The underground factory in Graveyard Keeper 2

The underground factory is the sequel’s automation space: a floor of stations you inherit in a broken state and rebuild into a line that fills commerce orders. One creator video describes it end to end, and it is the only source in the material that does.

Facts checked September 18, 2026Reading time 7 min readEvidence cited per claim

How the factory works, in four points

Four things decide whether the factory runs: whether you have conveyors, whether the floor is clear, which way the arrows point, and whether a zombie is standing at each machine.

Supplied video

Access is not the same as usability

The factory floor can be reached well before it can be used. The video is explicit that getting inside and unlocking conveyors are two different steps.

Supplied video

Conveyors come from Jack’s quest line

The belts unlock through “Jack’s Back in Business”: win the Market Square Purge, then restore Jack’s workshop. Until then the stations have no way of being fed automatically.

Supplied video

The arrows decide the layout

Every conveyor shows direction arrows, and the video names wrong-facing belts as the problem it has had to troubleshoot most. A belt has to run from one station’s output to another’s input.

Supplied video

Rubble first, then the build

Clearing rubble opens the passages and the floor space the stations need. The video treats it as the first job in a factory you inherit rather than design.

The unlock

Getting in, and getting conveyors

The gate on this system is a quest, not a technology.

Supplied video

The way in

The video enters the factory by moving down through the dungeon from its top entrance. Having access to the space is the easy half — the video says that using it is a different matter entirely.

Supplied video

The conveyors come from Jack

Conveyors are part of Jack’s quest line. The video’s sequence is to take out the zombies around his workshop in the Market Square Purge battle, then fix the workshop, and only then are the belts available.

Supplied video

Why the belt is the whole point

The video calls the conveyor the key to moving things in the factory. Without one, a station cannot be fed from another station, and the line stays a set of disconnected machines.

The quest chain behind this is described on the Jack page, including the reported Barracks Defense Power gate and the workshop’s two material hand-ins. Every dependency on this page is creator-reported, unconfirmed as of September 27, 2026.

Before building

Two jobs first: the way in, and the floor

The video treats the factory as inherited rather than new, which is why its first two tips are about clearing it rather than equipping it.

Supplied video

Clear the rubble to move again

Rubble stops you going in and out, which in practice also stops quick teleporting. The video’s first tip is to clear it so the floor becomes traversable instead of a dead end.

Supplied video

Carry the workforce down

Zombies have to be brought in with you. The video uses the Carrier unlock under the woodworking carpentry perk, which it says stacks up to four items and lets a whole squad be moved in one trip — reported, unconfirmed as of September 27, 2026.

Supplied video

Craft the area before the first station

The smithy cannot be placed on the raw floor. The video first crafts the area, which it says opens the gears underneath and cleans the space enough to build on.

The build order

Building a line: smithy, belt, assembly bench

The video builds one line end to end — ore in at a smithy, iron out on a belt, and an assembly bench turning it into what the commerce side accepts. The steps below are its order.

Place the smithy close to the start

Keeping the station near the line’s starting point is the video’s advice, because a shorter run needs less conveyor belt to connect. It explains the reasoning before placing the first belt.

Lay the belt with the arrows facing the flow

Conveyors show direction arrows, and the rule is to check them before placing. The video names wrong-facing arrows as the mistake it has had to troubleshoot most.

Feed ore in and push iron out

The smithy is set to make iron, and a belt carries its output into an assembly bench. These stations have inputs and outputs of their own, so the belt has to join the right side of each.

Staff the station with an equipped zombie

The video places a zombie in the station and gives it the tool the machine needs. It reports a hammer as insufficient and supplies an axe instead before iron production starts — reported, unconfirmed as of September 27, 2026.

Add the supply station and the porter

A supply station, reached by its own belt, and a zombie supply porter complete the run, so finished goods leave the line rather than piling up inside it.

Walk over and activate the order

With the line running, the video walks to Jack and the commerce area to activate the order the factory was built to fill. That is where the build stops being self-directed.

This is one player building one line, and the transcript is cut off mid-run, with the first batch still incomplete. Nothing in the supplied material gives belt lengths, build costs or throughput for any station — unconfirmed as of September 27, 2026.

What each part of the line does

Every station below is named in the same video; the roles are its description of them. No build cost or recipe for any of them appears in the supplied material.

Part	What it does in the line	What the material states
Smithy	Takes ore in and produces iron	Built only after the floor has been crafted; the video says that opens the gears underneath
Conveyor belt	Moves items between all the other parts	Directional: the arrows have to face the intended flow
Assembly bench	Turns the smithy’s iron into what the order accepts	Has its own inputs and outputs, and needs a belt feeding into it
Supply station	Feeds the line from outside it	Placed where it can be reached, then connected by belt
Zombie supply porter	Moves finished goods off the line	Built from wooden planks in the video’s run
Zombie	Operates a station	Needs the tool the machine requires; the video equips an axe after a hammer fails

Commerce Orders: what the line is for

The video’s stated purpose for the whole build is filling commerce orders, which is why the line ends at iron rather than at a finished product.

Orders come from the commerce side

The run finishes by activating the order the factory has just been built to fill, at Jack and the commerce area. The video does not publish what an order asks for or what it pays.

Iron is the intermediate

The product in the video is iron: ore in at one end, bars out at the other, then an assembly bench that turns them into an accepted form. The iron page covers where the ore comes from and both routes that smelt it.

Eight iron, as the video recalls it

The video recalls the run needing eight iron before the order completes, and says it has three at that point in the build. That is one player remembering a requirement mid-run rather than a quoted order screen, and no payout or deadline is stated anywhere in the material — reported, unconfirmed as of September 27, 2026.

A reported money route

The glass-to-flask sale, as one video describes it

A second, unrelated creator video describes what the chemistry side can be turned into: a repeatable sale rather than a defense. It is one creator’s one-minute routine.

Supplied video

Glass first, then alchemy flasks

The reported order is to produce glass and then turn that glass into alchemy flasks at the laboratory station in the tower in the Alchemy lab. Nothing in the video says where the glass comes from.

Supplied video

Craft to the stack cap

The video crafts as many as it can hold and gives 99 as the maximum stack, which it says took about two minutes and returned points as well as goods — reported, unconfirmed as of September 27, 2026.

Supplied video

Teleport, then sell at NPC trade

The batch is teleported and sold through NPC trade. The video’s own wording for what it sells is garbled, so which item the trader actually buys is recorded as unconfirmed.

That route is community-reported and unconfirmed as of September 27, 2026. It gives no sale price, no crafting cost and no profit figure, so this page gives none either. The alchemy page covers the laboratory station and the flask chain in more detail.

Factory energy and the zombie workforce

The factory runs on zombies, and the video’s estimate of their output is the only throughput figure in the material.

Supplied video

Three stations, seven energy each

The video sets up three stations and reports that each one creates seven factory energy, which it describes as roughly three zombies’ worth — reported, unconfirmed as of September 27, 2026.

Equipment decides who can work

A station rejects a zombie that is not carrying the tool the machine needs, which is the same rule the iron page documents from the recipe side: Mastery and equipment decide what a worker will accept.

The pattern is inherit, then repair

The video notes that factories arrive in a broken state and have to be reworked, which is what makes rubble clearing and area crafting part of the build order rather than optional chores.

What is still unknown

The factory is the least documented system on this side of the site: one video describes it, and that video is a build log rather than a reference. These are the questions it leaves open.

What a commerce order asks for beyond the iron, what it pays, and how often one arrives. The video shows the system being activated and stops there — unconfirmed as of September 27, 2026.
Whether eight iron is the whole requirement for that order or one input among several, and whether order sizes scale — unconfirmed as of September 27, 2026.
What factory energy does beyond the video’s own conversion of seven energy to about three zombies’ worth of work.
The build cost of any factory station, belt, supply station or porter. No supplied source prices any of them.
Whether belts move a fixed number of items per second, how long a run can be, and whether different goods need different belts.
How the factory connects back to the surface: whether finished goods are teleported, carried or collected.
Whether the rubble sits in the same places in every save, and whether clearing it is ever repeatable.
Whether the glass-to-flask route still holds after patching, and what the garbled item name in that video actually is.

Where these facts come from

Every entry below is labelled by what it is: a developer or publisher source, a platform store listing, a press report, a video, or a fan-maintained page. Fan pages are used for terminology, and where one is the only record of a number, that number is written as community wiki data, unconfirmed, with the date it was last checked.

Video Recreational Suffering — How to Make an Automatic Iron Factory for Commerce Orders — A 14:51 build-log video captured 2026-09-27 and the only source on /factory/: entering the underground factory from the top, clearing rubble to move and teleport, the Carrier perk for moving a zombie squad, the conveyor arrows, the smithy-to-assembly-bench line, the supply station and porter, the seven-factory-energy-per-station estimate, and the commerce order the build exists to fill. The transcript is truncated mid-run, so no throughput or cost figure is taken from it.
Video Quick Tips — Graveyard Keeper 2 Market Square Purge video — A creator video captured 2026-09-27 whose timestamps are cited inline on /jack/: the map banner for the battle, the 20/22 Defense Power reading on arrival, the Barracks construction menu, the battle setup screen, the Command post barricades and the central squad-banner ring. It is one player’s save, and it is also the source of the claim that restoring the workshop unlocks conveyors.
Video Wasting — The Easiest Money Method You Missed (Graveyard Keeper 2) — A 1:18 creator video captured 2026-09-26 describing a post-launch money route: make glass, turn it into alchemy flasks at the laboratory station in the Alchemy lab tower, craft to the stack cap of 99, then sell at the NPC trade. It gives no price, cost or profit figure, and its wording for the item being sold is garbled, so the sold item is recorded as unconfirmed.

Questions

Factory questions

How do you unlock the underground factory in Graveyard Keeper 2?

The floor itself is reachable early, but the video says using it is a separate step: the conveyors that move items unlock through Jack’s quest line, by winning the Market Square Purge battle and then restoring his workshop. That order is creator-reported, unconfirmed as of September 27, 2026.

How do conveyors work?

They are directional. Every belt shows arrows, and the video treats placing one the wrong way round as its most common mistake. Belts move items between stations that have their own inputs and outputs, so the arrows have to run from an output to an input.

Why can I not build a smithy in the factory?

The area has to be crafted first. The video hits the same wall, and says crafting it opens the gears underneath and clears the space; only then can the station be placed.

Do I need zombies for the factory?

Yes. The video staffs each station with a zombie and equips it with the tool the machine needs. A zombie without the right equipment cannot operate it — the video swaps a hammer for an axe before iron production starts.

What is factory energy?

The video’s working estimate is that each station creates seven factory energy, which it describes as roughly three zombies’ worth. Nothing else in the supplied material explains the unit — unconfirmed as of September 27, 2026.

What are commerce orders for?

They are the video’s stated reason for building the factory line: iron is produced to fill them, and the run ends by activating one. The material does not say what an order asks for, how much it pays, or how often one arrives.

Is there a money route in the factory?

Not in the supplied material. The one money route it contains — glass into alchemy flasks, crafted to a reported 99 stack and sold through NPC trade — happens at the Alchemy lab tower rather than in the factory, and the video gives no prices.