Graveyard Keeper 2 Zombie Talent Tree: 85 Nodes, 49 Perks

How many nodes are in the Graveyard Keeper 2 zombie talent tree?

Eighty-five, spread across the five building mastery lines. Every line carries exactly seven mastery nodes, and the rest are perk nodes: 10 each on Building, Smithing and Farming, 12 on Book writing, 8 on Anatomy. Not one of the 85 is available at the start or behind a lock, so every node is bought with tech points and nothing else.

Line (talent_id)	Nodes	Mastery	Perk	Red	Green	Blue
Building (talent_orange)	17	7	10	4,600	0	0
Smithing (talent_red)	17	7	10	4,450	0	0
Farming (talent_green)	17	7	10	0	4,650	0
Book writing (talent_yellow)	19	7	12	1,500	0	835
Anatomy (talent_blue)	15	7	8	1,500	0	1,075
Total	85	35	50	12,050	4,650	1,910

Source: talent_level_ups.csv → talent_id, is_zombie_perk, tech_red, tech_green, tech_blue, lock_type, available_at_start, build 25509347.

The colour columns decide the order you buy in. Farming is the one line finished entirely in green. Anatomy and Book writing are the odd ones: each wants a red foothold and then pays most of its body in blue. This branch is separate from the research tree on the tech tree overview — that is 206 research nodes, this is 85 worker nodes, counted in different places. Branch-by-branch totals are on the tech tree full cost list.

Why does the perk count come out as 49 and not 50?

Fifty nodes carry a linked_perk value, but two point at the same perk. Factory Operative sits on both the Building and the Smithing line, 500 red each time, so the shipped data holds 50 perk links and 49 distinct perks. Quote 49. All 49 carry a shipped English name and tooltip, so no name here is reconstructed.

A third number exists because the perk table is larger than the tree. perks.csv defines 56 perks whose id begins zperk_, and 7 are wired to no talent node: Deft zombie, Smart zombie, Speed Master, Strong zombie, Zombie tools, Undead researcher and Dead author. The shipped game data does not record how or whether the game grants those seven. For what these perks mean in play rather than as data rows, see zombie mastery and perks.

What are the five zombie mastery lines actually called?

Building, Smithing, Farming, Book writing and Anatomy — the same five the player trains. The internal ids are less tidy: the green line is talent_green, but its mastery nodes are prefixed z_gardening, not z_farming, so searching for “farming mastery” finds nothing. Book writing is talent_yellow and Anatomy talent_blue, matching neither word nor colour.

Display name	Line id	Mastery node prefix
Building	talent_orange	z_building_lvl_up
Smithing	talent_red	z_smithing_lvl_up
Farming	talent_green	z_gardening_lvl_up
Book writing	talent_yellow	z_bookwriting_lvl_up
Anatomy	talent_blue	z_anatomy_lvl_up

Source: localization/lng_en.csv keys building_lvl_up_1, smithing_lvl_up_1, farming_lvl_up_1, bookwriting_lvl_up_1, anatomy_lvl_up_1, cross-checked against talent_level_ups.csv → talent_id, build 25509347.

How do zombies buy mastery levels?

Each line sells seven mastery nodes in a fixed ladder. Building, Smithing and Farming are single-colour — 50, 100, 100, 200, 200, 500, 500, so 1,650 of one colour for all seven. Book writing and Anatomy alternate blue and red instead — blue, blue, red, blue, red, blue, red — for 800 red and 375 blue each.

The player-side nodes on the same lines cost no points. Their exp_price is 1 and they are paid with mastery experience, drawn from a shared 30-row table where the first three levels cost 2, 3 and 4 and every level from 4 to 30 costs a flat 5. The zombie branch sets exp_price to 0 on all 85 nodes and ignores that table, which is the entire difference between training a zombie and training yourself. Earning those points is covered in tech points farming.

What does every one of the 49 zombie perks do?

Every perk is listed once, with the point cost of the node that unlocks it. Rows are grouped by line in tree order — Building, Smithing, Farming, Book writing, Anatomy — so ten Building perks come first and the eight Anatomy perks last. A red or blue cost means that node mixes both colours.

Perk	Cost	Effect
Excavator	50 red	Faster digging, clay and sand
Tailor	100 red	Fewer scraps, more goods
Apprentice Carpenter	200 red	+2 Building mastery on wood
Logger	200 red	Faster woodcutting
Quarryman	200 red	Faster quarrying
Novice Stonemason	200 red	+2 Building mastery on stone
Master Carpenter	500 red	+4 Building mastery on wood
Magpie’s Eye	500 red	Recovers gems in mine
Factory Operative	500 red	Works better on conveyors
Master Stonemason	500 red	+4 Building mastery on marble
Zombie Miner	100 red	Tolerates the mine fumes
Novice Blacksmith	100 red	+2 Smithing mastery on bronze
Puff Master	200 red	+3 Smithing mastery on glass
Advanced Blacksmith	200 red	+4 Smithing mastery on iron
Impaler	200 red	Higher spear damage
Blindseye	200 red	Higher bow damage
Tin Can	400 red	Higher defense
Undead Resilience	400 red	Higher health
Factory Operative	500 red	Works better on conveyors
Master Blacksmith	500 red	+6 Smithing mastery on steel
Novice Fisherman	200 green	Better chance, common fish
Miller	100 green	Yields more flour
Farmer I	100 green	Better seeds, bigger crops
Brewer	200 green	+3 Farming mastery, brewery
Presser	200 green	+4 Farming mastery, pressing
Fertilizer Expert	200 green	+3 Farming mastery, fertilizer
Veteran Fisherman	500 green	Better chance, rare fish
Farmer II	500 green	Bigger crops, better seeds still
Winemaker	500 green	+5 Farming mastery, wine
Preserver	500 green	+4 Farming mastery, canning
Novice Musician	10 blue	Slight choir or organ gain
Dead Shakespeare	25 blue	Writes better stories
Dead printer	25 blue	More paper and newspapers
Dead King	25 blue	Faster books, stories, papers
Skilled Musician	25 blue	Better at choir or organ
Ghostwriter	50 blue	+4 Book writing mastery, stories
Dead tree society	50 blue	+4 Book writing mastery, paper
Maestro	50 blue	Greatly better at choir or organ
Dead pen	100 blue	+4 Book writing mastery, desk
Dead press	100 blue	+4 Book writing mastery, press
Dead jeweler	200 red	Creates jewelry faster
Corpse jeweler	500 red	+4 Book writing mastery, jewelry
Dead distiller	50 blue	More items from the cube
Dead alchemist	50 blue	Sometimes extra items, bench
Zombie alchemist	100 blue	+4 Anatomy mastery on potions
Holy corpse	100 blue	+4 Anatomy mastery, church goods
Rotten distiller	200 blue	+4 Anatomy mastery, cube
Mad necrochemist	200 blue	+4 Anatomy mastery, bench
Dead grave builder	200 red	Faster gravestones and fences
Grave architect	500 red	+4 Building mastery on gravestones

Source: talent_level_ups.csv → linked_perk, tech_red, tech_green, tech_blue and localization/lng_en.csv keys <perk_id> and <perk_id>_d, build 25509347.

Two details in that table are worth flagging. The mastery bonuses are the numbers the shipped tooltip shows; for the ten station perks, perks.csv → craft_mastery_bonus records 3 where the tooltip reads +4, so trust the tooltip. And Grave architect is the one perk paying Building mastery while sitting on the Anatomy line, which its tooltip states outright. The Formulation Bench perks only pay if you run that station — the recipes behind them are on the alchemy recipes page.

Which zombie perks are the cheapest way in?

Novice Musician at 10 blue is the cheapest node in the tree, and the only one that low. Four more sit at 25 blue. 200 red is the crowded middle tier with 10 nodes on it, while the top tier holds eight 500-red and four 500-green nodes, worth 6,000 points on their own.

Points come from the work itself, and the supply chain feeding a zombie is on the zombie production line; getting the workers in the first place is on how to get zombie workers.