Warband

Warbands are elemental-themed unique packs of monsters. They were originally introducted during the Warbands league but were not added to the core game when the league ended. Warbands are still available through other means, such as Zana's map device, prophecies, certain Delve nodes, and certain maps such as, , and.

Tiers
Warbands are separated into four tiers. The tier of a zone determines what kind of monsters can spawn. Tier 4 allows for the toughest warbands (the bosses) while tier 1 only spawns the weakest.

The current tier of the zone could be found with two methods:
 * it would be shown with small dots next to circle of the map (2 pairs of 1 dot for tier 1, 2 pairs of 2 dots for tier 2 and so on).
 * there was a message on the map modifiers such as ("Captured by the Brinerot"); see the faction section below for details

In addition to those restrictions, zone level will also affect the number of potential warbands can spawn from each tier. At lower levels you'll only see 2 warbands, where as on 68+ zones up to 6 warbands can spawn in total. Chaos Renegades, the fourth Warband faction, are hostile to both other Warbands and to exiles. They can only spawn in tier 4 map areas.

The tier will be determined by the number of warband kills in a zone; every 10 minutes (60 minutes for maps) the zones with the most warband kills will have their warbands removed, while new warbands will appear elsewhere in world increasing the strength of warbands in adjecent zones. Warbands will follow the regular world layout, for maps they follow a layout similar to the map upgrade path (see the graph).

Factions
Warbands are separated into four factions, each based on a damage type.

In the Warbands league, an enemy's faction could generally be found using the following techniques:
 * looking at the map; the map icons will have appropriately themed icons (i.e. lightning, fire, ice)
 * the mod in the upper right corner

Depending on the tier, the message on the upper right corner would change:

Items
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.

Warbands mods
These item affixes only appear on magic items of the correct item type that drop from the respective Warband members. The item drops pre-identified. All Warband mods are prefixes.


 * Brinerot:  (gloves)
 * Mutewind:  (boots)
 * Redblade:  (helmets)
 * Renegades:
 * Betrayer's: (weapons)
 * Deceiver's: (weapons)
 * Turncoat's: (weapons)

Version history

 * Warbands members now drop their signature items already identified.


 * The rate of spawning Warbands has been increased. It's now up to twice as high in some cases (such as leaders and Chaos Warbands).


 * Introduced the Chaos Warband Renegades.
 * Added three new Unique Items and some new weapon mods that can drop from the new Warband Renegades.
 * Warbands no longer leave footprints behind them.


 * Fixed a bug where Warbands in Maps were using location information from Merciless instead of the correct Map information.


 * There are now more fourth-tier Warbands throughout Merciless and Maps.
 * Increased the experience gained and the amount of items dropped by Warbands Grunts by 60% and Warbands Elites by 50%.
 * Warbands in Maps now change every hour rather than every half-hour, giving more opportunity to kill good ones.
 * The Chaos Leaders will rise up against the Warbands in content update 2.0.1.


 * Introduced to the game.
 * }