Manor Lords beginner’s guide: 5 tips and tricks for a happy town

Manor Lords is a beautiful medieval city builder with a sprinkle of combat and diplomacy. If you’re just getting started with the game, here are five tips and tricks to ensure your town prospers.

5 tips to get started with Manor Lords

Prioritize Food and Fuel in the first months

It may sound obvious, but Food and Fuel are necessary for your people to survive in Manor Lords. The tricky part is that during winter, Fuel consumption doubles, and most Food sources are unavailable. This is why, as soon as you start playing, prioritize gathering Food and Firewood to prepare for the cold times.

Have at least one military unit

Manor Lords is a fairly peaceful game, even on default difficulty. You don’t have to fight much if you don’t want to, but you must have some military units to defend against Raiders. Raids are random events in Manor Lords, and my town got attacked just one year after starting the game.

The game displays a counter in the bottom left corner of the screen if you’re about to be attacked and how many days you have left to prepare. Most of the time, there’s enough time to prepare, but that means diverting resources from daily tasks to manufacturing (or trading) military equipment.

This is why I recommend you form and fully equip at least one military unit even if the town isn’t in danger. You don’t need much. A single Spear Militia will do just fine.

Build Burgage Plots with extension slots

Burgage Plot extensions are key to your town’s growth. When you plan a layout for Burgage Plots, make it a bit bigger so that every house has an extension slot icon at the back. It doesn’t increase the construction cost and allows you to add extensions to the house. 

You can’t expand houses later to add the extension slot if you don’t have one now. I made the mistake of building Burgage Plots without extension slots and it meant I had to create a whole new section of houses to continue expanding my town.

Build Fields early on

Fields in Manor Lords have a feature called Fertility. It affects the Field’s yield, and the more of the same crop you grow every year, the lower the Fertility gets. To maintain Fertility, you have to switch the crops every year or leave the Fields fallow. This means that to have a good amount of all crops stocked up (even if you don’t need them right now), you should start building and maintaining Fields as soon as possible.

Don’t waste Development Points

You get Development Points by leveling up your settlement and can then spend them on different development branches. Every branch unlocks a new building, extension, or a perk to improve your town. However, Development Points are hard to come by, especially in the early game, so be mindful of what to spend them on.

Take your time going through all the development branches available and thinking about which ones are the best for you. If you aren’t sure, save the points for later. I promise you’re not going to fall behind in development.