What Are The Best Early Technologies In Graveyard Keeper 2?

Published Oct 6, 2026, 9:59 PM EDT Nick is a gaming news writer for TheGamer, and has been covering the games industry for over three years at sites such as Twinfinite, DotEsports and The Phrasemaker. Born and raised in a small town in Pennsylvania, Nick studied Media and Professional Communications at the University of Pittsburgh, refining his writing and fact-checking to ensure clarity and entertainment value in everything he writes. A game with a tech tree as large as Graveyard Keeper 2 can be overwhelming when you're trying to figure out which technology to unlock first. Because different projects require as much woodworking as metalworking, choosing the right early options matters. You can choose from six categories, though not all are unlocked at the start of the game. As you progress, you'll unlock things like Cooking and Theology, but in the early game, focus on what you can access sooner. Building and Metallurgy are the bread and butter of the game, but you can narrow your focus depending on what you want to work on first. Best Starting Building Technologies When you're starting out, one of the most important technologies you can focus on is Building. Working with wood is the basic way to interact with the game, opening the door to everything else you'll need to make. You'll need to learn Chopping to make firewood, which will power all your furnaces and kilns and is also needed to make food in your house. Planks are also incredibly valuable for making most other items, so making them as early as possible is key. Don't just focus entirely on wood, however. Learning to work with Stone is also crucial for making things like bricks, which lets you make furnaces that open the door to working in Metallurgy. You'll also need pottery for the Twins early on, so it's good to get there as soon as possible. In Metallurgy, the early technologies are pretty linear. However, once you get past Bronze Melting, you'll want to focus more on Bronze than Glass because it will have more implications for your technology going forward. Glass is important once you unlock Alchemy, but it takes longer to get to that point than to start forging. You'll need Bronze Details before you need glass, so it's best to start with the metals before dabbling in the more fragile stuff. Best Starting Farming Technologies Farming will play a big role in early gameplay, but you don't need it as much as Building and Metallurgy. You can sleep to regain energy, but even though it's a headache to run back and sleep every time you're tired, it's not the end of the world. However, once you decide to start making food for yourself, it's gonna be best to grow it on your own farm. Gardening is a smart place to start because it unlocks the Basic Rod for fishing, as well as Fertilizers and the Millstone. The Millstone lets you turn wheat into flour so you can make dough, which opens the door to making bread. Bread is a great early food to choose because it's easy to make and fills the energy bar more than foraged mushrooms or berries. It'll allow you to keep working for longer without stopping to sleep, which can be a problem when you need to do certain tasks on certain days. Best Starting Anatomy and Alchemy Technologies Anatomy and Alchemy is the next important technology category to focus on. Given that so much of the game is dedicated to performing autopsies and burying bodies, it's good to maximize those tasks as soon as possible by unlocking things like the Wooden Sign. Once you've done that, getting the Wooden Cross is helpful because it's an easy way to improve the quality of each of your graves. This lets you reach 10 wreaths faster and complete Herbert's Grave Expectations quest. The Soft Parts technology is also great to have early because you can get as many of these early resources from bodies as possible. Once you unlock alchemy, you can use Fat to make Polished Copper, which is important for many other building projects. As you level up, you'll unlock different technologies, but those first few choices are critical to getting as far as possible as soon as possible. Focus on what will let you complete early quests quickly, before the game really cuts you loose.