Beginner's Guide

Endless Legend 2 features nested tooltips, which allow you to lock a text box to hover over another tooltip inside. By default, you can hold shift to lock any tooltip. The tooltip lock also works by hovering over the initial tooltip for a certain amount of time before locking; however, this can be changed to a “mouse position” or middle-mouse-click function by heading to Settings -> UI -> Nested Tooltip Lock Mode.

Campaign map user interface

1. Empire Management - The left sidebar contains overviews of the various aspects making up your empire. From the top button:
   1. Empire Summary - Hover to see a brief description of your faction and any unique powers/units it can use. Select this button to bring you to an in-depth Empire Summary screen, containing detailed information from faction traits, units, and empire bonuses, to characters, your council, and population bonuses.
   2. Victory Conditions - Select this button to see your progression towards any Narrative or other Victory types and any key beats you’ve unlocked.
   3. Quest Journal - Contains all of your ongoing and completed quests across Faction, Pacification, and World victory types. This screen also contains Deeds, various objectives that you can try to accomplish first during specific Tidefalls. These will add enticing bonuses to your empire that last throughout the entire game.
   4. Cities & Camps - Provides an in-depth overview of all cities and camps within your empire.
   5. Protectorates - Assign and manage your Minor Faction Protectorates.
2. Faction Features - Abilities and information unique to your faction are displayed here.
3. Primary Resources - The stock and income of your two primary resources, Dust and Influence. Dust is used to buy out constructions, pay for Army Upkeep, purchase Strategic or Luxury Resources, and more. Influence is used to expand your Cities by building Foundations, assimilating Minor Factions, and performing Diplomacy Actions.
4. Strategic & Luxury Resources - Strategic Resources are used to build Improvements and to specialize your Armies. Luxury Resources provide temporary boosts to Cities and armies. Click on any resource to buy and sell it (requires a Trading Post in your empire) or to activate luxury boosters.
5. Notifications - Provides a list of messages about events inside and outside of your empire.
6. Reminders & End Turn Sequences - A series of buttons to filter through needed actions before you end your turn.
   1. Reminders/End Turn Button - Initially shows you the actions you have to take before ending your turn. Once all actions are complete, click here to end your turn.
   2. Next Icons (Bottom Three Buttons) - These three bottom buttons allow you to filter through your Armies and Cities/Camps, while the “Finish Moves” button completes any pending Army actions.
7. Hero’s Circle - Manage all of your Heroes, including their equipment, profiles and skill trees.
8. Research - Opens the Research screen, allowing you to explore what technologies you want to research.
9. Diplomacy - Manage your diplomatic status with other Empires, including Treaties, Declarations, and Propositions.
10. Yield And Grid Toggles - Customization toggles for your campaign map. Toggling on Yields will show the Tile output resources you will generate inside your Cities/Camps. Grid toggles the hexagonal grid on the world map, which is purely an aesthetic feature.

City user interface

Cities are an essential part of Endless Legend 2 as they form the backbone of your economy. You can open the city menu by left-clicking on the city banner or on the ground anywhere in its territory and close it by right-clicking anywhere in the window.

1. City Stats - An overview of the contents within the Territories of your City, including:
   1. Territories – How many territories your city may contain. This limit can be increased with Improvements.
   2. Mines & Quarries – The number of built/available resource extractors in the city. Hover for more details.
   3. Fortification – The Fortification level of your City, providing defensive bonuses for your units, and damage to attackers during a siege.
   4. Villages – The number of Pacified Villages/total amount of Villages of Minor Factions within the City Territories.
   5. Food Stock – The amount of Food the City has stored. Consuming more food than you generate will deplete this stock. If there is no stock left, the City will experience Starvation.
   6. Militia – The number of militia in the city to protect against invaders.
   7. Approval – Approval provides bonuses to the City’s yields when it is high, and penalties when low.
2. City Yields - The total generation of base resources (Food, Industry, Dust, Science, and Influence) per turn, primarily generated by Districts, Population, Improvements, Population, Technology, and other factors. Hover over each Resource to see a breakdown of its generation.
   1. Food - Used to feed and grow your Population. Each City generates its own Food.
   2. Industry - Primarily used to create Structures and Units. Each City generates its own Industry.
   3. Dust - Dust is a form of currency and has many purposes, including Army upkeep costs, accelerating City developments via Buyouts, and even when engaging in diplomacy. Dust is stocked at an Empire-wide level.
   4. Science - Used to research Technologies, how much this City contributes towards the Empire’s currently queued Technology. Science is combined at an Empire-wide level.
   5. Influence - Influence is used to build bigger Cities by attaching Territories, expand the Empire by establishing Camps in Territories, conduct Diplomacy with Major Factions, and assimilate Minor Factions. Influence is stocked at an Empire-wide level.
3. Population Breakdown - Food surplus leads to population growth. At the top of the screen, right under the yield display, you can see a summary of your current/max population, the growth progress on the next population (click this to select the desired population type), and a summary of the jobs your population fills.
   1. Population Management - Shows the current Population/max Population within your Cities and Camps.
   2. Population Generation Type - Depending on diplomatic treaties and assimilation of Minor Factions, you can choose what species your City will produce next. Clicking on the dropdown menu provides all possible species, and hovering over each species provides the benefits they would bring to your City.
   3. Population Vocations - Provides a breakdown of what Vocations your population occupies, including the yields they provide to the City and your Empire. Note that if a citizen is created with no job availability, they become Destitute and do not provide any benefits.
4. Construction Queue - The current and upcoming construction projects of the city. The bar above shows progress on the current construction and buttons to finish it instantly for Dust or cancel it. The queue can be rearranged through drag and drop. The button on the right allows you to convert industry to other resources if nothing is being built.
5. City Production Menu - A menu of various production items to manage your City.
   1. Foundations - Foundations exploit a tile’s yields and serve as the basis for building districts. They can be placed instantly next to existing districts, exploited anomalies, or pacified villages for a cost in influence.
   2. District - Districts provide improved resource yields. When they are adjacent to four other districts, they will level up and provide an even bigger bonus. To build a District, first select an empty Foundation, then choose the district to build from the menu at the bottom.
   3. Improvement - A specialized addition to a District that provides additional benefits unlocked by technologies or discovered through Quest rewards.
   4. Units - All Units that you can construct in your Empire.
   5. Population - A detailed breakdown of what Populations contribute to the City based on job type. You can move Populations to different jobs as needed or set an automation preference.
   6. Landscaping - An expanded menu of landscaping options that provide potential benefits depending on your Empire Faction and your overall gameplay strategy.

Army user interface

With an army selected, you have access to additional actions and more information about its composition.

1. Unit cards - Hover your cursor over a unit image to get more information about their stats and abilities. Left-click a unit image to select individual units and display further options above, such as the unit upgrade window or the hero screen.
2. Army actions - A list of stances and actions your army can perform.
   1. Guard - The army assumes a defensive stance, healing faster and acting first in combat if they are attacked, at the cost of some mobility.
   2. Recuperate - The army stays in place and will not notify you until it has fully healed.
   3. Auto-explore - The army will move on its own t o uncover unknown territory, picking up Curiosities along the way.
   4. Skip - Set the army not to take any action this turn.
   5. Found Camp - Spend some influence to place a camp and claim a Territory. Until you found your first city, this will be replaced by the Found Capital button that creates a city instead of a camp for free. Aspects use this button to create coral spores for Dust.
   6. Build Haven - Once they have gained some experience, heroes can settle down in your cities by building a Haven, which will give yields to the city and allow the hero to find a Companion.
   7. Remove Forest - Removes forest from a tile and sends industry to the Territory’s city. Takes multiple turns.
   8. Reforest - Spend Dust to plant a Forest on a tile.
   9. Clear Ridge - Spend Dust to clear a mountain Ridge and allow you to move through.

Understanding the ins and outs of your Army’s stats will help you figure out when and where to fight, and how to craft the best Army for specific purposes in your campaign.

Diplomacy user interface

You can engage in Diplomacy with another Major Faction anytime after initial contact using the Diplomacy button at the bottom right of your screen. The Diplomacy Screen contains several pieces of information and negotiation tactics that can aid in acceptance by the other party.

1. Your Public Opinion - What your Empire thinks about the other Major Faction. High public opinion makes beneficial actions cheaper, low public opinion discounts aggressive actions and is needed to declare a justified war.
2. Other Empire’s Public Opinion - What the other Empire thinks about you.
3. Other Empire’s Empire Information - A range of information, including current Attitude, their Attitude towards other Major Factions, Empire traits, Units, and Unique Abilities.
4. Diplomatic Options - The various diplomatic actions you can take. Each costs Influence and potentially other resources (if the other empire is reluctant to accept and needs to be bribed). When you select an action, the bott om of the screen will show whether the other empire would accept or refuse.
   1. Treaties are agreements between factions that focus on cooperation or non-aggression, and are considered Beneficial Interactions.
   2. Declarations are more unilateral decisions that signal a shift in the relationship between Major Factions, and can include harmful or beneficial interactions.
   3. Propositions are any current offering of Diplomacy from either Faction.
5. Negotiation Tools - AA range of options, including Dust, Influence, and Strategic or Luxury Resources to entice the Major Faction to accept your agreement. This can be done manually or by using the Ask Acceptable Terms to automatically calculate what it would take for acceptance.

Keep in mind that while basic Diplomatic Treaties are limited at the game’s start, certain Technologies can unlock more advanced ones, providing you with more strategic options to benefit your Empire.

Explore

Exploring the world of Saiadha will have you moving your Armies around to reveal new tiles on the map, seeking out Curiosities, encountering Minor & Major Factions to interact with, and discovering Narrative Quests for you to complete.

Tiles not yet explored by your Armies are shrouded in a Fog of War, preventing you from seeing tile yields or any potential obstacles you may encounter. Once explored, tiles will always show its yield or Minor Faction towns, however, once out of sight of a current Army, will be semi-hidden, preventing sight of actively moving Armies from Major & Minor Factions as well as any event-created ones.

Moving your Armies is as simple as right-clicking on the desired location you want your selected Army to head towards, and the Army will immediately move as far as its Movement Points allow it. You can also hold the right mouse button and drag around to determine how many turns your Army would take to move to a specific location. The number of tiles you can move in a turn is determined by the Army’s Movement Points and the terrain of the tiles. Each tile has a Movement Cost associated with it. With this in mind, you may only be able to move 1-2 tiles despite having more than three Movement Points, so it is advantageous to be intentional about moving your Armies, especially while exploring at the start of your game.

A Quest

Quests will be a driving force behind your exploration of Saiadha, as you will often need to either discover a new place not seen yet or bring an army to a specific location, as pictured above. You can access your Quests by selecting the Quest Journal button on the left-side UI panel. Once there, you can access all of your quests to see where you need to head off adventuring to next.

Tidefalls will also expose large swathes of land, allowing for exploration of never-before-seen sites and mysteries tied to your overall Narrative Quests to discover what is happening to Saiadha.

Map elements

A Curiosity

Curiosities are unusual sites your armies can collect by simply walking over them, granting you resources, items for your heroes, or sometimes narrative events. Most curiosities are permanent until picked up, but special types spawn during the Monsoon that disappear when the rain stops.

Anomalies are special tile locations that your cities can exploit by placing a Foundation of them. They have much higher yields that normal tiles, and some of them even provide approval.

Across Saiadha you may encounter deep rivers that your armies cannot just walk across. If you absolutely must cross though, right-click on the river to open a context menu that allows you to construct a temporary bridge that will last until the next Monsoon. You can also construct a dam this way if you have the required technology.

Minor factions

Many of the territories of Saiadha are already inhabited by Minor Factions, and integrating them into your growing empire may have tremendous benefits. When you come across one of their single-tile villages denoted by a small, grey faction flag, you have three options to pacify them: Bribe them with Dust, earning you one of their units; ask for a quest that will pacify all villages in the same territory; or attack them and destroy their villages.

Until a village is pacified, they will regularly spawn roaming armies. Some factions are aggressive and their armies will attack you, while others are peaceful and just roam about. However, during Monsoon all minor faction armies will attack you on sight.

Pacification will provide the best diplomatic option for most Minor Factions. Once a village is pacified, if it is in a Territory with one of your Cities, you c an make it into a Protectorate by assimilating it (or cohabitating with it as the Aspects). Once the Protectorate agreement has been confirmed, they provide a range of benefits:

• Population Bonuses - Selecting the Minor Faction as the next population within any City boosts various aspects based on their unique conditions.
• Recruit Units - Each Minor Faction has a unique Unit that can be recruited.
• Cohabitation Effects - Minor Factions provide their Notables that can fill Official slots as well as stackable FIDSI effects per Pacified Village on certain buildings within your Empire.

While limited to a couple of Protectorate Agreements at the start of the game, certain Technologies can unlock more slots.

Expand

Expansion in the world of Shaiadha involves claiming explored Territories, establishing new Cities to grow your Empire, and engaging in Diplomacy with Major and Minor Factions.

The world of Saiadha is divided into large areas called Territories, noted by a dashed border. Each Territory contains tiles containing FIDSI resources based on the terrain and possible Anomalies, Luxury/Strategic Resources, Minor Factions, and more.

When starting a new game, your first claimed Territory will become your Capital City. Fortunately, even if it takes a while to find the perfect spot, the "Prepared Settlement" effect boosts your FIDSI output by 50% for the number of turns it took before you established your Capital City. This effect ensures you don’t fall too far behind immediately.

When you’re ready to establish your Capital City, select any Army, and select the Found Capital Button at the bottom of the screen. Optimal locations will pop up showing the FIDSI yields in the vicinity should you want a different location, if not, simply left-click on the desired tile, and the Capital City is officially established, and the Territory is yours.

Exploit

Exploiting the world around you is necessary to exert your influence through managing your Cities, creating a robust economy that utilizes its Empire’s Resources, diving into Technological Research, and engages with the Minor Factions.

Cities are your core means to grow your Empire across Saiadha. They are home to your population, develop FIDSI resources, and are responsible for creating your Units and Armies.

Your Cities are comprised of Populations - citizens created using the excess generation of Food. Most of your Population will likely be the native faction you are playing. However, as you engage in diplomacy with Major and Minor Factions, you may have the opportunity to choose what population is created next, with each Major/Minor Faction having unique benefits within your city. Your Population fills up one of three Vocations within your City, increasing FIDSI resource generation depending on the Vocation Type and Buildings present. Note that some Faction Populations synergize with specific Vocations for even greater output.

Your Cities contain Foundations - tiles in which you can construct buildings, called Districts. Selecting an empty Foundation will bring up all available buildings, each providing benefits for your City. Once all Foundations have been built on, you must use Influence to claim new ones to expand.

Districts can be improved depending on the technology that has been researched. Selecting the Improvement button will highlight any Districts that can be improved, and selecting said Districts will bring up any available Improvements, usually costing Strategic Resources to upgrade.

Approval is the last piece of City Management and measures the City’s inhabitants’ happiness. Each City has its own Approval rating, contributing to an average across all Cities that gives the Empire Approval. Within a City, Approval levels can cause positive or negative events, while Empire Approval impacts the Empire’s production of Dust, Science, and Influence. Hovering over any City Approval rating provides a breakdown of factors contributing to its level and the potential outcomes that can result from said rating.

After the first Monsoon, the Empire Council will unlock, allowing you to assign Heroes and Notables from your population that will grant powerful empire-wide effects. After each Monsoon, an additional Council slot will open. At this time, you can reassign councilors for free, though you can also do so at any time for a small Dust fee.

Resources

Throughout the world of Saiadha are Resources ripe for the taking that can enhance City resource output. There are two types of Resources - Strategic and Luxury. Both can be harvested via Mines within your Territory, collected as Quest rewards, traded via a Trade Outpost, or used to fulfill Quests and sway factions in Diplomacy. Strategic Resources are used for Unit upgrades and District Improvements. Luxury Resources boost various parts of your Empire, be it approval, fortification, and increased FIDSI output in your Cities/Camps, increased experience gain on your Hero, and more.

Trade is a straightforward process. After constructing a Trading Post, unlocked with the Era 2 Tech “Markets,” you can freely buy or sell any Strategic and Luxury Resource. Click on the resource icon in your main view to bring up a small window where you can buy or sell this resource by the unit, and in case of Luxury Resources activate their booster effect. The price of resources is determined by the demand for it, so as more players buy a resource its price will increase and will decrease once nobody is buying. These trends are shown in the window with a little arr ow next to the price.

Economy

Here’s a quick list of what your Economy process looks like:

• Establishing Cities and Camps secures access to Strategic and Luxury Resources, with optimal placements that maximize FIDSI resource generation.
• Food Production creates Populations to fill Vocations, allowing Industry Production to develop buildings inside your City and build Mines on Resource Deposits, Science Production to research Technologies, Dust Production to fuel your Armies and engage in Trade, and Influence to expand your Territories and engage in Diplomacy.
• Approval ratings can drastically affect a City & Empire’s Production of FIDSI resources. Utilize Trade to gather Luxury Resources that can boost Approval.
• Use Science buildings and improvements to quickly research Technologies to further your Empire with better buildings, units, and other advancements to take on other Major and Minor Factions.
• Utilize Notables to fill Council positions, providing you with potentially powerful buffs to your Empire’s production of any FIDSI Resources.

Technology

Technology plays a crucial role in the progression of your Empire, unlocking new Units, buildings, and other bonuses and abilities that help you advance in the game.

Technology is researched in the Technology Screen, each requiring a specific amount of Science Investment to unlock. The benefits a Technology provides are shown as icons under the circle, and hovering over them will show you more details.

Technologies are divided into six Eras of Technologies, each requiring a total amount of previous-era tech to be researched before you can advance, though it is not necessary to research every single technology in an era before you advance. Navigate between the eras using the large triangular buttons at the sides of the screen.

Exterminate

Whether through negative actions on the world map, expansion desires, or plain bad manners, War is bound to happen between two Major Factions.

As the player, you can declare war via two means - Justified and Unjustified War through the Diplomacy Screen. A Justified War is free of any Influence cost but can only be declared if your public opinion of the other empire is Very Low. An Unjustified War costs more Influence the higher your Public Opinion is with the other f action, but it can be declared at any point regardless of prior Treaties and Declarations. This will immediately break any Treaties you currently have and cause immediate War Fatigue for you while being delayed for the faction you declared war on. More on that below.

Two main factors to consider in war are War Score and War Fatigue. War Score measures the progress and momentum of a war between two factions, generated by winning battles and successfully sieging Cities. Once the War Score against the enemy faction is high enough, or a war has gone on for an extended period of time, they may offer surrender terms. You can view the War Score at any time by clicking on the warring faction in the Diplomacy Screen.

War Fatigue simulates the growing weariness and instability caused by a long, drawn-out conflict. As the war continues on, War Fatigue will start to decrease the Approval rating in your Cities, and could lead to rebellions. It’s important to watch your Cities during any conflict to see when War Fatigue becomes too much for them to handle, and consider ending the conflict.

Speaking of ending a war, there are three resolutions to any war in ENDLESS Legend 2, accessible through the Diplomacy Screen:

• Surrender Demand - Demand the Empire surrender and pay a specific amount of Dust as tribute.
• White Peace - Hostilities will cease and no tribute will be given to any side.
• Surrender Offer - Offer to surrender and pay a specific amount of Dust as tribute.

Once a war has ended, all available Treaties and Declarations can be used. However, it may take some time before the opposing Empire has any positive relationship with you to engage in deeper Diplomacy.

Victory conditions

The ultimate goal of Diplomacy is to push you towards winning the game, and in ENDLESSLegend 2, that means achieving Victory Conditions. There are three paths to victory, accessible through the Victory Screen:

• Awakening Victories - As you unravel the mysteries of what is happening on Saiadha, you will unlock seven different
• Score Victory - Have the highest score at the last turn of the game.
• Conquest Victory - Be the last remaining Empire.

How you choose to win the game is up to you and your playstyle, but it’s well worth pursuing the Narrative Victory to learn the fate of Saiadha!