State of the game - October 2025

[p][/p][p]​Thank you to everyone who left a review and everyone who filled out a survey. If you haven’t done either of those yet, and don’t mind taking the time, they are both very appreciated.[/p][p][/p][p]A special milestone has already been reached, over 1 million hours in the game. That’s over 114 years of running from Sollusk armies, finding cool equipment and watching the oceans recede! [/p][p][/p][p]We are currently going through all the data, including the analytics and the written feedback. It’s important for us to see how many people are hiring hunters to deal with Doomwraiths (very few), as well as hear about what you like and don’t like and see the stats on how you are winning and when (more about that later). 
[/p][p][/p][p]​[/p][p]First, let’s start with game features. As with the Demo, the parts receiving the most critical feedback on the feature list are Diplomacy and Doomwraiths.  [/p][p][/p][p]For Doomwraiths, we have the following changes in the first major update[/p]

• [p]Corruption applied by Doomwraiths on city is now less impactful. We have made it so that the maluses are now increasing over time up to 50% after 10 turns.  [/p]
• [p]The “Bait Doomwraith” action is now unlocked by default.  [/p]
• [p]The “Close Rift” action is now unlocked by default.  [/p]
• [p]Doomwraiths now react immediately when using the “Bait Doomwraith” action.  [/p]
• [p]Added a 50% reduction cost to the “Bait Doomwraith” action to the “Collective Sacrifice” technology.  [/p]
• [p]Increased the cost of the “Bait Doomwraith” action. It is now based on the distance it is sent from its settled territory and also increases after each monsoon. [/p]

[p][/p][p]This is so that players don’t feel crushed if they aren’t able to respond to a Doomwraith right away. We want them to be a real threat and provide a midgame emergent goal for the player. But your economy shouldn’t be crushed by them if it takes you time to get the resources together to deal with them. We may break “Doomwraith Difficulty” off into its own setting so players can choose how powerful they want to make them. [/p][p][/p][p]Diplomacy will be getting updated in the second major update (the multiplayer update) , so there is more to come. 
[/p][p]As to what you are playing 🤔[/p][p]
[/p][p][/p][p]In this graph “Hardcore” players are players that play >80% of their games as that faction. “Main” players are players that play >50% of their games as that faction. Players that don’t play over 50% of their games as one faction fall into the “Multiple” category. 
[/p][p]It’s interesting to see how many players really commit to one faction. Granted, Early Access has only been available for a few weeks as I write this, so I hope more players go out and give another faction a try. Even removing tutorial results (which always start players as the Kin), players typically play as the Kin and enjoy playing against the more unusual factions than being them. [/p][p][/p][p]And yes, I really love graphs, I hope you enjoy seeing them as well. [/p][p] [/p][p]​Early Access has been incredible; we have a great start. Now, we are focused on working with you on making the game better, which is exactly where we wanted to be. [/p][p]We already have some great ideas coming in on Amplifiers. Feel free to join and submit your own ideas or upvote the ideas you like. 
[/p][p]And we have areas we are focusing on/ Let’s discuss those. [/p][p] [/p][p]​We have the following AI updates coming in the first major update: [/p]

• [p]Improved how AI defends against besieging armies.  [/p]
• [p]Improved how AI engages other armies in battle. It means AI Units should live longer, be more likely to be upgraded and earn more Veterancy.  [/p]
• [p]Improved how AI composes their armies.  [/p]
• [p]Improved how AI manages Necrophage larvae. Necrophage AI empires should have less isolated larvae units.  [/p]
• [p]Ensured AI was using up-to-date information when considering pathfinding.  [/p]
• [p]Improved how AI manages terraforming.   [/p]
• [p]Improved how AI attacks minor villages  [/p]
• [p]Fixed an issue where AI could buyout population when playing other factions than the Last Lords.  [/p]
• [p]Fixed an issue where AI Last Lords could \[REDACTED]. They will behave correctly now.  [/p]
• [p]Fixed a bug where the AI would keep a lot of unused Armies.  [/p]
• [p]Fixed various bugs with AI orders being sent when there was no need. [/p]

[p]In addition to this we found some bugs that are keeping the AI from being able to effectively fight in the mid to late game around upgrading and managing their armies. It’s not as simple as them not doing it. And it’s difficult to tell if the AI should be upgrading units or using that dust or resources for more long-term economic effects. Which will be fixed in the first major update. [/p][p]
[/p][p]​After making these changes I’ve noticed a big difference in AI aggressiveness with me and with each other. [/p][p][/p][p]Specifically in this game at about turn 50 the Last Lords rolled up on my capital with 2 full armies, declared war and laid siege to my capital. My army was about 5 territories away going for some very remote Glassteel, and I immediately started them running toward home. The following turn the Necrophage also declared war on me and had some roaming armies in the area which I thought would make my trip home even harder. 
[/p][p]But I got lucky and the Necrophage found the Last Lords sieging my city first. What began as a nice orderly line to sack my city became a battle between the Last Lords and the Necrophage outside my gates. By the time I returned home the Last Lords had won, but only had 4 units left. Which I finished off with glee. [/p][p][/p][p]Twenty turns later both the Necrophage and Last Lords were coming back for more but I was able to pay them both off so they would fight each other instead. I thought I was going okay until I checked my score which you can see above, and found out I’m in last place. The game is ongoing. [/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]One thing we are continuing to dig into is AI expansion.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]We are seeing that the AI isn’t claiming territories as quickly as human players. Interestingly the AI Kin seems to do the best and the Necrophage tends to do the worst, which is almost the opposite for human players. We will be digging into this for future improvements. 
[/p][p]I did a blog about the UI a few weeks ago. We got lots of feedback on it, thank you for that. There were positive comments about the main game screen changes. And a mix of positive and critical feedback about the city screen changes. You can see the beginnings of those changes in the below screenshot. The top left area has been reworked and all the empire level buttons moved there.  [/p][p]Concept Art 👆[/p][p][/p][p]​Currently the plan is to move forward with the main game screen changes you see above. But we are still working on the city screen changes. Most likely you are going to see an update to the city screen that is visually similar to what is in the game now, but changes the flow so that you pick a district first and then place it, instead of the other way around. [/p][p][/p][p]We will then provide recommendations on where to place the district. And be able to show a complete list of all your available districts that will help players that are missing the fact that they can upgrade a minor faction village (as the Last Lords) or place an extractor. [/p][p][/p][p]These changes won’t all come at once. We will roll them out as they become available (without breaking other things) so that we can get feedback from you as we go. [/p][p]
[/p][p]We also got feedback that it was hard to tell technology states on the Research Screen. So, we have added a more obvious check to researched techs, hidden their unlocks and more dramatically modified their shape to look like diamonds. We also added some visual effects and some background art to the screen while we were making updates. 
[/p][p]We released the Roadmap so you can see that Multiplayer is scheduled to be released in the second major update. I know a lot of people are eager to play multiplayer, and that some were surprised to see it come so early. The reason for that is simple, we need Multiplayer to come out soon just so we can start working on any issues with it to make sure it’s rock solid by release. 
[/p][p]Another issue that annoys some players is Simultaneous Turns. Specifically, that the AI can move and do things when you are trying to act and it creates a feeling of racing to do things. We already do some AI tweaking here to try to keep it from stepping on human players (if you have a path set to a curiosity for example, the AI will not move to take it).  [/p][p][/p][p]We do this to lower turn times, it’s not fun to have to wait for the AI to go before you can move. Most players prefer faster turns to the “race” to do things. But, not all. [/p][p]So, we added a new option in settings. It’s “Always Show Empire Statuses”.  
[/p][p]With it enabled you get turn indicators on your end turn button exactly as if you are playing a Multiplayer game. The turns are still simultaneous, but if you prefer to wait until the AI is done moving (which is what you would be forced to do if we disabled Simultaneous) you can wait for the all the bubbles to fill and know that the AI is done with their turn. [/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]Just a brief mention on writing because it’s something we are talking about a lot internally. But I won’t go into too many details here as our writing director (Loremaster? Bard in Chief? Supreme Overlord of Commas?) Jeff Spock is working on a blog specific to this topic. Expect to see more about this soon.  [/p][p][/p][p]The endgame is an intersection of writing for the narrative side (which we are working on updating) and gameplay. For the gameplay we want to make sure the victory conditions are difficult and come late for most players. [/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]These are humans winning victory conditions from September 22nd-September 24th. The first few days of Early Access and before we tweaked the victory conditions. We saw a lot of players winning very early, especially via the population victory condition.
[/p][p][/p][p]On September 25th we updated the victory conditions, and the above are victories after the change. Some progress was made (especially on population victory), but we are still seeing too many victories too early. There are more balance updates coming. 
[/p][p]Note: The goal isn’t to have all players play until turn 300. We don’t like the period of the game where players have already won, but need to play another 100 turns to get to that victory. So the ideal graph isn’t just everyone winning in the last 30 turns, but it does need to ramp toward the endgame, not hump at turn 170. [/p][p][/p][p]The first major update is scheduled for release next week. We have done a lot of work in the past month and will continue as we march forward toward release. We are looking forward to getting your thoughts. [/p][p][/p][p]You can read the changes on the Public Test Beta (PTB) changelog HERE[/p][p]
[/p][p]Derek Paxton, [/p][p]Game Director of ENDLESS Legend 2[/p]