Graveyard Keeper 2 Paint and Lacquer Guide

How do you make Paint in Graveyard Keeper 2?

In Laboratory I, from exactly 2 green runes and nothing else. Like every alchemy formula, the total must match precisely — two green means exactly two green runes with no red or blue mixed in — and every ingredient must be researched once at the Study Table before the lab accepts it.

Fact	Paint	Lacquer
Rune mix	2 green	2 blue
Lab	Laboratory I	Laboratory I
Base price	200 bronze	200 bronze
Who sells it	Trademaster — 10 per stock from level 1; Alchemist — 5 at level 1, 10 from level 2; Furniture Maker — 0 per stock, listed only from level 3	Same three vendors, same levels and counts

Source: gamebalance_full.json → itemDefs[].basePrice and vendorDefs[].tierDataList[].vendorProducts[].baseCount, build 25509347.

The priceMod field is the only sale-side coefficient in the shipped data, and what the game multiplies it against is not recorded there. Nobody should treat any figure on this page as a guaranteed sell price — the per-vendor buy-or-skip table is in the vendor buy price matrix.

One honest correction up front: the recipe dataset contains a single Paint item, not a set of colour variants. The formula definition records the rune total and nothing else — Paint is 0 red / 2 green / 0 blue, Lacquer is 0 red / 0 green / 2 blue, so the two are not interchangeable and a Paint brew does not work as a Lacquer brew. The shipped formula data does not record how many ingredient mixes satisfy either total. What the “colours” other guides mention are the rune colours going into the lab, not different paint products; the red green blue rune values page explains what each rune actually contributes, and the alchemy ingredient combinations reference lists every formula against its rune requirement.

What is Paint used for?

Three consumers take Paint in the shipped data, and only one turns it into money repeatably. The money press is that one: ten units in, ten Printed Money out, so a flask of Paint is a multiplier rather than a dead end. The other two are one-shot draws — a church build cost and a story hand-in.

Use	Recipe or cost	Notes
Printed Money	10 Clean Paper + 1 Paint → 10 Printed Money at the Printing Press	Base price 1 silver, selling price 75 bronze
Church Shrine III	Building cost includes Paint	Church quality construction
Safe Harbor quest	Handed over for the quest	Story hand-in on the Port path

Printed Money is the repeatable sink: Clean Paper comes from Leather Scroll at the Writing Desk or from Paper glop at the Paper Press, so the full chain runs graveyard → paper → press → coins. Check the item prices and selling guide before committing a session to printing, since merchant purses cap how much you can move in one day.

The bottleneck sits upstream of the press, not at it. Paper glop and Leather Scroll both compete for the same corpse-processing time that every other station on the board wants, so the useful way to read Paint is as a demand signal: it means the press loop already earns its throughput, not that you should build a second one. Bench placement and station counts for the rest of the production chain are in the crafting stations list.

What is Lacquer used for?

Three consumers take Lacquer, and the list mirrors Paint’s one to one — same count, same one-repeatable-plus-two-one-shot shape, different product. The repeatable sink is Live Bait rather than Printed Money, so Lacquer is a fishing input, not an economy input. If you have never fished, this reads as a dead end until you see what the top bait tier catches.

Use	Recipe or cost	Notes
Live Bait	1 Lacquer + 1 Flesh → 4 Live Bait at the Kitchen Table	Top-tier fishing bait
Confession Booth III	Building cost includes Lacquer	Church furniture construction
Varnish Before You Fiddle quest	Handed over for the quest	Story hand-in

Live Bait is the reason fishermen brew Lacquer: it is the only bait that draws Celestial Salmon, Elder Catfish, Kraken Jr and Mythic Carp, the fish behind the highest-value dishes. The full bait ladder and what each tier catches are in the fishing guide, and the lake-by-lake spawn table is in fishing lakes and catches.

The ratio runs the other way from Paint. One Lacquer plus one Flesh yields four Live Bait, so Lacquer is the limiting reagent only when you are out of it — Flesh is the abundant side, and it comes straight off the autopsy table described in autopsy mastery requirements. Four baits per brew makes one flask a small batch rather than a stockpile.

Which one should you brew first, Paint or Lacquer?

Paint comes first on every save, because Printed Money feeds the town restoration economy while Lacquer only pays off once you are already fishing. The choice is not close early; it opens later only if your build leans on the top bait tier, or you have finished the Safe Harbor hand-in and need somewhere to put surplus green runes.

	Paint	Lacquer
Rune mix	2 green	2 blue
Cheapest green/blue filler	Berry, Leaf, Stick (1 green each)	Blueberry, Blood, Seed oil (1 blue each)
Repeatable sink	Printed Money	Live Bait
Construction sink	Church Shrine III	Confession Booth III
Quest sink	Safe Harbor	Varnish Before You Fiddle
Prize if you skip it	Slow money and a stalled press	No Celestial Salmon, Kraken Jr or Mythic Carp

Both formulas sit in the full 28-formula list in the alchemy recipes guide, and both benches that consume them are catalogued in the crafting station list. Every brew costs Alchemy Flasks plus Fuel on top of the runes, so budget the Flask shelf before batch-brewing either one.