Before handing it over to Derek, I just want to highlight that you can now VOTE to help shape the gameplay or lore of the minor faction we’ll be crafting together with you, our amazing community 📬
🚨 Note: This post contains story spoilers. Those wishing to discover these things in game should skip this post.
What started as a peaceful oceanic world quickly turns into a world full of disappearing oceans, ravenous necrophage and punishing storms (on the positive side, the surfing is excellent).
It will come as no surprise to long-term ENDLESS Legend fans that Saiadha has a Lost at its heart. But where the spirit of Auriga was mostly benevolent, the spirit of Saiadha rages against its prison.
As Tidefall occurs you will be exposed to new mechanics and witness manifestations of the Lost’s power. Some are passive, and some violent. And it’s the water that keeps the Lost bound. As it rages and causes Monsoons, the ENDLESS’s prison drains the oceans to contain it, for a while…
In time you will have to decide how you want to deal with an angry god on the verge of escape. You will meet characters in the world with different ideas and agendas and it’s up to you to decide which to follow.
Will you Worship the Lost? Impress it? Or attempt to Master it?
Each option unlocks different victory conditions, and each player decides which path they want to follow. What other players selects matters because all players get a bonus depending on the number of players following the path they selected (if you choose Worship and other players did as well, then you all get a larger bonus from it). 
Not only that. But you can only win with a victory on the path you choose. So, if you are going for a Research victory (which is a Worship option) you only have to worry about other Worship path players.
Currently you can switch your path as you like. We don’t want players to feel locked in or want to reload because they didn’t check out all the options enough beforehand. It will be interesting to hear from all of you during Early Access to see if this is a good idea, or a potential exploit. 
There are seven narrative victory options (as well as the normal victories of conquest and score). The Awakening Victory screen shows you what is needed for each and how each player ranks.
This screen is functional but will need some love. At this point we are most focused on balancing the objectives and making sure they are fun. Based on your feedback objectives and layout may change. It will require a lot of testing and balance to make sure they remain achievable, but not too easy with the dramatically different situations that sandbox games create.
Here we see that we selected the Impress path, with two other players. Which allows us access to the Wealth and Stature victory paths. There is also one player on the Worship path, and one on the Mastery path on the right.
What paths other players select matters because all players in that path get a bonus based on how many are in it. Sometimes it’s easier to go along with the crowd. But I think we can do more here. Provide attitude modifiers and mood messages based on path decisions, I’d love to see some games fracture along these lines. Especially if some factions are fanatical about their path (The Kin and Tahuk) and others care less.
Manifestations of the Lost
The Lost isn’t just the basis of victory conditions in the game; its anger is also manifested in creatures in the world. These Doomwraiths are powerful and dangerous but aren’t a direct military threat. They won’t attack your armies or cities.
Instead, they settle in territories and slowly begin to corrupt them. This corruption applies penalties to your cities and destroys minor faction villages if they aren’t dealt with. We wanted to give the player agency to choose how (and when) to deal with Doomwraiths, which is why they don’t force conflict by attacking. You may be in the middle of a war, finishing a quest, or exploring far away from the corrupted territory so we wanted players to have options.
But dealing with them with an army is one of those options. In this case I needed to pull together two armies to be able to do it, Doomwraiths are powerful. 
With the Doomwraith defeated the corruption is removed and the minor faction’s villages can be rebuilt. Which takes us one step closer to conquering Saiadha.
How to Survive
Adding narrative content in a 4x game is a delicate balance. The “story” of the game is one the player crafts, it’s about allies and enemies that are emergent from the specifics of the game situation and we do a lot of work to make that as varied and interesting as possible.
The challenge is in adding narrative elements that feel like they fit in those situations without feeling like there are two separate stories being told. As well as feeling like the story of Saiadha isn’t separate from the player’s story.
These are the components we have to work with: Narrative Victories, Doomwraiths and the End of the World.
Our plan is to tie the victory paths more closely to your relationship with other players and to the Doomwraiths. So it’s easier to Ally with players on your path, and more difficult for those on other paths. Especially for more dogmatic factions like the Tahuk. We are also considering having the Doomwraiths leave you alone if you follow the Worship path, to help sell them as manifestations of the Lost.
We also want to make victory objectives less linear. So rather than completing one of the path objectives, you will need to complete all of them. As a bonus, most players assumed it already worked this way. 
And then we have the endgame. For the last few turns we want another monsoon to begin, but this one is unlike the others in appearance and design. It signals the coming of the Keeper of the Depths, the last guardian the ENDLESS placed to keep the Lost constrained.
The Keeper of the Depths will be the most powerful unit in the game, and unforgiving to players and doomwraiths alike (as an enemy of the Lost he will be aggressively wiping them out). This will be a dangerous time but we only plan it for the last ~30 turns of the game. Something to signal that the world is ending and the game is almost over, so you better hurry up or really attempt to hold on.
Diplomatic relations will worsen at the stage so alliances will be tested. Those counting on population and territory victories at this stage will have to fight for them as the Keeper and other players Armies become violent.
That’s what we are working on. What do you think? 
Derek Paxton,
Game Director of ENDLESS Legend 2
📩 MINOR FACTION CO-CREATION VOTE
We’re thrilled to have received over 100 submissions with ideas for the next minor faction! 👏
The team reviewed all the ideas and selected the first 4 that were doable. We also made an internal pick to add one more to the list. Now it is time for you to VOTE and help decide what the new minor faction will be (gameplay, lore, unit, and more!).
Once the voting is completed, we’ll move on to the artistic phase and start working on their visual design (starting November 17th) 🎨 
Soon we will have ready the next PTB (Public Test Branch) to try the multiplayer 👀