Graveyard Keeper 2 Technology Guide — Tech Tree, Points & How to Unlock Techs
Graveyard Keeper 2 Technology & Tech Tree Guide
Quick answer: Technologies cost red, green and blue tech points — not one XP bar. You earn points by working, crafting and studying items at the Study Table, then buy techs node-by-node. The tree has five branches — Building, Metallurgy (also called Smithing), Farming, Anatomy and Alchemy, and Theology — totalling 195 nodes in current post-launch sources. The 236 figure that circulated at launch is not confirmed; treat 195 as the sourced number.
The three tech point colours
- Red — labour and crafting: chopping, building, smithing, digging.
- Green — nature: plants, farming, gardening and cooking.
- Blue — intellect: body processing, alchemy and religious activities.
Blue is the scarcest colour early on. Red pours in from routine work, green comes steadily from farming, but blue only trickles in from autopsy work, alchemy and church activities — so blue-heavy branches (Anatomy and Alchemy, Theology) are the ones you feel.
Points come from almost everything you do (demo-era values, not re-confirmed post-launch): roughly 1–2 per tree or bush, 2–12 per crop, 1–10 for finishing a workbench item, 1–3 per crafted item, and a big 10–150 in one go for studying a new item at the Study Table (each item can only be studied once). Points left lying on the ground are collected automatically when you sleep.
The five branches
| Branch | Nodes |
|---|---|
| Building | 48 |
| Metallurgy (Smithing) | 43 |
| Farming | 34 |
| Anatomy and Alchemy | 42 |
| Theology | 28 |
| Total | 195 |
There is no separate "Cooking" tab. Cooking techs sit inside Farming. The writing techs — Writing Basics, Newspaper and Paper Press — hang under Theology.
Node costs
The table below is the subset confirmed by the sources linked at the bottom of this page. The full 195-node list is still pending — no source has published it in full, so anything not listed here is unconfirmed rather than free.
| Technology | Branch | Red | Green | Blue |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sawing | Building | 5 | 2 | 0 |
| Firewood | Building | 10 | 5 | 0 |
| Woodworking I | Building | 20 | 10 | 0 |
| Circular Saw | Building | 200 | 20 | 10 |
| Assembly Stand | Building | 200 | 50 | 20 |
| Fine Woodworking | Building | 300 | 50 | 50 |
| Bronze Works | Metallurgy | 5 | 0 | 0 |
| Bronze Melting | Metallurgy | 10 | 0 | 0 |
| Bronze Works II | Metallurgy | 30 | 0 | 0 |
| Iron Forge | Metallurgy | 35 | 0 | 0 |
| Steel Smithing | Metallurgy | 90 | 0 | 15 |
| Steel Weapons | Metallurgy | 100 | 0 | 10 |
| Masterwork Equipment | Metallurgy | 250 | 0 | 25 |
| Gardening | Farming | 0 | 5 | 0 |
| Fishing I | Farming | 0 | 15 | 0 |
| Fishing II | Farming | 0 | 25 | 0 |
| Bread | Farming | 0 | 25 | 0 |
| Flax Thread | Farming | 0 | 25 | 0 |
| Beekeeping | Farming | 0 | 25 | 0 |
| Fishing III | Farming | 0 | 75 | 0 |
| Fishing IV | Farming | 0 | 100 | 0 |
| Alchemy, Distillation | Anatomy and Alchemy | 5 | 5 | 0 |
| Reanimation Liquid | Anatomy and Alchemy | 30 | 40 | 50 |
| Reanimation II | Anatomy and Alchemy | 0 | 0 | 100 |
| Reanimation III | Anatomy and Alchemy | 0 | 0 | 300 |
| Marble Gravestones II | Anatomy and Alchemy | 300 | 0 | 100 |
| Writing Basics | Theology | 5 | 5 | 0 |
| Newspaper | Theology | 30 | 10 | 20 |
| Self-Help Books II | Theology | 100 | 100 | 100 |
Note the jump inside Building and Anatomy: early nodes cost single digits, the late ones (Assembly Stand, Fine Woodworking, Marble Gravestones II) cost 200–300 red, which is why blue and green accumulate faster than you can spend them early and become the bottleneck late.
Two launch-week corrections
- "The Concept of Stone = 15 red" is wrong. The Concept of Stone is Bishop-gated and costs no points at all. The 15 red figure belongs to Stoneworking, a different node.
- "Reanimation = 30 red + 10 green + 10 blue" is wrong. The launch-day costs are Reanimation Liquid 30 red / 40 green / 50 blue, Reanimation II 100 blue, and Reanimation III 300 blue.
Free, NPC-gated nodes (the "portrait" techs)
Some nodes cost nothing and unlock themselves through a character rather than through points. The ones confirmed so far:
- The Concept of Wood and The Concept of Stone — gated behind the Bishop.
- The first Smithing node — unlocked through the blacksmith.
- The clay line — opens once you make clay bowls for the Bishop.
- Three zombie nodes in the stone line (zombie quarrying and mining) — need Gunter, and you must have dug up a zombie first.
These only refresh the next time you open the tree, so if a node you earned still looks locked, close the tree and reopen it.
How to spend points
- Do not dump points at the start. Buy tech as the current task pushes you into it — when you hit a progression wall, unlock the tech or workstation that clears it, then move on.
- Mis-spending does not brick your save. Points keep coming and nothing is permanently locked out, so a "bad" early buy costs you time, not the run.
- Blue is the colour to protect: check whether a node actually needs blue before you commit, and prefer the free NPC-gated nodes over paid equivalents.
Mastery — the hidden gate
Mastery rises by having the matching tool on your toolbar (not necessarily held): rusty shovel for farming, rusty hammer for smithing, axe/pickaxe for building. It gates real tasks:
- Grave marker placement needs Building 1
- Wood wedges and pieces of stone need Building 3
- Bronze Details need Smithing 2
- Organ removal is impossible at Anatomy 0
TBD: the tool-tier bonuses that circulated pre-launch (rusty +1, bronze +2, iron +4, steel +6) have no post-launch source — treat them as unverified.
Inspiration & talents
Talent points come only from buying Inspiration levels — the work itself just advances counters. The Inspiration page unlocks once a branch has two free levels waiting. Named early goals: bury one body (Last Respects), pick one pocket (Pickpocket), cut 5 trees (Lumberjack), break 3 rocks (Rock Breaker), make Bronze Nails 3 times (Bronze Crafter).
If a tech won't unlock
- Portrait nodes unlock through their NPC, not through points — progress that character's storyline and reopen the tree.
- Nothing after this node shows — you have not bought the node it hangs from. A tech can only be bought once everything above it is bought.
- Blue bar looks wrong / points missing — check the branch you are actually spending in; blue earned from autopsy work and church activity is easy to lose track of.
Still open (TBD)
- Total node count: 195 sourced vs 236 often quoted — 195 is what the current sources list; the total still needs confirming against the live tree.
- Per-colour point cap (999) — demo-era value, unconfirmed post-launch.
- "Buy every demo technology" totals (552 red / 254 green / 22 blue) and the demo story-path total (288 red / 65 green / 0 blue) — demo-only values, never confirmed for the retail build.
- Demo-era node costs that retail sources have not repeated (Woodworking I at 10 red, Chopping at 8 red, Pottery I at 10 red + 5 green) — superseded where the table above disagrees, otherwise unverified.
- Full 195-node cost list — pending.
Related
Study Table & research · Beginner guide · Combat & the zombie army · Insanity
Last verified: September 2026 — data from post-launch guides; all values below source to their linked URL.