Graveyard Keeper 2 Town Approval Guide: What It Means

Updated 2026-10-19: The fan database these numbers came from (gk2db.org) has gone offline, so we re-checked them against graveyardkeeper2.io, an unofficial wiki built from the current game files; village reputation still matters only up to 10.

The four numbers behind "town approval"

Screenshot: official launch trailer, 1:33 (tinyBuild)

We stepped through tinyBuild's launch trailer to check the icons. At 1:33, inside the Town Warehouse, two Supply: Fabric orders pay +20 and +35 under the same thumbs-up icon as the HUD counter, which reads 0/200 in that shot, and a red line warns that orders can only be accepted on the sun day. That's the whole "approval" loop on one screen: crates in, thumbs-up out, capped by the number after the slash.

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Happiness: the counter that pays for sermons

Sermon attendance is whichever is lower, your happiness or your church quality, and each parishioner costs one happiness when the sermon starts. Nothing else drains it, so the counter only drops when you preach. Anything over the cap is thrown away, and you'll hear a failure sound as the overflow orbs land.

That makes Town Gratitude a timing item. Each one gives 5 happiness and keeps forever in your inventory. If town quality is 10 and you're sitting on 8, using one wastes 3 points; use it right after a sermon empties the counter and you keep all 5. The opening quests hand out 13 of them, and Januarius sells more one at a time. We'd hoard every one until the morning after a sermon.

What a full church pays out is small early on. Until the town lifts the parishioner cap, a sermon gives at most 6 Faith, and sermons are Faith's only source. Our Graveyard Keeper 2 faith and science guide runs the numbers for each prayer.

Selling to town traders also pays happiness for specific goods (marked with a smiley in the trade window), up to a weekly limit per good and a weekly cap per trader that resets on Pride day. Update 1.008 raised both the maximum likes from vendor trading and the likes per specific item, so treat any exact caps on fan sites as pre-1.008 numbers.

Town Warehouse orders are the real engine

The game itself says "town orders are the main source of" happiness, and players agree. Asked how they keep sermons full every week, one Reddit reply was simply "Supply orders on sun day for the bulk of the gratitude." Another said that "With supply orders you should easily be able to get in the 60-80 per week."

The rules are strict. You take or swap orders at the warehouse order board on Pride day only, every shop posts two orders per tier, and orders are filled with supply boxes packed in the factory. Crates placed on the pallets in the warehouse or its cellar are tallied the following Pride-day morning. On payment timing, players say "you get paid immediately on the order finish, you just have to pickup the payment on the board."

Update 1.008 made the loop friendlier: more likes per delivery, fewer crates per order, and more Town Gratitude for winning battles (our zombie army battle guide covers those fights). Patch 1.007 fixed iron supply delivery quests getting stuck, so if an old iron order never cleared, that's why. For crate prices and which trader wants what, our Graveyard Keeper 2 orders and traders guide has the full table, and the factory layout guide covers packing crates at scale.

Town quality: Green Scrolls, Linda, and Lust day

Town quality is the ceiling. It starts at 0, becomes 10 once Certificate, Please is done, and the story adds 10 more when you reach the port. Until then you can't hold more than 10 happiness, so no early sermon draws more than 10 people. A church rated above town quality gains no extra seats, which is worth knowing before you sink materials into church decor.

After that, houses are your lever. Each ruined house pays Green Scrolls when you repair it, from 1 for the small house to 25 for a whole block, 180 across the whole town. Give them to Linda under "New people" and each one adds 1 town quality. The catch: she only takes them on Lust day. On other days the option is greyed out with a day icon. Construction itself is instant and can pull materials from any shared chest in the same area, so the bottleneck is materials, not time. The Graveyard Keeper 2 calendar guide lays out which day is which.

Screenshot: official launch trailer, 0:54 (tinyBuild)

Village reputation stops mattering at 10

Here's the number most worth ignoring. Village reputation is shared by Januarius, Herm, the twins and the town traders. Three early quests add +5 each (Herm's Planted and Delivered, the twins' Two Peas in a Pod, and opening the tower door for Albert), and every trader shop you build or upgrade adds +2 or +3. The only checks are at 10: the twins' part of Jack in a Boat and Good Fellow. Beyond 10, the fan wiki's reputation table lists no technology and no other check that reads it.

Two myths die here too. Buying and selling earns no reputation, whatever Herm tells you. And house repairs don't raise village reputation: the game files attach a value to repairs, but nothing reads it. So repair houses for scrolls, build shops for the shops themselves, and don't keep score.

Character reputation is the long grind

The personal bars are where reputation actually gates things. Each named character gives +10 per quest, up to 100. The Nun Agatha's tree unlocks church upgrades, Jack's unlocks conveyors at 50 and steel smithing at 70, and Linda's opens new people for the town at 10 to 40. The election wants Herbert and Linda at 55 and 60, which is where players get stuck. One Reddit post this week asked how to get Linda and Herbert from 50 to 55.

Late in the story, six characters (Herbert, Jack, Agatha, Gunter, Albert and Linda) must each agree to help. The bar is 90 with every one of them if you returned the old god's red eye, or 100 if you kept it. Each has ten reputation quests, nine on the regular route. One more quirk: reputation tech nodes only check when you open the tech tree, silently, so open it now and then.

If you searched for the "astronomer," that's Gunter, and the game calls him the Astrologer. He lives in the Astrologer's Tower in the port, and his reputation is his own, not the village's. He's also the one who installs the PR machine beside his house.

Build the Builder first

Screenshot: official launch trailer, 0:30 (tinyBuild)

The Builder is a shop you place on a yard plot, and it's among the cheapest: Building Kit I ×4, Wooden Kit I ×3 and Iron Kit I ×1. More importantly, no other trader stocks Building Kit I (1 silver 50 each) or Building Kit II, the core material for every shop and house in town. That's why we'd build it before any other shop. Every shop you add after it, and every house you repair for scrolls, gets cheaper to supply.

Shops pay off in a sneaky second way. As one Reddit tip puts it, every vendor stall you repair sells a bag for one kind of item, "AND THEY REFRESH EVERY WEEK SO BUY 30 UNIVERSAL BAGS IF YOU WANT, IM NOT YOUR DAD." Inventory space is a real problem in this game, so that alone justifies building shops early.

What Lazy Bear says is changing

On October 2 the studio posted its plans: "Faith granted for the sermons will be increased," "The number of order slots will increase with the population," and "Trader upgrades will be rebalanced and simplified." Update 1.009 followed on October 6 with fixes, including a sermon that ended incorrectly. If shop upgrade costs or order counts look different from a guide you're reading, those patches are why. The patch notes tracker lists each one.

Our take

We'd run the town on two clocks. On Pride day, take every order you can pack and pick up last week's payout. On Lust day, give Linda every Green Scroll you've got. Use Town Gratitude only after a sermon, build the Builder before anything else, and let village reputation sit at 10 forever. The grind players complain about is real (the studio admitted some tasks "have become chores"), but most of it comes from chasing the wrong number.

New to the town? The Graveyard Keeper 2 beginner guide covers the first hours, the battles list shows which fights open each part of town, and the automation guide gets zombies packing crates for you, and the complete guide hub links everything else.

References

• Graveyard Keeper 2 on Steam: store page, developer and publisher
• Graveyard Keeper 2 news on Steam: Changelog 1.007, Updates 1.008 and 1.009, and the October 2 plans post
• graveyardkeeper2.io: happiness and town quality, reputation, town shops and repairs and the port: unofficial fan wiki built from the game files
• Official launch trailer: tinyBuild's YouTube channel
• r/GraveyardKeeper: community threads quoted above