[Guide] First hour a.k.a. what you need to do before you actually start playing

[Hoja Lateralus]

Title of the game and tutorial may have convinced you that you should start digging corpses. I mean, you get money for this and this is the first thing game shows you, right? Wrong! God forbid you bury corpses (at least at the beginning). Trust me, it's counter-intuitive, but there are much more important things to do and burying people will bring you more harm than profit at this point.
So, what should you do? Firstly follow the tutorial and do the crucial quests (Beer for Gerry and Blacksmith slime quest most importantly). Then you need to start farming... no, not ACTUALLY farming... you need to start farming your technology. But first, if you worry about the donkey just put a body into the morgue and it will stop coming. So, what you want to do is dig out bushes, chop down wood and gather some stone. You'll need Sawmill and Firewood technology first, then go for tech responsible for furnace and basic blacksmithing (steel parts and nails). Your fundamental goal at this point is to farm those technologies and set up Furnace and Wooden Anvil asap. You will need a lot of steel parts for this, so go through the broken barrels in your house cellar. You may be able to build furnace but you will still probably miss some parts for the anvil, so you will need to just buy them. You can either sell some wood products to carpenter or learn both autopsy technologies and, just this one time, bury a guy or two to get the funds (use the guide* on autopsies on steam for that). Then finally you'll be able to mine some of the iron which is north of your home, get iron bars and then, slowly but steadily, replace all your rusty equipment with equipment I. When you do all this, you may actually start the actual digging and whatnot.

* https://steamcommunity.com/app/599140/discussions/0/1696048426809146658/

[MaebeKnot]

I second.

I've done one restart since Alpha release. I focused on getting my technology first and for most. Largely focusing first on getting Iron bars and the items you can make with it. You will quickly find you need items that are crafted with Iron to progress.

Until you can make your own you will have to buy some from the blacksmith. Even going straight for making my own Iron bars I had to buy a few iron made components from the blacksmith. The sooner you can stop giving him money for those resources the better. Especially while the church is still closed and the town economy sucks. (You can't keep putting people in the ground and expect the tavern to have the money to pay you... until you open the church)

Also the sooner you can get the better tools the sooner your progression will speed up. Better tools and workstations can save a lot of energy and time.

Really I'm thinking corpse are a little bit of a waste of time until you can remove red skull icons. AKA remove Blood and Fat. Without the first few techs the bodies you prepare are going to make it HARDER to open the church when you put them in the ground. Ideally, you should only put a corpse in the ground that comes out to 0 rating without gravestone or fence. If your buried bodies are -1 or more, then you should have thrown it in the river.

I also recommend fixing the bridge to the west ASAP. This will be a renewable source of Coal (so much better to use than firewood) and iron. Since smelting takes time you will want that furnace running 24/7 if you can. It's easy to think you have enough iron, until you need to make use of it. Then it seems like you can never have enough.

[Hoja Lateralus]

I know right? The fact that you DON'T want to dig graves at the beginning and that it actually makes the game HARDER is either lack in communication or some terrible design mistake.

[Freche]

I don't know if I agree with this. The church will be your main source of income. Getting an understanding on how autopsies and graveyard rating works is key.

Once you know how that works, taking proper care of corpses and slowly increasing your rating while at the same time working to get your upgraded tools. Should imo be anyone's focus.

The free money from Burial Certificates will help you buying those needed items to get your "workshop" going. Later on Sermons will pay for whatever you are in need of.

[Nasabot]

I disagree.

The best thing is to rush blood/fat extraction. This allows you to get 3/0 corpses. You bury them, get money and you have a grave with +1.

But its also true that the first tools, the Furnace II and repairing the bridge are insanely good and should be bee-lined. You can use the bury-money to further speed up the rush.

[muki]

or maybe we are just all getting wrong on the topic because this is an alpha and everything is not there yet. What if you cannot just throw that easily the bodies in the river?!

[Kain Yusanagi]

Originally posted by Nasabot:

I disagree.

The best thing is to rush blood/fat extraction. This allows you to get 3/0 corpses. You bury them, get money and you have a grave with +1.

But its also true that the first tools, the Furnace II and repairing the bridge are insanely good and should be bee-lined. You can use the bury-money to further speed up the rush.

Disagree there. You should never, ever bury a 3/0 corpse, that should be river'd- unless you're going white/red, and talking pre-fat/blood extraction (which would turn it into a 5/0).

Otherwise, definitely need to balance upgrading tools with burying good tier bodies, and harvesting flesh/fat/skin (at least) from crap ones and toss 'em.

[紹 Shao]

Let me just state this first, that post about autopsy/grave rating guide, despite being helpful in giving a general direction, isn't 100% accurate.

Anyone who cares to do some testing would know the mechanics behind it is a bit more complicated than described.

I did some testing myself and get a good understanding of how it works in my first attempt, than immediately made the decision to start a new one, for reason most would agree, a bad corpse buried do more harm than good. The game did a poor job explaining the mechanics and by the time you realize it, it's too late.

Now, once you get the mechanics right, what technology you should focus first actually comes down to game play preference, just don't bury any corpse without removing its blood and fat, these 2 is the basic, and will do no harm.

What's considered a good corpse really depends on your plan. Anything other than blood and fats is situational. Sure, plan ahead but that doesn't mean always aiming at maximum possible rating when you don't have the technology to attain that rating in the near future, remember that it will take a while before you run out of gravesites, and a +3 gravestone require a lvl 2 stone cutter, which takes quite a while to get, the best you could rush is only a 2+2 configuration.

I'll share some detail that the guide about autopsy crucially missed. When dealing with a corpse, you need to the mindful of not only the number of white and red skulls, also it's "current rating". Yes, the current rating of a corpse is actually different from the number of white skulls. A corpse can have a maximum rating (after buried) of +2, and can go very negative depending on the # of red skulls. (so a 6/0 corpse can have +0 +1 or +2 rating after buried)

If you know what you are doing, the most efficient thing you can do when you only receive 3/1 corpse is to make it into 3/0 with +2 rating. Now, you can choose to make it a 4/0 with +1 rating, or if u do what's suggested by that post, you'll end up with 4/0 with +0 rating (you ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up when you remove the skull, no question about that). My argument for the 3/0 +2 corpse is that, a 4/0+1 corpse will need to be replaced anyway, it gives less immediate benefit, which is all what it matters in the early game. By going the 3/0 +2 path, You can attain +5 graveyard quality in the 2nd week, that means start getting your $$ and better corpse (5 or 6 total skulls) starts to come. Again, depending on the condition of the corpse, 5/0 or 6/0 with +2 starting rating is what you are aiming for. With good understanding of the mechanics, you're graveyard will soon be full with "actual" +5 and +6. (without the need of lvl 2 stone cutter)

I won't go into detail as this is just alpha stage, things can change. Also at current stage we are not able to make alchemy potion which may or may not change the picture.

[Poki]

I strongly disagree with the OP.
Your main priority should be fixing your graveyard and opening the church, not only you'll get a passive source of money every week (and later on becoming your main source of money), it's also the ONLY way to get Faith, a very useful "item" that is used extensively.
Only when you fix the church you should focus on improving tools and whatelse.

From my experience, a priority list for new players should be as follow:
1. Fixing graveyard/opening church.
2. Upgrading tools.
3. Getting 10 value inside church so you can get 100% garanteed sermon rate.
4. Getting one of the improved sermons (faith or money), so you can get a better return per week.

Once you are done with this, everything will be smoother.
A successful church will grant you LOADS of money, which you can use to buy the blacksmith and everything else you might need from the city.

[MaebeKnot]

Originally posted by Poki:

I strongly disagree with the OP.
Your main priority should be fixing your graveyard and opening the church, not only you'll get a passive source of money every week (and later on becoming your main source of money), it's also the ONLY way to get Faith, a very useful "item" that is used extensively.
Only when you fix the church you should focus on improving tools and whatelse.

From my experience, a priority list for new players should be as follow:
1. Fixing graveyard/opening church.
2. Upgrading tools.
3. Getting 10 value inside church so you can get 100% garanteed sermon rate.
4. Getting one of the improved sermons (faith or money), so you can get a better return per week.

Once you are done with this, everything will be smoother.
A successful church will grant you LOADS of money, which you can use to buy the blacksmith and everything else you might need from the city.

Not a bad path if you want to focus money. Even better if you want to focus faith. At nearly day 100. Focusing on tools and tech over church I'm finding my bottleneck is now faith. For a while it was iron. Though I assume with another few weeks faith won't be such a bottleneck. With upgraded tech I then invested in my church and got some much needed blue tech I was delayed getting to.

With my high tech ranking and a few bodies in the ground without decorations. When I decided to focus on opening my church it didn't take long. After opening the church it was only about two weeks that I was able to hit 50 rating. Then focused on the church rating of 10 to not fail (though I never did so not sure that is working correctly).

I've found money mostly un-necessary. Early game before I had a good start on technology I was buying a bunch of stuff. At least what I could with my limited income. Now that my church is open and I get an easy 5 silver each Sunday, I barely spend the money. Probably because I'm usually busy doing other things in the game that cost energy instead of money. Especially since most of the stuff I "need" to progress I can just make myself, or grind to make myself.

I've been meaning to come back to my graveyard and aim for 100 rating. Yet I feel like it will be a lot of work for money I barely need atm.

[Xuhybrid]

I would make a slight amendment to this. After the tutorial corpse, you should rush for fat and blood removal and then put that next body in the grave with a decent rating, but do not cover it. This will still stop the donkey from coming.

Focus on getting the stone cutter so you can decorate graves, but more importantly gravestones give red orbs. Also, you should actually do farming. It costs very little energy and it gives quite a lot of green orbs.

[BlackW1nd]

I think that donkey bringing bodies only if your morgue is empty and the frequency it brings them is kind of bad design. Better if it brought the corpses like every 3/4/5 days randomly, cause people die time to time, no matter if you have unburied body or not. And tossing to much bodies down the river or piling them in morgue had consequences, like spreading plague etc.

[Kane_Cold]

What a funny discussion about a game not even having a clear ending/goal yet :D i like it

First of all ... I agree with everybody but i think also everybody is missing a few things here and there ... first because there is no goal what actually is the point? Why shouldn't you focus on the graveyard and have a bit fun learning the game? Why shouldn't you go through the technologies to get things going. And also sure ... if the Devs feel like adding some more penalties here and there, maybe some hunger game ... this will change again. So while i write this I'm at v0.671 and i can only speak for all the content and rules that are here yet.

Church VS Tech

So ... what I like is the discussion about what to do first ... first tech ... first church. Actually why don't you do just both? Technology enables you to do things yourself ... sometimes earlier than NPC can do it for you. It also saves money you maybe don't have. It also can help you make some money but this depents on the refresh ticks of the vendors itself and how often you can trade with them, without screwing their progress. Then the Church does enable you to make money out of thin air, and not to less ... from what i experienced myself it's already a lot and from what get from other i'm not doing it right to begin with (wrong prayer - I still use the basic one for 2xFaith). And also not to forget faith itself, which is key resources for later technology and "grow".

Common Goals

Right now because it is an alpha you can't really finish the Game, so there is no need to rush it. But we all know what drives us most when we start something new right? We want to get into it and as quickly as possible have more and more right? So we have Progress/Unlocking new abilities and Time ... time is a bit tricky as you could take real time or in game time in form of days/weeks. Missed a deadline for a trader? well wait another week, of cours you could waste it and sleep all day long, but is this fun? So i guess nobody just wants to spend time wander aimlessly around wating for things to show up: Another thing you could do would be NOT going to sleep and do not save ... start the game/day again and redo everything in the order to fullfill the target deadline, saving time ingame, as in reallife if done right ... or waste it by wanting to do everything right and redo and redo, again and again.

Challenge - Church on the third "SUN"-Day

This is something i set for myself as an Goal which didn't turned out so well yet (always missed it by one week), but had to try quite a lot, because the Alpha stage forced me to redo a few games. So ... I just want to get over with it. And because as stated the Churchs unlockes the road to midgame (well right now late game) content and the earlier you start the faster you progress in the long run.

Also there are a few things to keep in mind ... some "Quest" we currently have are tied to faith (Miss Beauty/Snake), and can't be tackled before we got into.

Also you need faith/research for Passiv Technologies that improve your overall gameplay like Blacksmith - enables you to make 8 rather than 6 nails out of Iron or 4 Iron parts rather than 3. The more the better so you want it.

Things nobody talked about yet

• You don't need food - it's just fancy to have more energy to waste
  
• Mind yout sleeping cycle: Daylight Hours: 1-2 Energy regen; Dusk/Dawn 3-4 Energy, After Midnight 5 energy straight every tick, with a single 6 before the end.
  
• going to bed shortly before dusk can give you enough energy to prepair incoming corpse in the Morque (take Blood/Fat)
  
• going to bed shortly before Midnight fills your energy to max till dawn - leaves corpse in the Morque (that came normal time after dusk) with 92-93%. Enough time to put it into the graveyard without malus.
  
• don't gather iron with the rusty pick
  
• There is tendril-scrub (see left side of the graveyard) that gives you a lot of green knowledge/orbs if you need it ... quick to gather with the shovel, doesn't drop anything else though.
  
• Only workbench that needs Axe-tool is the choping block. All the other wood production can be done by hand.
  
• There is some Flour in the Basement of your House next to the broken Buckets. You could invest some health of the rusty axe to make firewood or use sticks to back bread from the flour.
  
• There are two natural Beehives on the Hill north west from your hous (north of the graveyard). You can gathere there every day for honey, but lose health and time. BUT Honey and Dough can make 4 Muffin which give 20 energy each. Sadly it needs 20 heat (40 sticks or 4 firewood)
  
• There are a lot of bugs, glitches and moments that can break your save ... so make manual backups once so ever.
  
• If you don't sleep you don't save. You can "scout a head, what will happen the day and redo it if you just exit the game without sleeping. If you by chance play all day long without any sleep ... and it crashes ... well guess who starts again?
  
• Some drops can be pushed - like logs or Bodies. Somethings in the world colide with your character and can be moved that way. Funny enough your Char can only hold one Log at a time, but could probably push 100 logs infront of him (well i guess the game would crash from the colision detection). It's harder horizontal as the sprites are smaller than they are vertically. Sometimes it's a good idea to chop down a whole forest, bring two logs (one at hand one infront) and drop then to the next possible stop where it goes vertically again (like from the cross road of the morque < ^House^ > village)

Priorities

1. Fullfill basic quest/unlock important Vendor.
   
2. Manage corpses.
   
3. Manage Technology / Upgrading (important) tools.
   
4. Get Skull to unlock Astronomer - buy paper/science
   
5. Fixing graveyard/opening church.
   
6. Get blue Science - get Blacksmith
   
7. Getting 10 value inside church so you can get 100% garanteed sermon rate.
   
8. Open Bridge to the West/Get Coal
   
9. Get smelther
   
10. Start to play the game.
    
11. Maybe make an better axe now

Two Weeks Plan

Basic Quests - Tavern - Blacksmith - Beer - Gerry

• There is a short chain of events you shouldn't miss on the First day. Which is when you start, unburrow Gerry, meet the Bishop and get your tools, and get the Task to go to the Village Tavern and sell the burrow certificate.The Important thing comes after, where the Tavern Ower gives you the Quest to bring a letter to the Blacksmith to which in return opens you up to kill some slimes for which you get an broken sword and a precious whetstone to repaire the sword. Kill the Slimes get some Iron Parts - buy a bit of iron (1-2 maybe 3 or then *optional* you can also sell the sword already), but don't go overboard - everything gets more expensive (cheaper) if you buy(sell) it in increasing numbers. Sometimes it's better to wait until the Vendor restocks (unreliable right now ... can be tomorrow ... or next week)
  
• IMPORTANT after finishing with the Blacksmith go back to the tavern owner and let him give you a beer as bonus ... you will need it for Gerry (the skull) to unlock the potential to talk to the Astronomer. If you don't give gerry the beer you can't talk to him further and from the game mechanic do know nothing about the Astronomer. Who in return will not talk to you.

Early Corpses and Extraction Techy

• You should mange your corpses from the very begining, first the few silver you get will come quit in handy to buy more iron from the Blacksmith ... or other important things like paper from the Astronomer to start Science early on. But you Also need the Corpses to have more room to improve your Graveyard rating which is abysmal.
  
• IMPORTANT Do nothing else on the graveyard yet ... don't fix, don't cut weed, just bury bodies. There can be a Problem with that. In most cases the early corpses you get are fine with just taking blood and fat of, and should give you an +1 rating even without decoration. But there can be buggs involved that turn that off. Get the Tech for Blood/Fat extraction quick and ignore the other for now. Also don't over do it. The important part is to bring bodies on the field that allow improvement, but do not have red skulls themself you would have to outmatch first.

Technology - from wood to iron to stone

• What every you want to do in the game, you will not come around to build things up first while also juggling the workload of the graveyard, and resource collection. For this you need to make sure you make good use of your Energy. The starting tools are garbage you want to abandon as quickly as possible and don't even waste your precious Whetstone on them (one whetstone is 10 silver at the blacksmith).
  
• I even advice to work the Pick and Axe to the bones and let them rot in the inventory for later when you can visit the Blacksmith and sell them, to buy more iron. Only keep the Shovel in good shape (well at least after it broke) because you need it to get bodies in the ground. But you can also use it to uncover shrub for 1 red and green Knowledge/Orb and also sticks. It's even possible to pull out Logs from stump you find south of your house quite a lot.
  
• Make a beeline to unlock the Technology for getting Iron tools, this is the first you want, preferentially in the first week, or it will be hard to get the graveyard ready on the third "SUN"-day. Build all the Workshops you need to get there BUT don't go for smelthing yet not even Iron ore or coal, don't waste Red or Green Knowledge/Orbs for this yet.
  
• Collect materials in the Basement of the House. There are some old Buckets you can destroy to get some Wood/Iron Goods from and you will need at least 4 Iron Parts to make a wooden Anvil to make the tools. You also need 2 Iron Part and 1 Iron Ingote for the Shovel and 3 iron Parts and 1 iron ingot for the Pick. Last one will become important, because you want to focus on Stone and T2 Gravestones. So get the Technology but also the one for the Stoneworkshop.

Get Astronomer - give Skull, buy paper

• This point is important, because the first Seremon already allowes you to get enough Blue Knowledge/Orbs for the first Passiv Ability "Blacksmith", which will come in hand for the next steps and for most Passiv Abilities has the most value if taken early on.
  
• This can only be done the day before the third "SUN"-day when you want to open the Chruch. But don't panic you have almost the whole next day to fix the rest of the graveyard. So go early in the morning, so when you come back, you get the chance to take care of another corps if it comes.
  
• IMPORTANT You gave Gerry the Beer. You talked to him about the Astronomer. You have a SKULL with you.
  
• Give the Astronomer the Skull - buy some Paper (two sheets for around 2 silver is enough ... it's 4 science points, you only need 3 next day)

Fixing Graveyard

• finaly with maybe 2-3 days left (thrid "SUN"-Day included) you should start working on the graveyard. Get rid of the Scubs with the Iron Shovel, make use of the repair Kits to fix fences and replace broken Gravestones/Crosses with newly crafted ones. You can destroy most of the broken things, but should leave at least one of each kind, because you can researche them later for more Blue Knowledge/Orbs
  
• IMPORTANT The Bishop stays for quite some time into the evening, and you should use any possible time necessary to get to the 5 graveyard rating.
  
• After the seremon go down into the basement and use the Laboratory to research for blue knowledge/orbs - use all faith (3) you have to get 30 Blue and use it for "Blacksmith" Passiv

Get 10 Church Value

• This point will be hard, as you need quite a lot of Iron to make enough Iron-Parts and Nails for Chandeliers [6 Iron Parts] and Church Benches (8 nails 8 wood planks). The Problem is at this point you should be low on Silver to buy more Iron, or the Blacksmith doesn't have much left. If you can make use of your own "Blacksmith" Ability you can make 8 Nails per Iron so you should focus on making all 4 possible church benches. Don't forget you can use the shovel to get logs from stumps.

Open Bridge to the West/Get Coal/Get Smelther

• If the Blacksmith is low on Iron, or you low on cash you should focus yourself on geting a way to the west into the swamp area, and also the Tech for Iron/Coal mining. You want the Coal to fire a smelther ... which you do not have yet. So get it quick it needs 20 Stone and 8 Iron parts

Welcome to Graveyard Keeper Alpha v0.671

• From now on you can do what you want, it's up to you. You should have mayor technologies to make most materiels yourself, while also slowly improve the graveyard rating to earn more cash every week. You should focus your research for now on body parts and grave decorations for Blue Knowledge/Orbs or you could go the route and make another Prayer for more Money, which will need some ink and Pens(Feathers) which restock slowly at the Astronomer, so buy it early and store it.
  
• Maybe you want to get an Axe now ... make some firewood ... give it the Inquisitor, make the graveyard bigger ... enjoy the game.

[Freche]

Originally posted by Kane_Cold:

If you want to get church and things done by first sunday, worked on v669

First priority is Gravestones and if you get a corpse ignore it until you are done with the GY, you should miss at most 2 corpses, (last game I played my first arrived on the day I got a +5 rating).

1. Tutorial
2. Clear 5 bushes in the GY
3. Sleep, and yes do that even though it's daytime, (should wake in the middle of the night).
4. Clear a bush and 1-2 stones next to your house, -> sleep again until dawn.
5. Go to town, sell your certificate, do blacksmith quest, buy 4 nails, get the beer.
6. Still a bit of daylight left, clear a couple of more stones, you need a total of 6 stones in your inventory.
7. Sleep
8. Clear basement (do a quick sleep in the middle of clearing if you still got some nighttime/dawn left that can give decent regen)
9. Now if you got 4 flitches from the basement you go straight for stone cutter and simple gravestones otherwise you need to get the saw too, but skip the saw if possible.
10. Create 6 gravestones, clear GY, repair GY (and be smart with repairing cleared and repaired should bring you to -7), place gravestones, (you should be done on inquisitor day or the day after)

Creating the gravestones gives you 30 red orbs, now you only need to clear a few vines on the left side of the gy to get enough experience to learn to do autopsies and can start expanding your gy.

[Kane_Cold]

Originally posted by Freche:

Originally posted by Kane_Cold:

If you want to get church and things done by first sunday, worked on v669

[...]

this sounds interesting i should take a look at this ... but why specificly version 669? what would hinder this in newer versions?

^^ also first "SUN"-Day is the day you start the game ... you mean the second then :P

but the point is to find a balance between opening the church and be technologly advanced / resource self-sufficient enough to coop with the further game ... sounds like i open the church, but wouldn't be able to use the prayer afterwards with 100% success.

[Freche]

Nothing that I'm aware of, but v669 was the last version I played. Taking a break from GK right now.

Sure it will probably take a little while before you reach a 100% sermon, depending on what you focus on. But right now there is no real penalty for failing your prayer, and it's still a 50% success chance from the beginning. Even if you fail you still get donations and one faith. Which is better then nothing.

My sugesstion on the next goal is repairing the bridge and getting the improved pickaxe as a first item, it will help you getting that iron going to improve your other tools. But you should ofc take care of the dead in the meantime.