Battles and Army: Defense Power, Squads and How to Win Every Fight

Herbert writes the battle plans. You supply the walls, the wages and the conscripted dead. Every fight in Graveyard Keeper 2 is gated by one number, defense power, and often won or lost on whether you remember to pick up your own banner. This page covers both, plus every battle’s requirement, the enemy roster and a build for each power wall. Every Town district opens with a battle, so the town restoration guide shows which fights free which shop plots and houses.

Battle basics: four checks and one rule

You start a fight by talking to Herbert or the guards at a battle post. The game then checks four things, and all of them must pass before the fight can start:

1. The day. Sloth for most Town battles, any day for the Port breakthrough, the sewers and the Bathhouse (see Sloth battles vs any-day fights).
2. A sword and body armor in your tool belt. A bow does not stand in for the sword, even if you never intend to swing it.
3. At most one item carried on your head. Set down any extra load first.
4. Defense power at or above the requirement. It sits next to a sword icon in the pre-fight window. The Swords and Bell objective calls the same number “Barracks quality”.

Then you set the field from the Command post: place your barricades and archer towers, plant each squad banner on a marked spot or on a barricade slot, and press Start in the Command post menu.

The rule that costs players their first battle: a squad follows its banner while the Keeper carries it and holds wherever the banner is planted. Nobody advances on their own initiative. Pick the banner up, walk it to the enemy flag, plant it, and stay close: more troops near a flag capture it faster.

How you win, how you lose

• Win: capture every enemy flag and still hold all of them when the waves end. Four fights have no flags and are won by surviving: Market Square Purge, Operation POTATO: Part II, the Final Battle and every round of the Sewerena.
• Lose: enemies take your base, or the Keeper’s health reaches 0 (you have 100).
• Waves: enemies arrive along one to three fronts (one front can feed more than one entry point), and bars at the top of the screen show where the next attack will land. Each lane holds 15 to 100 enemies at once, and anything still queued when the timeline ends never appears. You are holding out against a clock, not clearing a map.
• Kills pay nothing. No tech points, no experience, no drops. Only the victory pays.

All battles: defense power, squads and rewards

Sorted by required defense power. “Red pts” are the red tech points paid to every zombie that fought (mercenaries earn none). Rewards are the 1.008 values; TG means Town Gratitude and goo means Zombie goo.

Emblem is a Defender’s Emblem, Banner a Victory Banner, Keys are Keys for Looters. Before update 1.008 the Town Gratitude figures were half (4, 8 or 3), except the Final Battle, which paid 3 Keys, 4 goo and 3 TG. The story battles send 3,877 enemies at you in total.

Sewerena: seven rounds

The Sewerena in the sewers opens one round at a time: winning a round opens the next and closes the one you just won. Every round is a survival fight, playable on any day.

All seven rounds together pay 42 Keys for Looters, 44 Zombie goo, 70 Town Gratitude and 700 red points per zombie that fought in each of them. Round 7 brings 61 Barrel Zombies: treat it as a dress rehearsal for the Final Battle. Whether barricades and towers count in the arena is not confirmed, so read the power total in the pre-fight window before you count on them.

Defense power: where every point comes from

Defense power = Barracks structures + selected zombie squads + hired mercenaries.

What a full squad of four is worth:

Squads and the Barracks

The Barracks by the Town gate is your army’s home: squads live in its pen, structures are built at its desk, and the Merc Leader rents out his crew there.

• A squad is four zombies. Each needs body armor plus a pike or a bow. Zombies never use swords.
• Squad slots open one at a time when you hand a Defender’s Emblem to Battle Ram, the helmeted ram who manages them. Four Emblems exist, so four squads is the cap: from Break Through to the Port, Eastern Districts: Active Scouting, Central Districts Purge: Part I and Break Through to the Bathhouse Basement.
• Enlisting: carry the zombie into the squad area and chain it in the shackles. A zombie dropped on the floor is ignored.
• Selecting: switch each squad on in the pre-fight window. Hired mercenaries always take one of the battle’s squad places, which is why the one-squad Port fight is a mercenary job: your first zombie slot is that battle’s reward.
• Zombie limit: fighters count toward it. Four full squads put 16 zombies on the books, and being over the limit when the game checks it (when a PR Machine run starts or ends, for example) brings the Excessive zombies penalty, which cuts the Faith and coins your sermons pay. The zombies guide covers how to raise the limit.
• Victory Banners pay for the three “Expand Military Building Area” projects at the Barracks desk (each needs the previous one, and the first needs the Archers Tower technology). They add room for structures, not squads.

Who should fight: porter and Carousel zombies use no tools, so they can keep a pike and armor on permanently and double as the army without any gear juggling. Fighters want red skulls, because every combat perk takes a red-skull slot.

Pikes or bows?

Zombie fighters have 100 health and move at speed 2.4. Their weapon decides everything else:

On paper the bow wins at every tier: more damage per second, and range 6 outreaches Spitters (4.5) and kills Bloated Zombies before their death burst reaches your line. Pikes earn their place in two situations: they can hit a Door Zombie from behind, and from a squad banner planted on a spiked barricade they strike through the wall while the spikes do the rest. Two pikes and two bows per squad is the safe default; go bow-heavy for Central Districts Purge: Part II and Battle at the Lake, where Bloated Zombies pile up.

Mercenaries: rent, upgrades and the Inflation trap

The Merc Leader’s four hired fighters (two pikes, two bows, the Leader is one of the pikemen) have 150 health each, defense 1, and start with pikes hitting for 4 and bows for 8 at range 8. They fill one squad place and add 8 defense power.

• One payment lasts until you win a battle with them. A lost battle does not use it up.
• Upgrade 1: 3 Iron Ingot, offered from Hope It Doesn’t go South. They get Battle Pikes, Battle Bows and Iron Armor: defense 2 and 16 power.
• Upgrade 2: 3 Steel Ingot, once the first upgrade is done. Knight’s Spears, Heavy Bows and Steel Armor: defense 3 and 24 power. The gear comes free with the ingots: +8 power for three bars of metal is a bargain next to forging four sets yourself.
• No red points. Mercenaries earn none from victories, and the squad place they fill is one your zombies are not being paid for.
• They leave after Part I of a two-part fight. Plan Part II without them.
• Inflation: paying the 20-silver fee starts the Inflation quest. Finishing it switches their pay to 3 gold-quality Wine per hire for good. Gold Wine needs Farming mastery 14, or Farming 10 plus Spices and Umami to upgrade bronze Wine at the Kitchen Table (see the talents guide and the wine and alcohol guide). The medium Seeds looter order (2 Keys) returns 12 to 24 gold Grape Seeds. Finish Inflation only once gold Wine flows steadily.

Barricades and archer towers

All structures are built at the Barracks desk, placed from the Command post before a fight and returned afterwards. Each one adds +2, +4 or +6 defense power by tier, whatever its type.

Tier II needs the Reinforced Beam technology first, and tier III sits behind Steel Smithing, which also needs 70 reputation with Jack. Each defense spot holds up to three barricades, or two barricades plus two archer towers.

Picking the right structure:

• Fortified for a lane you will not man: raw durability, but no banner slot.
• Spiked against melee crowds. Every melee enemy triggers the spikes; Spitters do not, because spit is not a blow. Spikes are at their best against Door Zombies, which appear to target barricades.
• Archer Towers for damage, and range 7 outreaches Spitters too. Damage Potions and God’s fury do not boost towers.
• Tier I gives the cheapest power per material. When the requirement is a few points short, a couple of extra Barricade I is usually the quickest fix.

Two Smithing talents turn structures into a real weapon: War Engineer (+4 / +4 / +6 per arrow, spikes hit back +1 / +2 / +3 harder) and War Supplier (+50 / +100 / +100 tower health, +10% health on every barricade). Both sit after Sword Master; see talents and inspirations. The Defense Architect inspiration counts every barricade and tower you build.

Enemy types and how to counter them

The game never shows a name for enemy zombies, so the labels below simply describe what you see. Every enemy has defense 0. Damage per hit is attack minus the target’s defense, never below 0, so each point of armor matters. The Bloated Zombie’s death burst does not follow that rule: it ignores armor.

Door Zombies appear to attack only barricades, ignoring the Keeper, squads and towers until no barricade is left on their front; then they head for your flags. That is why a spiked wall in their path pays twice: it holds them up and bleeds them at the same time.

Sloth battles vs any-day fights

The week runs Gluttony, Sloth, Lust, Envy, Pride, Wrath, then loops (weekly calendar). Battles split into two groups:

When Herbert hands you the red banner before the first battle, every battle can be started on any day until the end of the following Sloth. Use that window to clear as much as your power allows.

After that, treat the week as a production line. Smith gear, build structures and enlist zombies from Lust to Gluttony, fight the Sloth battle, and spend the other days on the any-day fights. Steel, the Royal Foundry and the endgame are locked behind the battle chain, so postponing battles stalls the whole game, not just Herbert.

How to win each battle type

Flag battles

Most fights. Plant a banner, push one squad at a time onto each enemy flag, and keep every captured flag manned until the timeline ends. A flag you leave behind can be lost, and you must hold all of them at the end. Use the wave bars to move squads before an attack lands, not after.

Survival battles (no flags)

Market Square Purge, Operation POTATO: Part II, the Final Battle and the Sewerena. Nothing to capture: keep the base alive until the timeline runs out. Market Square Purge and Operation POTATO: Part II run a single wave front, the Final Battle and the Sewerena rounds two or three. One front can feed several entry points, though, and the Market Square waves come at you from every direction, so spread structures around the base instead of stacking them in one lane, keep squads near the middle where they can reach any side in time, and use the wave bars to see where the next attack lands.

Two-part battles

Closing the Eastern Floodgate and Operation POTATO. Part II starts the moment Part I is won, with no power check, and both parts pay out only when Part II is won. A loss in Part II sends you back to Part I. The mercenaries leave after Part I, so pass the power check with zombie squads wherever you can: three iron zombie squads (48) are worth exactly as much as upgraded mercenaries plus two iron squads, and they stay for Part II.

Sewer fights

Sewer Brawl I and II ignore barricades and towers entirely: they can be neither placed nor counted. The 8 and 24 must come from squads alone. For Sewer Brawl II with a single zombie slot, upgraded mercenaries (16) plus one bronze squad (8) make exactly 24; with two zombie slots, a bronze squad and an iron squad do it without paying the mercenaries.

Battle-by-battle tactics

Army progression: a build for every power wall

Steel Ingots are sold only by the Bishop at the Royal Foundry (after Man of Steel), and the road there runs through the Bathhouse Basement fight. A tier III Smithy does stock finished Steel Armor (2 gold 50 silver) and Knight’s Spears (1 gold), one of each at a time, so a steel squad bought there costs 14 gold. Plan everything up to 88 power around iron gear and tier II structures; steel and tier III are for the Final Battle and the late Sewerena rounds.

Mercenaries and three Master Armor squads also reach the Final Battle’s 144 exactly (24 + 84 + 36). How many structures each building zone holds is not confirmed; if the late fights run out of room, spend your Victory Banners on expansions and upgrade zombie gear before adding walls. Four suits of iron for one squad: Iron Armor x4 in the crafting calculator. All the gear is forged at the Wooden, Iron and Steel Anvil; research order is in tech priorities.

The Keeper’s loadout and battle potions

The Keeper has 100 health. A sword swing costs 20 stamina, a bow shot 10.

• Swords: 4 / 5 / 7 / 10 / 13 damage (Rusty to Master). The Sword Master talent adds +2 per hit (+3 with the Master Sword).
• Bows: 4 / 8 / 15 / 22 (Simple to Heavy). The Battle Bow (15) already out-damages a plain Master Sword (13) at half the stamina, and even Sword Master only lifts the Master Sword to 16, well short of the Heavy Bow’s 22. The bow is your main weapon; the sword passes the start check and, swung from behind, still gets past a Door Zombie’s door.

Battle potions can only be drunk during a battle or its preparation. First… Sludge? gives you 2 Healing Potions from Herbert and reveals the Battle Potions I technology. Recipes are in the alchemy guide.

Zombie fighter perks and red points

Each zombie buys combat perks in its own Smithing tree with its own red tech points, and each perk uses a red-skull slot:

The cheapest complete fighter is 50 + 100 + 200 + one weapon perk (200) + 400 + 400 = 1,350 red points, or 1,550 with both weapon perks. Every perk takes a red-skull slot, so the full fighter is 6 nodes and needs 6 red skulls, 7 with both weapon perks, which means at least a Golden collar (a Bronze collar stops at 5). A 5-node version without Undead Resilience costs 950 red and fits a Bronze collar.

Battles fund it nicely: a zombie that fights in every story battle except the Port and the finale collects 1,375 red points from victories alone. Zombies parked on wood, stone or iron jobs bank red points too; buy their combat perks before you move them into a squad. Battle red points arrived with the PC patches 1.006 and 1.007; consoles may not have that fix yet.

Rewards and what to do with them

Three achievements come from the battle chain: First Blood for the first win, A New Dawn once Eastern Districts Purge, Central Districts Purge: Part II and Sewer Brawl II are all won (it also completes Safe zone.), and Warmaker for crafting 50 battle items in total (swords, pikes, bows, armor).

Common mistakes

• Leaving the banner behind. Squads only move while you carry their banner. Mercenaries left idling at the first flag have cost players the Port battle.
• Bringing only a bow. The start check wants a sword in the tool belt, even if you fight with the bow.
• Half-equipped zombies. A pike without armor (or armor without a weapon) adds 0 power, and a zombie dropped on the Barracks floor instead of shackled is not in the squad.
• Building walls for the sewers. Barricades and towers do not count in Sewer Brawl I and II.
• Pikes on Bloated Zombies. The 10-damage burst ignores armor and hits everyone nearby. Kill them with bows and towers.
• Shooting doors. Arrows into a Door Zombie’s door do nothing; hit it from behind with a pike or the sword, or let spikes work.
• Counting on mercenaries in Part II. They leave after Part I of both two-part fights.
• Not sleeping before a big fight. The game saves only when you sleep. After a win, look around before leaving: in rare cases a unique reward such as an Emblem or a Banner lands on the floor, and a missing Emblem leaves you one squad short for the Final Battle.
• Finishing Inflation too early. Once done, the mercenaries want 3 gold Wine every hire, forever.
• Postponing the battle chain. Steel and the Royal Foundry wait behind it. Stuck somewhere else? See progression blockers.