How Warbands Works

In Normal, Cruel and Merciless difficulty, map pins on the World Screen show which Warbands are in which areas and how strong they are. Warbands with four dots (on each side) are able to spawn Leaders.

When you enter an area with a Warband in it, there's a chance at spawning the strongest type of Warband possible. There's a larger chance of spawing the next one down, and so on. That's why some areas with four dots don't have Leaders, and why strong areas often have many Warbands in them.

Any type of Warband member can drop items with special new magic mods or the Unique Shields. Tier three/four members can drop the Unique Boots. Tier four members can drop the Unique Rings.

Every ten minutes (30 in Maps), the areas that had the most Warband kills in the last period have their Warbands removed. A new Warband appears somewhere else, increasing the strength of all adjacent Warbands. This process can create new four-dot Warbands.

Today's 2.0.0f patch fixes a bug where Warbands in Maps used Merciless location data by mistake.

In Maps, Warbands have their own layout. The areas are connected in a similar way to the upgrade chain available when you vendor a set of three maps. This is now working correctly as of 2.0.0f.

Some Warband leaders are beginning to show dissatisfaction with their factions. Soon they may take matters into their own hands.