Video walkthrough · captions checked · runes and formulas
Graveyard Keeper 2 alchemy & runes
Graveyard Keeper 2 runes are the whole basis of demo alchemy, and this is where most players stall: how to get into the tower, where runes come from, what studying costs, and which formulas are worth making. This walkthrough turns the video into an order you can follow, with a “story only” and a “go deep” route — every cost carries its timestamp.
Alchemy does not live in your hut — it lives in the tower above it. Access comes from a quest chain: talk to Julie in the inn, she points you at the plague doctor, and his quest opens the tower.
Once inside, most stations are already there; the video only added the distillation cube and the firework shed. So a player who feels locked out is usually missing a quest step, not equipment.
Alchemy’s currency is not materials, it is runes. Every studyable item carries them, but an unstudied item only shows a question mark, so the first job is taking items to the study table and revealing which colours and how many they hold.
There are exactly three colours: red, green and blue. Every formula you brew is a combination of those three.
If you just want the quest out of the way, the tower asks for one thing: Dream Dust, which is the reason you were sent here. It costs 1 green rune and 1 blue rune.
The materials matter more than the cost: water and blood, both of which study without any faith. That is the free route through the alchemy quest.
The video tests what can be studied without paying faith: copper nuggets (2 red + 1 green — the useful one), leaves (same yield as water, so no reason to hoard them) and water itself.
Copper nuggets are the standout because red runes are the early bottleneck and this is two at a time.
Beyond Dream Dust, the demo lets you make four potions with no faith spend at all. The video calls them straightforward and genuinely useful — these are your supplies if you intend to fight the final defence.
The video shows them on screen rather than listing names; the most valuable branch is the healing potion line covered below.
The folio records every formula you have made. The video counts roughly 14 potions craftable in the demo without extra unlocks.
Two specifics: Paint needs 2 green runes — two water, two leaves, or a bought onion; Lacquer needs 2 blood, or Zombie Goo instead. The video notes goo is the only thing besides the battle reward that hands over 2 blue runes at once.
The most practical line is healing, and it is absurdly cheap: raw stone as you mine it studies into red runes, one stone per Healing Potion I, and two stone in the lab equal 4 red runes for a Healing Potion II.
The video flags a trap: the lab icon only shows up to three runes, but it keeps counting past that. Sand gives 3 and fails; two stone give 4 and succeed — do not assume the displayed cap is the real cap.
Damage, Zombie Motivator and Berserker potions are combat items. The video is blunt that in the demo they are useful for nothing else, so brewing them only makes sense before the final defence.
It also expects far more zombie fighting in the full release, which is where they will pay off.
Three more formulas worth knowing by name: Green Dust (a quest item; the video suspects more will be needed later), Explosive Dust (no stated use — the video guesses it opens shortcuts later) and Spices (the description promises better bronze-quality food and drink, but the demo has no machine to apply them).
All three are “know it exists” entries — do not burn demo resources on them.
Organ Improver (red) costs 4 red + 1 green; Organ Improver (white) costs 4 green. The video says they are not hard to make and will be excellent, because they act directly on corpse values — the root of graveyard rating and zombie quality.
For materials it demonstrates the red one from stone plus a copper nugget, and the white one from two onions.
The video’s verdict: don’t over-invest in the demo
The video ends honestly: most demo alchemy is not useful yet. What actually pays is the quest’s Dream Dust, a few combat supplies and the potential of organ improvers — the rest is groundwork for release.
So the sensible line is: open the tower, study the free materials, hand in the Dream Dust, and only then branch into combat potions or improvers.
Demo: Dream Dust + combat supplies
Stock materials for improvers
Leave the rest for release
Where this comes from
MrFlameturtle — Graveyard Keeper 2 Demo Alchemy
The single source video (published 2026-09-16). Its English captions were read in full on 2026-09-20 (196 cues) and checked chapter by chapter.
Names follow the game’s own data: Dream Dust, Paint, Lacquer, Healing Potions I–III, Explosive Dust, Spices, the red and white Organ Improvers, Zombie Goo, Faith and Science all follow the game’s own data (the formula table holds 29 formulas). The rune costs here are the video’s on-screen readings, and they match the game’s own formula table: 1 green + 1 blue for Dream Dust, 2 green for Paint, 2 blue for Lacquer, 4 red for Healing Potion II, 4 red + 1 green for the red Organ Improver. The table also names the reagent combinations that resolve each formula at the Laboratory, which is the part a rune cost alone does not answer.
Limits: the captions are auto-generated, so proper nouns can be misheard — every name was checked against the game’s strings. The “four faith-free potions” are shown on screen rather than named, so this page does not list them individually. The video covers the demo build (1.002.4); formulas and values may change in the full release (2026-09-22).