In Manor Lords, Development Points are powerful upgrades that can be unlocked whenever a settlement levels up. Choosing the right Development Points allows you to specialize your settlement's economy and enhance your ability to collect resources, trade, and wage war. However, with so many excellent upgrades, knowing how to spend your Development Points wisely is crucial to success.

To unlock Development Points, you need to level up your settlement. Raising your settlement's level involves building and upgrading Burgage Plots, allowing you to house additional villager families and increase your settlement's population. Upgrading Burgage Plots involves building essential infrastructure such as a Well, Church, and Marketplace to meet your villagers' basic needs. Each time your settlement's level increases, you unlock one Development Point.

7 Trade Logistics

Establish A Network Of Trade Routes

Once your settlement has some basic infrastructure, you should survey the area surrounding your settlement. Your settlement will have access to certain resources, such as wild animals and berries, or minerals, such as iron, but may lack access to others. A great way to obtain these resources is to build a Trading Post and establish Trade Routes.

However, although you can trade for some basic resources without setting up Trade Routes, others require establishing permanent Trade Routes using Regional Wealth. Traveling merchants will then visit your settlement to sell that resource to your villagers.

Regional Wealth is a currency in Manor Lords obtained from upgraded Burgage Plots and trade. It is separate from the funds in your settlement's Treasury.

With the Trade Logistics upgrade, the cost of establishing new Trade Routes is capped at 25 Regional Wealth. Setting up Trade Routes for basic resources such as Stone is relatively cheap, but Trade Routes for other items such as plate armor, weapons, and tools can often cost much more. For example, establishing a Trade Route for Leather costs 36 Regional Wealth, while establishing a Trade Route for plate armor costs 144 Regional Wealth.

By capping the cost of new Trade Routes, you immediately gain a trading advantage: your settlement will have more Regional Wealth to spend on imports. It's an essential upgrade that allows you to set up a thriving trade network to bring wealth to your settlement.

6 Better Deals

Turn Trade To Your Advantage

Trade Logistics makes establishing Trade Routes much cheaper but doesn't reduce the cost of importing resources. Trade is an excellent way to obtain any resources your local region lacks, but it's worth noting that imports always cost significantly more than exports. Even essential crops such as Flax, Wheat, and Rye can cost 12 Regional Wealth per unit to import while only selling for 2 Regional Wealth when exported.

Import prices in Manor Lords always cost 10 Regional Wealth more than export prices.

Spending a Development Point on the Better Deals upgrade rebalances trade in your favor by reducing all import costs by 10 Regional Wealth. This effect can seem insignificant on paper, but Better Deals effectively rebalances the game's whole trade economy by equalizing export and import prices on all resources. Resources are now cheaper to import, making it much easier for you to purchase the resources you need for your town to prosper. By exporting the right resources, you can even start to make some easy money in Manor Lords.

Using a Development Point on Better Deals has beneficial effects throughout the game. Initially, your settlement benefits from trading for fairer prices. Later in the game, when raising a militia to go to war, weapons, and armor can be traded for much better prices.

5 Charcoal Burning

Increase Your Fuel Efficiency

One of the first things you should learn in Manor Lords is the importance of Food and Fuel. Your villagers need both to survive, and you can even check how many months' worth of supplies you have stockpiled, showing how your settlement is progressing. Initially, your settlement will depend on Firewood produced at a Woodcutter's Lodge for Fuel. Having a steady supply of Firewood is crucial to surviving your first winter, when the Fuel requirements of your villagers double, placing additional strain on your resources.

By spending a Development Point to unlock Charcoal Burning, you can build the Charcoal Kiln building to process Firewood into Charcoal at a 1:2 rate. This effectively doubles your Fuel efficiency, giving you double the Fuel resources as long as your Charcoal Kiln has Firewood to process.

To improve processing speed, it's a good idea to place buildings that share or process the same resources close to each other. You can even remove or reroute roads in Manor Lords to make this easier.

Having the Charcoal Kiln also quickly becomes essential for any settlement with significant industry, such as the following buildings:

• The Bloomery processes Iron Ore into Iron Slabs.
• The Smithy processes iron slabs into tools.
• The Clay Furnace processes Clay into Clay Tiles.
• The Malthouse processes Barley into Malt.

All of these buildings must be refueled once a month. Having a Charcoal Kiln to produce Charcoal is vital to keeping your industrial buildings working and producing resources.

4 Beekeeping

Establish A Sweeter Source Of Food

One of the biggest challenges is ensuring your villagers have enough food. There are many different ways to get more food in Manor Lords, but due to seasonal changes, resource depletion, and regional variation, you will have to find more than one steady food source. Most food sources are limited in some way; for example, Hunting Camps can actually hunt wild animals to extinction, Berries can't be gathered during the winter, and crops and Bread require lots of new infrastructure.

As such, it's highly recommended that you avoid putting all your eggs in one basket and establish a food supply based on multiple sources. The Beekeeping upgrade is an excellent choice for this reason. Once unlocked, you can build up to two Apiaries in a single region to produce Honey. Your Approval may also rise, as villagers like having more than one food source available.

You can also take Advanced Beekeeping, which allows Apiaries to produce both Wax and Honey.

Honey also gives you another resource to trade, allowing you to save essential resources for your people. However, the importance of the Beekeeping upgrade depends on the resources available in your local region. If you have lots of Berries nearby, then the Forest Management upgrade may be a better choice for your food supply in the long term. Beekeeping is best suited to regions with limited food resources.

Manor Lords is currently in Early Access, so many Development Point upgrades still cannot be unlocked. The Beekeeping upgrade tree has several unimplemented upgrades.

3 Deep Mining

Maintain Rich Mineral Deposits Indefinitely

Many resources in Manor Lords can be depleted, including deposits of Iron and Clay. In the long term, you need to expand into other regions or start trading for Iron and Clay once your local deposits are used up. However, you can upgrade your Mining Pits into Deep Mines by spending a Development Point to unlock Deep Mining. Deep Mines can extract resources from any Rich Deposits indefinitely, allowing you to continue working them without worrying about resource depletion.

Clay can be processed into Rooftiles needed for advanced building upgrades, including for your Burgage Plots, while Iron is used for a wide variety of items including tools and weapons. As such, it's worth taking the Deep Mining upgrade if your settlement is particularly close to any Rich Deposits of Iron and Clay. In these cases, you'll likely want your settlement to specialize in mining and industry. Supplying raw resources that can't be depleted is incredibly useful.

Future updates of Manor Lords will likely introduce new Development Point upgrades, so you may need to be more selective about spending Development Points and specializing in the future. However, as of writing, fewer upgrades are available, so less specialization is needed.

2 Trapping

Increase Your Supply Of Meat

The Trapping upgrade is important for all the same reasons as Beekeeping: multiple and diverse food sources will keep your population alive and happy. Meat is typically a staple food resource for most players, as it's generally easy to find and doesn't disappear in winter like Berries. As such, any upgrade that allows your Hunting Camps to supply extra meat is a high priority.

With trapping, hunters will skillfully lay traps to produce a ive income from meat, supplementing the meat you get from hunting wild animals. It's worth noting that wild animals are considered a resource, just like Berries, and can be depleted by overhunting, so having a ive income from Meat goes a long way toward fighting starvation.

Hunting Camps have controls that allow you to set limits on hunting, including forcing villagers to stop hunting once the wild animal population drops below a certain point.

It's also helpful to have a food surplus, as Churches can take a monthly tithe of food and convert it into Influence. Getting Influence in Manor Lords is key, as you need it to lay claim to new regions, establish new settlements, and declare war.

1 Heavy Plow

Unlock The Full Potential Of Farmlands And Fields

To set up crop fields in Manor Lords, you need to check the local soil's fertility for crops before asg multiple families to plow, sow, maintain, and harvest over many months. It's a slow and labor-intensive process when done by hand, making the Heavy Plow upgrade crucial. With it, you can build the Plowing Station upgrade on Farmhouses, allowing Oxen to work the fields.

With Oxen working your farms, plowing takes less time, and harvested crops are moved to safe storage much faster. This provides you with space and peace of mind, knowing that your fields will safely be plowed, sown, and harvested before winter sets in.

Crops such as Flax, Wheat, and Barley can all be processed into important resources, including Flour (used for baking Bread), Linen for clothing, and Malt (used for brewing Ale to keep your settlement's Tavern running). Crops and farms are important in Manor Lords, and the Heavy Plow upgrade is the key to making farming efficient and productive.