Endless Legend 2 hit 1.0 on September 17, 2026, and the faction roster now stands at eight: six major factions plus the two Rogue Factions that arrived with the full release. If you are standing in the faction select screen wondering what has changed since Early Access, this is the guide for it — a launch-week tier list built from the actual 1.0 mechanics, not from pre-release speculation.
One honest disclaimer before the tiers: this game shipped yesterday. Nobody has enough hours to give you a settled competitive meta, and Amplitude has already proven during Early Access that it will rebalance aggressively. What a launch-week tier list can do — and what this one does — is rank factions by what their rules actually reward: power ceiling, consistency, and how forgiving they are while you are still learning the map. Where a ranking could move after the first balance patch, I say so.
If you want the full 1.0 overview instead — Tidefall timing, all twelve Deeds, and the first-40-turn priority order — start with our Endless Legend 2 1.0 launch guide. This article assumes you know the basics and only care about one question: which faction should I pick?
One more thing worth knowing before you pick: the 1.0 launch is running a 50% discount on Steam — $24.99 instead of $49.99 — through Wednesday, September 30. That is the opposite of what Amplitude signaled pre-launch (the stated plan was no launch discount), so if you were waiting, the wait is over.
How These Tiers Are Decided
Three criteria, weighted in this order:
- Power ceiling — if piloted well, how strong can this faction get? Factions that snowball (Order of Zelevas) or that rewrite the map's rules (Sandshapers) score high here.
- Consistency — how often does the faction deliver a good game without needing a lucky map or a specific neighbor? Defensive and economic factions score high here.
- Difficulty tax — how many of the faction's points are locked behind unusual mechanics you have to learn? This drags down Last Lords, Tahuks, and to some extent the Severed Claws.
A faction ranked lower is not weaker — in Endless Legend 2 the asymmetry is so extreme that "best faction" mostly means "best faction for this player." The tiers tell you where the value is easiest to reach, not which faction wins a tournament that does not exist yet.
The Tier List: All 8 Factions at 1.0
| Tier | Faction | Type | Difficulty | One-line verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| S | Order of Zelevas | Rogue (Kin of Sheredyn) | Moderate | The city cap gets deleted; snowball the map before anyone can stop you |
| S | Sandshapers | Major (new in 1.0) | Hard | Daunting but powerful — the highest skill ceiling in the game |
| A | Kin of Sheredyn | Major | Easy | Still the most reliable faction in the game; defense wins long games |
| A | Aspects | Major | Moderate | Coral networks quietly win the influence and pacification game |
| B+ | Severed Claws | Rogue (Necrophage) | Very hard | Double-strike combat is filthy; the enslavement economy is unforgiving |
| B | Necrophage | Major | Hard | The classic hunger engine — strong, but every neighbor hates you |
| B | Last Lords | Major | Hard | Dust vampires; a whole economy most players have no instincts for |
| B- | Tahuks | Major | Hard | Mad scientists doing three unusual things at once; fun, not beginner-friendly |
The rest of this guide explains each call, with full breakdowns and opening playbooks for the three factions that are new in 1.0.
S Tier: Order of Zelevas — The Snowball That Removed Its Own Brakes
The Order of Zelevas is what happened when the Kin of Sheredyn's defensive engine was handed to somebody with no patience for defense. Under Imperator Vecc, the Order stayed loyal to Emperor Zelevas and the United Empire, and their mechanics read like an imperial conquest checklist.
Here is the affinity change that puts them in S tier: where the Kin unlock faction abilities by fortifying their capital, the Order unlocks them by expanding territory — and at the highest tier, the unlock completely removes their city cap. Every other faction in the game manages a City Cap and decides painfully between a new city or a ministry. The Order just... stops having that problem. On a map where three Tidefalls keep exposing new land to claim, a faction whose power scales with territory count and who can exceed every settlement limit is playing a different game.
The supporting kit reinforces the same identity:
- Infrastructure scales per city center and ministry. Many of the Order's unique buildings grant bonuses for each settlement you own, so wide play compounds instead of drowning you in overhead.
- Districts level up easily near your centers of power, even though the Order loses access to the Kin's level 3 districts. You trade the top-end for speed.
- Every Keep built grants a free cavalry unit. Fortifications are not defensive projects for the Order; they are army production.
- All units can be recruited instantly with Dust. In a game where unit build queues are the normal choke point, Dust-to-army is a war-tempo ability no other faction has.
In combat, the tight defensive formations of the Kin are replaced by cavalry that charge into the enemy and absorb counterattacks behind shields. Their unique Imperial Decrees temporarily reshape production and military priorities — the correct use is stacking them before a major offensive, not bleeding them on skirmishes.
The one weakness: the Order is a momentum faction. If your offensive stalls — a failed siege, a stubborn defensive opponent, a war that drags into War Fatigue — half your kit stops paying out. A stagnant Order of Zelevas is a worse Kin of Sheredyn. Keep moving or start over.
Opening playbook: take an Industry-heavy start, get scouts and early military on the map fast, pick the nearest winnable target, and chain victories. Bank Dust between wars so that when a real war starts, you can materialize a full army in one turn. Expand every time the option appears — your unlocks and infrastructure both demand it.
S Tier: Sandshapers — Daunting, Powerful, and Playing a Different Map
Amplitude's own description is exactly right: "daunting to play, but powerful." The Sandshapers are the oldest civilization on Saiadha, beings of sand, rock and glass whose desert world was drowned by the Endless. They want it back — and their mechanics make them the only faction in the game that does not play the map as generated.
The constraint that defines everything
The Sandshapers' faction affinity, Djinns of the Deserts, comes with a brutal rule: they can only harvest Food from Sand tiles — and Sand tiles do not occur naturally on Saiadha. On top of that:
- Aquaphobic — no basic resource yields from any tile adjacent to rivers or lakes, and they cannot build bridges. Their dams, however, are better at drying out riverbeds than anyone else's.
- Storm Cursed — all construction is more expensive during Monsoon season.
On an ocean world, a faction that cannot feed itself from fertile land and cannot cross rivers looks unplayable. That is the "daunting" half.
The power half: ruins, wishes, and terraforming
The Sandshapers can see ancient ruins that are invisible to every other faction. Restoring a ruin lets them invoke Wishes — powerful faction abilities, the most important of which is terraforming the surrounding region into Sand tiles. Only Sandshapers benefit from Sand, so they are progressively converting the map into terrain that feeds them and starves everyone else. Their armies and population regenerate from the desert they are recreating.
The rest of the trait list quietly fixes their weaknesses:
- Harvester — Resource Extractors are much cheaper to build.
- Mineral Bred — cities gain extra Food based on strategic resource extraction.
- Saiadhan Shapers — all Landscaping actions complete faster.
- Lands of the Past — after each Tidefall, the newly uncovered land is highlighted through the fog of war. On a map where Tidefall land-grabs decide games, this is a free intelligence advantage.
The combat kit: Stone Stance
The Sandshaper battle affinity is Stone Stance: at the end of your turn, your units deal 8 damage to all adjacent enemies, ignoring Defense. That is free, defense-bypassing area damage applied every single turn of every single fight. Add a unit roster full of repositioning tricks and you have the most tactically distinctive army in the game:
| Unit | Role | Signature trick |
|---|---|---|
| Blackwind | Scout (flying) | Knocks enemies back a tile |
| Deathgale | Fast scout | Even faster on the world map |
| Sandswarm | Support | Bolsters allies with shields |
| Shard | Infantry core | Short-range teleport; excellent flanker |
| Spineshards | Skirmisher | Excels at killing isolated units |
| Sandstorm Maestro | Area damage | Attacks groups with AoE |
| Sandweavers | Ranged | Attacks at range, plus the short teleport |
| Stonewardens | Anti-armor | Focuses tough enemies, shatters defenses |
| Stonescorchers | Buffer | Best placed deep in ranks; attacks strengthen allies |
| Vitreous Titans | Juggernaut | Receives shielding every turn |
| Bulwark | Terror unit | So terrifying it pushes enemy units away |
| Stoneslinger | Line damage | Attacks everything in front of it, strips defenses |
A Stone Stance army wants to be in the middle of the enemy formation: teleport Shards and Sandweavers into contact, shield the stack with Sandswarms and Titans, and let the end-of-turn 8 damage roll across everything adjacent. Positioning that would be suicide for other factions is the Sandshaper win condition.
Why they are S and not A
Lead Designer Julien Gueguen — the Sandshapers' creator — published pro-tips that double as the faction's opening playbook, and they are worth quoting in spirit:
Nearly every territory on Saiadha contains a Sandshaper ruin. You will almost certainly awaken that ruin and convert its surroundings into food-producing Sand, so decide where to place your camp after you know where the ruin is. Camp close to it and exploit the tiles it feeds.
Even after you raise a ruin and invoke the Wish of Awakening, adjacent rivers and lakes still remove Sand tile yields. A ruin by a lake is permanently discounted. A ruin by a river needs that river dammed before it pays out fully — and remember, the dam tech most factions ignore is one of the Sandshapers' most important technologies, both for making rivers passable and for restoring river-adjacent yields.
The other food source: Extractors on strategic and luxury resources grant Food for the Sandshapers, and upgraded extractors scale that bonus. Between Harvester (cheap extractors), Mineral Bred (food from extraction), and ruins, a competent Sandshaper player out-economies the map by mid-game while owning terrain nobody else can use.
They sit in S rather than A because the ceiling is genuinely that high — a terraformed Saiadha is a map where the Sandshapers eat for free and every rival's farmland stopped existing. They do not sit at the top of S only because the first 40 turns punish pilot error harder than any faction except the Severed Claws.
A Tier: The Reliable Picks
Kin of Sheredyn — still the safest game on the roster
The Kin remain what our launch guide recommended for first campaigns: fortifying cities generates zeal, zeal buys Commandments, and a defensive position means mistakes cost you turns instead of cities. Nothing in 1.0 power-crept them — their Rogue offshoot just took the aggression they never wanted. If the Order of Zelevas is S-tier when the snowball rolls and B-tier when it stalls, the Kin of Sheredyn are A-tier always. On higher difficulties, where the AI's resource cheats punish overextension, that consistency starts looking better than any snowball.
Aspects — the quiet influencer
The coral-spreading machine hivemind remains one of the strongest economic factions: coral improves tile yields, heals armies, functions as a movement network, and — the underrated part — quietly pacifies nearby minor faction villages without combat. On a map where the Severed Claws and Necrophage are butchering villages for population and everyone else is spending Influence on pacification quests, the Aspects get the same result as a side effect of their economy. Moderate difficulty only because you have to think in networks rather than borders.
B+ Tier: Severed Claws — the Hardest Faction With the Dirtiest Combat
The Severed Claws are a Necrophage hive that meddled with forbidden technology and was cut off from the Matriarch. Every classic Necrophage rule has been torn out and replaced with something meaner:
- No larva replenishment. Base Necrophage spawn larva after every battle to replace losses. The Severed Claws must build units in their capital like everyone else — except…
- Destroy a village, gain a unit. Any time the Severed Claws destroy a minor faction village, a unit of that minor faction appears in the capital to fill the ranks. Their army roster grows by conquest, not production.
- Minor faction population that never grows. They can house minor faction populations in their cities (base Necrophage cannot), but those populations only increase by rebuilding pacified villages — you are literally importing your workforce.
- Districts wrap around villages, not a queen. No Matriarch's Eye. Their Communal Habitations provide no population slots; instead they accelerate population growth, and that population in turn provides the slots and reduces district costs.
And then the combat mechanic that justifies the B+ despite all of that friction: destroying any enemy allows that unit to attack a second time in the same turn. A full Severed Claws army that wins its init can chain double-strikes through an enemy stack. Every unit "punches above its weight" by design, because the faction's whole identity is doing more with fewer bodies.
Why not higher? The economy is the tightrope. Population that only grows through village conquest, districts that depend on population, armies that depend on village destruction — if the map runs dry of villages or a war goes badly, there is no fallback engine. This is a second-or-third-campaign faction for players who want the most interesting (and most stressful) campaign in the game.
B Tier: The Rest of the Roster
Necrophage (base) — the hunger-driven war machine is still good at what it does: consume everything, evolve the army, out-attrition the map. It ranks below its own Rogue variant purely because the Severed Claws' double-strike is a stronger combat identity, while the base hive's diplomacy penalty (everyone hates you, forever) never gets easier.
Last Lords — Dust vampires who do not eat food. The economy loop is genuinely excellent once it is online, but "learning to run an empire on Dust" is a whole skill, and the Early Access statistics always showed new players stalling with them. Nothing in 1.0 changed that.
Tahuks — mad scientists and religious zealots who want to be doing three unusual things at once. Beloved by veterans, hazardous to newcomers, and unchanged at 1.0.
The 1.0 patch fixed every bug with more than five upvotes on Amplitude's feedback platform, but faction balance is a different matter. The Sandshapers and Rogue Factions have been in public hands for one day. If history repeats — Amplitude rebalanced repeatedly through Early Access — expect the first balance pass within weeks, most likely touching the Order of Zelevas' city-cap removal or the Severed Claws' village-unit loop. Treat this list as launch-week truth, not eternal truth.
Which Faction Should You Actually Pick?
Three concrete recommendations, matching three kinds of player:
If you are new to Endless Legend 2: Kin of Sheredyn. Full stop. Every mechanic the game teaches you lands softer with them, and the demo's 90 turns are built around their kit. Read the 1.0 launch guide first — the Deeds and Influence-banking habits matter more than faction choice for your first campaign.
If you have one campaign under your belt and want the 1.0 experience: Sandshapers. They are the faction this release exists to showcase, the terraforming loop is the most novel system Amplitude has shipped since Tidefall itself, and a competent Sandshaper campaign ends with you owning a desert empire sitting on terrain nobody else can even feed from. Respect the water rules and it works.
If you are a warmonger who finds 4X economies boring: Order of Zelevas. No city cap, instant Dust armies, free cavalry from every Keep — the faction removes every brake the genre puts on conquest. Just remember the deal you made: the engine only pays while you are moving.
And if you have already won the game on a high difficulty and want the campaign people will be telling stories about for months: Severed Claws. Nothing else in 1.0 plays like it.
FAQ
Is the Sandshapers faction good, or just hard?
Both. Amplitude designed them as "daunting to play, but powerful." Their early game is the roughest of any major faction — food only from Sand tiles, no river or lake adjacency yields, no bridges — but their ceiling is the highest in the game, because terraformed Sand feeds them and only them, and their Lands of the Past trait gives them free vision of new land after every Tidefall.
What is the best faction for beginners in Endless Legend 2 at 1.0?
The Kin of Sheredyn. Their defensive bonuses and zeal economy forgive mistakes, and nothing in the 1.0 patch replaced them as the recommended starter. The Order of Zelevas is second — it shares the Kin's foundation but demands constant aggression.
Do the Rogue Factions cost extra?
No. Both the Order of Zelevas and the Severed Claws are included free with the 1.0 release.
How do the Severed Claws replace lost units?
Not with larva — they lost that ability when they were cut off from the Matriarch. Destroying a minor faction village spawns a unit of that faction in your capital, and everything else must be built there conventionally. Every unit compensates by attacking twice in the turn it kills something.
Why does the Order of Zelevas have no city cap?
Their faction affinity unlocks abilities through territorial expansion instead of capital fortification, and the highest unlock tier removes the city cap entirely. Combined with infrastructure that pays per city center and ministry, it makes unlimited wide expansion their core identity.
Is Endless Legend 2 on sale at 1.0?
Yes — despite pre-launch statements that there would be no launch discount, the 1.0 release launched with 50% off on Steam: $24.99 instead of $49.99, running through Wednesday, September 30, 2026.
The Bottom Line
The 1.0 faction design tells you what Amplitude is actually good at: not balance, but asymmetry. Eight factions, and no two of them ask the same question of the player. The Order of Zelevas asks "what if you never stopped conquering?" The Sandshapers ask "what if the map itself was yours to rewrite?" The Severed Claws ask "what if your army only existed because of the people you enslaved?"
For launch week, the value ranking is clear: Order of Zelevas for raw power, Sandshapers for the highest ceiling, Kin of Sheredyn for the smoothest ride. And with the 50% launch discount running through September 30, this is the cheapest entry point the game will ever have.
Pick one, bank your Influence for the first Tidefall, and open the Deeds panel the moment the water starts to drop.
