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Manor Lords News

Manor Lords just got discounted to its cheapest Steam price yet

There are few games that have come out this year and attracted quite as much attention as Manor Lords. The debut from lone developer Slavic Magic, Manor Lords may still be in Early Access, but it's already one of the most extensive medieval life simulators to date, even unfinished. With settlement building systems like those found in Frostpunk 2 or Cities: Skylines 2, army management in the style of a less involved Total War: Medieval, and battles reminiscent of Mount and Blade 2: Bannerlord, the game is an ambitiously and already successfully realized vision. And now's the perfect time to play it for yourself as it's just received a substantial discount that lowers it to its cheapest price on Steam yet.


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Hooded Horse is having a Steam publisher sale, with discounts on Manor Lords, Against The Storm and many more

Indie publisher Hooded Horse have been on a roll of late, publishing wonderful strategy games like Manor Lords, Against The Storm and Cataclismo. Good news, then, that they're currently running a publisher sale over on Steam where those games and many others in their library are discounted.


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[Update 3 - 0.8.004] Fishing, Butchers, Crossbows, Unreal Engine 5 & Bug Fixes

A new patch has been released to the main branch, combining the work from two prior beta patches. Below is a brief summary of the most significant changes and a full changelog right below it.

Note: The new patch is available on the main branch. If you participated in the pre_release, please remember to set "betas" to "none" to access the update. We recommend starting a new save with the new patch, regardless if you participated in the beta or not.

Mods: Please remove any mods you have before beginning a new save to ensure you can play without interference from an outdated mod.

To discuss the patch, please join the official Manor Lords Discord server.

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Key Updates in 0.8.004
[h2]Unreal Engine 5[/h2]
  • The game has been successfully upgraded to Unreal Engine 5, addressing multiple stability and performance issues, including random crashes during loading screens and resolution changes.
  • Improved visuals with new volumetric clouds, a virtual shadow map system for sharper shadows, and enhanced performance through GPU-based LOD handling for instanced components.
[h2]New Gameplay Features[/h2]
  • Fishing System: Fishing ponds may now spawn on the map with a new resource node, Shoal of Fish. Fishermen can now fish at the Fisherman’s Hut, and fish multiply during spring months. Be careful of overfishing as ponds freeze in winter, and a new Winter Fishing branch can be unlocked to extend fishing year-round.
  • Butchers & Food Spoilage: Butchers can now turn surplus livestock into meat, and a new spoilage system has been introduced. Foods like fish spoil faster than bread, and new Salt Deposits can be used to make sausages to reduce spoilage.
  • Crossbows & Huntsmen Mercenaries: Crossbows can now be crafted at the Bowyer’s Workshop and equipped by militia and The Huntsmen, a new ranged mercenary unit.
  • Production Limits & Reserves: Set production limits for different workplaces and reserves for prioritizing specific resources, such as shields or bows.
[h2]Performance & Optimizations[/h2]
  • Significant CPU optimizations for late-game scenarios, making large cities run smoother.
  • Reduced stutter and improved load times for large save files.
  • Multiple optimizations for crowd animations, pathfinding, unit rotations, and rendering of surface checks to further improve performance.
[h2]Balance Changes & Bug Fixes[/h2]
  • Advanced Pondkeeping was introduced to increase pond capacity and limit overfishing.
  • Various balance adjustments to resource node spawning, deposit management, and food spoilage rates.
  • Fixed several crashes and bugs, including deer behavior issues, villagers ignoring storage filters, and certain game-breaking edge cases related to saved games and building placement.

[h2]To the Manor Lords Community:[/h2]
Thank you for your continued support and for playing Manor Lords. We'd appreciate it if you could share your feedback through a Steam review — your feedback is invaluable in shaping the game and letting us know how you feel about it.

Greg Styczeń,
Lead Developer, Slavic Magic
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[h2]The Hooded Horse Publisher Sale is here![/h2]
Manor Lords is 30% off in the Hooded Horse Publisher Sale, running until October 10th! You can also find discounts on great strategy titles like Against the Storm, Breachway, Terra Invicta, and more.


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Manor Lords Patch Notes - Version 0.8.004

[Beta Patch - 0.8.002] Open Beta Update

Hi all,

A small patch with several bugfixes was published to the BETA branch (pre_release).

We decided to postpone the main branch patch longer than I ever wanted cause of several reports that the UE5 build either crashes or performs worse than UE4.

We spent a ton of effort trying to investigate those reports and tested the game on over 40 PCs with different configs, could not find any pattern and in fact couldn't find any proof that the new patches perform worse.

In our crash investigations we found the following:
-Players forget they had mods installed, deleting the all mod traces fixes it.
-Players overclock their CPUs or GPUs (in cases of 13th and 14th gen Intel CPUs instability happens even with factory settings). Downclocking fixes it.
-Players set FPS to unlimited and/or settings too high and overheat their GPUs. For instance players report that limiting framerate, changing AA to FXAA or putting the laptop into a lower peformance mode fixes the crashes for them.
-Players using old GPU drivers. Installing newest drivers fixed it.
-One crash according to the player was fixed by him simply restarting his PC
-One crash according to the player was fixed by uninstalling the game, removing all leftover files and installing it again

Some players suspected the Steam update process itself. We were unable to confirm it but a possible fix might include deleting all settings files in C:\Users\ \AppData\Local\ManorLords\Saved\Config\Windows and turning off steam cloud, letting them regenerate on boot.

There are some unexplainable GPU crashes that we can't find pattern for, which look very much like GPU overheating and losing stability. It's starting to block the development of the game so it will no longer be the top priority, however, we will continue looking.

Saves: If you're new to the beta, to avoid any potential issues, it’s recommended that you back up your saved files before switching to a beta version.

Mods: Please remove any mods you have before beginning a new save to ensure you can play without interference from an outdated mod.
[h3]To find your saves on Steam for Manor Lords.[/h3]
  • Press Win + E
  • Paste %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\ManorLords\Saved\SaveGames into the search bar.
To try the BETA, please follow these steps:
  • Open Steam
  • Right-click on Manor Lords in your library
  • Select Properties
  • Go to the BETAS tab
  • Enter the password: veryNiceBasket
  • Choose "pre_release" from the "Beta participation" drop-down list
  • Wait for the game to update the files (if nothing happens, restart the Steam client)
  • Launch the game
All new strings might not be localized yet, and stability hasn't yet been thoroughly tested. Some balancing changes are still experimental.
To discuss this, please join the official Discord server https://discord.gg/manorlords. You'll find a channel specifically for discussing the ongoing pre_release branch.

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Changelog Version 0.7.999 -> 0.8.002


Minor changes:
-Changed the season tooltip to display the current year instead of years survived, as well as the day of the month
-Changed the Animal Pen upgrade icon to reflect the new animal choices (Beta)
-Traders will continue working when sick until they reach home region again

Audio:
-Added pig sound effects (Beta)

Crashfixes:
-Fixed a crash when deer were startled off-map (Beta)
-Fixed a crash when the baron loots one of the bandit camps (beta)

Bugfixes:
-Fixed resources retrieved from the bandit camp being able to land in a pond, leading to the bandits possibly trying to loot them, not being able to get into the pond to get them and clog pathfinding, resulting in pathfinding for squads not working or being laggy
-Fixed Tavernkeepers transporting Ale back to the Granary if it exceeds 85% of the Pantry limit
-Fixed: It is possible to order an animal after demolishing the Animal Pen backyard extension (Beta)
-Second fix attempt: Resources retrieved from the bandit camp being able to land in a pond
-Fixed export price showing as "NA" in the trading post when doing local trade only (foreign trade checkbox disabled)
-Fixed villagers not unequipping carts when going to fetch water (beta)
-Fixed villagers clumping too much at the well (beta) (note: this might affect transportation limits of other buildings again, aka more workers waiting if too many people want to access the same building at the same time)
-Fixed grass not properly culling over fields

Cosmetics:
-[Experimental] Light function atlas enabled to allow ponds to receive cloud shadows - cloud shadow material edits were required (Beta)

Cosmetics:
-Tweaked grass LODs & Grass Wind
-Reworked the animal pen extension

Thanks for playing!

Greg
Lead de

[Beta Patch - 0.7.999] Further Open Beta Bugfixes & Ale Balance Changes

Hi all,

A small patch with several bugfixes was published to the BETA branch (pre_release).

Saves: To avoid any potential issues, it’s recommended that you back up your saved files before switching to a beta version.

Mods: Please remove any mods you have before beginning a new save to ensure you can play without interference from an outdated mod.
[h3]To find your saves on Steam for Manor Lords.[/h3]
  • Press Win + E
  • Paste %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\ManorLords\Saved\SaveGames into the search bar.
To try the BETA, please follow these steps:
  • Open Steam
  • Right-click on Manor Lords in your library
  • Select Properties
  • Go to the BETAS tab
  • Enter the password: veryNiceBasket
  • Choose "pre_release" from the "Beta participation" drop-down list
  • Wait for the game to update the files (if nothing happens, restart the Steam client)
  • Launch the game
All new strings might not be localized yet, and stability hasn't yet been thoroughly tested. Some balancing changes are still experimental.
To discuss this, please join the official Discord server https://discord.gg/manorlords. You'll find a channel specifically for discussing the ongoing pre_release branch.

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Changelog Version 0.7.995 -> 0.7.999


Gameplay & Balance:
-1 Malt now makes 2 Ale

Minor changes:
-Changed ox plowing directions to be even more historically accurate (from center, outside)
-[Experimental] The game hides the demolish button on the very last Hitching Post in the region in order to protect new players from game overing themselves by deleting the last hitching post and making the ox run away. I made the stables follow the same rules, so that if you have 10 stables and 1 hitching post, you may delete the hitching post, but if you have 1 stable, you can no longer delete it.
-Adjusted the description of the "Better deals" perk

Optimization:
-[Experimental] Dynamic foliage LODs: Tree detail will now vary on the camera angle additionally to being dependent on the distance to the camera.

Crashfixes:
-Fixed the game crashing when Baron clears a bandit camp
-Fixed the crash when booting the game while volumetric clouds setting is off in the ini file (Beta branch)

Bugfixes:
-Fixed Herders not collecting Wool from Sheep if the sheep move after the task is created and not move again due to the camera being far
-Fixed: Barter traders leave imported non-food goods in market stalls
-Fixed the "don't allow to delete last hitching post" safety check not working on stables or if you have multiple building tabs open at the same time
-Fixed: Reserve set in the Tavern for Ale distribution is not being respected
-Removed the extra 2 days between December and January which resulted from the day of the year counter starting at 0
-Fixed: Military equipment crafted by Artisans is not being transported to the Storehouse if the corresponding Workshop's Storage is full
-Fixed oxen not reaccommodating to another hitching post or stable if their current "home" hitching post gets demolished
-Fixed grass not disappearing after deleting and rebuilding a vegetable garden

Cosmetics:
-The irregularity of the vegetable field shape now scales with their size. This way they are no longer too wobbly as they get very large.

From our side this looks like a good candidate for the main branch, but I'll as usual wait for a confirmation from the community first.

Thanks for playing,

Greg
lead developer