The tribe-themed throne rooms waiting at the end of each fortress invasion also give definite boss fight vibes. We’d assumed those fortresses would take the place of traditional boss battles, mostly because they were the focus of most early Shadow of War preview footage. “So if you put a bunch of level 10 guys in there, you’re going to have a much weaker fort than if you put a bunch of level 40 or level 60 guys in there.” “When you look at a fort and it’s a level 400 fort, that’s a combination of how big it is and how many upgrades its got, but also the level of the warchiefs you’ve installed there,” Roberts said.

But building new walls and towers is only half the battle – you’ll also need an army of orcs that you’re willing to give leadership roles in order for your keeps to reach their full potential. Each new wing lets Talion assign more of his followers to the keep. Every fortress can be upgraded and expanded, if you have enough mirian to pay for construction. But players can add more fortresses to that list as the Shadow of War campaign progresses. Talion begins his new career as Mordor’s next landlord with nothing more than a two-chief keep in his real estate portfolio. “Once you take it over, you can start upgrading it until it becomes a full-on six warchiefs and the overlord.” “We have this kind of structure where the first keep you’re going to assault in the game will be kind of training you on the concept,” Roberts said. While those numbers are predetermined at the onset of the campaign, they won’t remain stagnant if the player doesn’t want them to. In addition to looking very different from each other, based on the orc tribe that runs the keep, each keep will have varying numbers of warchiefs ready to defend them during invasions.

We’ve known for many months that the fortresses Talion and Celebrimbor encounter throughout Mordor won’t all be the same size or shape.

To celebrate, we have additional details on the game’s Nemesis-driven fortress invasions, courtesy of our PAX West interview with Shadow of War Design Director Bob Roberts. The Middle-earth: Shadow of War release date is only four days away and early reviews suggest the Shadow of Mordor sequel will be worth every day of the three years we had to wait for it.

Shadow of war fortress upgrades