A lot of people struggle with the basics and get stuck at simple things. Instead of unlocking everything and progressing, many end up frustrated after the first few hours. Here are the basics I learned from playing the alpha and how you progress fast without problems.

If you fail to do the following basics, you can easily end up getting stuck with little to no money / no research points / no materials and wasting a lot of time.

I tried to keep it short and beginner friendly. No indepth guide.


Only gameplay spoilers, no story spoilers!

Use the wiki!
https://graveyardkeeper.gamepedia.com/

Get your production started:


Start building your work/ crafting stations.
Upgrade your tools asap.
You can buy more iron ore from the smith to get your own production started.
Iron deposits are north from your house and in and around the swamp to the west.
If you remove one of the huge borders to the north, you get to unlimited ore/stone/coal/marble deposits.
You can cut big iron/ stone rocks into normal ones.

Now that you are able to craft the basic materials, devote yourself to your very own church!
You get donations and faith by holding sermons in the church every "sunday".
The amount depends on your church/graveyard rating and the quality of your sermon.

Your graveyard rating depends on the quality of corpses.
ALWAYS remove blood+fat
If it has 3 red skulls, you can remove heart for a 33% chance to remove red skulls and continue with blood+fat.
If you fail and end up with red skulls or less than 4 white skulls burn the body (you can do this to the south side of your morgue using tree stumps, keep the ashes)

Never waste your failed corpses by throwing them into the river!
Always get meat+skin+skulls from failed corpses!
(you will need ~24 skulls for a quest, you can sell meat later or cook with it and craft paper from skin)

Don't bother with wood items, directly go for stone graveyard items to get +4 ratings or more.

After clearing out the basement of the church you can research almost any item for red/blue/green points.
To research an item you will need to craft paper from skin/batwings first and research the paper to get research points.

Use research points + faith to get blue and then red orbs.
You get blue points from body parts / graveyard items like gravestones/ some alchemy items.

You can also craft new prayers in the basement.
Try to unlock the bronze combo prayer asap for extra money+faith.

To unlock/craft higher quality sermons, you should get the writing skills and craft prayer for imagination to get a buff for increased quality. This will give you even more donations and faith.

Quests won't give you big rewards in the beginning, try to upgrade the church as your main goal and don't waste all your time and money on quests in the beginning.

The merchant will give you access to the garden very early.
The inquisitor will give you access to the whineyard for extra space quite early too.
Snake will give you royal stamp+town pass for free.
All other quests will only lead to more quests or give you some recipes.

After you unlock the first church upgrade, concentrate on the merchant.
He will enable you to package your vegetables and sell them in a new store.

You can't sell everything at every vendor.
If you sell very high quantities, the vendor will pay less per item!
Vendors have limited money.

Your goal should always be to upgrade your church.
To use the first upgrade, you need the building allowance AND the citizen certificate to actually use it(buy from the mailbox)
You will need a lot of faith to do research and unlock new skills! The bigger the church and the higher the rating, the bigger your weekly income and research.

You can craft some food and sell it at the inn along with burial certificates.
You can mine 400 coal in one go and sell them to the smith for 6copper each, but sadly you can't do this every day :)
If you befriend snake, he gives you the royal stamp & townpass for free, but meat isn't worth much.

You can sell fish to the fisherman at the lighttower in the east for a little bit of extra money.
Selling vegetables to the farmer isn't very profitable either.

Grape seeds from the weekly vendor can be expensive first, but you can turn 30 grapes into 20 expensive wine bottles for a nice income boost. Sell bronze/silver wine at the inn and the gold one at the merchant.

Don't spend money on anything else than carrot seeds for donkey / whetstones etc., only what you really really need until you got your church upgraded.


Earning real money with vegetables:

Do the merchant questline, you will be able to unlock a own shop to sell chests.
You can craft chests with a workbench in your garden using silver/gold vegetables.

If you do the inquisitor quest line, you will be able to open a food tent where you can sell 10x gold beer / 5x gold burgers every week for extra faith and money.

Long term money making per week:

Church donations >10 silver
Selling wine+beer >15-30 silver
Witch burning food tent 33 silver
5 vegetable crates 33-55 silver

So you should be able to get 1 gold per week :)

Place tree logs and ore-/stone blocks in a line and walk against them to move multiple at once.
Spam pick-up-botton to carry 2 at once.

After you got enough weekly income, you can buy 3 books every week for 25 skill points from the astronom at the lighttower.

There is a shortcut under your house where you end up near the inn. Just follow the tunnel that Snake takes.