Best development branches in Manor Lords

As you level up your town in Manor Lords, you accumulate Development Points used to unlock technology branches with new upgrades and benefits.

Leveling up the town can take a long time. After around four hours of gameplay, I only got two Development Points, so you have to be mindful of what you spend them on. Below, you’ll find the seven best development branches to get first in Manor Lords.

Best development branches to get in Manor Lords

Charcoal Burning

Charcoal Burning is one of the first branches I recommend you get in Manor Lords because of how much it helps with Fuel efficiency. Firewood is a decent source of Fuel but not sustainable enough when the town’s population is over 50. This branch unlocks Charcoal Kiln, a building that converts one Firewood into two Charcoal, allowing you to practically forget about Fuel as long as you have families assigned to it and the Woodcutter’s Lodge.

Heavy Plow

No medieval town can survive without fields and farmers. One of the first uses for Fields is to grow Wheat needed to produce Bread, and the process is significantly faster if you have the Heavy Plow unlocked. Heavy Plow allows you to assign an Ox to the Farmhouse, increasing the plowing and crop transportation speed.

Trapping

Similarly to how Heavy Plow helps with farming, Trapping passively increases your Meat output, which is great for leveling up your Burgage Plots. However, Trapping still affects the number of animals in the herd/deposit your hunters are using, so I recommend picking this branch up if you have a Rich wild animal deposit in the region.

Sheepbreeding

Sheepbreeding is a great branch if you plan on producing Wool in your town. It allows your Sheep to multiply when grazing on Pastures. Start by importing three or four Sheep and then leave them on the farm. It takes some time for a new Sheep (or Lamb) to appear, though. It took me about four to five months to get a new Sheep, and the speed seemingly doesn’t scale with the total amount of sheep on the Pasture.

Deep Mining

Resources in Manor Lords, apart from Timber and seasonal deposits, aren’t infinite. Every deposit has a set amount of resources, but you don’t have to worry about them with Deep Mining. Deep Mining unlocks a Deep mine upgrade for the Mining Pit that can indefinitely extract resources from Rich deposits.

However, it doesn’t apply to Stone deposits because Stonecutter Camp is a different building and doesn’t support this upgrade, at least in the current version of the game.

Better Deals

Better Deals is a great branch if you have a good amount of Regional Wealth saved up and want to double down on trade. The base import price of all items on the market is somewhere between 11 and 18 Regional Wealth, and this upgrade lowers it to 10. 

Trade Logistics

It’s almost impossible to produce every material you need in Manor Lords in the early game. Your second way of obtaining the necessary resources or equipment is via trade, and this is where the Trade Logistics comes in. The branch reduces the cost of establishing a new trade route to 25 Regional Wealth, saving you a ton of money.

I made the mistake of not getting this upgrade when importing military equipment for my army units because those are considered to be major trades and require a Trade Route. These Trade Routes cost me almost 300 Regional Wealth to buy, and I could’ve spent most of that money on more equipment if I had Trade Logistics.