Manor Lords dev says Unreal Engine 5 upgrade looks like a “smoother overall experience” so far, but here are some new coats of arms that “medieval games for some reason never add” while you wait

Manor Lords dev Slavic Magic is still working towards the city-builder’s Unreal Engine 5 upgrade, but has added a bunch of new coat of arms designs in the meantime, including some that “medieval games for some reason never add” as a sweet bonus.

The Unreal Engine 5 update has been on the cards for some time for Manor Lords, but sort-of-solo dev Greg Styczeń now hints that the “precise performance tests” that are currently being carried out are looking very promising. “So far it looks like compared to [Unreal Engine 4] the framerate is more stable, that is highs are lower but lows are higher,” the dev says. “Even if the highest FPS might be lower, it should result in a smoother overall experience.”

Elaborating further, it doesn’t sound like Manor Lords will be implementing Unreal Engine 5’s fancy illumination and reflections system, Lumen, simply because it’s not really worth it. “So far Lumen wasn’t worth the extra performance cost for this particular game therefore I left it off,” Styczeń explains. “It also caused some ‘black hole’ bugs. Direct comparison below. The overall difference in lighting will be subtle.”

Overall though, it’s sounding pretty good, right? We still don’t have an exact release date for the Unreal Engine 5 upgrade, but last week, Styczeń said it’ll be coming with the highly anticipated fishing ponds update which is planned to arrive in the coming weeks, so it shouldn’t be too far away.

However, those aforementioned new coats of arms symbols are available right now, and include everything from “derpy lions to fish to weird characters and even two snakes,” the latter of which were added after content creator GamerZakh “mentioned that medieval games for some reason never add snake as an option (no idea why but also was true for ML).” The coat of arms creator was already super detailed, but these new options should give players even more room to create one that matches their style.

Manor Lords gets crossbows and a new trade feature when the city builder’s next update lands in the “next few weeks.”