Philosopher Stone

The Philosopher Stone is the most valuable thing alchemy can make in Graveyard Keeper 2, at five thousand coins against three thousand for the next best, and it is made out of three things nobody in the game will buy from you.

The catch is on the other side of the trade. One shop in the world takes it, he only takes it late, and he carries a hundred coins.

Three runes of every color, and 432 ways to reach them

The formula is three red, three green and three blue, the largest in the game. Four hundred and thirty two ingredient combinations add up to it, and every single one of them uses three ingredients.

The cheapest sets cost nothing at all. One Beeswax carries one red and two green, a Brain carries three blue and a Copper Nugget carries two red and one green, which is exactly nine runes from a beehive, a corpse and a copper vein.

Three Cheese also works, since Cheese is one of every color. It is a curiosity rather than a plan, because no recipe, shop or resource in the game produces Cheese and the only pieces that exist come out of two quests.

Or sixty gold of powder

Buying the answer outright is also on the table. The Apothecary stocks nineteen Alchemic Powders, one for every rune total up to three, and the three strongest cost twenty gold each.

One Alchemic Powder (Red Rune x3), one Alchemic Powder (Green Rune x3) and one Alchemic Powder (Blue Rune x3) is nine runes for sixty gold, which buys a five thousand coin item outright. They reach his shelf at his second tier.

Nine spheres a brew, which is the most of any mix

Every completed mix pays technology points equal to the formula it satisfied, so a stone hands over 3, 3 and 3 on top of the item. Nothing else in the game pays nine in one brew.

Umami comes closest at eight and Alkali, Tannin Liquid, Reanimation Liquid and Berserker Potion III all pay seven. Every mix also grants an Alchemist inspiration regardless of what it made.

One shop in the world will buy it

The Alchemist is the only vendor in Graveyard Keeper 2 who has the stone on his product list, and it appears at his third tier. Until he reaches it, nobody anywhere will take one off you at any price.

That hundred a day is the real ceiling. A shop settles a deal out of the cash it is holding, so a five thousand coin item against a hundred coin purse looks impossible, and this is where most of the money in a save gets stuck.

Buy your way out of his empty purse

Only the difference between the two sides of a trade is ever checked. Fill the sell pane and the buy pane in the same window, and the shop needs to cover the net rather than the whole sale.

So put the stone in one side and three and a half thousand coins of his flasks, powders and potions in the other. He hands over the difference, you walk out with the goods, and a hundred coin shop has just paid for a five thousand coin item.

Or turn it into gold instead

Two recipes at the Formulation Bench take a stone, and both are called Gold transmutation. One takes an Iron Ingot and returns a Golden ingot worth ten thousand. The other takes Iron Ore and returns a Golden nugget worth a hundred.

The ingot has the same problem as the stone, one step along. Only the Jeweler buys a Golden ingot, from his second tier, and he opens holding five of them, so the first one you sell fetches around 6,847 rather than ten thousand.

That is still close to double what the stone itself would have paid, so the transmutation is worth doing even after the shelf discount. The net trick applies just as well at his counter.