"Baaaaah" says the vital staple of your growing village economy.
Sheep are an excellent way to diversify your investments in Manor Lords, the medieval simulator game from developer Slavic Magic and publisher Hooded Horse. Any village needs sheep in order to keep supplies rolling, but starting off doesn't make the direction you should take clear. Here's how to get sheep in Manor Lords.
How to breed sheep in Manor Lords
To get sheep, you need to make sure you have a steady supply of Timber. You'll also want to make sure you've got plenty of food, so your people aren't starving. Finally, you need to have plenty of open Burgage Plots in order to ensure new families are moving in and growing your workforce.
With those potential pitfalls out of the way, you'll need to establish a Livestock Trading Post. These are relatively easy to construct, merely requiring two Timber. Once it's built, assign a family to the trading post, then go under the Trade section. Set Sheep to "Import," then set your desired surplus of Sheep. I recommend starting with two or three, for reasons we'll get into below. This will cost a large chunk of your village wealth, but you can bring the price down if you've got the Better Deals development upgrade, giving you a hefty discount on imports.
Now that trade is established, you need to set up the Sheep Farm. This only costs one Timber. Once you've got it set up, assign a family. You don't need more than one family working with the sheep for a long time, and they'll be sufficient to get a steady flow of wool into your economy. A Sheep Farm, by default, has room for five Sheep.
If you are interested in breeding sheep so you don't have to keep importing more and more, simply choose the Sheep Breeding development upgrade, which allows you to slowly gain more Sheep once you have at least two in your pens.
If, after that, you want to actually use that wool to improve your people's lives, you can also establish a Weaver's Workshop. After assigning a family to this building, the weavers will use the wool to produce yarn, which is then distributed via the Marketplace.
A still-growing settlement simulator
Manor Lords is still in early access, meaning a lot of features are missing as the lone developer continues to flesh out the different systems. Even in this early state, it's racking up quite a bit of attention on Steam, and is also available for Windows PC players via PC Game Pass.
In our early access review, my colleague Brendan Lowry wrote that "Manor Lords may be an Early Access release, but it already feels like a full, complete game — and with its developer planning to expand it with additional upgrade paths, some extra gameplay systems, and a full-fledged diplomacy mechanic, things can only go up from here. Despite a few confusing elements and a handful of annoying bugs, it ultimately stands tall as one of the best new games of 2024, as well as one of the best PC games for city-builder and strategy fans."
