Patch Notes Explained: Every Update from Launch to 1.008

In ten days a hotfix and four patches cleared the worst quest blockers, closed duplication exploits, made logs, bricks and techbooks go further and doubled the Town Gratitude paid by most battles. The official roadmap promises less chore work, with no dates.

Which version are you on? (October 5, 2026)

So far Steam has received every patch first, with consoles days or weeks behind. Find your platform before you trust any fix listed further down.

For prices, editions and the full platform list, see release dates and platforms.

Every update at a glance

The launch build (1.004.2)

The game unlocked on September 22 at about 17:00 UTC on Steam, PlayStation, Xbox and GOG, roughly four hours after the announced 13:00 UTC. The developers flagged the delay at 11:54 UTC. The Epic Games Store listing followed on September 23.

The PC build history on GOG shows the game shipped on the 1.004 branch, with 1.004.2 as the launch installer. Why care? Because many numbers that circulated in launch week, from brick fuel to techbook points, describe that build and are now wrong. The table in the section “Numbers the notes never printed” below lists the ones we know of.

Launch-day hotfix: pre-order bonus in existing saves

About four hours after launch, Steam got a hotfix: the pre-order Sauna and outfit were missing from saves created before release or imported from the demo, and now they show up.

On consoles the same fix was still in progress. The workaround: make sure the pre-order DLC is downloaded and installed, re-import your demo save, then reload. Support cannot add the bonus to a save by hand.

Update 1.005 (September 24): stations unstuck, wood goes further

The first real patch went after the stations that froze mid-game:

• The Study Table no longer locks up after you insert an item for Science.
• The Crematorium no longer keeps a corpse stuck on its table.
• The Resurrection Table keeps its “prepared” state when you leave the Morgue and come back. Zombies that met every requirement but refused to rise can now be resurrected, and PlayStation gets the zombie-limit hint it was missing.
• Buildings inside the resurrection zone can be demolished again.
• Zombie crafts waiting in a queue now tell you when the zombie’s skill is too low.
• Smoother frame rate at the top of the alchemy tower, and a batch of errors before the first sleep cleared.

The balance part was two vague lines: “more chunks per log” and “rebalanced Kiln and Furnace craft / fuel costs”. Comparing the launch game with the current one shows what most likely changed here. The Sawhorse now turns one Log into 3 Short Logs instead of 2, and the Circular Saw into 4 instead of 3 (6 instead of 5 with the Carpenter talent). At the Kiln, a batch of Brick costs 4 Clay and 10 Fuel instead of 20 Fuel.

Update 1.006 (September 25): bug reporter and kitchen zombies

• In-game bug report on the Steam PC build: top-left of the main menu or in the pause menu. Consoles do not have it; use the publisher’s support form with a screenshot or video.
• Kitchen zombies no longer use up or burn ingredients without producing the dish, and a zombie at the oven no longer blocks the millstone.
• Backpack: extra bag slots now take pickups and shop purchases when the main backpack is full.
• Trading: fixed-price goods no longer double in price on your first purchase.
• Demo players: milestones reached in the demo now unlock their Steam achievements in the full game, retroactively.
• Defender’s Emblem can no longer be destroyed. Destroying one used to soft-lock your zombie squad slots. Emblems come from Break Through to the Port, Eastern Districts: Active Scouting, Central Districts Purge: Part I and Break Through to the Bathhouse Basement.
• Crop beds stuck just before harvest, and crashes on ultrawide or unusual resolutions, are fixed. The game still has no native ultrawide mode.

The notes also said zombies “should now” earn red tech points in fights. 1.007 announced the same reward again as new, so count on it from 1.007 onward.

Update 1.007 (September 28): the big blocker sweep

The largest early patch. If you stopped playing because a quest refused to move, this is the one that probably freed you.

Quest and progression fixes

A translation error that blocked quest completion was also fixed. For blockers that are not bugs at all, see stuck in progression.

Exploits closed

Item duplication through bag-to-bag transfers, alchemy and farmer bags is gone. If your fortune was built on cloned goods, the party is over.

The notes also say Dynamite can now be destroyed or sold, yet the item still carries the “Cannot be destroyed” flag and no trader buys it, so do not count on either. It does stack to 20 now (it did not stack at launch). Keep the stick from Can’t See The Forest for the Iron until the mine is open: a replacement means researching the Dynamite technology and crafting one at the Formulation Bench.

Zombies earn red tech points from battles

Every zombie that fights in a won battle now earns 50 to 200 red tech points: 50 for the opening battles, up to 200 for Break Through to the Bathhouse Basement and the Final Battle. At launch, battles paid none. The points go into each zombie’s own talent trees, not to the Keeper, and mercenaries earn nothing. Rotating weaker zombies through squads is now a real training plan; the zombies guide and battles guide show how.

Techbooks rebalanced

“Rebalanced self-study books” means the Red Techbook II, Green Techbook II and Blue Techbook II now give 100 points of their colour instead of 50. Plan your research order with that in mind in tech priorities.

Quiet changes in quests and perks

None of these are in the notes. They show up when you compare the launch game with 1.007, so a few may have slipped in with 1.005 or 1.006.

• Break Through to the Bathhouse Basement needs 88 defense power instead of 96.
• In Inflation, the 3 Wine you hand the mercenaries must be gold quality (bronze before).
• In Varnish Before You Fiddle, Albert wants 20 reputation on top of the Lacquer.
• Church Music I and Church Music II stay hidden until The Nun Also Reads and Organic Music start. Players had reported quest checks failing when the Choir or the Organ was built before its quest asked for it.
• The zombie perks Farmer I and Farmer II became Dirt Digger and Crop Planter: +2 and +4 Farming when planting.
• The Hypno-device quest text now sends you to the Formulation Bench to charge it, not the Abandoned Tower.
• Cremation no longer needs a talent or a mastery level.

Other 1.007 fixes

Saving no longer drops the frame rate to about 2 FPS. The Study Table awards Science points again, and items that refused to be studied now can be. The Tempering Expert perk now grants its mastery bonus and unlocks Master Sword and Master Armor crafting; both recipes are also tied to the Master Blacksmith zombie perk. The Potter’s Wheel no longer gets stuck on Craft.

Also fixed: a crash when a zombie caretaker took items, getting stuck on the pier stairs or on a hatch under a workbench, the unharvestable bush by the Factory entrance, the Keeper’s head vanishing while planting, stray buttons on the Vineyard Bridge repair window and a placeholder instead of Jully’s name.

Numbers the notes never printed

The official notes say “rebalanced” and move on. Comparing the launch game with the 1.007 game gives the actual values. If a list you are reading still shows the launch column, it is out of date.

The halved brick cost of Building Kit I is the quiet change Town restoration feels directly: first-stage shops need 4 to 8 Building Kit I each, and every kit you make at the Woodworking Workbench now takes half the bricks it did at launch.

Update 1.008 (October 2): crashes, soft-locks and a kinder economy

Steam only so far. It came with the roadmap the same afternoon.

Crashes and soft-locks

• Bed crash. Going to bed could crash the game and throw the Keeper out of bounds. Since sleeping is the only way to save, that was the worst possible place for it. Fixed.
• Infinite loading screen. Some saves hung on load because of a conveyor-related error. If a save would not open, try it again on 1.008.
• Linda’s Ball soft-lock. Finishing what the notes call “Linda’s Ball” before “the Plague Doctor’s Beautiful Dream” blocked basement access and the Plague Doctor’s storyline. The names do not match the quest titles; the likeliest pair is Concept for a Concert and Sweet Dreams, but that mapping is not confirmed.
• Inflation error. The mercenary part could error out and leave a garden plot locked. Fixed.
• Clipping in the Town Warehouse and the vine cellar (Vineyard Basement), a collision in the workyard and error pop-ups that kept coming back.

The Panic debuff now applies

Before 1.008, going over your zombie cap could fail to trigger anything. Now it applies the Panic debuff (shown as Excessive zombies in the game), which cuts the Faith and coins each parishioner brings to a sermon: most prayers lose 0.1 to 0.5 Faith and 3 to 18 coins per parishioner (one late story prayer loses 0.9 Faith). The Basic Prayer’s base Faith drops from 0.25 to 0.05.

Your limit comes from the quality of the Resurrection Lab, which is effectively 0 (your five free story zombies already put you over it), plus 10 from the Good fellow perk, plus 10 to 80 while a PR Machine run lasts (runs are loaded on Gluttony and last one to five weeks). The game checks your count at set moments, such as when a PR Machine run starts or ends. Resurrecting a zombie does not trigger a check by itself, so the penalty lands at the next check, not when the zombie rises.

Economy: more Likes, more Town Gratitude

The balance section lists six buffs and zero numbers: more Likes from Town orders, fewer crates per order, a bigger Happy supplier bonus, a higher cap on Likes from trading with vendors, more Likes per traded item and more Town Gratitude for winning battles.

The battle part is measurable. Every battle whose old reward is known now pays twice the Town Gratitude, except the Final Battle, whose reward was reworked:

The Final Battle losing its 3 Keys for Looters appears nowhere in the notes.

On the trading side, Town orders now pay about 10 to 75 Likes each (urgent orders more), plus 5 to 35 with Happy supplier, and the current game shows 10 crates for every order except Jack’s (a few players still quote larger orders). The weekly Likes caps of traders such as Januarius, which reset every Pride, went up too; the exact old and new caps are not confirmed. The Town orders and trading guide has the full payout rules.

Smaller 1.008 fixes worth knowing

• Fast Travel Points can no longer be used during a battle.
• The Sommelier perk is fixed and, per the notes, now boosts wine crafting.
• A PR Machine run should now last the full time it promises. Battles still count against its timer, so load it late on Gluttony to keep it alive through the Wrath sermon.
• Zombie farmers produce again (wheat no longer follows the Keeper around), and a zombie no longer freezes at the firewood holder.
• Items no longer teleport into your inventory from a distance when space frees up.
• The distiller tooltip shows the right requirements, and save slots show current information.

Console and GOG: the patch lag

Patches reach Steam first. 1.007 arrived on PS5, Xbox and GOG on October 1, three days after Steam. On the same day PS4, Switch and Switch 2 were promised 1.007 “next week”, and they were still waiting on October 5. Version 1.008 has no date anywhere except Steam.

On top of that, console players see screen tearing with no workaround, and on PS5 and Xbox an error can still freeze a save (frozen NPCs, stopped clock) while a fix is in progress.

The full list of open bugs, with save locations and backup steps, lives on the known issues page.

The roadmap: “Plans for the future”

Posted on October 2, less than two hours after 1.008. The developers admitted that some tasks had turned into chores and said they do not want that in the game either. The post gives no dates, announces no DLC and no co-op, and lists ten concrete changes, “but not limited to” those. The daily Steam review score recovered after 1.008 and the roadmap, from a low of 60% on October 1 to 72% on October 2 and 75% on October 3.

Common mistakes

• Trusting launch numbers. Brick at 20 Fuel, Techbook II at +50, Bathhouse at 96 power and 6 Brick per Building Kit I are all launch values. Use the table above.
• Ignoring the zombie cap after updating to 1.008. The Panic debuff now cuts sermon Faith and coins from the next check. Count before you resurrect.
• Smelting bronze from scrap out of habit. Since the Furnace rebalance it burns twice the fuel per ingot of the copper-and-tin recipe (10 against 5 without Fireman).
• Getting rid of the quest Dynamite. The 1.007 notes say you now can; a replacement costs a technology and a Formulation Bench craft, and the mine will not open itself.
• Using the Sauna. Its food energy penalty is still not fixed in 1.008.
• Fighting Central Districts Purge on a pre-1.007 console build without a backup save. One game-breaking bug is enough.
• Looking for the bug reporter on console. It exists only on the Steam PC build; console players report through the publisher’s support form.
• Assuming the roadmap is close. It has no dates. Build for the game you have today.

For everything that changed from the first game rather than from patch to patch, see what’s new in Graveyard Keeper 2.