This will be excellent for the economy.
Manor Lords developer Greg "Slavic Magic" Styczeń announced in the usual fashion (a random post on X) that he's working on a new feature for the medieval city builder—interactive fish ponds.
"Working on fishing ponds for the next update since it was requested a lot," Styczeń says in a tweet. Alongside this, there's also a lovely picture of a fish pond, reeds and all, sitting in a field in front of some trees. It's a really lovely image that pays testimony to just how pretty Manor Lords looks.
To comments asking when this feature will be available to check out, Styczeń responds by saying that it "will be part of the next patch" and that the "current plan is a few weeks." This is great news because I really can't wait to see how having fishing ponds will help or hinder my village.
This will give players a new food source to rely on. Right now, there's farming, foraging for berries, and hunting, but even with all these options, I found that my population was straddling the line of starvation or there just wasn't enough variation in their diet. This impacts how happy your citizens are and what buildings are on offer. Just having another food option available will surely help me get on top of the slim pickings in my village.
It's also cool to have another item to trade. I'm dealing in armaments like shields and swords, with the occasional yarn and herbs being thrown into the mix. While you can get by with only trading a few things, it always helps to broaden your horizons. I've already built up quite a bit in the two regions that are under my control, but hopefully, I'll be able to make space and even create fish farms later on, just so I'll have another source of income. The only problem is if I dedicate too much space to fish only for the market to crash, leaving the muddy watering holes a complete waste of space.
Styczeń has been working tirelessly to patch Manor Lords while it's in early access with substantial updates and new features. A couple of months ago, he dropped a massive patch that had loads of tweaks and new additions, including one that limited how much your villagers drank.
But even still, Styczeń hasn't been free from criticism. Hinterland's CEO Raphael van Lierop commented last week that "Manor Lords is a pretty interesting case study in the pitfalls of early access development" on LinkedIn. In response, Hooded Horse's CEO Tim Bender defended Styczeń's choices for early access and affirmed that the publisher's goal is to always support developers.
