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.

Cities 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.

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.

After they are pacified, any minor faction with villages in one of your cities can be assimilated by spending some influence. Assimilated factions add population to your cities, grant you access to their units, and an empire-wide bonus based on how many of their villages are part of your realm.

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.