Perks sit in five tracks that level independently, each off the inspiration experience its own discipline earns. A perk you buy is yours for good, and most of them hand you a named ability rather than a number.
Two trees share every cell on the screen. One is yours and spends talent points; the other belongs to a zombie and spends technology spheres, because a zombie is equipped rather than trained.
180 nodes across 5 tracks: 95 cost a talent point, 85 are zombie perks bought with spheres.
The five tracks
The game files label the tracks by colour, but each one is a discipline and its own nodes say which: the orange track is full of Building mastery, the red one Smithing, and so on down to Anatomy. Two of those colours do not match the art, which draws the book track in teal and the anatomy track in purple, so the names and the colours here follow what the screen shows rather than what the ids claim.
No track is cheaper than another in talent points, since every player node costs exactly one. What separates them is the zombie side, where the sphere price runs from under 2,000 on the book track to over 4,500 on Building.
| Track | Player nodes | Points for all | Zombie perks | Spheres for all | Grant a perk |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Building | 16 | 16 | 17 | 4,600 | 21 |
| Smithing | 18 | 18 | 17 | 4,450 | 23 |
| Farming | 21 | 21 | 17 | 4,650 | 26 |
| Book writing | 19 | 19 | 19 | 2,335 | 26 |
| Anatomy | 21 | 21 | 15 | 2,575 | 24 |
Plan a build
This is the layout the game uses. Each track is a small grid laid out on half columns, which is what gives the tree its stagger, and the lines are the prerequisites between nodes. Your perks and the zombie ones occupy the same cells as two overlaid trees, so they are drawn one layer at a time.
Tick what you want and the bar totals that layer in its own currency: talent points for your tree, technology spheres for the zombie one. Drag the grid to pan it, and hold control while scrolling to zoom.
Talent experience per level
All five tracks use the same ladder. The first level is the cheapest at 2, and from the fourth onward every level costs 5, unchanged to level 30. One track from nothing to the top is 144 experience.
Perk questions
How do talent points work in Graveyard Keeper 2?
Perks are split across 5 tracks, each levelled by its own inspiration experience. 95 nodes belong to you and cost one talent point each, 95 points to take the lot. The rest are zombie perks, which are bought with technology spheres instead.
Do zombie perks cost anything?
They cost no talent points, which is what makes them look free, but every one of the 85 carries a technology sphere price of between 10 and 500. Taking all of them is 18,610 spheres, drawn from the same pool the technology tree spends, and each node wants a single colour rather than a mix.
How much experience does a talent level take?
Every track uses the same ladder: 2 for the first level, then 3, 4, and 5 from the fourth level onward, flat all the way to level 30. Taking one track to the top is 144 experience, and the five tracks level independently.
Which perks come with a named ability?
120 of the 180 nodes carry a named ability with a measurable effect, such as craft mastery, energy or insanity. The other 60 are mastery nodes, which raise the track's own talent value instead.