Best Development Points to unlock first in Manor Lords
How to spend your first 5 development points wisely.
Want to know the best development points to unlock first in Manor Lords? Development Points are essential for building up your settlement and giving you new skills and capabilities in Manor Lords, but deciding what to spend them on can be tricky when there are so many options to choose from. You only get a new Development Point when you increase your settlement level, so making the most of this precious currency is crucial to running a successful, efficient town.
So read on below for some tips and guidance on how best to spend your development points in Manor Lords to make sure you get the most out of your early hours.
Best Development Points in Manor Lords
To access your Development Point menu, simply click the name of your town at the top of the screen. Mine is called Zweiau, but your town name will be whatever you called it when you first started your game.
The Development Point menu works in a similar way to skill trees you might find an RPG. You have a small selection of options available to you at the start - the ones branching out from your town name in the centre - and investing in these will then unlock additional features further up the chain.
It's important to note that not all Development Points are available as part of Manor Lord's early access release. These development points have a padlock symbol on them, and will likely only be available in the final 1.0 release of the game.
Still, there are plenty of good options to choose from here, and to help get you started, we've chosen 5 of the best development points you should consider to help jumpstart your village:
1. Trapping
Enables hunters to skillfully lay traps in the forest, which give a passive income of Meat.
You'll need to build a Hunting Camp to get the most out of this development point, but having a steady supply of Meat to build up your food reserves is vital for staving off hunger and unhappy citizens during the long winter months. Berries - your early source of food - will stop growing when the snow comes, so finding an alternative food source should be one of your top priorities early on.
2. Charcoal Burning
New buildling: Charcoal Kiln
Charcoal kilns convert 1 firewood into 2 charcoal, making refuelling twice as efficient.
This unlocks the Charcoal Kiln building, which allows you to make charcoal and improve the efficiency of your fuel supply - and by the time you've got two development points and upgraded your settlement to a Medium Village, you'll have plenty of building options in your Industry menu that need to be constantly refuelled in order to continue working. These include the Bloomery for making Iron Slabs, the Smithy for getting Tools, and the Malthouse for turning Barley into Malt (which you'll need for making Ale for your Tavern). Therefore, the more efficient your fuel is, the further your resources will go when it comes to production.
3. Heavy Plow
New upgrade: Add a Plowing Station
Enables employing Oxen at the Farmhouse for significantly faster plowing of large fields, as well as bringing crops back to storage more efficiently.
As your town grows, so do the number of hungry bellies you'll need to feed, and you'll soon need to start thinking about how to stretch your food reserves even further. Berries and Meat will cover a small to medium village, but when you're dealing with larger numbers, you'll need to start thinking about setting up a farm - and so what better way to spend your next development point than giving it an Oxen to help speed things up a bit?
4. Foreign Suppliers
New building: Firewood Cart
A permanent market stall, which provides a passive income of Firewood, as long as the region has enough Regional Wealth. Region does not pay the Transport Fee. Must be placed on the Marketplace.
New building: Food Cart
A permanent market stall, which provides a passive income of Bread, as long as the region has enough Regional Wealth. Region does not pay the Transport Fee. Much be placed on the Marketplace.
This development point gets you two new buildings, which once again reinforce your ability to feed your growing population and keep your buildings running smoothly. Since they require a steady stream of Regional Wealth, we'd also recommend brushing up on how to trade in Manor Lords at this point, as exporting surplus goods will help keep your coffers nice and healthy.
5. Deep Mining
New Upgrade: Upgrade to a Deep Mine
Enables the building to extract resources indefinitely if placed over a rich deposit.
You'll need to have unlocked Charcoal Burning to access this development point, but if you've got a rich deposit of Stone or Clay in your region, then this is going to be an essential upgrade. It means you'll never run out of resources from these deposits, giving you a permanent supply of stone and clay to turn into other materials and goods.
Of course, these are just our personal picks for which development points to unlock first, so if you have different strategies and priorities you'd like to share, please do tell us about them in the comments below.
Likewise, if you need more help getting started with Manor Lords, find out what to do first in our beginner's tips and tricks guide, as well as how to level up your Burgage Plots so you can speed through the different settlement levels to earn yourself more development points.