Fortifications and army space from the official Steam stills.
Lead your undead army into battle. Steam's about text puts the inquisitor at the head of that army, then asks you to build towers and fortifications, craft armour and weapons, and train not-so-smart troops. The 18 September combat diary makes the reason local: biting zombies overran The Town, and the fights are written as part of that story rather than as a separate mode. First Blood is the public first-win mark. A New Dawn names the south of Town cleared. Warmaker and Necromancer print the craft and resurrection volumes.
Battles are part of the Town story
The combat diary opens on a joke that becomes a rule. Good zombies work. Bad zombies bite. Thousands of the biting kind have overrun The Town and will tear apart anyone who gets close. You are not hopping into an arena playlist; you are clearing districts so restoration can continue. That is why the army route sits beside The Town instead of inside a generic combat hub.
Steam never published a unit roster, tower stat sheet, or battle-by-battle drop table. Steam never printed one. What you can plan around is sequence: draft working dead, raise towers, craft battle items, win the first fight, then take the named south clearing. If a later patch prints encounter names, they can join this atlas as a table. Until then the exclusive still is the fortification screenshot Steam shipped.
The exclusive still on this route is the Steam fortification screenshot. It shows the army space as a place with walls and yards, not as a menu of unnamed units. Pair it with First Blood and A New Dawn if you need public marks, and ignore any unofficial unit list that Steam did not illustrate.
First Blood and the south clearing
First Blood awards when you win your first battle. In the captured 24 September 2026 roster it sat at 35.7 percent, far below the opening story marks and far above the south-clearing row. Treat it as the on-ramp. You do not need a hidden encounter name to know Steam considers a first win worth an icon.
A New Dawn awards when the south part of Town has been cleared of zombies. That row sat at 0.4 percent in the same snapshot. It is the only Steam district name tied to a fight. The Town page records it as a street address; the army route records it as the army's public mid-campaign mark. Back to Life (a recovered house) and A New Dawn can both be true in the same save, which is how restoration and warfare share a map without sharing a screenshot.
If you arrived from the demo, Steam news already promised a first look at combat before 22 September. The 1.0 army is the same campaign with the rest of The Town attached. Win once so First Blood moves, then treat the south as a restoration prerequisite rather than optional content.
Towers, battle items, and 50 zombies
Warmaker awards for crafting 50 battle items. Necromancer awards for resurrecting 50 zombies, with Steam's caption 'a whole army.' Those two volumes are how the factory on the automation page becomes a fighting force. You still need working zombies on production lines; the 50-resurrection mark is the army-sized surplus.
Towers and fortifications are in the store blurb and in the launch news, not in a stat table. Build them where the biting dead press The Town. There is no official range, damage, or upgrade cost in Steam text. If you need a number Steam did not print, verify it in your 1.0 save rather than copying a unofficial dump into this sentence.
Battle items and resurrections both drain the factory. If Warmaker or Necromancer stalls, the bottleneck is usually input from the cemetery or labour assigned to food instead of war. Rebalance the line on the automation page, then come back. This route does not reprint the production table.
Not a separate mode
The combat diary's title is 'Let's talk Combat,' but the body refuses a mode split. You grind biting zombies into dust so the street can live. The inquisitor still runs a graveyard and still fills town orders. Opening the army route should not feel like leaving the sequel; it should feel like the same map with the gates closed.
That is also why the launch trailer on the hub shows army beats next to cemetery beats. tinyBuild is selling one campaign. Use Restore The Town when you need housing and orders, zombie-based automation when the army is starving for items, and this route when a district is still held. The Grand Inquisitor page is the campaign's faces and ending, not the tower placement guide.
The People Have Spoken can fire while districts are still contested; it is an election mark, not a peace treaty. Keep civic beats on the inquisitor and town pages. Use the army route for towers, the first win, the south clearing, and the two volume marks that turn labour into an army.
Fortify, then restore
Launch news tells you to rebuild, fortify, and defend The Town in one breath. Fortify is the army route. Restore is the town page. Defend is the overlap. If you restore houses while biting zombies still hold the south, you are doing civic work on a contested street. If you raise towers and never fill a town order, you are running an army camp with no revenue.
The practical order for a first campaign is cemetery input, a working labour line, the first town order, First Blood, then the south clearing when you are ready to spend battle items. That order is inferred from official pillars, not from a published walkthrough. Steam did not ship a step list, and there is no extra walkthrough beyond that hinge.
That hinge is also why the atlas does not ship a walkthrough split. Other guides cut first-week, election, and ending guides. Steam never published those step lists, so early-game combat advice stays here as First Blood plus the south clearing, not as a separate /walkthrough/ route.
Frequently asked questions
Is combat a separate mode in Graveyard Keeper 2?
The 18 September combat diary writes battles as part of the story of a Town overrun by biting zombies, not as a standalone playlist. You draft an undead army, raise towers, and clear districts inside the same campaign that also runs the graveyard and The Town.
Which Steam achievements are the public combat marks?
First Blood is the first battle win. A New Dawn is the south of Town cleared. Warmaker is 50 battle items. Necromancer is 50 zombies resurrected. Steam does not publish a unit roster beside those four public rows Win once, then clear the south when you have battle items.
