Energy, Insanity and How Sleep Works

Graveyard Keeper 2 tracks two numbers on a single HUD bar. Energy pays for manual work one swing at a time, whether you are chopping, digging, crafting or doing an autopsy. Insanity builds up from grim jobs like grave digging and dissection, and it eats into energy: your energy cap is 100 minus your insanity. Eating and sleeping refill energy. Drinking is the main way to bring insanity back down.

Key figure	Value
Energy when a new game starts	4
Insanity when a new game starts	10
Insanity limit	80, or 70 with Iron Will
Lowest possible energy cap	20, or 30 with Iron Will
Time awake before Lack of sleep	2 in-game days (15 minutes)
Sleep from empty to full energy	about 6 in-game hours

Spending energy

The crafting window shows the energy price of each swing, and that price is fixed. When you can’t cover it, the swing is skipped: your character stands still with an empty-energy icon over their head. You can run completely dry without ever passing out. Zombies draw nothing from your bar.

Watch what happens when insanity climbs while your bar is full. The cap moves down, and whatever energy now sits above it is deleted on the spot, not stored for later.

Getting energy back

Anything you eat or drink pays out its energy the moment you use it. The game doesn’t stop you eating on a full bar, but the part that would go over the cap is thrown away.

The three Energy Potion grades are worth 20, 50 and 100 energy, delivered instantly (the item text calls it regeneration, which is wrong). Their recipes are not tied to any workstation, no technology unlocks them, and no trader carries them, so as far as we can tell no version of the game lets you make them.

Sleeping

Your bed at home is the only place to sleep, and it has its own rules:

• It refuses you on a full bar. The one exception is when you have Lack of sleep.
• Time speeds up fiftyfold for the rest of the world while you are in bed.
• You wake the instant energy is full, whatever the hour. Going from empty to full takes roughly six in-game hours.
• Getting up saves the game. Outside of this, there is no regular way to save.
• Loose tech points are gathered for you when you lie down, wherever they are on the map. Time and the Week covers what else carries on during the night.

A normal night in bed leaves insanity where it was.

Lack of sleep

Stay up for two in-game days (15 minutes) and you pick up Lack of sleep. It has two effects:

• each point of energy you spend also costs 0.5 insanity, so chopping wood or any other harmless job turns grim;
• every source of insanity reduction is cut in half.

The only cure is to sleep until the bar is full. Doing so also takes 20 insanity off, the one way sleep helps with insanity at all.

Ignore the in-game description, which warns that work will waste more energy. Energy costs stay exactly the same; you pay the difference in insanity.

Insanity

Sources

What you do	Insanity gained
Dig a grave or fill one in	0.2 each swing
Make a gravestone or fence	0.2 each swing
Autopsy work, pocket-picking included	0.3 each swing
Exhume a grave	1 each swing
Eat Flesh (it turns up in corpses’ pockets)	10
Eat Baked meat	10
Drink Soldier’s ale	20

Cures

Remedy	Effect	How to get it
Chocolate	−20 insanity, +50 energy	Made from Cacao on the Kitchen Table II after the game grants you the Chocolate technology
Sleeping off Lack of sleep	−20 insanity	Always available once you have the debuff
Beer	−12 insanity	Sold by Januarius; your yard chest holds one bottle at the start
Croissant	−5 insanity, +20 energy	Kitchen Oven, from Dough and one Chicken Egg
Berry Pie	−3 insanity, +30 energy	Sold by Januarius, or baked in the Kitchen Oven

Croissants take some setting up. The recipe only appears once you have baked a Berry Pie, and the eggs come from Herm after his shop moves up to its second tier.

Hitting the limit

High insanity has exactly one consequence. Any swing that would carry you over 80 is refused, which rules out autopsies, digging or filling graves and placing gravestones until you get the number down. There is no other penalty.