A New Beginning Final Cut Walkthrough
Clara Vanliere
Not sure how to get started in Manor Lords? It's a common complaint. I'm of the opinion that solo developer Slavic Magic has made a rather special city-builder with Manor Lords, but it has to be said that the game can be pretty obtuse and confusing at times.
If you're itching to build your own town in Manor Lords but you're not sure where to begin or whether you're doing things right, that's where we hope to help you. In this beginner's guide, I will walk you through your first year in Manor Lords, handling everything from the initial few buildings and family assignments to big projects like food production, building your first Church and Manor, and surviving your first Winter. At the end, I'll also leave you with some key objectives for you to prepare for in Year 2.
Note: for this walkthrough, I'll assume that you've chosen the default starting scenario: "Restoring The Peace". But no matter which scenario you choose, this guide should help you through the basics of setting up your town.
When you first load into the world, immediately pause the game and take a look around your region of the map. You should see a few key resources: Berries and Wild Animals will be the most important, as they're your early-game food sources. There may also be Stone, Iron, and Clay, which you won't have to worry about for a while, but it's good to note their whereabouts ahead of time.
All of the buildings except the Logging Camp and Woodcutter's Lodge should be near the centre of where you'd like your village to be. The Logging Camp should be placed near a forest, but make sure it isn't too close to any Wild Animals. I personally like to place down a Woodcutter's Lodge early on as well so it's ready when I need it, but it's not necessary. If you do place one now, you should ideally place it near a different patch of trees to your Logging Camp.
With the game still paused, start hashing out a basic road network. Roads in Manor Lords are completely free and instantly built, so it's always a good idea to build them at the start of the game while paused.
The general idea with these starting roads is to connect all your starting buildings to each other, while also leaving large-ish gaps for Burgage Plots and other buildings later on. It's particularly important to make sure your Population (and Oxen) have road access from the Logging Camp to the rest of your village, because the Logging Camp is where you store all the Timber you need for constructing new buildings.
It's time to unpause the game and let your villagers build those starting buildings you placed down. Feel free to speed up the game or slow it down with the buttons in the bottom-right (hotkeys: Z and X).
Once your Logging Camp is built, click on it and assign 2 families to it immediately. They'll start chopping wood for more Timber, and meanwhile your other 3 families will continue building.
Once your Storehouse and Granary are built, assign 1 family each to them, to start storing resources so they don't get ruined when it starts to rain. Your one remaining family can deal with the rest of the building for now, but if need be you can take one extra family off the Logging Camp to help out.
The extra benefit of assigning families to work in the Storehouse and Granary is that you'll quickly get Food and Firewood Stalls set up in your Marketplace. You'll need these Stalls to keep your people happy after setting them up in Burgage Plots in Step 5.
The type of food production you set up first really depends on which food source is closer to your village: the Berries, or the Wild Animals. In my playthrough the berries were nearby, so I set up a Forager Hut in the wood right next to the Berry bushes.
But if Wild Animals are in a better spot for you, then I'd recommend building a Hunting Camp near them instead. You don't need both food sources immediately, so just pick whichever is more convenient.
Once your chosen building (Forager Hut or Hunting Camp) is built, set a family working there, but make sure you still have one family free for building. To recap: your families should now have the following work:
All this time, your families have been living in their starting tents, and you may have noticed your Approval Rating starting to decline next to the thumbs up arrow at the top of your screen. The solution is to start building Burgage Plots, which are where your families live in Manor Lords.
We'd highly recommend you build your first 3 or so Burgage Plots so that they have extra Living Space Extensions (depicted by the icon of the house with the plus sign). As you'll know if you've read our Manor Lords tips and tricks guide, Living Space Extensions allow you to expand your population more easily, with less overall cost to your Burgage Plots.
One thing that really slows down a lot of new players in the early game is that they rely heavily on their one starting Ox to ferry all that Timber to and fro. But you can easily double that workrate by ordering another Ox! To do this, just click on your Htiching Post (which you begin the game with), and click the "Order Another Ox" button. It costs 20x Regional Wealth out of your total 50, but it's a worthwhile investment.
However, you also need to build another Hitching Post, because each Hitching Post can only handle one Ox. It's a good idea to build multiple Hitching Posts anyway, so that your Oxen are spread across your settlement and can do transport jobs more quickly. I placed mine pretty much in the centre of my town, and I suggest you do something similar.
You should now have 3 Burgage Plots set up, but that still means 2 out of your 5 families are stuck in your starting tents. You can build more Burgage Plots (and indeed, that's the next step), but it's even quicker to make use of those Living Space Extensions you built into your first Plots.
Your overall goal is to expand your town and take over the map, but your smaller goals should really be dictated by your settlement levels. Hover over your settlement name at the top of the screen and you'll see the requirements needed to upgrade to the next settlement level. In our case, we need 5 Burgage Plots, so let's build the other two now.
Remember to keep your Burgage Plots fairly close to your Well and Marketplace as they're important for your Approval Rating; and it's also a good idea to keep them close-ish to the Storehouse, Granary, and Logging Camp.
I also took this opportunity to flesh out my settlement's road system a bit more. Now that the starting supply areas and tents were gone, I could afford to be a little neater and more efficient with road placement.
The moment your fifth Burgage Plot is built, you'll enter a new settlement level: the Small Village. And you'll get a shiny new Development Point, to pop wherever you like in the Development Upgrades tech tree. Open up the tree by clicking on the settlement name at the top of the screen.
We'd recommend you put your first Development Point into Trade Logistics. It's a fantastic early-game tech which will make setting up trade routes much, much less expensive. We'll be starting up our Trade network very soon in Step 11, so it's a good time to get Trade Logistics.
Now that you've eliminated homelessness, your Approval Rating should start creeping up above 50%. As long as it's above 50% and you have empty Burgage Plots, you will periodically get new families joining your village. Which is great, because at the moment we're basically using all our families already.
Whenever your next few families arrive, you should assign them to build a second food production building for whichever food source you haven't already got (Berries or Wild Animals), and start a family working there the moment it's built.
Your next family to arrive at the settlement should go towards building a Sawpit near your Logging Camp and working there to start making Planks. And your next family after that can start working in the Woodcutter's Lodge for Firewood production.
It's time to build your first Trading Post. Traders come from off the edge of the map; there are little icons off the map edge to tell you where they spawn. Try to build your Trading Post fairly close to the edge of the map, connected to the main road.
Trade is very important in Manor Lords. It's the easiest and earliest way to get lots of Regional Wealth, which you'll need for expanding and upgrading your town. Once it's built, have a look at all your resources in the Trade tab to see if you have any large surpluses of resources.
In my case, I had an awful lot of Berries - enough to feed my village for 35 months, which is rather more than I need. So I started selling my Berries until I was down to just 100 of them, which is still more than enough for the time being.
This isn't really a step, but at around this point of your playthrough, you may see your first Bandit Camps arise elsewhere on the map. These bandits may periodically steal some resources from your village. There's nothing you can do about this until you start building up an army and taking them out, which we'd recommend you wait until Year 2 to do. So it's not a big issue for now, it's just something to keep in mind going forward!
It may be a strange time to think of Clothing in the summer months, but winter will be on us soon. I recommend taking this time to start producing Leather, so that when winter arrives you'll be able to start making Shoes.
You'll have started getting a few Hides from your Hunting Lodge, but it's good to get more, and closer to home. Take a couple of Burgage Plots with Backyard Extension Slots, and build some Goat Sheds there (or just one if you don't yet have the Regional Wealth for it). These will provide a steady supply of Hides for your village.