Graveyard Keeper Achievements Guide: Ultimate 100% Completion Strategy

I’ve played plenty of management games, survival games, crafting sandboxes, and RPGs where getting every achievement basically means repeating the same three tasks until your brain turns off. Graveyard Keeper is different. It looks like a quirky cemetery simulator at first, but underneath the dark jokes is a surprisingly complicated progression system involving NPC schedules, technology points, crafting, farming, fishing, alchemy, graveyard optimization, and several quest decisions that can quietly ruin a 100% run.

That last part is what makes a Graveyard Keeper 100% completion guide genuinely useful. Most achievements are straightforward once you understand the systems, but a handful can be missed because of a dialogue choice or because you progressed a questline before doing something else. I learned pretty quickly that this is not a game where you should blindly follow the next objective and assume everything will still be available later.

The good news is that the mechanical difficulty is pretty low. You don’t need lightning-fast reactions or perfect combat skills to get every achievement. What you need is patience, planning, and a willingness to keep track of what each NPC wants and when they actually appear.

Graveyard Keeper 12-Skull Corpse Guide: Ultimate Autopsy & Embalming Path

How Long Does It Take to Get 100% in Graveyard Keeper?

The exact time depends on how efficiently you play and which DLC content you’re including, but a complete run can easily take 60–80 hours or more. The base game itself has a large achievement list, while the DLC adds additional progression and some particularly annoying completion requirements.

The biggest thing to understand is that Graveyard Keeper runs on a six-day weekly cycle. Characters don’t simply hang around waiting for you. If the NPC you need appears on Wednesday and you forget to talk to them, you’re potentially waiting almost an entire in-game week.

That sounds minor until you’re sitting there with every ingredient ready except for one conversation.

Don’t Rush the Story

One of the biggest mistakes I made in management games like this is assuming that progressing the main story is always the best thing to do. In Graveyard Keeper, I would strongly recommend working on several character questlines at the same time.

Some quests unlock new areas, crafting options, resources, or characters. Others can change what an NPC asks from you later. The safest strategy is to treat major quest decisions as potential points of no return.

Before handing over an important item or choosing an unusual dialogue option, make a manual save or backup if you’re playing on PC. This is especially useful around the later DLC storylines.

My Basic Weekly Routine

Once the early game opens up, I found it much easier to organize my days instead of constantly reacting to whatever objective appeared in the quest log.

• Check which important NPCs are available that day.
• Handle their quests before starting a long crafting session.
• Gather resources while traveling between locations.
• Work on the graveyard and production buildings during quieter days.
• Use automation whenever possible.
• Keep rare ingredients and high-quality crafting materials instead of selling everything.

This sounds obvious, but Graveyard Keeper constantly tempts you to spend resources immediately. Don’t. A material that looks useless on Monday can suddenly become the missing ingredient for a quest on Thursday.

The Achievements You Really Don’t Want to Miss

Most achievements can be cleaned up later, but some deserve special attention.

‘He Trusted You’

This is one of those achievements where a single conversation matters more than hours of grinding.

It comes during the Inquisitor’s storyline after you’ve progressed far enough to provide the required Dark Organs. During the relevant conversation, you’ll get a dialogue option involving Gerry, the talking skull.

You need to select the option suggesting that you could bring the Inquisitor a talking skull named Gerry.

That’s the kind of achievement I wish games made more obvious. If you’re rushing through dialogue, it’s incredibly easy to choose something else and move on. Read the Inquisitor conversations carefully.

‘Bestseller’

The Astrologer’s storyline has another potentially nasty trap.

At one point, the Astrologer wants a Silver-quality book. For the achievement, however, you need to go beyond that requirement and provide the appropriate Gold-quality book.

This is particularly easy to mess up if you’re also playing with DLC content because alternative progression can change what the character asks for. If you’re specifically hunting achievements, don’t assume that satisfying the minimum quest requirement is enough.

I recommend preparing the Gold book before committing to the conversation. That way you aren’t suddenly searching for materials after you’ve already progressed the quest.

Game of Crone Has Its Own Trap

The Game of Crone DLC adds another achievement that can punish players who build things too quickly.

During the refugee storyline, you’ll encounter a Golem encounter involving Marquis Teodoro Jr. After dealing with the initial situation, there are additional Golems that need to be found and destroyed.

The important part is that you should hunt down the remaining Golems before constructing the Watchtower.

This is exactly the kind of thing that makes me recommend keeping a backup save during DLC progression. If an achievement depends on doing three unrelated-looking tasks before a major construction milestone, it’s much safer to pause the story and finish the cleanup first.

Graveyard Progression Is a Long-Term Project

The cemetery is obviously the centerpiece of the game, but upgrading it isn’t something you’ll finish in a couple of hours.

Early on, you’re mostly concerned with getting bodies buried and improving the basic graveyard. Later, you’ll be replacing cheap decorations with better markers, statues, fences, and other structures.

You’ll eventually need to bury significant numbers of bodies for achievements such as Advanced Gravedigger and Shovel Master.

Remember that cremation doesn’t count toward burial achievements. I made the mistake of thinking that processing bodies in any way would advance the counter, but the game is specifically looking for actual burials.

The 200 Graveyard Rating Goal

The Ideal Graveyard achievement is one of those objectives that happens naturally if you’re constantly upgrading, but it can also become a late-game grind if you neglect the cemetery.

Don’t waste your best materials on low-quality decorations early. Instead, improve the graveyard progressively as better technology and resources become available.

The stone fence is another major milestone. Once you have the necessary blueprint and materials, upgrading the cemetery’s perimeter gives you another substantial step toward a properly developed graveyard.

Unlock Automation as Soon as You Can

If there’s one piece of advice I’d give to anyone starting a new Graveyard Keeper save, it’s this:

Automate boring resource production as early as possible.

The zombie systems can completely change the way you approach the game. Instead of personally spending every day cutting wood, mining stone, or transporting materials, you can eventually create a workforce that handles some of those repetitive jobs.

This doesn’t remove the management side of the game. It actually makes it better.

Your time becomes available for questlines, fishing, alchemy, farming, crafting and exploration instead of being consumed by another round of manual chopping.

For a 100% achievement run, that saved time adds up enormously.

Crafting, Farming and Cooking Achievements

A lot of the achievement list is built around simply engaging with the game’s production systems.

The Marble achievement requires opening the marble quarry, which means clearing and repairing parts of the northern route. It’s one of those progression milestones that feels expensive early but becomes extremely valuable once you’re investing heavily in graveyard decorations.

The Golden Pumpkin achievement is more farming-focused. You’ll need the right seed and fertilizer setup to produce a high-quality pumpkin.

Then there are the cooking achievements, which reward preparing increasing numbers of different recipes.

The cooking achievements are actually pretty enjoyable compared with some of the more repetitive objectives. The annoying part is simply remembering which recipes you’ve already prepared.

Keep experimenting instead of selling every ingredient you find.

Alchemy Can Become a Huge Time Sink

Alchemy is one of the systems I wouldn’t recommend trying to brute-force randomly.

You have to discover combinations and work through different ingredients, and wasting rare resources just to see whether two items react can get expensive.

The achievement progression eventually asks you to discover 5, 10, and 20 unique recipes.

If you’re serious about 100%, keep a record of recipes as you discover them. There is nothing worse than spending half an hour testing combinations only to realize you’re repeatedly making things you’ve already discovered.

Fishing Is the Completionist’s Patience Test

Fishing is probably the part of the achievement hunt where I felt the game slowing me down the most.

There are multiple fishing locations, different fish species, different rods and casting requirements, and some catches depend on conditions such as time of day.

The major fishing achievements include:

• Discovering every fish at a particular spot.
• Finding all fish across the available fishing locations.
• Completing the full fish collection.
• Catching the rare Goldfish.
• Catching 200 fish.

The Goldfish deserves special attention because it isn’t something you’ll necessarily stumble across quickly. You need the appropriate fishing setup, and its appearance chances are much better under specific conditions.

For the 200-fish requirement, don’t overthink it. Once you’ve finished the collection, pick an easy fishing location and simply grind out the remaining catches.

Technology Points Are a Hidden Grind

The technology tree is where Graveyard Keeper quietly becomes a resource-management marathon.

You’ll need red, green and blue technology points, and the game rewards different activities with different point types.

There are achievements tied to reaching both 1,000 and 3,000 points in these categories.

Blue points were particularly important in my experience because they tend to feel more limited early on. Writing, studying and advanced crafting become increasingly valuable once you’ve unlocked the relevant technologies.

The Astrologer can also sell books that provide additional technology points, so don’t ignore his inventory. If you’re sitting on a pile of silver late in the game, buying books can be much faster than manually producing every last point.

The Easy Miscellaneous Achievements

Thankfully, not every achievement is a massive project.

Some are almost comically simple once you know they exist.

MacPlayer, for example, requires dying multiple times. If you’ve spent enough time exploring the dungeon, you may unlock this naturally. Otherwise, you can deliberately put yourself in danger and get the counter moving.

Tastes Like Home requires eating a Fish Nugget. You can buy one or prepare it yourself.

Then there’s Health Care, which requires drinking 50 healing potions. This is another achievement that is much easier if you start tracking it early instead of waiting until the end and realizing you’ve only consumed six potions in 50 hours.

My 100% Completion Strategy

If I were starting Graveyard Keeper again specifically for achievements, I’d approach it in roughly this order:

1. Build up the graveyard early and keep improving it whenever better materials become available.
2. Repair important bridges and blocked routes so you’re not constantly wasting travel time.
3. Meet every major NPC and learn their weekly schedule.
4. Progress multiple questlines together rather than completing one character’s story as quickly as possible.
5. Watch every important dialogue choice, especially with the Inquisitor and Astrologer.
6. Automate resource production once zombie systems become available.
7. Keep rare ingredients instead of selling everything.
8. Work on fishing and cooking gradually so they don’t become massive endgame chores.
9. Track technology points and use the Astrologer to accelerate difficult categories.
10. Back up your save before major DLC decisions.

The key is to avoid creating a giant cleanup list for the final five hours. Graveyard Keeper has enough repetitive systems already. There is no reason to make yourself fish 200 times, cook 30 dishes, discover 20 alchemy recipes and collect thousands of technology points all in one miserable endgame session.

Final Thoughts

After playing a lot of games with achievement systems, I actually like how Graveyard Keeper handles 100% completion. It isn’t based purely on combat challenges or ridiculous mechanical requirements. Instead, it rewards players who understand the game’s systems and pay attention to the strange little details hidden inside its questlines.

The biggest danger is missing something permanently. That’s why I would put the missable dialogue and DLC objectives above everything else. You can grind technology points later. You can catch another 200 fish later. You can’t always undo a quest decision.

If you treat your save like a long-term project, automate the boring jobs, follow NPC schedules and keep an eye on the handful of dangerous quest triggers, the road to every achievement becomes much more manageable. And honestly, watching that awful little cemetery evolve from a collection of dirt graves into a ridiculously elaborate medieval operation is one of the most satisfying parts of the entire game.

Graveyard Keeper rewards patience more than speed, and that’s exactly the mindset I’d bring to a 100% run.