Manor Lords: How to trade? Manor Lords Guide

Trading is one of the key mechanics of Manor Lords and can bring you huge profits. On this page of the guide we have described how to trade effectively, what the market and the factories are used for.

Last update: 17 April 2024

Trading is a key mechanic in Manor Lords, and using it correctly can bring you great profits and provide a supply of resources that your village cannot produce. However, trade isn't explained clearly enough in the game and can be a bit confusing. On this page of our guide, we show how to trade effectively, what are the uses of Trading Post and Marketplace and what products should be traded.

• What is Marketplace for?
• How does Trading Post work?
• How does Livestock Trading Post work?
• How to make money from trading?
• How to ship goods between regions?

What is Marketplace for?

1. Despite its name, the Marketplace in Manor Lords isn't a trade venue, although it is still an extremely important building.
2. The marketplace is used to distribute resources among the villagers, such as food, firewood, clothes, and raw materials to produce them. You should devote a lot of space when planning a Marketplace plot so every villager wanting to put his products on sale has a separate stall.
3. Stalls on the Marketplace are manned by villagers living in plots that have Extensions built in them and employees of buildings producing any of the above resources. As long as there is space at the marketplace, the entire process will take place automatically - residents will build stalls and sell produced goods without your input. Your task, on the other hand, will be to provide a satisfying variety of goods to sell - the better the variety of goods, the more your Approval grows, allowing you to bring more settlers to your village and set higher taxes.
4. Marketplace stalls do not add to the region's Wealth - the main currency of the game - as they only work locally. To make money through trade, you will have to build a Trading Post.

How does Trading Post work?

1. A Trading Post is a building allowing trade between regions. Trade will be your main means of earning Wealth, as through it you can export and import almost every resource in the game.
2. To start trading, click on the trade post building and enter "Trade" tab. You will see a list of all goods available for importing and exporting, along with prices of them. This received a detailed description on a dedicated page of our guide.
3. Next, you need to adjust how much of the given resource you want to buy/sell by pressing the plus and minus buttons. On the left side of the list, you can find approaches to trading with a given resource. "No trade" means that the resource won't be used in trading. "Import" means that the trading post will automatically purchase the item until you have it in the specified quantity. "Export" means that the trading post will automatically sell the item until it reaches a specified quantity. "Full Trade" means that the trading post will automatically sell a given product if you have more of it, or buy it if you have less of it.
4. From the list, you can also spend a certain amount of Wealth to establish a trade route for a specific good. Without an established trade route, trade and exchange of goods is done at random times i.e. when the village is visited by a traveling mercant. If you set up a trade route, a merchant will visit your village once per month for the acquisition/delivery of this one specific resource. Certain goods, such as processed resources, armor, and clothing can only be traded after establishing a dedicated trade route.

How does Livestock Trading Post work?

1. The Livestock Trading Post is a separate building where you can trade in animals - oxen, horses, sheep, and mules. It works identically to a normal trading post.
2. In the current version of the game (Early Access 0.7.002), the only way to earn money by breeding animals is to export sheep - after spending a development point on sheep breeding technology, thanks to which these animals will slowly breed on pastures. These are currently the only animals that can be bred - the rest must be purchased. You don't need a Livestock Trading Post to buy draft animals - you can buy them directly from the Stable or a normal Trading Post.

How to make money from trading?

1. Trading is one of the most important and useful mechanics in the game. It allows you to compensate for the lack of certain resources that your land doesn't produce. However, there are several steps you can take to maximize your trading earnings:
2. Sell products you have a surplus of. Each region in Manor Lords has at least one resource in which it is rich in - it is marked with a small crown and this means that there is an abundance of it. You should start collecting it as soon as possible and export it via trade routes. In the future, you can also spend Development Points to unlock Deep Mining technology thanks to which you will never run out of resources that are mined.
3. If you don't want to trade with your crown resource, you can try to trade wooden planks. Every region in the game is rich in trees - so all you need to do is build a Logging Camp, a sawmill, and a forester's hut and your settlers will start cutting down trees, turning them into planks and planting new trees to replace the cut ones, ensuring a constant flow of goods for export.
4. Processed goods sell at a better price than raw materials. As a result, it is better to build the necessary infrastructure (Extensions) and man it to get the more valuable goods on-site. For example, Animal Hides are sold at 4 Wealth per unit. However, if you process them at a Tannery, and then at a Cobbler's Workshop Extension, you will receive shoes that are sold for as much as 8 Wealth per unit.
5. If you plan to earn big through trade, spend your Development Points as soon as possible on Trade Logistics and Better Deals technologies. The first one will make establishing a Trade Route cost only 25 Wealth. The second one will abolish trade tariffs, lowering the buy prices of all goods in the game by 10 Wealth, thus making export and import prices equal. Both of these technologies will allow you to buy more goods for the same price and are crucial to any settlement focusing on trade.

How to ship goods between regions?

1. Later in the game, when you have more Regions, you may take an interest in the option to transport goods between your settlements.
2. Establishing such a route is very simple. You need to build a Pack Station and buy a mule that will transport the goods between regions. In the menu of the building, choose the region, and products that you want to transport between the settlements. The goods will be transported once every month. This way you can, for example, ensure constant access to grain if your starting region wasn't rich in this resource.