Graveyard Keeper 2 Defence Power — Archer Tower and Barricade HP

How is defence power actually calculated in Graveyard Keeper 2?

Defence power is the sum of two things: the quality value of every defence building standing in your military base, plus the power of each squad you switch on. It is not hit points. A tier I Archer Tower and a tier I Fortified Barricade both add exactly 2, because both carry a quality of 2.

Read the number as a count of placed structures weighted by tier, not as a toughness score, and expect the tooltip’s own split: it labels the figure “Your total power / Minimum required power” against the fight’s lock.

The loading tips spell out the split: defensive structures and your troops from the barracks both feed it. Which structures count toward a given fight’s gate depends on that fight’s own flags, and the full gate list for all 24 real fights is on the town battle guide.

How much hit points does each tower and barricade have?

Twelve structures ship in four families of three tiers, and every one of them has a hit point value written as a formula rather than a number, because two war perks can push it up. The table below lists the base value, the value with War Supplier taken, and what each structure actually does in the field.

Structure	Hit points	With War Supplier	Attack damage	Retaliation damage	Defence power
Archer Tower I	150	200	8	—	2
Archer Tower II	300	400	16	—	4
Archer Tower III	450	550	24	—	6
Barricade I	400	440	—	—	2
Barricade II	600	660	—	—	4
Barricade III	800	880	—	—	6
Spiked Barricade I	250	275	—	3	2
Spiked Barricade II	450	495	—	5	4
Spiked Barricade III	600	660	—	7	6
Fortified Barricade I	600	660	—	—	2
Fortified Barricade II	800	880	—	—	4
Fortified Barricade III	1,000	1,100	—	—	6

Source: gamebalance_full.json → fighterDefs[].hp / atkDamage / retDamage for build 25509347. The stored expressions are literal, not derived: 150 + 50*PPar("perk_warsupplier") for Archer Tower I and 400 + 40*PPar("perk_warsupplier") for Barricade I. Defence power comes from wgoDefs[].quality on the twelve _pre structures, which the pre-fight window reads and truncates to an integer; the copies you place on the battlefield (_fight) carry an empty quality and contribute nothing.

Two things in that table are worth pausing on. The plain Barricade is already the second-toughest thing you can build — tier III Fortified Barricade triples its tier I hit points while the Spiked variant trades hit points for retaliation. And all three towers share a range of 7 and a 0.6 second attack pause, so a tower’s contribution scales with how long it survives, not with how it differs from its siblings.

What do the War Supplier and War Engineer perks change?

They touch two different numbers, and that split is why one is worth taking before the other. War Supplier is a flat hit point bonus on all twelve structures. War Engineer is a flat damage bonus on tower shots and on Spiked Barricade retaliation only. Neither touches defence power, because defence power reads quality.

Perk	What it changes	Base	With perk
War Supplier	HP on all 12 structures	—	+50 towers I, +100 towers II and III, +40/60/80 Barricade, +25/45/60 Spiked, +60/80/100 Fortified
War Engineer	Archer Tower damage	8 / 16 / 24	12 / 20 / 30
War Engineer	Spiked Barricade retaliation	3 / 5 / 7	4 / 7 / 10

Source: gamebalance_full.json → fighterDefs[].hp / atkDamage / retDamage and perkDefs[].setGameResOnAdd, build 25509347. Both perks are single talent-tree nodes costing 1 talent point — War Supplier sits behind Smithing Level I–V, War Engineer behind Swordmaster — and each one stores its bonus as a game resource set to 1, so the multiplier is a flat step, not a rank that climbs. On Fortified Barricade III the perk adds 100 hit points to a base of 1,000, which is the largest single durability swing available anywhere in the defence line.

How much do the six defence technologies cost in tech points?

Six technologies in one branch, 620 red, 285 green and no blue between them. The two barricade nodes are what gate the towers: Archers Tower requires Simple Barricades, and Archers Tower III requires Reinforced Barricades, so the whole line unlocks in a fixed order you cannot skip.

Technology	Unlocks	Red	Green	Blue
Simple Barricades	Barricade I, Spiked I, Fortified I	60	25	0
Archers Tower	Archer Tower I, plus a military area expansion	60	25	0
Robust Barricades	Barricade II, Spiked II, Fortified II	90	30	0
Archers Tower II	Archer Tower II	100	50	0
Reinforced Barricades	Barricade III, Spiked III, Fortified III	150	75	0
Archers Tower III	Archer Tower III	160	80	0
Total		620	285	0

Source: gamebalance_full.json → techDefs[].redSpheresPrice / greenSpheresPrice / blueSpheresPrice / buildingsUnlocked, build 25509347. Archers Tower also unlocks an “Expand Military Building Area” module that costs 1 Victory Banner, and since defence power counts buildings standing in that area, the expansion is a direct multiplier on how many structures you can field at once. Where those 620 red points come from is covered in how to farm tech points, and every node’s cost is on the full technology cost list.

What materials do the towers and barricades need?

Three tiers, three material sets, and the tier is the only thing that changes the recipe. All three barricade families at a given tier share one list, so switching from a plain Barricade to a Spiked or Fortified one at the same tier costs you nothing extra in materials.

Tier	Barricade materials (all three families)	Tower materials
I	Bronze Nails ×6, Short Log ×2, Reinforced Plank ×2	Bronze Nails ×6, Reinforced Plank ×2, Reinforced Bow ×1
II	Iron Nails ×8, Iron Detail ×4, Reinforced Beam ×2	Iron Nails ×8, Reinforced Beam ×2, Reinforced Bow ×1
III	Steel Screws ×8, Steel Detail ×4, Wooden Joint ×2	Steel Screws ×8, Wooden Joint ×2, Battle Bow ×1

Source: buildings.csv → need_items for the twelve *_pre_fb rows, build 25509347. Every structure is a two-step build: it is assembled at the military base builder, then the finished piece is placed on the field by the fight-area builder. The tier III line is the first one that pulls on the steel chain, so the steel guide is the production page to read before you queue Fortified Barricade III.

Which battles lock you out of barricades and towers?

Only two, and both are early. The first sewer fight and the one after it set both the barricade and tower exclusion flags, so in those two battles your defence power is made up entirely of squads. Every other real fight counts both groups normally.

That is a scheduling problem rather than a build problem, and it lands on the same day as every other battle. The six-day cycle locks combat to Sloth, so if you miss it you wait another six days; the weekly day cycle page has the full window.

How do zombie squads raise defence power?

Each zombie in a switched-on squad adds its weapon quality plus its armour quality, but only if it carries both a pike or bow and a body armour — a half-equipped zombie contributes nothing. That makes equipment quality the squad multiplier, not zombie count. A Battle Pike plus Steel Armor is 2 plus 3, so 5 per zombie.

You can field four fighter containers plus one paid mercenary, and the mercenary is always on, never toggled. The 4-container cap is why late fights with a 144 defence power gate are a squad-equipment problem and not a building problem.

The quality ladder behind that arithmetic runs four steps on each side. Pikes climb Simple Pike 1, Light Pike 1, Battle Pike 2, Knight’s Spear 3, and bows run Simple Bow 1, Reinforced Bow 1, Battle Bow 2, Heavy Bow 3. Armour runs Rusty 0, Bronze 1, Iron 2, Steel 3, Master 4. Steel Armor on a Knight’s Spear is therefore 6 per zombie, the ceiling the ladder allows, against 1 for a Simple Pike in a Rusty Armor. Getting the bodies and the resurrection chain running is covered in how to get zombie workers, and keeping the line fed afterwards is on the zombie production line.

What else has to be true before the Start button lights up?

Three conditions, and only one of them is the number. Your defence power must meet the fight’s lock, and the required figure is hidden entirely on follow-up fights, which is why the second half of a two-fight chain can start at zero. You also need a sword or bow in your hotbar.

The third is the day. Battles are gated to Sloth Day, so the same three conditions can all be true on a day you cannot fight. When the number is the only thing missing, the cheapest points come from the cheapest structure — a tier I barricade at 2 per slot is a far better point-per-material deal than a tier III at 6, and the tier jump is worth taking once the material chain is already running.