Manor Lords has received its first major patch in version 0.7.972, with developer Slavic Magic making even more changes than were present in the beta version of the update.

Revealed on Steam, the patch includes the myriad features available to those testing the new version such as the addressing of clogged Trading Posts, weak archers, overly high ale consumption, disappearing crops, and more.

A new major feature called King’s Tax has also been added, which ultimately rewards good workers and punishes poor ones.

Slavic Magic has applied many more balance changes with the full patch too, using the testing period to fine tune different mechanics. Armor variations, a refreshed Large Granary, a new patron saint, and more were also added. The full patch notes are available below.

Players should “begin a new save to enjoy all the fixes and changes”, Slavic Magic recommended, and asked players to remove any mods before doing so to ensure a smooth gameplay experience.

Manor Lords arrived in Early Access form on April 26, 2024 and proved an immediate Steam hit, selling more than one million copies in a day and hitting the highest ever concurrent player count for a city builder. It continued to grow too, with Slavic Magic announcing Manor Lords had sold two million copies after three weeks.

The King’s Tax (or Annual Royal Tax, name undecided)

• The tax is collected annually from all players (main player and AI) and goes to the liege. It is calculated per population, serving as a counterbalance for players hoarding huge wealth despite non-optimized economies.
• Currently, players can incur debt without consequence. In the future, failure to pay will result in losing the king’s favor and eventually facing the king’s army as enemies.

Global/Local Trade Switch for Trading Posts

• Players can now switch trade to “local only” in the trading post for each type of good, allowing them to exchange goods between their own regions while ignoring free merchants.
• Two trading posts (one in each region) are still required to make this function work. Employed traders will prioritize traveling to the location with the best prices to commence trade, potentially including regions owned by other Lords.
• The transport distance factor is reduced to make it more predictable for players where traders will go (to the place with the best price).
• Regional wealth is still required to exchange goods between regions with a trading post to maintain regions as independent economic units, simulating a more realistic economy.

Resource Management and Agricultural Adjustments

• Food Consumption: People now pick a random food resource instead of eating food in a specific order.
• Crop Fertility: Fertility is no longer drained after crop growth reaches 100%, making early harvest micromanagement less necessary. Yield may still increase over 100% growth if max yield is not reached.
• Yield Cap: will now never increase past 100% growth to avoid confusion about exceeding 100%. Even when fertility reaches 0%, there will still be a small possible yield.
• Harvesting Efficiency: When harvesting, crops are directly added to the field inventory instead of the villager inventory to reduce bottlenecks from harvesting walk times, especially for large fields.
• Oxen Prioritization: Prioritized oxen plowing over transporting resources to the granary and warehouse to reduce oxen walking back and forth from the plowed field every time new resources are available for transport.
• Plowing Shed: Plowing shed now adds 2 livestock worker slots.
• Food Distribution: Food-producing residential plots no longer stock up on their produce before sharing with the marketplace.
• Sawpit Log Storage: Increased sawpit log storage space to 5.

Economic and Trade Developments

• Baron Region Claims: Lowered the rate of the Baron claiming regions and adjusted it to better reflect game settings.
• Worker Camp Upgrade: Removed the worker camp upgrade intended for colony regions; it will be re-added when properly implemented.
• Trade Route Establishment: When establishing a trade route, merchants no longer all spawn at the nearest trade point but are distributed to circle between various trade points.
• Archer Damage: Archer damage increased from 4 to 13.
• Trade Logistics Development: The “Trade Logistics” development branch now lowers the cost of new trade routes by 50% instead of clamping it at 25.
• Trade Route Costs: Increased the base cost of opening a trade route from 12 to 20 (before the good value multiplier). Reverted the cost of opening new trade routes to linear scaling.
• Market Oversupply: When the market is oversupplied, players can still export goods at a lower price. The price multiplier for oversupplied goods is now 0.75x for oversupplied and 0.5x for critically oversupplied.
• Market Oversupply Rate: The rate at which the market becomes oversupplied no longer depends on the value of goods, ensuring equal rates for all good types.
• Better Deals Development: The “Better Deals” development branch reduces the foreign import tariff by 50% instead of removing it completely.
• Global Market Supply: Tuned global market supply to rebalance itself faster, aiming for a closer to one-year cycle if not trading.

Quality of Life and Infrastructure

• Ale Consumption: Reduced ale consumption by 75% (approximately 1/3 per family per month).
• Building Placement: Made building placement steepness limits harsher to prevent trading posts and churches from looking awkward on sharp slopes.
• Soldier Approval Factor: Soldiers no longer trigger the “unburied bodies” approval factor when corpses are in their proximity.
• Hitching Post: Hitching post is free again to reduce the chances of players getting stuck without an ox, hitching post, or the ability to order an ox.
• Sheep Breeding: Capped sheep breeding to a maximum of 1 new lamb every 10 days.
• Water Fetching: Villagers are now only allowed to fetch water from the well nearest to their home, except in case of a fire.
• Maximum Yield per Plant: Increased the maximum yield per plant from 2 to 4 (Hunting Grounds policy still reduces it by half).
• Plant Yield Rate: Plant yield rate reduced by half to encourage early harvest only in emergency mode.
• Militia Squad Limit: The militia squad limit is now 6, regardless of whether the player has a retinue or mercenaries. This will be connected to a rank system in the future.
• Fertility Regeneration: Doubled the fertility regeneration rate effect on fallow fields and from fertilization.
• Plant Growth Rate: Adjusted crop growth to match crop rotation (to hit 100% at harvest as often as it can on auto).
• Tree Growth Rate: Slowed down tree growth rate by around 30% to enhance forest management impact.
• Trading Post Workers: Increased the carrying capacity of on-foot trading post workers from 1 to 5.
• Royal Tax Calculation: Royal tax is now calculated as follows: No tax for the first 5 years, 1 Treasury per citizen after 5 years, 2 Treasury per citizen after 10 years, 3 Treasury per citizen after 15 years.
• Granary and Storehouse Worker Slots: Adjusted Granary and Storehouse Worker Slots: unified to 3 families for level 1 and 6 families for level 2.

Trade and Market Adjustments

• Mindfulness System: Applied the “mindfulness” system to free merchants to reduce clumps and traffic jams.
• Trade Location: Moved the location of trades further off the map to ensure space for all trade wagons, even if the trading post is placed on the map edge.
• Trader Transactions: Allowed traders to make transactions without entering the shed if the trading post is clogged, as long as they are within the general building bounds.
• Marketplace Logistics: Improved marketplace logistics efficiency and optimization.
• Market Supply Reset: Reset market supply on loading old saves (from builds 0.7.954-0.7.956) due to mismatched global market supply stock values.
• Market Stall Workers: Capped the number of workers supplying a single market stall to 2 to reduce market clogs with the increased market supply frequency. The number of stalls is now reduced back to the number of families divided by 5, with a minimum of 1 to ensure functionality in towns with fewer than 5 families.
• Market Supply Optimization: Further optimized market supply functions for smoother late-game town performance.
• Trading Post Thumbnail: Added the missing trading post building thumbnail.
• Trading Post Price Range: Trading posts now display a price range for imports, indicating whether they can buy from other regions or foreign trade sources.

Optimization and Performance

• Default AA: Changed default AA under DX11 to TAA.
• Spatialization Update: Added a spatialization update call for recruits teleported home when rallied to ensure proper collision calculations.
• Follow Mode Optimization: Updated “is close to camera” value in follow mode to prevent optimization of animations or sound effects for characters near the camera.
• Firefighting Behavior: Made firefighting villagers ignore anti-clogging behavior at narrow pathfinding points.
• Pathfinding Updates: Minor unit in-town pathfinding updates.
• Destructible System: Swapped the old UE4 destructible system for a new UE5-friendly chaos-based debris system currently used for chopped firewood cutter logs.
• AA/Upscaler Selection: Tweaked default AA/upscaler selection during first-time launch for specific GPUs (e.g., RTX properly defaulting to DLSS).
• Pathfinding Thread: Added another pathfinding thread for handling multiple end-game cities.
• Harvest Prediction Optimization: Optimized harvest prediction and fertility changes to reduce stutter.
• Log Display: Limited the log display to store only the last 100 entries to improve UI optimization.
• Idle Task Optimization: Optimized the function for finding friends to do idle tasks like conversations.
• Door Opening Animations: Optimized door opening animations.

User Interface and Accessibility

• Mourning Period UI: The residential panel now has a “mourning period left” UI element that displays the number of days of mourning until the burgage plot can bring in more family members.
• Mourning Icon: Added mourning icon to the building floater.
• Save Restrictions: Disabled the ability to quick save during the game over/victory cinematic. Disabled manual save after being defeated and added a tooltip explaining why saves are disabled. Disabled quick save and autosave if the game was lost.
• King’s Tax Rate Multiplier: Added king’s tax rate multiplier to the game setup settings.
• Victory Camera: After continuing the game after a victory, the camera returns to the player’s main region instead of levitating over the map edge.
• Currency Icon: Unified the currency icon in the mercenary company panel to clarify payment with the treasury, not regional wealth.
• Accommodation for Homeless: Added an accommodation call for homeless people after a fire, ensuring they are quickly re-assigned to available burgage plots.
• Family List UI: Aligned “workplace/reassign” buttons vertically in the family list due to most families having more than one member.
• Font Fix: Fixed old fonts being used in the family entry widgets.
• Fertility Overlay: Made fertility overlay colors and colorblind symbols more accurate with the percentages displayed in the field’s building panel.
• Building Panel UI: Tweaked building panel header buttons/toggles to improve readability and distinguish buttons from toggles.
• Market Stalls: Set “Allow market stalls” to ON by default for all workplaces and artisan workshops to aid new players in setting up stalls without confusion.
• Popup Queue: To avoid popups like “royal tax increase” from interrupting visit mode, they are now queued and triggered after the player returns from visit mode, after around 1-2 seconds.
• Transaction Popup: When trading between regions, the transaction popup will now display over both trade buildings, depending on which is closer to the camera.
• Region Borders: Region borders will show under the cursor even if the camera is low, clarifying where region territory ends.
• Region Calculation for UI: Tuned how “current region” is calculated for the UI to make it more comfortable to build on the edge between two player-owned regions.

• Fixed a crash when doing a sequence of livestock import, export, and import because “home” wasn’t cleared properly during export, and the same animal was reimported.
• Fixed a rare crash if a handcart fails to spawn, likely if the trading post was built so that part of it crosses the map edge.
• Fixed crash on startup if OpenXr SDK is installed.
• Fixed a crash when deleting a building if there are pathfinding obstacles being verified (for instance, soon after loading a game).
• Fixed the player being able to reassign a family to another Region, which could crash the game.

Gameplay Mechanics

• Fixed victory status not resetting after starting a new game, leading to a game over screen not appearing if the player lost/won multiple games without turning the game off.
• Fixed crops dying in the winter instead of actually increasing yield by absorbing nutrients from the snow as intended for winter crops.
• Fixed oxen sometimes “ghost plowing” a field when they are waiting for their guide.
• Fixed plow and ox sometimes misaligned on 12x game speed.
• Fixed farm workers not accounting for oxen plowing the farms in some situations, leading to a lot of unnecessary collisions on the field.
• Fixed crop rotation unplowing the fields.
• Fixed disbanded mercenary group becoming immediately available again after save/load cycle.
• Fixed the trading post export transactions not moving regional wealth between the regions correctly if owned by the same lord.
• Fixed paused taverns fulfilling the entertainment requirement.
• Fixed attempt for never-ending fires if a fire was triggered after the building was already on fire.
• Fixed livestock sometimes being unaccommodated after order even though there is stable or pasture space due to being transferred to the region twice (once when buying and once when livestock merchant brings it to the building).
• Fixed livestock traders traded between on-map regions, possibly sometimes paying twice because the ownership changing function was called both on pickup of livestock and on dropoff.
• Fixed the game getting stuck on the game summary screen infinitely after winning or losing the game.
• Fixed “none” people populating the town after a raid sometimes who just stand around waiting forever and possibly crash the game while reloading.
• Fixed the employed traders going to trade points even though the trade route for the traded good is not opened yet.
• Fixed the farm workers moving to transport tasks early even though there is still plenty of crops to harvest.
• Fixed predicted yield not showing correctly in the field building panel.
• Fixed people not resetting rotation after dismounting.
• Fixed farming oxen not respecting work area limits.
• Fixed bandit camps respawning on loading because “lastBanditCampSpawnedDay” didn’t save properly.
• Fixed villagers not setting up market stalls to sell their home produce like vegetables if they are unassigned.
• Fixed granary workers stealing ale from the tavern.
• Fixed livestock exports getting interrupted by sheep herd behavior.
• Fixed livestock trader job not triggering an import task when buying livestock from another region.

Visual and Interface Fixes

• Fixed the blurry desktop icon.
• Fixed the save/load menu header not translating after changing the language.
• Fixed the front lighting not being visible in the retinue editor if bounced light approximation is turned to low or off.
• Fixed floating feedback text spawning during the cinematic mode.
• Fixed autosave triggering during the cinematic mode.
• Fixed the gilded aventail hounskull helmet appearing blurry in the retinue editor.
• Fixed the forest mask not drawing.
• Fixed the wrong yarn basket carrying animation.
• Fixed the wrong apple basket carry animation.

Economic and Resource Management

• Fixed “storage full” triggering for wrong buildings sometimes (for example, sawpit having 1/1 logs).
• Fixed attempt for oxen bringing too many logs to the sawpit and crossing the storage limit.
• Fixed free merchants sometimes got stuck if a trading post was built so close to the edge that a portion of it was outside of any region bounds.
• Fixed horse wagon rotations getting a bit too wonky on slopes.
• Fixed a bug where a unit could no longer move due to being forever stuck in “waiting for pathfinding to finish” if another unit with a lower squadID got completely destroyed.
• Fixed traders not importing from on-map regions even though the price is better than buying from trade points.
• Fixed farm workers & farm oxen stealing planks from fields which are getting “fenced up.”
• Fixed “homeless” problem banner not disappearing after upgrading homeless camp to a worker camp.
• Fixed animals not getting removed from stable space / pasture space after death.
• Fixed animal corpses not disappearing over time.
• Fixed a dirty fix for families moving into homes but not registering correctly and not displaying in the UI, leading to a “secret” family living in one of the burgage plots. The reason is still unknown and being investigated.
• Fixed wealth getting transferred when doing barter.
• Fixed bartering traders always return 1 item regardless of the barter value and carrying capacity.
• Fixed bartering traders packing too much stuff in their origin region when barter value is more than 1x.
• Fixed trading post exports not proceeding with transactions once the trader reaches the destination.
• Fixed multiple markets sometimes distributing multiple instances of the same good type to a plot, for instance, a single plot would “eat” 2 leather, leaving houses on the outskirts forever undersupplied.
• Fixed crop rotation to fallow causing farmers to harvest itemID_0, which was invisible in the UI and stopped supply dumps from being cleared because they were never considered as fully empty.
• Fixed farmers getting stuck in pickup-putdown handcart loop when multiple farms are used.
• Fixed unnecessary harvest data recalculations triggering in the winters.
• Fixed a bug with trading between regions where during selling items the wrong region would pay for the transaction.
• Fixed free merchants not applying the foreign import tariff when selling their goods to trading posts if another region was exporting the traded good for a lower price.
• Fixed trade wagons sometimes traveling with empty inventory.
• Fixed traders doing “major trades” even without an established trade route.
• Fixed workers ignoring storage filter settings.
• Fixed the “current year” always incrementing in January, regardless of the month the game was started in, also leading to the tax being calculated inconsistently [fix for new saves only].
• Fixed market supply percentages not displaying correctly because it still accounted for uninhabited homes.
• Fixed a bug with workers not setting up market stalls if there are less than 5 families in the settlement.
• Fixed squad icons disappearing/flickering when disbanding certain squads.
• Fixed export price showing even though trade is locked because there’s no trade route established and no interregional trade available.
• Fixed foreign market supply incrementing instead of decrementing when off-map trade was being done by trading post workers.
• Fixed disband/remove squad sometimes affecting wrong squads if multiple squads are selected when pressing “disband” or “remove”.
• Fixed “Not enough funds for import” warning displaying even though there is enough.
• Fixed apiaries leaving invisible items in supply dumps after demolition.

New Additions and Visual Upgrades

• Added a new patron saint banner graphics: St Maurice.
• Added a carried dead body visualization.
• New upgraded retinue helmet variation: Pointy bascinet.
• New upgraded retinue body variation: Coat of plates.
• New upgraded retinue helmet variation: Hounskull bascinet with a gilded cover.
• New militia helmet variation – banded bascinet with a mail aventail.
• Reworked LV2 granary model with proper animated doors.
• Added new 6 “short” attack animations to reduce animation repetitiveness during combat.
• Added new “inch forward” battle locomotion animations which should greatly reduce the weird “wiggling” effect when groups push each other.
• Lady visit mode: If you pick the green lady portrait, the visit mode character should now be female.

Animation and Model Adjustments

• Combat animation clean up.
• Made debris piles align to ground slope.
• Fixed the throw torch animation ending abruptly.
• Increased location precision for animals standing in the stables.
• Fixed the praying animation.
• Adjusted the two-handed weapon default idle pose to give it a more natural stance.
• Improved the precision for snapping terraforming meshes (like mines or sawpits) to ground.
• Made leaf clumps smaller and disabled the parallax mapping since it caused distortions and wasn’t very visible anyway.
• Tuned field dirt UV wiggle to make those huge vegetable gardens players were making less wavy.

Fixes and Adjustments

• Fixed the armor clipping through the leg of the upgraded retinue puffy sleeve upon body variation.
• Fixed some mail armor variants clipping with helmets on T3 militia units (militia mail will get their own unique variations soon).
• Fixed the wrong door orientation for LV2 cottage variation B (with a planked gable).
• Fixed the TAB building floater residential data not showing in 0.7.969.
• Fixed a potential bug when a family assigned to a smithy is unassigned while a family member is rallied, and the function that unequips their smithing aprons may, by mistake, unequip their body armor or/and helmet.
• Fixed player army UI not getting updated after squad array changes because of non-player commanded units getting removed.
• Fixed recruit distribution sometimes assigning new militia recruits to an invalid unit

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.