Manor Lords: 10 Beginner Tips and Tricks

Manor Lords has exploded into early access and, despite warnings from the developer to temper our expectations, early reviews are staggeringly positive. Turns out that one man, passion, and patience are all that's needed to produce a rock-solid new game in 2024! Someone should let the triple-A devs know...

In any case, thousands of budding lords and ladies have taken to Manor Lords in a bid to build their legacy. You'll begin life in the new strategy city-builder from the bottom, building a quaint little village into a thriving town. There's lots to learn to keep your citizens hale and hearty, so, this article covers 10 beginner tips to help get you started in your lofty new station.

1. Assign Your Workers Carefully

If you haven't enough population to fill every job slot in every building, make sure to manually assign families to buildings that require immediate attention.

For example, need to store your starter supplies in a Storehouse? Assign workers to the Storehouse until all supplies have been shifted, then reassign them elsewhere. It's a bit micro-heavy, but it's just until you have enough population to cover job roles more comfortably!

2. Assign Your Work Animals Manually

As you unlock animals such as horses, make sure to assign them to work in buildings in the same way you would your population! Horses, for example, can be assigned to the Trading Post building by navigating to the building's 'Advanced' tab.

3. Defending Your Village in Manor Lords

Don't overly fret about bandits! 1 unit of Spearmen and 1 unit of Archers will be more than enough to deal with bandit raids in the first year of your village's lifespan.

Alternatively, start your first game mode in the 'Rise to Prosperity' scenario template setting to disable combat elements entirely while you get to grips with the city-building side of Manor Lords.

4. How to Get Eggs in Manor Lords

In houses built with big enough backyards, you can pay 25 Regional Wealth to get a Chicken Coop house extension. Doing so will provide a steady passive income of eggs. These eggs are a super-reliable early-game food source that will provide value for years to come, so don't underestimate those hens!

5. A Quick Management Tip

Hit tab on your keyboard for an easy visualization of where workers and livestock are located and what they are up to. This can be super helpful for spotting job vacancies in key buildings.

6. How to Choose a New Start Region in Manor Lords

Reroll your starting region by restarting on a new save if you disapprove of your starting region's resources.

Perhaps a new feature is in development that will allow you to select a starting region manually but, until then, this is the only way to get a new opener in Manor Lords. A bit clunky, but hey, it's early access after all.

7. Specialize Your Village

Build your village up to specialize in processing your local resources into artisan goods. This will ensure plenty of local jobs and a steady money supply earned via trading. The real mistake to avoid here is trying to specialize in everything all at once! Doing so will cost a ton of money for comparatively little gain.

8. Farming Tips in Manor Lords

Crop rotation is huge to maintaining a field's fertility. Make sure to cycle fields between different crop types to maintain fertility, and grow a crop of 'Fallow' once every 3 years in a field to greatly recover its fertility levels.

9. Boosting Field Fertility in Manor Lords

Furthermore, if you're struggling to maintain fertility levels in your fields, try unlocking the 'Fertilization' tech upgrade to allow fallow fields to function as pastures for livestock. Allowing livestock to graze in fallow will very rapidly boost fertility in a given field!

10. Hunting Camp Tips

Set hunting limits on your Hunting Camp buildings to ensure your hunters don't hunt entire herds of wildlife into extinction. To be clear, whatever number you set as the 'Hunting Limit' will ensure that your hunters never hunt wild animals if doing so would reduce said animals' population lower than that number.

As a bonus tip, do your best to keep your non-hunter villagers away from wildlife areas. Too much human activity will goad wildlife into migrating to safer woodland.

Hopefully, a few of these tips get you off to a juicy start in your Manor Lords adventures! For more Manor Lords guides, check out one of the articles linked below!

• How Trading Works in Manor Lords
• How to Increase Your Population in Manor Lords
• Is Manor Lords Coming to PS5?