Village reputation is the requirement that looks like a bug. A dialogue option grays out, the game shows a number you have never been told the name of, and nothing in your inventory fixes it. Village reputation is a whole town standing with only two sources.
That step of Jack in a Boat needs 10 village reputation, not an item. It opens at the same time as the step asking for 5x 
Bronze Detail, and follows one that asked for 5x 
Wooden Plank, so a step wanting no items at all looks broken by comparison. Three early quests award 5 reputation each, and any two of them clear the gate.
Reading the bar above someone’s head
This is the part that causes most of the confusion, because two different numbers appear in the same place. The only thing separating them is the icon beside the figure.
| Icon | Looks like | Stat | What it means |
|---|---|---|---|
 | Three faces | Village reputation | The whole town’s opinion of you. This is what the boat quest checks. |
| A single face | That person’s own reputation | Only six characters have one. Nothing to do with the boat. | |
 | A hooded figure | Citizen reputation | Raised by delivering Green Scrolls to Linda. Feeds your maximum happiness. |
So if you stand next to Heffry and see a 5 against three faces, that is your village total and you need 10. Stand next to Jack and see a 10 against one face and that is Jack’s personal standing, which the brothers do not care about.
Every character carries a field naming the bar they display, and only seven point at a personal track: Jack the Workshop Foreman, Herbert the Head of the Guards, Albert the Plague Doctor, Gunter the Astrologer, Linda the Tavern Owner, the Nun, and Larry. Everyone else points at village reputation, including Jeffry and Heffry, Herm, Januarius the Head of the Village, and all twelve shopkeepers once you have built them.
The fast route: three quests
Three quests award village reputation directly, five points apiece. Any two takes you to ten, which is every point the game will ever ask you for, since only Jack in a Boat and Good Fellow check it and both want 10.
| Two Peas in a Pod | 5 | 6x Clay Plate | The twins, in Twins’ Land |
| Planted and Delivered | 5 | 5x Wheat | Buy 16 to 20 wheat seeds from Herm and grow them |
| Dungeons and… that’s it, probably. | 5 | Nothing | Open the prison bars into the Abandoned Tower |
If you already have five it is almost certainly Two Peas in a Pod, since bringing pottery to the twins belongs to the same chain as the boat. Helping them pays into the village pool rather than into them, which is why they still will not row.
The slow route: town shops
The other source is the town shop system, and it dwarfs the quests. Twelve shops at three tiers each award 86 reputation in total, against 15 from the quests.
| Build it (tier 1) | 2 | |
| Tier 2 | 2 | Brewery and Shalman give 3 |
| Tier 3 | 3 |
The twelve are Alchemy, Bakery, Blacksmith, Brewery, Builder, Fish, Furniture, Jeweler, Pharmacy, Shalman, Tailor and Vegetable. Only two quests in the game check village reputation and both want 10, so once those are done the other 76 points buy you nothing directly. Shops are worth building for the merchants, town orders and happiness they bring, with reputation as a side effect rather than the reason.
Every tier one shop starts locked, so paying the materials is not enough on its own. The key is a zero cost technology called Market Stalls I, revealed by a quest chain beginning at the Port with Meet Linda, the hostess of the Dockside Club.
What a shop costs
Once the system is open, the cheapest shops are Pharmacy, Vegetable, Tailor, Builder and Blacksmith, each costing 4x 
Building Kit I, 3x 
Wooden Kit I and 1x 
Iron Kit I. The other seven ask for more, and no shop is cheap before the kilns are running.
| Building Kit I | 4 | 1x Stone Kit + 6x Brick | Woodworking Workbench |
| Stone Kit | 4 | 2x Stone + 1x Polished Stone | Stonemason’s Workbench |
| Wooden Kit I | 3 | 3x Wooden Plank + 1x Oiled Plank makes two | Woodworking Workbench |
| Iron Kit I | 1 | 1x Iron Ingot | Iron Anvil |
That is roughly 24x 
Brick per shop, so five shops cost about 120 bricks and the 
Brick Kiln is the real prerequisite. Research Brick Making first, then Stone Polishing for the 
Polished Stone that Stone Kits need, and Oiled wood last because 
Oiled Plank depends on a 
Distillation Cube.
Iron Kit I needs an 
Iron Ingot, and by hand that is 3x Iron Ore and 30x 
Fuel at 
Furnace II, not 
Furnace I. If you are short, a Conveyor Furnace smelts iron from 1x Iron Ore and 1x 
Coal instead.
The seven personal reputations
The game names these after the person rather than the job, which is worth knowing when a quest tells you to go and see someone. Jack is the Workshop Foreman, Linda the Tavern Owner, Albert the Plague Doctor, Herbert the Head of the Guards and Gunter the Astrologer, alongside the Nun and Larry.
Six of the seven gate quests, 30 of them, several at 90 or 100, so they climb far higher than village reputation ever does. Larry has a track of his own and nothing checks it. Each has its own page in this codex.
Figures read from the Graveyard Keeper 2 game files.
Required by
Reward from
