This is a guide of things I would’ve liked to know when I started my playthrough. I haven’t finished the game, so I don’t know everything, but it’s not meant to be an advanced guide. Work in progress
 
 

First Tips

– Ignore the stamp quest for now. I don’t know why this quest is given so early in the game, but it’ll take you a lot time to complete
 
– Completing the letter/blacksmith quest gives you all the tools you need to start progressing. You can use the Simple iron parts to create you first Forge, but you’ll need to buy a few more to create your Wooden anvil. Once you have both, you can create your own Iron nails and Simple iron parts
 
– There’s more than one technology tree! Browse them and buy the first skills once you can
 
– Forget about getting blue skillpoints at first. You won’t get them until you can access the Church
 
– After you access the Church, the donkey will demand Carrots. This is a blessing in disguise, because now you control when you can and can’t receive bodies.
 
– You can buy Carrot seeds (among others) from the Farmer south of the Wheat Mill. Lentilswill require a Garden bed with sticks
 
– You can sell Carrots, Beats and Lettuce to the same farmer. Or you could cook them in your house.
 
– The Compost heap requires Crop Waste to create Peat(which is used as fertilizer). Crop Waste can be bought in town, but you’ll get it from your own harvests.
 
– Grape seeds are sold by the Merchant and can only be planted in the Vineyard which is northwest of the entrance to the Witch Burning Hill
 
 
 

Days

Each day has a different event occurring, and most quest require that you talk to a person that only shows up on a certain day, so you could miss it if you were busy working, so try to plan ahead your day. Also keep in mind that it takes a little while for you to walk to town, so don’t make the trip too late in the day, or you might end up waiting another week.
 
 

Understanding the Time

 
The game decided to show an image instead of an actual hour. So it can be tricky to understand what time it is.
 
The symbol directly below the image is the current day. However the time is indicated by the fraction of the image currently on top. So if the image has the moon right in the middle, it’s 00:00 (midnight). If the image has a black left half and a shiny right half, it’s 06:00 and the image has the sun right in the middle, then it’s 12:00 (midday). Shops and so usually open around 9:00, so making the trip around 7:00 will be best to not waste time waiting.
 
 
 

Locations

Lighthouse. It’s in the southeast corner of the map.
 
Merchant’s house. It’s close to the tavern. Southwest of it.
 
Blacksmith’s house. Southeast of the tavern.
 
Bridge. West of the Church.
 
Swamp. West of the Bridge. You’ll have to build it.
 
Coal Vine. North-northeast of the Swamp.
 
Iron Vine. North-northwest of the Swamp.
 
Marble quarry. North-northwest of the Swamp.
 
Sand dig site. North of the Bridge, from either side.
 
Clay dig site. South of the Church.
 
 
 

Opening the church

– So as you know, you need a 5 grade cemetery to access the church. It sounds easy, but if you don’t know what you’re doing, you’re gonna have a bad time.
 
– First unlock your technology to create Wooden crosses. You’ll need a Sawhorse, a Chopping spot and a Carpenter’s workbench. Now you create Wooden crosses and Wooden fences and place them on the graves without one to increase their grade. Also, create the Wood Repair Kits necessary to fix the ones already in place.
 
– Follow the basic corpse preparation and the basic corpse burial sections, and you’ll get a 5 grade in no time
 
– Once the church is open, you can use the basic prayer to get faith. Faith is used to study items and get skillpoints. Study bodyparts or graveyard items to get blue skillpoints.
 
– The ammount of Faith you get by praying depends on the quality of the church. Increase it by making more Benches and Candelabres
 
– The ammount of money you get by praying depends on the cemetery grade
 
– You can eventually make Stone Crosses that increase your grade even more.
 
– You can also remove the existing crosses and fences to place better ones
 
 
 

Basic corpse preparation

A corpse will have a certain number of red skulls and white skulls. That means some of the corpses parts are bad and some good.
 
– Always remove the Bloodand the Fat
 
– Removing anything else is a gamble as far as I know
 
– At first your only income is corpse burial, so maybe bury every corpse for now. You can fix this later.
 
– Occasionally, removing a part will result in failure, and the destroyed part will remain in the body. If this happens you might consider removing everything and throwing the body into the River west of the Church(on the south side of the bridge). You’ll eventually be able to cremate bodies, but this requires blue skill points. The Crematorium is south of the Morgue.
 
– If you do remove everything you’ll get inventory problems, because the Brain, Heart and Intestines occupy a whole inventory square, and it takes a while for you to create a Shelf to put those on.
 
– The Skin can later by turned into Paper, so if you think your cemetery grade is good enough, try removing some
 
 
 

Basic corpse burial

Each tomb will grant you a grade, which depends on the skulls the body has. The more white skulls it has, the better possible grade. If a body only has red skulls, the best possible grade it can have is 0, so burying it will only be worth it if you need money (via a certificate). But once you can cremate bodies, you can get certificates this way without ruining your cemetery.
 
You can always buy an Exhumation permit, but it’s more expensive than what you get for for a Burial Certificate, so only use it once yo have enough money and need to increase your cemetery grade.
 
The skulls by themselves get you no positive grade. For this you need a cross and a fence. Each type of cross and fence gets you a different grade, but it is capped to the white skulls, so there’s no need to place a Stone Cross on a body with only 1 white skull.
 
 
 

Some item’s info

Most Item’s creation is linked to a technology, so if it’s not available after creating the corresponding device, check your technologies.
 

 
 
This is all we can share for Basic Guide and First Time tips – Graveyard Keeper for today. I hope you enjoy the guide! If you have anything to add to this guide or we forget something please let us know via comment! We check each comment! Don’t forget to check SteamClue.com for MORE!