Graveyard Keeper 2 Red Green Blue Rune Values — All 70 Items

What are the red, green and blue rune values in Graveyard Keeper 2?

Runes are the red, green and blue numbers stored on an alchemy ingredient. Add them across everything you load into a flask, and the colour totals must equal the formula’s requirement exactly. The shipped balance data puts every value between 0 and 3, and only 70 of the 814 item records carry a non-zero rune at all.

The rule is not a community guess: the English tutorial text states twice that you need the exact amount of runes from your ingredients. A surplus is as fatal as a shortfall, since an extra red cancels nothing. The 29 formulas sit in the alchemy recipe list, and the single-rune fillers that supply most of them — Clay, Flesh, Sand — are covered, with their sources, in the runes and clay guide.

How many items in Graveyard Keeper 2 carry runes?

Seventy item records carry runes, and they collapse to 63 distinct items once grade variants are merged. The scale is small: 13 records give one rune in total, 20 give two, 37 give three, and nothing in the game gives four.

Rune shape	Records
One colour only	39 (11 red, 16 green, 12 blue)
Two colours	28
All three colours	3 — Cheese, Salt, Alchemic Powder (red + green + blue)
3 of a single colour	13
Base price above zero	45

Source: gamebalance_full.json → itemDefs[].runesRed/runesGreen/runesBlue, build 25509347. Onion and Pumpkin ship three grade records each, and Heart, Brain and Guts two rune-bearing grades each; that is where 70 records lose seven.

What is the rune value of every alchemy ingredient?

Here is the whole list: all 44 items that carry runes, other than the 19 Alchemic Powders below. Three items max out one colour at 3 red — Marble, Iron Ore and Melted Fat — and Blue Crystal, Firefly, Heart and Guts are the only ones giving 2 blue alongside another colour.

Ingredient	Red	Green	Blue
Alcohol	0	0	3
Ash	0	1	1
Beeswax	1	2	0
Berry	0	1	0
Blood	0	0	1
Blue Crystal	0	1	2
Blueberry	0	0	1
Brain	0	0	3
Cacao	0	2	1
Cheese	1	1	1
Clay	1	0	0
Coal	1	2	0
Copper Nugget	2	1	0
Firefly	1	0	2
Flax	1	1	0
Flesh	1	0	0
Flour	0	2	0
Fragrance	0	3	0
Golden nugget	2	1	0
Goldfish	0	2	1
Guts	0	1	2
Heart	1	0	2
Honey	0	2	1
Hops	0	2	1
Iron Ore	3	0	0
Leaf	0	1	0
Marble	3	0	0
Melted Fat	3	0	0
Minced Meat	0	0	2
Night flower	0	0	2
Onion	0	2	0
Peat	0	1	1
Pumpkin	0	3	0
Red Mushroom	2	0	0
Salt	1	1	1
Sand	1	0	0
Seed oil	0	0	1
Stick	0	1	0
Stone	2	0	0
Swamp mushroom	0	2	0
Tin	2	0	1
Tooth	1	1	0
Water	0	1	0
Zombie goo	0	0	2

Source: gamebalance_full.json → itemDefs[].runesRed/runesGreen/runesBlue, build 25509347. Onion and Pumpkin cover all three grades with identical runes.

Value weight is a poor proxy: 22 of these 44 items carry no base price at all, and the priced ones run from Stick at 1 to Cacao at 300. See the item prices guide for what a trader actually pays.

What do the 19 Alchemic Powders carry?

Each powder’s name spells out its own runes, and the data agrees with the name in all 19 cases. Base prices fall into five steps: 5 for a single rune, 10 for two, 20 for three of one colour, 25 for a two-plus-one split, 30 for the tricolour.

Alchemic Powder	Red	Green	Blue	Base price
Alchemic Powder (red)	1	0	0	5
Alchemic Powder (red + red)	2	0	0	10
Alchemic Powder (red + red + red)	3	0	0	20
Alchemic Powder (red + green)	1	1	0	10
Alchemic Powder (red + green + green)	1	2	0	25
Alchemic Powder (red + green + blue)	1	1	1	30
Alchemic Powder (red + blue)	1	0	1	10
Alchemic Powder (red + blue + blue)	1	0	2	25
Alchemic Powder (red + red + green)	2	1	0	25
Alchemic Powder (red + red + blue)	2	0	1	25
Alchemic Powder (green)	0	1	0	5
Alchemic Powder (green + green)	0	2	0	10
Alchemic Powder (green + green + green)	0	3	0	20
Alchemic Powder (green + blue)	0	1	1	10
Alchemic Powder (green + green + blue)	0	2	1	25
Alchemic Powder (green + blue + blue)	0	1	2	25
Alchemic Powder (blue)	0	0	1	5
Alchemic Powder (blue + blue)	0	0	2	10
Alchemic Powder (blue + blue + blue)	0	0	3	20

Source: gamebalance_full.json → itemDefs[].runesRed/runesGreen/runesBlue and items.csv → base_price, build 25509347. Two further powder_ records, Dream Dust and Gunpowder, carry zero on all three colours and are flagged unusable in alchemy, so both are excluded here.

Within the powder set, single and double powders carry a base price of 5 bronze per rune while the tricolour works out at 10. That powder is one of only three ingredients that solve a one-red-one-green-one-blue target alone — Cheese and Salt are the other two, which is why Berserker Potion takes all three as a single-ingredient mix. The Dream Dust recipe runs the same way: Ash, Peat or Alchemic Powder (green + blue) alone covers 1 green + 1 blue.

Do boosters change how many runes you get?

Yes, and the shipped text is explicit. Three boosters each add one rune of one colour: Heat gives +1 red, Cool gives +1 green, Distillation gives +1 blue. That is a flat +1, not a multiplier, so it can close a one-rune gap or push a mix past the exact-match line.

Their string ids appear in all eleven shipped language files and nothing else. The balance data does not record where the three are bought, what they cost, or whether they are permanent.

Does item quality change how many runes something gives?

For body parts, yes, and it is the sharpest quality trap in alchemy. Heart, Brain and Guts each ship six grade records, and only the two Star-grade records of each carry runes — a bronze or silver Heart contributes nothing, not a weaker version of the same value.

Crops are the opposite: all three grades of Onion give 0/2/0 and all three grades of Pumpkin give 0/3/0. All 104 non-zero rune fields are plain integers, with no perk, mastery or quality term multiplied in. Item quality tiers covers the rest.

Which rune values are worth learning first?

The single-rune fillers carry the game. Clay, Sand and Flesh each appear in 21 of the 29 formulas, Berry, Leaf, Stick and Water in 18, and the matching single powders, Alchemic Powder (red), (green) and (blue), tie them at 21, 18 and 14.

Memorise the single-rune fillers and you can read any formula card. The rare ones mark the odd jobs: Fragrance and Pumpkin are the only non-powder sources of 3 green, Alcohol and Brain the only 3 blue, and Iron Ore, Marble and Melted Fat the only 3 red. Alchemy ingredient combinations lists every legal pairing, and where Clay comes from is the sourcing question behind the most-used filler.