Automation

Automation is one of the central pillars of Graveyard Keeper 2 and the system that most clearly separates it from its predecessor. Lazy Bear Games has described the goal in promotional copy as letting players automate your production like never before, framing the feature as a major leap in scope rather than a small quality-of-life pass. Where the original game leaned heavily on manual crafting, the sequel pushes routine production work onto a network of conveyor belts and reanimated workers so the player can focus on higher-level decisions. For a wider tour of how this fits into the rest of the game, see the overview.

The automation system is also the connective tissue between the game's other big loops. Anything the player crafts for combat preparation, sells for profit, or contributes to town restoration can be produced through the same set of machines, belts, and undead workers. Automation is therefore not a side activity; it is the engine that keeps every other system fed.

Conveyor Belts

Conveyor belts are the visible backbone of the production layout. They carry resources between crafting benches so a player no longer has to ferry every input by hand from storage to a workstation, then carry every output back. In the announcement trailer, belts are shown threading between multiple stations, moving items along the floor and feeding them directly into the next stage of a chain.

Because belts deliver items to a station whenever supplies arrive, a single chain can keep running long after the player has left the area. Players are expected to design their workshop layouts the way a small factory might be planned: where the inputs come in, where outputs leave, and which benches sit between the two.

Zombie Labor

The other half of the system is workforce. Captured and reanimated corpses are placed at workstations and on belts, where they act as permanent workers. Once a zombie is correctly positioned, it keeps performing its assigned task indefinitely, freeing the player from having to drive each animation by hand.

The trailer makes this point in unusually literal fashion. Some workstations are powered from below by reanimated corpses physically walking in circles underground, driving the machinery on the surface as if turning a millstone. Others ride the conveyor belts directly to perform cottage-industry tasks along the line. The visual gag doubles as the actual mechanic: the undead are the labor force that makes the workshop tick.

Outside of these confirmed images, the precise rules around zombie placement are not yet detailed publicly. The dossier does not currently support claims about how many workers a station accepts, whether different undead vary in efficiency, or how players acquire and assign them beyond the general loop tied to the zombie apocalypse framing.

Inputs and Outputs

Automation in Graveyard Keeper 2 sits at the middle of a single supply chain. The table below summarises what feeds into the production lines and what they produce, based on what has been shown so far. Specific item names and recipe lists have not been revealed and are not listed here.

Shared Supply Chain

Graveyard work, town development, and combat preparation are not separate economies in Graveyard Keeper 2. They draw from the same automated supply chain. A row of belts and benches in the workshop might be turning out salable goods for one quest, weapons for an upcoming wave, and materials for a building the townsfolk asked the player to repair, all through the same set of stations.

This is what gives automation its leverage. Improving any part of the chain, whether by adding more belts, recruiting more undead, or unlocking a new bench, lifts every downstream activity at once. The same upgrade that increases profit also increases combat readiness and the speed at which the town can be rebuilt.

Why It Matters

The shift toward automation marks a clear tonal change from the first game. The original was largely a manual crafting sim where the player walked each ingredient between stations. Graveyard Keeper 2 keeps that hands-on loop available for early or specialised tasks, but explicitly invites the player to scale far beyond it. The promotional pitch of automating production like never before is meant to signal a difference in pace and ambition rather than a refinement of an existing system.

That scale is also what makes the rest of the package viable. Outfitting troops for combat against a kingdom-wide undead threat, and steadily restoring an entire ruined town through town restoration, both demand far more output than a single keeper could realistically hand-craft. Automation is what closes that gap.

Unconfirmed Details

Several aspects of the automation layer have not been confirmed publicly and should not be treated as known. This article will be updated as Lazy Bear Games and tinyBuild release more information.

• Specific names or types of conveyor belts and their throughput rates

• Named buildings, workshop blueprints, or facility tiers

• Recipe lists, ingredient ratios, or production timings

• Whether zombies fall into a tier or quality system, and how that affects work speed

• How deep the automation tech tree runs and what gates each unlock

• Whether stations can be toggled between manual and automatic operation, and any fuel, upkeep, or breakdown rules