was previously stuck start turning out wooden planks.

Each tool grants a different Mastery type, so the tool you hand over decides which jobs the zombie qualifies for. Swap the axe for a different tool and the same zombie may cross the threshold for another station instead — producing nails rather than planks. Pickaxes and axes cover the simple jobs, the bronze hammer covers the wooden workbench and smelting, and the shovel carries the farming icon for field work.

Higher-quality tools give larger boosts, so upgrading a zombie's tool is often cheaper than trying to grind its perks up to the same level. Before you conclude a station is bugged, check the zombie's Work Mastery and equip the tool that raises the right Mastery for that specific job.

To go beyond your starting pair you need the Reanimation technology from the Anatomy and Alchemy section of the tech tree.

The technology alone is not enough. Head to the Morgue and take the west side of the area to a locked door — behind it is the Resurrection Chamber. Build a Resurrection Table inside it, lay a corpse on the table, interact with it and fit a collar to prepare the body.

Then you wait. Resurrection only works on Envy, the fourth day of the six-day week. When it arrives, interact with the device in the middle of the chamber to switch on the electricity: one use raises every prepared Resurrection Table, then its power is spent until the end of the next Lust. A successful Prayer for Storms sermon lets it run on any day while the effect lasts. The ritual is gated by the calendar, not just by resources — our calendar guide lists what every day does.

If the body you raised is not what you wanted, it is not wasted. Take the resurrected zombie back to the autopsy table, click the specific organ or body part you want to change, and swap in a higher-quality one.

That is a meaningful investment, which is why the two story zombies should be put to work rather than parked while you save points.

There is no hard cap on how many zombies you can raise, but there is a zombie limit, and going over it gives the keeper the Excessive zombies debuff.

The debuff does not stop zombies working. It cuts sermon income: most sermons bring in 0.1 to 0.9 less Faith and 3 to 36 less copper per parishioner.

Community data puts the starting limit at 0, so any zombie counts against it until you raise it — with the PR Machine on Gluttony day, or +10 for good with the Good fellow talent.

Our zombie limit page has the PR Machine tiers and the Hypno-devices they consume.

Every resurrection needs a corpse with all six vital organs, 1 Reanimation Liquid and a Zombie Collar whose limit meets the corpse's red-skull count.

A Bronze collar (1 Bronze Ingot, 1 Blue Crystal, 3 Faith) supports up to 5 red skulls.

A Golden collar (1 Golden Ingot, 1 Blue Crystal, 5 Faith) supports up to 10 — see our gold guide for the ingots.

A Steel collar (1 Steel Ingot, 1 Blue Crystal, 10 Faith) supports up to 99, and steel only comes from one vendor, covered in our steel guide.

The first game trained players to chase white skulls. The sequel inverts that for zombies: the more corrupted a zombie is — the more red skulls — the better the skills it can develop.

The developers explain that the most corrupted zombies come from sinners, and that making townsfolk's lives more comfortable secures a steady flow of them.

If a body is not corrupt enough, you can transplant the most corrupted parts from different corpses and finish the job with corruption embalming.

In practice the red skulls on a zombie's sheet are a perk budget: four red skulls means at most four perks unlocked, and the collar's quality caps its overall potential alongside them.

The perks shown on a new zombie are not free. You have to earn the points before you can spend them — 50 red points for a first Building or Smithing node, around 100 if you want to move across to a different branch, and a separate pool of about 50 green points for the green side of the tree. There is currently no way to reset a zombie's perks, so spend deliberately — our zombie mastery guide lists every tree's cost and the perks worth buying first.

Zombies no longer just use ordinary workbenches. They can operate semi-automatic machines in underground factories, provided minimum working conditions are met.

Reviewers of the launch build describe full assembly lines with machines and conveyor belts that zombies staff, enabling more automatic and complex production than the original allowed.

Zombies also earn their own tech points and perks, with the ceiling set by the red-skull level of the corpse they were raised from.

There are two kinds of zombie in the game. The ones terrorising The Town are dark beings created from corrupted townsfolk.

Yours are made deliberately, and the developers joke that each comes with a special mark identifying it as a Possession-Free Zombie.

Once equipped with weapons and armour, your zombies become your army for the battles that reclaim the city.

Work through the Dreamdust questline until the locked hatch appears in the back room of your house, go down and clear the rubble off the Plague Doctor to unlock the Abandoned Tower.

In the tower, study Water and Blood at the Study Table, infuse Water with Blood at the flask table to make Dreamdust, and hand it to the Plague Doctor — he takes you to the tower basement and hands over your first two workers.

Head outside and build the Zombie Supplier Station from your workbench, inside the same zone as the crafting stations you intend to run.

Place one zombie on the supplier station. This one is your courier and will not craft.

Put the raw materials into a chest in that zone — not in your own inventory — so the supplier can find them.

Equip your second zombie with the tool that matches the work, because without one its Work Mastery is 0 and it will not craft anything: an axe or bronze hammer for woodworking and smelting, a pickaxe for simple jobs, a shovel for farming.

Assign that zombie to the crafting station and queue the items you want made, checking that its Mastery meets each recipe's requirement — and swapping its tool if you want it qualified for a different product instead.

From there the loop runs itself: the supplier delivers materials, the crafter works through the queue, and the supplier carries the finished goods back to the chest and fetches the inputs for the next job.

My zombie is sitting at the bench doing nothing. It is almost always one of two things: it does not have enough Work Mastery for the recipe, or it is waiting on materials that have not been supplied. Give it the tool that raises the right Mastery and make sure the station's inputs are in a chest, and it should start working normally.

My zombie will not craft what I queued specifically. Check its Work Mastery against that recipe's requirement first, then equip a tool that raises that particular Mastery type — a different tool can qualify it for a different station entirely. Failing that, the materials are in your personal inventory instead of a chest.

Does the chest have to be in the same build square as the supplier? No. Anywhere in the same area works, because the supplier zombie's action range reaches every crafting station in that zone.

Can zombies chop trees or haul logs for me? Not in the demo — automatic tree felling and log hauling are not available in that build.

Can they farm or cook? Also not in the demo. Zombie farming and kitchen cooking are locked and are planned for the full 1.0 release, which is why the shovel's farming Mastery has little to do yet.

Can I undo a bad resurrection or a bad perk choice? A bad body can be fixed: return the zombie to the autopsy table and replace individual organs with better ones. Perks cannot — there is no reset option at present.

Corruption is now an asset. The more red skulls a body has, the better the skills the resulting zombie can develop.

The most corrupted zombies come from sinners, and the developers note that making townsfolk's lives more comfortable secures a steady flow of them.

If a body is not corrupt enough, you can move the most corrupted parts between corpses and finish with corruption embalming.

That sits in direct tension with graveyard rating, which rewards net white skulls — so you are constantly sorting bodies into two pipelines.

Producing more zombies requires the Reanimation perk from the Anatomy and Alchemy branch, plus a special underground room.

Because that is a real investment, the two story zombies should be working rather than idle while you save points.

Each zombie earns its own tech points and spends them on perks, so an early worker that has been employed for a while is more valuable than a fresh one.

The developers add that a zombie may even earn a name as a reward for ten years of loyal service.

Handing off gathering and crafting is the game's answer to repetitive work, and it is the only kind of help available since there is no multiplayer.

Fuel and ore are the obvious first assignments, because both feed the furnace chain that everything else depends on.

Underground factories and conveyor lines extend that from single benches to whole production chains.

The time you reclaim goes into the parts of the week that only you can do: sermons, battles and town rebuilding.

The hostile zombies in the city are described as dark beings created from corrupted townsfolk through sinister curses.

Yours are deliberately made, and the developers joke that each carries a mark identifying it as a Possession-Free Zombie.

Functionally they sit on opposite sides of the game: one is your labour and your army, the other is the obstacle.

Across the whole campaign you will put a little over 4,000 of the hostile kind to rest.

The same zombies you employ can be armed and taken to war once The Town battles open.

The developers state that zombies equipped with the finest weapons and armour are what fight the city's undead best.

In battle you position squads by moving their flags, or raise the banner and lead them yourself with a sword or bow.

That makes your metalworking line and your workforce two halves of the same military preparation.

Zombies were introduced in the first DLC for the original game, once the developers realised the graveyard had more tasks than one keeper could handle.

There they were taught to help with jobs like quarrying stone, farming and alchemy.

The sequel expands that role rather than reinventing it, adding machines, specialisation and combat on top.

The developers frame it plainly: zombies do not ask for food or payment, so they gave them more to do.