ENDLESS Legend 2 Tech Guide: Research & 1.0 Trees

The science race in ENDLESS Legend 2 decides who unlocks the second-tier units, the late-game wonder projects, and the Doctrine bonuses that swing army matchups long before the first Doomwraith shows up on the horizon. A tight research plan in the first 40 turns converts your approval surplus into finished research, and a finished research queue converts into an economy that snowballs faster than the AI. This ENDLESS Legend 2 tech guide covers the post-1.0 tech tree rework, the approval economy that funds it, and the science-race routes that the developer livestreams have highlighted since launch.

How Research and Approval Interact After 1.0

Research in 1.0 runs through Dust Science rather than a dedicated beaker resource: every Dust point your empire siphons into the Research queue converts into progress, and your Approval rating acts as a soft multiplier on how much Dust each city actually channels. Drop below zero Approval and your queues slow dramatically; climb past the neutral threshold and the same building can finish a tech two to three turns sooner. That coupling is why a strong ENDLESS Legend 2 research guide always begins with a city-by-city plan, not a tree order.

The Three-Pillar Science Economy

The 1.0 economy patch rebalanced three pillars that feed the tech queue. The official changelog notes the new Alchemists' Commission interaction, which grants +10 Dust on a Merchant house adjacent to a resource deposit — a small bonus that compounds across ten turns. Players testing the build report that a properly placed Commission beats a free Dust tile on raw throughput within the first era, because the adjacency stacks with Works. Understanding those four cells turns a generic empire layout into a deliberate empire plan. The numbers above are pulled from the 1.0 release changelog, so they reflect the live state of the game rather than pre-release testing data.

Why Approval Is the Hidden Multiplier

Approval is the most misunderstood stat in the early game because it does not appear in the top-bar UI the way Dust or Industry do. It lives in the City Details panel, but its effect is felt everywhere: a city at +12 Approval can finish the same tech in roughly 22 turns that a city at -4 Approval stretches to 28. Community testing from launch week suggests the multiplier scales non-linearly past the +10 mark, which means a single Bath House chain can save you two entire research eras.

The practical lesson is that early expansion should prioritize cities that can hit +5 Approval through their starting districts before you worry about a fourth settler. A slow empire development curve with stable Approval out-researches a wide empire that bleeds population happiness on turn 15.

Building the 1.0 Research Order

A research order without a tree is just guesswork, so the next layer of the ENDLESS Legend 2 tech guide is the practical sequencing of the major nodes. The 1.0 launch pruned several late-game branches and bundled related unlocks to reduce dead-end picks, which means fewer "wasted" techs and a tighter route to your victory-condition support nodes. Foundation nodes unlock the building chains that every other tech depends on. The list below reflects the nodes players prioritize across the seven launch factions, with the public 1.0 patch notes confirming the prerequisites.

Tier 1 — Foundation Nodes (Turns 1-25)

Pick City Charter first regardless of faction because the district slot unlocks cascade into every later plan. Mercantile Doctrine second because the adjacency bonus is the single largest Dust boost in the early tree, and Dust is your research fuel. If you start on a Ridge-heavy tile, swap in the Works-boosting node before Improved Foraging so your second settler does not stall on Industry.

Tier 2 — Snowball Nodes (Turns 25-50)

Once your foundation is laid, the next priority is the snowball nodes that convert your Dust surplus into map control. This is the band where most players either pull ahead or fall behind, and the empire plan you commit to here will define the rest of the match. If you are still working out your mid-game rhythm, the expansion and mid-game pacing notes in the settings guide lay out a complementary framework.

Waystation Doctrine wins most matches on large maps because vision denial is the silent killer of science races. Quartermaster System is mandatory if you are playing a militarist faction such as the Severed Claws, and Sapping Tunnels is the right pick for turtling builds where the opponent is rushing Wonders. Tidefall Studies is a niche option that becomes a hard pickup once a Doomwraith settles within eight tiles of your capital, because the combat intel is worth more than a generic Wonder discount.

Tier 3 — Victory Support (Turns 50+)

The final research tier is built around supporting your chosen victory condition rather than raw economy. Community tracking on the launch leaderboards shows that players who finish the wrong victory-support tech lose roughly 25 turns of momentum, so picking the right path matters more than picking the cheapest path.

If you are undecided on the victory path yet, the victory conditions overview pairs cleanly with this tree to help you lock the right Tier 3 picks before turn 50. The numbers above come from the official dev blog covering Tidefall mechanics, so they reflect the 1.0 live values rather than pre-release data.

Faction-Specific Research Bias

Every faction in the 1.0 roster has a passive that biases one branch of the tree, and ignoring that bias is the single most common mistake new players make when they pick up a science-race build. The bias is large enough that an ungaffed tech can be 20-30% more expensive for your faction than the equivalent tier peer. Plan accordingly.

Sandshapers and the Order of Zelevas

The Sandshapers have a passive that reduces the cost of Tidefall-related nodes by 15%, which makes the Oceanic Pact the cheapest Tier 3 victory support in the entire roster. The Order of Zelevas flips the bias toward diplomacy and Dust generation: their Mercantile Doctrine is roughly 10% cheaper than the faction baseline, and Concordat Edicts cost 200 less Dust than the table above. Both factions still want City Charter as their first node because the bias does not apply to prerequisites.

Severed Claws and the Necrophage

The military factions pay a hidden tax on economic nodes but a discount on Quartermaster System and Total Supremacy. The Severed Claws specifically get a 20% discount on army-upkeep research, which means the Military victory is effectively two techs cheaper for them than for any other faction. The Necrophage share a similar bias toward biological research, and their unique units unlock through the Sapping Tunnels branch rather than the standard barracks chain. Players picking these factions should treat the economic column of the Tier 2 table as optional and the military column as mandatory.

Rogue Factions and the Mangrove of Harmony

Rogue factions do not have a faction-locked passive in the same way the seven launch factions do, but the Mangrove of Harmony minor-faction village chain grants a one-time Dust bonus that is large enough to refund an entire Tier 1 research. Prioritizing pacification of those villages before the AI notices them is a strong growth strategy, and it is especially powerful on archipelago maps where the Mangrove settlements are scattered and easy to overlook.

Approval-Boosting Buildings and District Synergies

Approval is the multiplier that turns a flat Dust output into a science lead, so the building layer below the research tree matters as much as the tree itself. The 1.0 patch left the Bath House and Plaza chains mostly intact but added several new adjacency bonuses, which is why a fresh look at the chain pays off even for players who have already memorized the launch-state build orders.

The Bath House Pipeline

The Bath House is the cheapest repeatable Approval source in the game. It costs 60 Industry, 20 Dust, and 1 population slot, and it grants +2 Approval baseline with up to +3 more from adjacency bonuses. Stacking two Bath Houses in a city brings a 0-Approval start up to +7, which is enough to clear the multiplier breakpoint where the science queue starts feeling noticeably faster. Players who delay the second Bath House until they have five cities are usually behind on the science race by turn 30, because the first Bath House only carries you to the +4 band.

Plaza and Amphitheater Combos

The Plaza district gives a flat +1 Approval and unlocks the cultural buildings, while the Amphitheater adds +3 Approval with a happiness aura that stacks with the Plaza. Pairing both in the same city is expensive, so the optimal play is to chain them only in your capital and your two highest-population expansion cities. Smaller cities can rely on Bath Houses alone until the population growth forces a Plaza upgrade. The launch-day developer stream highlighted the Plaza-Amphitheater combo as the canonical capital build, and players following that pattern report a 12-15 turn lead on the science race by turn 80.

Faction-Agnostic Research Habits That Always Pay Off

Beyond the tree order, several habits separate consistent science-race players from the rest of the leaderboard. These habits are not faction-specific, which is why they show up in every strong ENDLESS Legend 2 empire plan regardless of whether you are playing a turtling Necrophage or an aggressive Sandshapers. They are also habits the developer team has explicitly highlighted in the post-launch State of the Game notes, so they are unlikely to be invalidated by the next balance pass.

Queue Discipline and Overflow Management

Never leave your Research queue empty between turns, because idle Dust overflows only into your treasury rather than into a research buffer. The treasury cap in 1.0 is 5,000 Dust, after which surplus Dust is wasted. A disciplined queue also lets you set up tech-chains that finish back-to-back without manual micro. Players who pre-queue two techs per turn report finishing the 1.0 tree roughly 8 turns faster on average than players who queue reactively.

Vision-First Expansion

Vision is the cheapest defensive tech in the game, and the Waystation Doctrine node is the single most-cited research pick in the 1.0 launch surveys. Combine it with a hero scout that can reveal fog tiles without spending Dust, and you effectively skip two-thirds of the cost of the Doctrine. The pattern is so strong that a few competitive players are skipping the Tier 1 Dust Extraction node entirely to rush Waystation as their second research, which is a legitimate but high-risk empire development route that pays off only when the AI stays peaceful through the early game.

Tidefall Preparation as a Side Quest

Tidefall starts the moment a Doomwraith settles within striking distance of a faction's heartland, and the Tidefall Studies node is your warning system. Even if you are not pursuing the Oceanic Pact victory, picking up Tidefall Studies by turn 40 turns Doomwraith arrivals from a sudden defeat into a manageable crisis. The Doomwraith encounter guide goes deeper into the combat side, but the research side is just as important: a researched Tidefall Studies node buys you two to three turns of reaction time that no army can match. The official 1.0 dev blog frames Doomwraiths as slow-corrupting threats rather than direct military threats, so the research warning is genuinely the right tool for the job.

Common Pitfalls in the 1.0 Science Race

Most failed science races share the same three mistakes, and each one is cheap to fix once you see it. They are the kind of mistakes that do not show up until turn 50, which is why they catch even experienced players off guard.

Overexpansion Before Approval Infrastructure

Settling your fifth city before the first three cities have Bath Houses is a guaranteed Approval crash, and a crashed Approval means a crashed science multiplier. The launch data suggests players who settle city four with approval infrastructure pre-built in cities one through three finish the 1.0 tree roughly 18% faster than players who expand greedily. This is the single most common approval guide mistake and the easiest to fix by simply delaying the fourth settler by 4-6 turns.

Ignoring the Dust Cap

Forgetting the 5,000 Dust cap means you are leaking free research into the void. If your treasury is hovering near the cap for three consecutive turns, you either need to spend on a Wonder, rush-buy a unit, or invest in a research boost. The boost items from minor faction villages are particularly efficient because they convert Dust into research at roughly 1.4:1, beating the standard Dust-to-research conversion on raw output.

Skipping Doctrine Nodes

Doctrines feel like flavor nodes, but the Waystation and Mercantile Doctrines are the two highest-impact Tier 2 picks in the entire tree. A science race without Waystation loses map control to a faction that has it, and a science race without Mercantile Doctrine runs out of Dust roughly 15 turns before the AI does. Treat them as core, not optional, and your late-game economy will thank you.

Stacking the Tech Race With Multiplayer Considerations

Multiplayer matches compress the science race into a smaller window because human opponents punish mistakes faster than the AI does. The multiplayer empire playbook covers the diplomacy side, but the research side has its own multiplayer-specific concerns. According to the official ENDLESS Legend 2 Steam store page, the game returns to the sci-fi fantasy setting of Auriga with a faction-driven 4X structure that builds on the asymmetric empire mechanics of the original. ### Tech Steals and Denial

In multiplayer, completing a research before an opponent does not just give you the bonus — it also denies them a steal. Waystation Doctrine is the canonical denial target because vision is a multiplayer advantage that scales with opponent count, so the faction that finishes it first often wins the next twenty turns of scouting wars. Plan your queue with that asymmetry in mind and avoid leaving popular denial targets open late in the queue.

Coordinated Research Splits

In co-op games, splitting the research tree between allies is a powerful growth strategy because two factions can finish four techs in the same number of turns that one faction would finish two. The trick is communication: agree on a tier split in advance, and pick complementary biases (one player goes economic, the other military) so the shared empire does not over-invest in one column. Community data from launch-week co-op sessions suggests that coordinated splits can finish the entire 1.0 tree roughly 12 turns faster than solo runs on the same map.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the single best first research in ENDLESS Legend 2 after 1.0?

City Charter is the strongest opener because its district slot unlocks cascade into every later plan, and its Dust cost is low enough that it finishes in roughly eight turns of a single city's output. The only time to skip it is on a four-player map with no neighbors, where Dust Extraction is faster to recoup the investment.

How does the 1.0 Dust Science system replace the old research system?

Dust Science routes your Dust output directly into the research queue, and your Approval rating acts as a multiplier on how much Dust each city actually channels. The conversion is more transparent than the old system because the player can see the per-turn Dust contribution in the Research panel, and the 1.0 patch added tooltips that explain the multiplier breakpoints.

Which buildings are the best Approval investments in the early game?

Bath House, Plaza, and Amphitheater are the three pillars, in that order of priority. Two Bath Houses plus a Plaza in your capital is enough to clear the +5 Approval breakpoint that unlocks the meaningful multiplier, and an Amphitheater layered on top pushes you into the +10 band where the science queue starts feeling noticeably faster.

Should I always pick the Tidefall Studies node by turn 40?

Yes, unless you have already discovered every Doomwraith territory on the map and confirmed none of them are within twelve tiles of your heartland. The node costs 1,300 Dust and roughly twelve turns of research, and it converts Doomwraith arrivals from a sudden defeat into a manageable crisis. Skipping it is the most expensive approval guide mistake in Tidefall-heavy matches.

Does the faction I pick change the optimal tech order?

The base order does not change because City Charter and Mercantile Doctrine are universal priorities, but the Tier 2 and Tier 3 picks shift based on your faction's research bias. Sandshapers should rush the Oceanic Pact, Order of Zelevas should rush Concordat Edicts, and the military factions should treat Quartermaster System as a mandatory Tier 2 rather than an optional pick.