Manor Lords: Best Burgage Plot Upgrades

Burgage Plots offer more than just family homes in Manor Lords. If you make them long enough, a Burgage Plot can support a backyard upgrade, and these upgrades allow a plot to create new goods. In fact, a backyard upgrade is the only way to create many important goods and resources.

However, not every Burgage Plot upgrade in Manor Lords works the same way. Some of them you must unlock with development points, and a few of them are more or less effective based on the size of the backyard. That's why it helps to know exactly how each Burgage Plot upgrade works, and which ones are more or less useful than others.

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Basic Upgrades

Manor Lords Best Upgrade Yard Size — A large vegetable garden in Manor Lords.

The first four Burgage Plot upgrades are available for any home, including level one homes. However, the apple orchard is only available if you buy the orchardry upgrade in the development menu. These upgrades are:

Vegetable Garden (15 Regional Wealth)
Chicken Coop (25 RW)
Goat Shed (25 RW)
Apple Orchard (50 RW, 1 Development Point)

Each of these upgrades provides a steady goods income without a resource cost: the garden provides vegetables, the coop provides eggs, the shed provides hides, and the orchard provides apples. However, there are a few quirks that affect how these upgrades work:

The garden is cheaper than the other upgrades because the homeowners have to spend time tilling the soil and harvesting the vegetables. The other upgrades also require some interaction, but the vegetable garden is easily the most time-intensive.
While you get some apples from an orchard in the first two Septembers, apple production shoots through the roof once the trees reach maturity. This is why orchards cost a development point and double the Regional Wealth compared to other backyard upgrades.
Both the garden and the orchard produce more food when the backyard is bigger. Backyard size has a minimal impact on every other upgrade, including all the artisan upgrades.
Backyard goods stay in the Burgage Plot until someone comes by to transport them to a Granary or Storehouse. However, homeowners who control the right kind of market stall can also sell their backyard goods directly in the marketplace.
Unlike artisan upgrades, homeowners with a regular upgrade will still be part of the regular workforce. Since a large backyard costs nothing but space, you should always make sure your Burgage Plots have enough room for a backyard extension.

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Artisan Upgrades

Manor Lords Best Upgrade Artisans — A pair of artisan workshops in Manor Lords.

Once a Burgage Plot reaches level two or higher, you can upgrade it to an artisan home. Here are your options:

Bakery (5 Regional Wealth, 5 Planks, 1 Development Point)
Blacksmith's Workshop (5 Regional Wealth, 5 Planks)
Brewery Extension (5 Regional Wealth, 5 Planks)
Tailor's Workshop (5 Regional Wealth, 5 Planks)
Cobbler's Workshop (5 Regional Wealth, 5 Planks)
Joiner's Workshop (4 Planks)
Armorer's Workshop (4 Planks, 1 Development Point)
Fletcher's Workshop (4 Planks)

The cost in Regional Wealth is always much lower, but you'll need access to planks to build any of them. Still, the biggest cost of an artisan upgrade is the fact that the residents become artisans and leave the regular workforce. If you then upgrade a plot to level three, the new families who can move in will also become artisans. Every artisan upgrade also requires raw materials, and artisans who can't get these materials won't work.

Something else to note is that you can convert a Burgage Plot with a basic backyard upgrade into an artisan house, but doing so doesn't refund the Regional Wealth you paid, and you can't convert an artisan home into anything else, including another kind of artisan. The only way to get rid of an artisan you no longer need is to demolish their Burgage Plot.

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Every artisan plot produces something useful and valuable, but some products are more useful than others. Many artisans can craft one of several items, and you'll need to tell them which ones to make by selecting the "General" tab in their building menu and choosing a Production Focus.

The Bakery converts flour into bread. The Communal Oven does the same, but the Bakery produces two loaves per flour instead of one loaf per flour. You'll need to spend two development points to unlock it, but doing so is well worth the cost in a low-fertility region.
The Blacksmith's Workshop is your only source of melee weapons, at least if you don't want to pay any expensive import prices. The Blacksmith can create Tools for 1 iron slab, Sidearms for 2 iron slabs, Spears for 1 iron and 1 plank, or Polearms from 1 iron and 1 plank. By contrast, the Smithy industrial building can only create Tools. If you don't need weapons for a militia unit, you should set the Blacksmith to craft Tools for export.
The Brewery Extension is the only way to convert malt into ale. Manor Lord citizens are thirsty, and you'll need at least two Breweries if you want to keep a tavern stocked with ale year-round.
The Tailor's Workshop can produce Clothes for 1 dye and 1 linen, Gambesons for 2 linen, or Cloaks for 1 dye and 1 yarn. Gambesons are a type of militia armor and don't count as clothing. The only way to make dye is with berries, so the Tailor's Workshop is less useful in regions with few berries and low flax fertility.
The Cobbler's Workshop only makes shoes, but it uses leather instead of yarn or linen. You get leather from taking hides to a Tannery, and you get hides from both Hunting Camps and Goat Sheds. Since shoes also count as advanced clothing, and every region can produce plenty of hides, the Cobbler is far more useful than the Tailor.
The Joiner's Workshop can build Wooden Parts for 2 planks, Small Shields for 1 plank, and Large Shields for 2 planks. Joiners and Blacksmiths are equally useful for building militia units, because you can't fill out a unit of light infantry or spear militia without both weapons and shields. And when you have no militias to equip, you can have the Joiners produce Small Shields for export.
The Armorer's Workshop is particularly expensive in terms of development points. You need to spend one point to unlock the workshop and build Helmets, another to unlock Mail Armor, and a third to unlock Plate Armor. Helmets and Mail Armor are militia armor upgrades, while Plate Armor is a Retinue upgrade. You don't need these armor upgrades to win the game, but they can make your units much harder to beat if you focus a region on iron mining and armor.
The Fletcher's Workshop converts planks into Bows. Bows are all you need to equip archer units, but archers are only useful if you have enough melee units to keep them safe. Bows aren't the best weapon for exports, but there's nothing else you can do with a Fletcher once your archers are equipped.

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With all this in mind, here's the takeaway:

Always build Burgage Plots with enough space for a backyard expansion.
Build at least some Burgage Plots with large backyards to produce extra vegetables and apples.
Never convert a Burgage Plot to an artisan house unless you know that artisan will come in handy.
The only essential artisans are Breweries and Cobblers. Bakeries are also helpful, but mostly in regions where wheat is hard to grow.
If you need to build a militia, you need a Blacksmith and a Joiner. The Armorer, Tailor, and Fletcher can help, but are less useful.
Remember that you can only raise up to six militia units, and extra settlements can trade weapons and goods with each other using Pack Stations.
An artisan producing goods for export is at least doing more than an artisan with no raw materials to work with.