Graveyard Keeper 2 Faith and Science: How to Get More

This guide uses the graveyardkeeper2.io wiki, which documents the numbers from the game's files, plus the developers' own Steam posts. We haven't played Graveyard Keeper 2 ourselves.

Screenshot: official Graveyard Keeper 2 Demo Launch Trailer (tinyBuild on YouTube), 1:41

Faith and Science at a glance

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How to get Faith: hold a sermon

1. Unlock the church. It opens in Agatha the Nun's quest line. After Holy Moly! you get the Church Cleaning technology free and have to raise the church to 10 church quality. Each piece of rubble and broken pot counts -2, so clear those first.
2. Take your first sermon. The Nun gives you a Basic Prayer and lets you hold the first service the same day. After that, sermons only run on Wrath day, the sixth day of the week. Our calendar guide maps the week.
3. Carry the sermon in your backpack. Sermons left in a chest don't appear in the list. They also aren't used up, so the same Basic Prayer works every week.
4. Pray at the lectern and start. The window shows church quality, happiness and attendance. Attendance is always the lower of the first two, and starting spends one happiness per parishioner.
5. Pick up the Faith. After the cutscene it lands on the floor in front of the lectern. The money goes to the donation box, which you empty separately.

The success roll happens when you press Start. Below a sermon's "guaranteed success" number, the chance is parishioners divided by that number. Fail, and you still get the base Faith and money, just not the success bonus.

Why your Faith is stuck at 6

Here's the cap that stalls the opening. Happiness can never go above town quality, and town quality sits at 10 from the end of Certificate, Please until the story takes you across to the port, which adds another 10. So for the whole opening, no sermon can have more than 10 parishioners, however good your church is. As u/Vixana_L put it on r/GraveyardKeeper, "Your sermon success rate is based on the lower of your church quality and town gratitude."

The wiki's own example: a Basic Prayer with 10 parishioners gives 6 Faith if it succeeds and 3 if it fails. That's the most Faith one sermon pays before the port.

We ran the wiki's formula on the next prayer up, at base values before perks. A one-star Faith Prayer needs 7 to start and 15 for a guaranteed success. At 10 parishioners it's a 67% roll for 7 Faith, or 3 if it fails, which averages out below the Basic Prayer's guaranteed 6. At 20 parishioners after the port, the same Faith Prayer is guaranteed and pays 14, against 11 for the Basic Prayer. So:

• Before the port: run the Basic Prayer every week. It's guaranteed at 8 parishioners.
• After the port: switch to the one-star Faith Prayer once you reliably seat 15 or more.
• Don't chase stars too early. Players learned this the hard way. "I found out that for a guaranteed succeed I needed 40 church decorations and 40 likes. 20 is my max, so that's the problem," one wrote after a run of failed sermons.

How to raise happiness (and get more parishioners)

Happiness is the number that usually runs out first, because every sermon spends it. Players often call it likes or gratitude. The wiki lists these sources:

• Town Gratitude: +5 each, and it keeps in your inventory. Quests and battles both pay it out: graveyardkeeper2.io counts 13 from the opening chapters' quests, and wikily.gg lists 40 quests and 16 battles that reward it in total. Update 1.008 on October 2 also "increased the amount of 'Town Gratitude' earned for winning battles." Use one right after a sermon, not before, because a sermon empties your happiness and leaves room under the cap.
• Burial certificates to Januarius: at his first tier, the first five of each kind every week give happiness. His weekly cap is where the fan wikis disagree: graveyardkeeper2.io lists 10, wikily.gg lists 15 (30 and 50 at his later tiers). Update 1.008 "increased the maximum number of likes that can be earned from trading with vendors" without giving numbers.
• Fish fillets and vegetables to Herm: a fraction of a point per item, with weekly limits.
• Town orders: completed orders pay happiness. The order boards are in the port warehouse, so they open after the bridge. Our orders and traders guide covers them.

Screenshot: official Graveyard Keeper 2 Demo Launch Trailer (tinyBuild on YouTube), 1:11

Weekly limits reset on Pride day. To raise town quality itself, repair houses and hand the green scrolls you get to Linda; each scroll adds 1. The town reputation guide covers that side.

GODEEPER: Where the church and the Writing Desk fit into the opening chapters. Graveyard Keeper 2 Beginner Guide →

Keep the zombie debuff off your sermons

Excessive zombies lowers the Faith and money of most sermons. On a Basic Prayer the wiki lists -0.2 Faith per parishioner on both the base and the success bonus. Run that through the formula at 10 parishioners and a successful sermon drops from 6 Faith to 2. That's why one of the busiest Faith threads of launch month was a player's mod that removes the debuff.

The non-mod fixes are the Good fellow talent, the PR Machine and the Hypno Prayer's buff, which cancels the debuff if you already have it. Our zombie limit guide explains when the game checks the limit, and the PR machine guide covers the quest that charges a hypno-device with 1 Faith.

Graveyard quality matters too, but only for money: a successful sermon adds a money bonus per point of graveyard quality. It doesn't touch Faith.

Screenshot: official Graveyard Keeper 2 Demo Launch Trailer (tinyBuild on YouTube), 1:39

What to spend Faith on

Faith's main use is buying Inspirations, which is how your talents gain experience. It's also spent at the Study Table and in recipes: a Story costs 3 Faith (plus 2 Clean Paper and an Ink), and zombie collars take 3, 5 or 10 Faith. Because a new sermon needs a Story, Faith from one sermon pays for the next one.

With 6 a week, spend carefully. u/Tornado8841's top-voted answer in a "Faith problems" thread: "I unlock the fast travels immediately. Then I save the remainder for when I need them in the inspirations or a quest objective." Another reply in the same thread noted that alchemically active items cost Faith as well as Science to study, and plain items only cost Science.

The developers know it's tight. Their October 2 "Plans for the future" post says "Faith granted for the sermons will be increased." Updates 1.009 and 1.010 didn't include it, and there's no date. The patch notes tracker will log it when it ships.

How to get Science: paper and kits

Science doesn't sit in your backpack. It lives in the Study Table's own slot, which holds up to 999, and you fill it by decomposing items on the table:

Your first sheet of paper and first Science Kit I are in the chest in the tower laboratory, which is also where the Study Table stands (not in the church basement, whatever the tutorial says). Together they're 31 Science, and that's all you get until you can make paper. Most early items give about 10 tech points per Science, so spend it on things you need.

1. Build a Writing Desk and unlock Writing Supplies. The desk comes with the Writing Basic technology, which appears on your tech tree once you finish Holy Moly! and costs 5 red and 5 green tech points; Writing Supplies (10 red, 5 blue tech points) adds the paper and kit recipes.
2. Make Leather Scrolls from a corpse's Skin, then cut each into 6 Clean Paper. The corpses and autopsy guide covers skin.
3. Mix Ink from Ash, Water and Melted Fat (4 per batch).
4. Craft Science Kit I, never decompose loose paper. Five sheets as paper are 5 Science. The same five sheets in a kit recipe make 3 kits, which is 90.

Screenshot: official Graveyard Keeper 2 Demo Launch Trailer (tinyBuild on YouTube), 0:57

Studying an item costs 1 to 20 Science and pays 10 to 150 tech points at once, but each item can only be studied once. The item itself isn't consumed. If your Study Table refused items or paid nothing at launch, that was a bug: Update 1.005 fixed it locking up after an item was inserted for Science, and Changelog 1.007 fixed it "not awarding science points".

GODEEPER: What to do with the runes once you've studied an ingredient. Graveyard Keeper 2 Alchemy Guide: Rune Totals →

Our take

Treat Faith as a weekly salary, not a resource to grind. Before the port it's 6 a week at best, so run the Basic Prayer, use Town Gratitude after the sermon and keep your zombie count in check. Spend on fast travel and the Inspirations your next quest needs. Science is the easier fix: get the Writing Desk early, and every sheet of paper should go into a kit. And if Faith still feels stingy, the developers agree with you. Their fix just hasn't landed yet.

How we checked this

We haven't played Graveyard Keeper 2. On October 23, 2026 we read the graveyardkeeper2.io wiki's Faith, Science, Sermons, Happiness, Technology, Clean Paper, Science Kit and Writing Desk pages, which document values from the game files. On October 29 we re-checked the happiness numbers against wikily.gg's Januarius and Town Gratitude pages and the Update 1.008 notes, and the Writing Basic unlock on both wikis. Patch and plans information comes from Lazy Bear Games' posts on Steam, through Update 1.010. Player quotes come from four r/GraveyardKeeper threads. The Faith comparisons between prayers are our own arithmetic using the wiki's formula and base values, before perks.

We stepped through tinyBuild's Demo Launch Trailer at 2-second intervals for the screenshots: the tech tree at 0:57, an order at 1:11, the graveyard at 1:39 and the sermon at 1:41.

Related reading

• Graveyard Keeper 2 factory layout guide
• Graveyard Keeper 2 achievements guide
• Graveyard Keeper 2 complete guide hub

References

• Graveyard Keeper 2 on Steam: Lazy Bear Games, tinyBuild
• Faith and Science: graveyardkeeper2.io wiki
• Sermons and Happiness and Town Quality: graveyardkeeper2.io wiki
• Technology: graveyardkeeper2.io wiki
• Graveyard Keeper 2 - Plans for the future: Lazy Bear Games, Steam news
• Changelog 1.007: Lazy Bear Games, Steam news
• r/GraveyardKeeper: Faith problems
• Graveyard Keeper 2 - Demo Launch Trailer: tinyBuild on YouTube