Endless Legend 2: Which of the Eight Playable Factions to Pick Since 1.0

Since September 17, 2026, Endless Legend 2 has been out of the Early Access that opened a year earlier. The roster now holds eight playable factions: six major factions and two Rogue Factions. In practice, the opening choice weighs heavily, because each faction changes how you feed your people, how you expand and how you fight.

This guide describes each faction from Amplitude Studios’ official presentations and the patch notes published up to Update #47 on October 20. It does not rank factions by power. It pairs each one with a player profile, so you know which to launch first and which to keep for later. The studio also announced Xbox Series and PS5 versions for September, and the October patches already mention the gamepad interface on consoles.

Eight factions, but not eight easy ways in

Saiadha changes with the Tidefalls, the tides that push the oceans back and uncover new land. Each faction reacts to that rhythm in its own way. Some look for safety, others lean on currency, science, coral or sand.

On the selection screen the six major factions sit side by side: Kin of Sheredyn, Last Lords, Necrophage, Aspects, Tahuks and Sandshapers. A seventh slot lets you create a custom faction. Only the Sandshapers carry the Expert label. What matters here is the signal: the studio itself warns that this faction is hard to approach.

The statistics the studio shared in August give a useful hint: the Kin of Sheredyn and the Last Lords are the two favorite factions among players. The Kin are even the most played faction of Early Access, according to the retrospective published in early September.

Kin of Sheredyn: fortify first, then radiate

The Kin of Sheredyn are the game’s defensive builders. Amplitude describes them as an excellent faction for exploring Endless Legend 2, because they engage every system, from industry to war, without asking you to master an exotic mechanic. They develop their territory through strong production and protect it with tough fortifications and a disciplined army.

Their faction affinity rests on a gauge, the Strength of Our Zeal. It rises with the fortification level of their cities. At certain thresholds it unlocks passive bonuses on Keeps and Holy Commandments, active abilities usable inside your own territory: fully healing an army, or granting it an extra action in the same turn. The Chosen, mech suits worn by elite soldiers, act as a beacon to use these Commandments beyond the borders. Their number is deliberately limited.

In battle, the Stand United affinity gives each unit a shield for every adjacent ally. The textbook tactic is hammer and anvil: Legionaries and Chosen hold the line, archers and cavalry deliver the blow. The Kin were also reworked in spring to offer several paths of play rather than just one. For players who want a safe first game, this is the faction that pays off fastest.

Who is it for? The player discovering the game, who likes to build at their own pace and prefers a solid defense to an expansion race.

Last Lords: Dust instead of food

The Last Lords are spirits of Dust trapped in armor. They have no use for food: no tile shows it to them, they build no farms or food improvements, and their citizens produce Dust. Their population does not grow on its own. You have to create it by paying.

Amplitude files them among the economic factions. The game director sums them up this way: powerful when rich, limited when poor. A new city can fill up instantly if the Dust reserve keeps pace, and armies can be bought out and healed without delay as long as the war chest is full.

Minor factions play a central role. On a village, the Lord’s Estate lets the minor population keep living and growing while paying you a small Dust tax. The Soul Repository drains the village to give birth to a Primordial Last Lord, a population that improves the yields of ordinary Last Lords. The Last Lords can also sacrifice the population of other factions to create their own.

On the military side, their Gifts of the Fallen affinity heals neighboring units whenever a unit falls, and many of their units leech life from their opponents to regenerate.

Target profile: the player who enjoys optimizing an empire, counting every resource and fighting only when necessary.

Tahuks: science as a lever of faith

The Tahuks are the game’s science faction, but Amplitude wanted more than a faction that simply researches faster. Their identity blends science and theocracy: fervent engineers whose every great power also carries a drawback.

Their armies build Observatories on mountains to produce Science. An Observatory can later become a Library, which improves Approval, or a defensive Sacred Flame. Each Tahuk empire can build a single Holy Oculum, in one of its cities. Once finished, it unlocks the Holy Oculum Actions, active abilities you charge by diverting part of your Science output. Their effects range from yield bonuses on Observatories to turning an entire region into glass.

The strength of some actions depends on which side you favor in the Assembly during the main quest. The Tahuks also manage the Called, a particular population you either keep in your cities or send to other empires as Missionaries. On the battlefield they field more ranged units than other factions, which makes them effective as long as nobody traps them in melee.

Pick them if you like tech trees, multi-resource systems and active powers to plan around.

Necrophage: one queen, one city, one swarm

The Necrophage are one of the most aggressive factions in the game. Their whole economy sits in a single city, the capital, fed by armies that devour their enemies and the land itself. According to the studio, peace is never an option against them.

Instead of founding camps, they attach faraway territories to the capital through Burrows and Hives, placed anywhere on the map. These tunnels also move armies from one point to another. The Corpses harvested by killing enemies or razing cities evolve larvae into stronger forms and can also create population when you have a surplus. Every victorious battle spawns a larva nearby, and the Devour the Land action strips a tile of all its resources and sends them to the hive.

Their basic unit is deliberately the weakest in the game. The trick is to give it terrain to devour, or meat and strategic resources to make it evolve. The Necrophage can neither parley with nor bribe minor factions, but they declare justified wars for free and suffer less war weariness.

The typical profile: the player who likes constant pressure, large armies and a rhythm built around the next target.

Aspects: coral, treaties and soft power

The Aspects are Endless Legend 2’s diplomatic faction. The designers wanted to move away from the classic pacifist and aim for a deal with the devil instead: the Aspects manipulate others for their own supposed good. They suit players who would rather tend their economy than fight, while still being able to go to war when needed.

They do not found camps. They place Coral Spores, which can become cities but first serve as growth nodes for the coral. Tiles covered in coral give Dust to any empire that exploits them, and benefits to the Aspects: faster movement, faster healing, crossing water tiles and permanent vision around the coral. The more coral an opponent exploits on their land, the easier it is to force a treaty or a truce on them.

To stop others from clearing all the coral, the Aspects offer special treaties that extend their advantages to the other empire. Another design quirk: the coral is a resource shared by every Aspects empire in the game. The faction therefore plays differently depending on whether a second Aspects empire is present. In combat, the Harmonious Tactics affinity gives allies a damage bonus when an Aspects unit defends rather than attacks.

Ideal for: the player who likes relations between empires, agreements and a slow but hard-to-stop expansion.

Sandshapers: reshape the world before you can eat in it

The Sandshapers are the sixth major faction, arriving with 1.0. They are the oldest civilization of Saiadha and want to return the planet to its deserts. Their starting rule is harsh: they only harvest food from Sand tiles, and those tiles do not exist naturally. They also get no yields from tiles next to a river or a lake, and can neither cross a river nor build a bridge.

Their answer is terraforming, and this is where the game gets demanding. Nearly every territory hides a Ruin that only the Sandshapers can see. You raise it, then restore it to unlock Wishes. One of them, the Wish of Awakening, turns the tiles around the Ruin into food-producing Sand that only the Sandshapers can exploit. Extractors on strategic and luxury resources also give them food, and the studio advises weighing the nearby Ruin when choosing where to place a camp.

The real risk is water. In practice it remains a trap. Even after a Wish of Awakening, a neighboring lake or river removes the yield of Sand tiles. A dam, often ignored with other factions, becomes a major tool here: it makes a river passable and gives riverside tiles their yields back. In battle, the Stone Stance affinity deals 8 damage to all adjacent enemies at the end of the turn, ignoring their defense, and several units teleport short distances.

Reserved for: the experienced player who enjoys hostile starts and mechanics that reshape the map. Amplitude designs them for survivor types, and the Expert label in the menu confirms it.

The two Rogue Factions: variants that change the loop

Rogue Factions are fully playable variants of the major factions that broke away from their parent. They share the base affinity but bring other traits, their own battle affinity, a distinct leader, a different look and a short faction quest. They are included for free with the base game.

The Order of Zelevas comes from the Kin of Sheredyn, under Imperator Vecc. Instead of raising the gauge through fortifications, it raises it by expanding its territory, and the highest level removes the city cap. Every soldier is bought with Dust, not Industry, and cavalry replaces tight formations. Building a Keep even grants a cavalry unit. It lacks its parent faction’s level 3 districts. One trap to know: an army wiped out without a Dust reserve is hard to replace.

The Severed Claws are a Necrophage hive cut off from its queen. Without larvae, they enslave minor factions: destroying a village spawns a unit of that faction in their capital, and rebuilding a pacified village adds population. Their natural growth is slow, and they cannot even create a protectorate before Era 3. The studio describes them as the most unpredictable faction, because their strength depends on the minor factions met during the game.

Target audience: players who already know the parent faction: the Order of Zelevas for those who like the Kin but want to conquer, the Severed Claws for those who like the Necrophage spirit with an adaptation challenge.

Which faction for which profile

• You are starting out: Kin of Sheredyn, the faction the studio recommends and the community plays most.
• You like numbers and optimization: Last Lords, provided you watch the Dust reserve every turn.
• You want to plan active powers: Tahuks, with the Holy Oculum as the pivot.
• You want to attack early: Necrophage, or the Order of Zelevas if you prefer a conquest backed by currency.
• You prefer to negotiate: Aspects, with coral as leverage.
• You want a challenge: Sandshapers, or the Severed Claws for a game that depends on the luck of the minor factions.

What the October patches have already adjusted

1.0 did not freeze the factions. On September 23, a patch fixed a bug where armies drowned against the Aspects. In early October, Update #44 fixed Sand tiles that were not giving their bonuses to the Sandshapers. It also removed the Severed Claws’ ability to consume for Corpses, judged too close to the Necrophage. Update #45 fixed a case where the Tahuks’ Called population went to the Necrophage. Update #47 of October 20, version 1.0.203, removed the food yield when placing a camp for the Sandshapers.

Read the descriptions above as a snapshot at October 26: the core mechanics remain those of the official presentations, but the numbers can still move. Amplitude said it wants to share a roadmap later, after watching the first feedback.

Going further

• All our Endless Legend 2 articles: the game’s hub.
• Endless Legend 2 at 1.0: the Sandshapers and the Tidefalls, the launch analysis.