No Small Feat: Endless Legend's Third Free Update

The third free mini-expansion for Endless Legend [official site] adds a new minor faction, an extended endgame and enhanced modding tools. There's more, and I'll list everything below, but those are the three stand-out features. I'm always glad to see fresh content in the form of factions and the modding tools include an AI debugger, which could lead to some interesting experimentation.

It's the new victory quest that really grabbed my attention though. The title of the update is Look To The Stars, in reference to a faction-wide final quest that allows the victor to repair a spaceship and leave the doomed planet behind. The Endless trilogy just pulled all of its threads a little tighter.

First of all, here's the feature list:

Victory Quest: A final quest for all factions that unlocks after Faction specific Quests, where the player can repair a Spaceship and leave the planet.

Three Map Generation Presets: Players will be able to easily choose a map preset for a fresh experience:
- New World: Players start on the same island and need to conquer a new one for resources.
- Scattered: Every player starts on its own island.
- Symmetrical: Symmetrical Twin continents, perfect mirrors of each other.

The Dorgeshi Minor Faction: This new Minor Faction, chosen by the community, gives bonuses on Luxuries and has a powerful charging cavalier unit.

“Ask to declare war” diplomatic option: Players will be able to ask a faction to declare war on another one.

Three Steam Achievements: Community designed Steam Achievements. Kudos to T41, and and Teslaflux community members.

Enhanced Modding Tools: Modders will be able to have access to the game Simulation.

New Keyboard Shortcuts: As requested by the community.

For those who may not have been keeping up to date with the connections between the games in the trilogy, it goes a little something like this:

1) Endless Space came first but is the chronological endpoint. It's a sci-fi 4X game.

2) Dungeon of the Endless takes place before the other games. It's a roguelike/tower-defense game that befuddled and bewitched me when I lost myself in it for a couple of weeks last year. In terms of the trilogy's plot, Dungeon of the Endless explains how Auriga, the setting of Endless Legend, came to be repopulated after the devastation of the Dust Wars (the Dust Wars took place long before the trilogy begins).

3) Endless Legend is set on Auriga and the warring factions are descendants of the survivors of Dungeon of the Endless. They kinda want to conquer the planet but they mostly want to work out how to leave. Because, and this can't be overstated, Auriga is not a very good home away from home. Short-term? You could spend a pleasant summer there. Long-term? The harsher seasons are likely to last for thousands of years, destroying every speck of life on the planet's surface. Rubbish.

4) The new Endless Legend victory condition, which allows the victor to escape Auriga, sows the seeds that will become Endless Space. Circle complete. Well - circle almost complete. Seems to me that there might be another story to be told, about a crew of survivors searching for a new homeworld. Endless Odyssey maybe?

Endless Legend was, of course, The Bestest Best Game of 2014. The update is already live.