Trade is the backbone of a successful settlement. With the right rules, routes, and smart exports, you can keep your people supplied and your coffers full. Our Manor Lords Trade Guide shows you how to control the market, manage goods, and build an efficient trading network from the start.
Table of Contents
Basics
Trading in Manor Lords appears straightforward at first, but it quickly becomes one of the most vital systems in your entire run. You use regional wealth to import and export goods through the trading post or the livestock trading post. This transforms your town into an active participant in the broader world, enabling you to respond to challenges as they arise.
In the early game, you rarely have everything you need. You might lack food, be short on weapons, or struggle to grow fast enough. That’s when trade comes into play. You can sell surplus goods for quick coins and use that wealth to get the resources your town is missing.
Build a Trading Post
Getting your trade network started in Manor Lords begins with a simple step. You need a Trading Post, which costs four timber, so you can build it early, even in a new settlement. Once it’s constructed, assign a family to work there. They will handle everything from managing stalls to sending traders out on the road.
A traveling merchant will visit you from time to time. If your Trading Post is prepared, they will stop by and follow the trade rules you set. You decide whether a good should be imported, exported, or handled with full trade, which adjusts everything toward your desired surplus.
Within the Trade tab, you can select any good, set the desired surplus, and decide how aggressive you want your trading to be. If you want to accelerate things, you can even order an extra horse for 30 Regional Wealth, but remember, you can only assign two.
There are three trade buildings you can use:
- Trading Post for importing and exporting materials
- Livestock Trading Post for horses, oxen, and sheep
- Pack Station for region-to-region barter, perfect for swapping goods without spending Regional Wealth
Most of your actions happen in the Trading Post, but knowing all three keeps your economy flexible. Use these early, and your town will never run dry when winter hits.
How to Set Up Trade Rules
Once your Trading Post is operational, it’s time to teach it how to behave. Every good in your town can follow its own Trade Rule, and this is where you control the flow of your entire economy.
When you open the Trade tab, you’ll see all goods divided into categories such as food, crops, construction, crafting materials, commodities, and military. Each category can be assigned to a specific rule:
- Never Trade stops all movement. Perfect when you want to stockpile.
- Import brings in goods until you reach your desired surplus.
- Export sells anything above that surplus for Regional Wealth.
- Full Trade automates both directions and always tries to keep your storage at the number you set.
The key is the desired surplus. This number indicates to your traders how much you want to keep in stock after covering construction requirements and market demand. If you set a surplus of fifteen tools, export will send everything above fifteen out, while import will keep buying until you reach exactly fifteen.
Next to each good, you also see the export and import prices. Importing always costs more, so watch your wallet. To the far right, the global market supply shows how easy it is to buy or sell that good. If you flood the market with exports, demand drops, and you might not be able to sell at all.
Trade Routes in Manor Lords
Random merchants are okay early on, but they’re unreliable. They appear whenever they want and often bring a weird mix of goods. If you want a steady supply or to boost large exports, you need Trade Routes.
You set them up directly in the Trading Post. Open the Trade tab, find the item you want to automate, and click the wagon icon. If you have enough Regional Wealth, the route unlocks immediately. If not, you’ll need to save up. Once the route is active, you can click the eye icon to monitor it and see when traders are on their way.
A Trade Route ensures a monthly merchant visit focused on that specific good. No randomness. No surprises. Just steady movement of essentials in or out of your town. This is crucial for items like food, tools, or anything your production chain can’t keep up with.
Some high-value goods can’t even be imported or exported without a route, so unlocking them is essential later. Make sure you assign workers to the Trading Post and set an appropriate surplus. Anything above that becomes export fuel for your new route.
Manor Lords Trade FAQ: Trade and Market Basics
Global market supply determines how costly or cheap a good is. When the market is flooded, export prices fall, and imports become cheaper. When the market is tight, the opposite occurs. You can view the supply level by the small dot next to each item in the Trading Post.
Imports cost more because you’re pulling goods from a limited global supply. However, you can still turn a good profit by exporting easy-to-produce items like eggs, wool, or other goods that fill your storage. Combine this with upgrades like Trade Logistics and Better Deals to reduce import costs.
Focus on items with high ROI. Ale, cloaks, bread, warbows, wool, and yarn all provide great returns. Eggs are a strong initial export because chicken coops are inexpensive and need no production chain.
Build your Trading Post near the King’s Road and close to your storage buildings. Buy an extra horse to speed up deliveries. Invest in the trading tech upgrades and reinvest profits into Burgage Plot extensions that generate valuable goods.
Pack stations transfer goods between your own regions using mules. They don’t rely on Regional Wealth. Instead, they trade goods directly through a barter system. They are ideal when one region overproduces something while another region desperately needs it.
Boost Your Trading Power with PLITCH
If you want to turn your settlement into a true trading hub, PLITCH provides you with several Manor Lords cheats to accelerate progress. The most crucial trading boost is Set Regional Wealth (current region), which instantly fills your coffers and lets youstart importing high-value goods without waiting for exports to catch up. You can also speed up your trading infrastructure by using Remove Build Costs, Fast Build, or Ignore Build Costs to place Trading Posts and Pack Stations quickly.
Storage frequently becomes the bottleneck in long trade chains, so Set General Storage Capacity, Set Special Storage Capacity, and Set Food Storage Capacity help you avoid constant overflow problems. If you rely heavily on resource production for exports, Set Rich Deposit (Berries), Set Rich Deposit (Stone), or Refill Deposit (Clay/Iron) keep your economy flowing smoothly.
Check out this blog to learn more about PLITCH and our Manor Lords Trainer Showcase on YouTube to see our cheats in action.
Happy Gaming!
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