Howdy Folks,

I come bearing good news!

We're excited to announce the release of a new experimental branch for Manor Lords, version 0.7.965. This experimental update brings significant gameplay changes and numerous improvements.

Important Notice: Before you switch to the new beta version of the game, it's absolutely crucial that you back up your save files. Failing to do so could result in the potential loss of your progress. The new strings are not localized yet and stability hasn't yet been thoroughly tested. Some balancing changes are still experimental.

To access your saves on Steam for Manor Lords.

1. Press Win + E

2. Paste %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\ManorLords\Saved\SaveGames into the search bar.

To discuss this build, please join the official Discord server You'll find a channel for discussing the ongoing pre_release branch.

You can read Slavic Magic's full Steam announcement

How to Access the Experimental Branch:

1. Open Steam

2. Right-click on Manor Lords in your library

3. Select Properties

4. Navigate to the BETAS tab

5. Enter the password: veryNiceBasket

6. Select "pre_release" from the "Beta participation" dropdown

7. Wait for the game to update (restart Steam if needed)

8. Launch the game

Full Changelog for Version 0.7.960 -> 0.7.965

What's inside:

This update focuses primarily on balancing and bugfixes. Key changes include:

• Militia Squads: You can now hire 6 militia squads even if you already have a retinue and mercenaries employed. Future builds will connect this cap to the Lord's rank.

• Sheep Breeding: The sheepbreeding development branch has been capped, and sheep no longer spawn exponentially.

• Fields, Harvests, and Fertility: Significant improvements have been made to field overlays, crop prediction, and ox and worker behavior for enhanced accuracy and optimization.

• Barter and Trading: Numerous fixes implemented; on-foot traders can now carry 5 items per trip.

• King's Tax and Trade Route Costs: These have been toned down from the levels introduced in version 0.7.960.

• Loserville Bug: Fixed the "Loserville" mercenary bug.

• Marketplace Distribution: Improvements made to the distribution within the marketplace.

• Experimental Feature: Added a "Allow market stall setup" toggle to prevent workers/inhabitants of certain buildings from setting up market stalls.

• Construction Reserve: You can now set a construction reserve for buildings using planks for crafting, like the Joiner's shop.

Gameplay & Balance:

• Capped sheep breeding to 1 new lamb every 10 days max.

• [Experimental] Villagers are only allowed to fetch water from the well nearest their home, except in case of a fire.

• [Experimental] Yield will never increase past 100% growth to keep gameplay intuitive.

• [Experimental] Even at 0% fertility, a tiny yield is still possible.

• [Experimental] Max yield per plant increased from 2 to 4, although the Hunting Grounds policy still reduces it by half.

• [Experimental] Plant yield rate reduced by half to encourage early harvest in emergency modes.

• The militia squad limit is now 6, regardless of retinue or mercenaries employed; future connection to the Lord's rank planned.

• [Experimental] Doubled the fertility regeneration rate on fallow fields and from fertilization.

• [Experimental] Slowed all plant growth by around 30% for balanced gameplay between field and vegetable crops.

• [Experimental] Tree growth rate slowed by around 30% upon player requests for more impactful forest management.

• [Experimental] Archer range increased by 1.5x with damage also increased from 12 to 15.

• [Experimental] Cost of opening new trade routes returned to linear scaling.

• [Experimental] Carrying capacity of on-foot trading post workers increased from 1 to 5.

• [Experimental] Royal tax restructured: No tax for the first 5 years, then 1 Treasury per citizen after 5 years, 2 Treasury per citizen after 10 years, 3 Treasury per citizen after 15 years.

• [Experimental] Adjusted granary and storehouse worker slots to unify to 3 families for lv1 and 6 families for lv2.

Minor Changes:

• Removed optimization where only every nth plant affected the fertility values due to display errors.

• Improved accuracy of fertility overlay colors and crop yield predictions.

• Added missing tooltips to minor/major trades.

• Enabled setting "trade rule" for advanced trades without an established route; items not available will show as NA.

• Reworked the construction reserve system to include various goods like planks.

• Optimized inventory array functions.

• Enabled disallowing certain families or workplaces from setting up market stalls.

• Tuned how "current region" is calculated in the UI for more comfortable building on the edge between two player-owned regions.

• Ensured iron and clay deposits do not generate on steep terrains.

• "MODDED" may now display after the version number to aid bug reporting.

Crash Fixes:

• Fixed a crash related to deleting a building when pathfinding obstacles are being verified.

Bug Fixes:

• Addressed issues with employed traders going to trade points without an open trade route.

• Corrected early movement of farm workers to transport tasks despite available crops.

• Resolved inaccurate predicted yield displays.

• Fixed rotation issues in villagers after dismounting.

• Addressed respect of work area limits by farming oxen.

• Fixed blurry appearance of gilded aventail houndskull helmets in the retinue editor.

• Corrected non-drawing of the forest mask.

• Fixed bandit camps respawning on loading due to unsaved "lastBanditCampSpawnedDay."

• Ensured villagers set up market stalls to sell their produce like vegetables.

• Corrected the wrong apple basket carry animation.

• Fixed wealth transfer issues during barter.

• Ensured bartering traders return the correct number of items based on barter value and carrying capacity.

• Addressed overpacking by bartering traders in their origin region.

• Resolved trading post exports not proceeding after the trader reaches the destination.

• Corrected the distribution of multiple instances of the same good type to a single plot, which left outlying houses undersupplied.

• Fixed crop rotation to fallow causing farmers to harvest invisible itemID_0, which stopped supply dumps from being cleared.

• Addressed issues with villagers staying at homes indefinitely if a bandit camp is spawned, thinking the region is under attack.

• Ensured proper saving of mercenary company arrival regions.

• Stopped granary workers from stealing ale from the tavern.

• Fixed interrupted livestock exports due to sheep herd behavior.

• Ensured livestock trader jobs trigger import tasks when buying livestock from another region.

• Corrected the missing "hunger" popup artwork.

• Fixed a typo in the credits list.

Cosmetics:

• Tuned field dirt UV wiggle to make the huge vegetable gardens less wavy.

• Improved the precision for snapping terraforming meshes like mines or sawpits to the ground.

• Made leaf clumps smaller and disabled the parallax mapping to reduce distortions.

• [WIP] Updated the visit mode character model for the green lady portrait to be female, still in progress.

• Cleaned up combat animations.

Thank you for playing!

Greg Styczeń, Lead Developer, Slavic Magic