Stuck in Graveyard Keeper 2? Every Progression Blocker and Its Fix

The game rarely tells you why a quest has gone quiet. It simply lets you keep digging graves until you notice. This page works backwards from the symptom: find the line that matches what you see, apply the fix, get back to the shovel. Reveals from the last third of the story are folded into a spoiler block near the end, and the full story route lives in our walkthrough.

The six-question check

Run through this before you assume the game is broken.

Weekday locks

The week runs Gluttony, Sloth, Lust, Envy, Pride, Wrath, then starts over. Miss the day and that step waits a full week, which makes a weekday lock the easiest stall to mistake for a bug.

A few exceptions save you a week. The very first sermon, in Holy Moly!, works on any day. Break Through to the Port, both Sewer Brawls, Break Through to the Bathhouse Basement and the Sewerena start whenever you like. A successful Prayer for Storms sermon grants the God of the storms blessing, and for its 90 minutes the Resurrection device works on any day, as many times as you like. The Town order board also takes orders from your first visit until the end of the next Pride. Our weekly calendar turns this into a week plan.

Reputation walls: who is short and why

Reputation is a threshold, never a payment: reaching Herbert’s 60 costs you nothing. Each paying quest step adds +10 for a friend (+5 for the Village), three quests pay twice, and the character quests add up to exactly 90 for each of the six friends. If someone is short, a quest of theirs is unfinished, often because it waits on a different friend’s storyline.

Herbert stuck at 50

Security Checkpoint: Democracy wants 55, then 60. Two of Herbert’s six steps hide behind other content:

• Safe zone. completes only when Eastern Districts Purge, Central Districts Purge: Part II and Sewer Brawl II are all won. The sewer fights are not optional. The Central Districts fights only open after Market Square Purge, the Town battle most players miss: it starts from a post outside the walls, at the gate north of the Crossroads.
• Reader for a Warrior opens after The Nun Also Reads, Agatha’s choir sermon, which itself follows Herbert and? and its Love Novel. The Choir comes with Church Music I, which sits after Church Carpets and the Nun 30 gate, so Agatha’s own quests must reach 30 first (see Agatha stuck at 20). Once Agatha agrees to read, go and tell Herbert.

The wall is reputation, not army strength. A bigger squad will not move it.

Linda stuck at 50

Vote Early, Vote Naughty wants 55, then 60. The last +10 is Plague Me Maybe, and that is the trap: Albert must be at 50 before he lets Linda visit, and his fifth +10 is Personal Zombie Zone, a resurrected zombie with at least 8 red skulls placed on his special table. The election waits on your resurrection room. The pair scenes that follow are in the romance and pairs guide.

1. Open the resurrection room (see Morgue, resurrection and zombies).
2. Prepare a complete body with at least 8 red skulls (the Golden collar covers up to 10). Albert hands you 2 Golden Zombie Collars and 2 Reanimation Liquid, and preparing the table uses one of each. Raise it on Envy, or on any day under a Prayer for Storms blessing.
3. Carry the finished zombie, not the corpse, to his table.
4. Ask Albert about Linda again, sleep, then visit both of them.

Green Scrolls and Town quality 100 belong to Wealthy Clients, a later Linda quest. They are not what blocks the vote.

Gunter below 45 or 50

Destiny Polls wants 45, then 50. Two of Gunter’s five steps depend on other people:

• Stars, Lies, & Contracts needs Jack at 60 to sign the PR Agreement.
• The Ingenious Gentleman Don Keyote, the Necronomicon quest, only starts once Agatha’s The Nun with the Hairy Ass restores corpse deliveries and the Donkey tells you Gunter has the book. Ask Gunter at 20, then again at 30.

The +10 that usually carries Gunter to 30 is Rhyme and Printed: 1 Printed Poetry from the Printing Press (which comes with Newspaper, behind the Gunter 20 gate), made from 1 Blank Softcover Notebook, 2 Ink and 1 gold Story (Book writing mastery 4). A gold Story is Improve story II at the Writing Desk: two silver Stories, Book writing mastery 8 and Storytelling I. Start on that well before the election.

Agatha (the Nun) stuck at 20

After Holy Moly! and Nun of Your Business, Agatha goes quiet. Her next quest, The Nun with the Hairy Ass, waits for two events elsewhere: summoning the Fairy in Chasing Fairy Lights, then the Donkey’s strike complaint at the Morgue. After that you need Graveyard quality 20 and a repaired Underground Well under the Crossroads manhole: 2 Polished Bronze and 4 Polished Stone, Building mastery 3. If Polished Stone seemed impossible to make, that was a bug fixed in 1.007. Her later steps, at 30 and 40, sit inside Brawns and Brains.

Jack stuck at 60, 70 or 80

Jack’s first 60 come from Jack in a Boat (+20) and four +10s (Docked and Found, Workshop Hours, Jack’s Back in Business, Give materials). Then the steps get long:

• 70 is Man of Steel. It needs the Royal Foundry, which opens after the election and three main quests: Front-of-the-Envelope Calculation, Water Locked and Steamy Royal. Ask the Bishop about high-quality steel to open his steel shop, then give Jack 3 Steel Ingots. You buy them, so Steel Smithing is not needed first: it is what the 70 unlocks. The steel guide has the whole chain.
• 80 is Factory Tour. Your Factory rating must reach 20, and the rating is the lower of two numbers: conveyor demand (each ordinary belt counts 1) and staffed Carousel capacity (each zombie on a Carousel gives 7). Twenty belts and three staffed Carousel slots (21) do it. Conveyors themselves sit behind the Jack 50 gate.

Albert stuck at 20 or 50

Since patch 1.007, Varnish Before You Fiddle wants Albert at 20 before he discusses the violin. Dungeons and… that’s it, probably. and Sweet Dreams give exactly that. His 50 then needs Varnish Before You Fiddle, Concept for a Concert (Lust only) and Personal Zombie Zone.

Village reputation below 10

Good Fellow, which leads to the dungeon and Albert, and the twins’ rowing step in Jack in a Boat both need 10 Village reputation. Planted and Delivered and Two Peas in a Pod give +5 each, exactly enough.

Technology blockers

Greyed-out nodes: the ten reputation gates

A gate is a free node that opens when two things are true at once: you own the technology in front of it, and the friend has the reputation. Every prerequisite in the tree is required, never either-or. The quests that pay each friend are in the reputation table above; Agatha’s 25 and 30 gates open together, since reputation moves in tens. Linda and Village reputation open no technology.

Reanimation Liquid is one of the tightest locks in the tree: Battle Potions II owned, Gunter at 20, and the Necronomicon quest finished, because the node stays hidden until then. Albert’s two free liquids cover Personal Zombie Zone in the meantime. Gate-by-gate research planning is in tech priorities.

Missing nodes: hidden technologies

Thirty-seven entries start hidden: all 20 Cooking groups and 17 researchable nodes. Since 1.007, Church Music I and II also stay off the tree until their quests start. A hidden node simply is not on the tree until its trigger fires.

Opening the Old Mine. Blow the Quarry cave with the bandits’ Dynamite (Building mastery 8), then clear the mine-side blockage in the underground Factory with 4 Building Kit I and 1 Reinforced Beam (Building mastery 8). Zombie Lumberjack also needs Circular Saw, behind the Jack 40 gate.

A whole tab missing? Theology opens during Holy Moly!, Anatomy and Alchemy when your first body lands on the autopsy table. Cooking entries are never bought at all: repairs, first crafts, harvests, rare catches and quests grant them.

Bought it, but the recipe won’t start: masteries

Technology decides which recipes exist. Mastery, the talent side fed by inspirations, decides whether you may start one. Normal recipes need their mastery level; star crafts and autopsies can be attempted from level 1 with a chance to fail. The five masteries are Building, Smithing, Farming, Book writing and Anatomy, and these are the ones the story leans on:

Bronze is the classic early case: Bronze Detail needs more than Bronze Craft. You also need a Hardening Bucket beside the anvil and enough Smithing. Before buying any node, check you can build its station, gather its materials and meet its mastery.

Quest triggers that hide in plain sight

Prologue, Village and the Fairy

• Can’t leave Jack’s workshop in the prologue. Equip the Rusty Armor and Rusty Sword from the output chest. Carrying them is not enough.
• The Village guards turn you back. Finish your first burial, Wooden Sign on the grave included, and show the Burial Certificate I to Herbert at the Crossroads. It is a carry check: sell the certificate to Januarius afterwards.
• Herbert won’t take the Faith in Fighting Spirit Required. Faith is an item you pick up after a sermon; Church quality and research points do not count. Report Grave Expectations first, then hand 3 Faith to him.
• No Magic bell recipe, or no Blood. The recipe arrives with Jack’s letter at the end of Jack in a Boat, after two sleeps. Blood comes from some corpses at the Autopsy Table, not all. If no new body shows up, see the Donkey entry below.
• Swords and Bell stuck below 12 Barracks quality. The mercenaries from Hooligans for Hire bring 8 for 5 silver; barricades make up the rest, and barricades sit behind the Herbert 20 gate.
• Dream Dust won’t brew. It is one green rune plus one blue rune, and an ingredient only works in the Laboratory once you have studied it at the Study Table. Show the Dust to the Plague Doctor (he checks it, he does not take it) and keep it: Chasing Fairy Lights consumes it.
• No summon option in Chasing Fairy Lights. The recipe appears once the Plague Doctor has checked your Dream Dust. Use the Kitchen Table with Farming mastery 3 and bring 1 Dream Dust, 1 Comet’s Tail and 1 Tooth.

Forest and Swamp

• The Forest Post guards still refuse you. Repair the Village’s Royal Postbox and collect the Temporary Head of the Village Certificate. In the Village Tavern, ask Januarius about the Head of the Village, choose Ask about papers, hand it over, then ask for the Forest Pass. If the pass vanishes, it fell behind the tavern counter (a bug still open on 1.008): walk behind the counter and pick it up.
• The bandits still block the Swamp bridge. They want the Royal Pardon (5 silver and 3 Ink at the Royal Postbox) and the Fairy’s Swamp Map handed over together. The Dynamite deal is for the mine, not the bridge.

Morgue, resurrection and zombies

• The Donkey stopped delivering bodies. Three causes. A conversation is waiting at the Morgue: finish it and let him leave. The Morgue is full: bury or cremate. Or he is on strike, which starts after Chasing Fairy Lights and ends with The Nun with the Hairy Ass.

• Reanimation is missing from the tree while quests ask for zombies. After Sweet Dreams, sleep: Larry points you to a rusty door near the Morgue. Open it with 1 Bronze Detail and 1 Melted Fat, read the chest notes, then repair the power switch with 1 Bronze Detail and 2 Wooden Plank. That reveals Reanimation (30 red, 10 green, 10 blue) in the Resurrection Lab.

• The Resurrection device refuses. Each check is separate, so read the error:

  • Organs: all vital organs must be in the body.
  • Liquid: Reanimation Liquid must be in the room’s storage.
  • Collar: one in your backpack that covers the body’s red skulls (Bronze 0 to 5, Golden 0 to 10, Steel any).
  • Power: Envy (one zombie per table per Envy), or any day while a Prayer for Storms blessing lasts.
  • Zombie limit: it should not stop the device; going over it costs you sermon income at the next check. If the device ever names the limit anyway, a PR Machine campaign, loaded on Gluttony, raises it.

  The zombies guide covers each one.

• Albert’s special table ignores you. It takes a resurrected zombie with 8 or more red skulls, carried in your arms. A corpse does nothing.

• The Plague Doctor is missing. Update 1.008 (Steam) fixed one cause, a soft-lock when Linda’s concert was done before his dream quest. He also leaves during some scripted story scenes and returns when that branch moves on, so advance your other open quests and rest. A few players still saw it after 1.008: report it and keep an older save.

Town, battles and the factory

• A battle will not start. Equip a sword and body armour, reach the defense power the post asks for, and come back on Sloth unless the fight is one of the any-day exceptions. The table below lists all of them.
• No battle marker left except the sewers. That is Plaza Battle: its Market Square Purge post is outside the walls, north of the Crossroads past Agatha’s house. 22 power, 2 squads.
• Jack’s workshop is still broken after a delivery. Give materials is two separate hand-ins: 5 Building Kit I and 5 Wooden Kit I, in either order.
• The Steamy Royal battles never appear. Talk to Herbert in the Barracks about the water tunnel first. The Eastern Floodgate fights then start from the Port-side bridge post, and the Bathhouse Basement fight from the sewer battle camp.
• Stuck below the 72 to 88 power fights. Spend Victory Banners on the Expand Military Building Area projects at the Barracks desk (they need the Archers Tower technology), then fill the space with barricades and towers, and upgrade the mercenaries (8, then 16, then 24 power). Our battles and army guide has full builds.
• Factory Tour: “Show my factory” is missing. Finish Man of Steel first, then push both conveyor demand and staffed Carousel capacity to 20. One player saw the hand-in make the Keeper walk off endlessly while Jack stood near Gunter’s boat: force-quit with Alt + F4, reload and talk to him at his workshop instead.
• Sermon attendance and Likes are capped low. The Likes cap follows Town population. Restored houses give Green Scrolls, and Linda turns them into new residents on Lust. Likes themselves come from Town orders, Likes-tagged trades and Town Gratitude, which is worth 5 Likes per item (the Town Gratitude guide lists every source).

Church: the choir and the organ

• The Nun Also Reads won’t complete. Assign a zombie to the Choir, tell Agatha “The choir is ready”, then hold the next Wrath sermon and close the results window. If you built the Choir before the quest asked for it, reloading the game has fixed it for some players.
• Organic Music starts after Still Standing on Stilts, the Battle at the Lake quest. Find Harold in the Stilt Houses, give him 2 Building Kit I and 1 Iron Kit II to unlock his Special Wood, then build the Organ (4 Special Wood, 6 Steel Detail) after Church Music II.
• Agatha and Herbert keep asking about an organ that exists. The Organ was built before the quest. There is no confirmed fix: keep an earlier save and report it. Since 1.007 Church Music II stays hidden until the quest starts, which prevents new cases.
• A Good Example is the Best Sermon stays open. The sermon must run with a zombie playing the Organ. An ordinary sermon does not count.

Election night

• “It would be rude to leave” at the tavern door. In Campaign of Thrones, talk to both Jack and Agatha inside the tavern after the vote, then leave and let Linda’s exit scene play.
• A 100-Faith quest right after the vote. It is the biggest single Faith bill of the story (the quest is named in the spoiler block below). If your church has been spending every drop, this is where the run stalls. Our church and Faith guide has the budget.

Battle walls: every main-path fight

Defense power is Barracks structures plus the squads you bring plus hired mercenaries. Barricades and archer towers add 2, 4 or 6 each by tier, but count for nothing in the two Sewer Brawls. A zombie fighter counts only with armour and a pike or bow (never a sword), chained in the squad shackles: one dropped on the floor is ignored. Each squad slot opens with one Defender’s Emblem given to Battle Ram in the Barracks, and the squad number below is a cap, not a requirement.

Late-game blockers

The last stretch of the story has its own set of stalls, and you cannot describe them without giving away what happens. Open this only once you have reached the portal fragments, or if reveals do not bother you.

Soft-locks the patches fixed

Check your version before anything else: Steam is on 1.008, while GOG and consoles lag behind (the table of versions is in the patch notes).

The 1.008 patch notes name the concert fix “Linda’s Ball” and the dream quest “Beautiful Dream”, which matches no journal title exactly. Every change is explained in patch notes.

Old instructions that no longer work

Advice written at launch now sends players the wrong way. By 1.007 these requirements had changed:

• Jack in a Boat takes 1 Bronze Axe and 1 Bronze Hammer, no longer 5 Bronze Detail.
• Varnish Before You Fiddle needs Albert at 20 on top of the Lacquer.
• Inflation wants 3 gold-quality Wine, no longer bronze.
• Break Through to the Bathhouse Basement needs 88 defense power instead of 96.
• Church Music I and II stay hidden until their quests start, so you cannot build the Choir or the Organ early any more.

Still open on 1.008

Outside the spoiler block, four blockers have no patch yet: the Forest Pass behind the tavern counter, a Defender’s Emblem or Victory Banner lost after the Bathhouse Basement fight (reload a save from before it; some players avoided it by changing the screen resolution first), an Organ or Choir built before its quest (reloading has helped with the Choir, nothing confirmed for the Organ), and the endless walk after Factory Tour (a single report). The late-game ones are in the spoiler block above. The complete list, crashes included, is in known issues.

When it really is broken

The game only saves when you sleep, so sleep before any risky step: a battle with a unique reward, a big story choice, a gift you cannot take back. If something does break, roll back rather than restart, since the load menu keeps your recent saves. Back up your save folder before big story moments (the known issues guide has the path and the routine), restart every few hours, and on Steam PC use the in-game bug report (added in 1.006) with your version number.

Common mistakes

• Treating the sewer brawls as optional. Before the election, Herbert cannot reach 60 without Safe zone., and Safe zone. needs Sewer Brawl II.
• Leaving the resurrection room for later. Albert’s 50 and Linda’s 60 both wait on an 8-red-skull zombie, and resurrection runs only on Envy unless a Prayer for Storms blessing is active.
• Grinding Gunter to 30 or 40 for a gate. Both Gunter gates check 20, whatever the label says.
• Building the Choir or the Organ before a quest asks. Early builds stalled both quests for some players. The check happens during the sermon, with a zombie at its post, and since 1.007 both technologies stay hidden until their quest starts.
• Spending every drop of Faith. A 100-Faith quest follows the election, on top of the 3 Herbert wants early on.
• Buying a technology you cannot use yet. A node is worthless without its station, its materials and its mastery level.
• Carrying portal fragments around. A fragment in your bag counts for nothing until it sits in the portal frame.
• Rushing every late gift out the door. Before you hand over the last of the six character gifts, read the spoiler block above.