We are in the exciting world of late game optimization. Got a saved game that was on turn 800. Anyone getting to that point in any 4X strategy game has found themselves in the "there be dragons" area of gameplay. In Elemental's case, of course, there are actual dragons. The first thing we wanted to look at was optimizing the loading of saved games. An 881 turn game has a lot to load so finding…
June was pretty rough for this game. At some point, we don't know when, there was what we think was an OS update that slightly changed the way the game's audio system integrates with the OS, which resulted in what seemed to be (but weren't) random crashes. So what happened? In the game there are WAV files and MP3 files, and previously, for the last 15 years anyway, if a file name had a typo or…
Elemental Reforged v1.2 has landed and it is a meaty patch. Focusing on stability and bugfixes, v1.2 irons out many of the crashes and performance issues reported since launch. In this video, we highlight some of these fixes and changes made to improve the game.
Elemental: Reforged v1.2 Update Now Available View Changelog The v1.2 update for Elemental: Reforged is now available. This release is focused on stability, AI improvements, and an overhauled loot system for the base game and gameplay updates and bug fixes for Treasures of Magi. Smarter AI AI now pushes back against runaway leaders, founds more cities on large maps, uses potions and scrolls in…
I really couldn’t think of a good theme for this week’s journal entry. There’s a bunch of things we’re working on simultaneously so let’s tackle them in no particular order. General polish and bug fixing Bringing Elemental to the modern age has been pretty challenging to say the least. It wasn’t just a port to 64-bit, but also a complete rewrite of the underlying graphics engine (even the 3D mo…
Stardock Entertainment today released Treasures of the Magi , the first DLC for the fantasy turn-based strategy game Elemental: Reforged . Priced at $8.99 (enjoy the 20% launch discount through May 28!) , the expansion adds new monsters, treasures, items, and quests drawn from the First Age of Elemental, the era when the Magi ruled through sorcery and their golems stood watch over the cities of…
Treasures of the Magi is the first DLC for Elemental: Reforged. It adds a host of new items, armor, weapons, potions, and other gear, along with a handful of new lairs, quests, and monsters. Two of my favorite additions are the Mage Wands and the Shapeshifting Potions. But players will almost immediately notice the new items and lairs that help bring fresh life to the game, especially for those…
When we shipped 1.0.3, the team sat down and made a list of the things that were nagging us. Not big design questions. Not roadmap items. Just the stuff that, after a long play session, you start to feel. A few systems were slower than they had any right to be. Some encounters didn't reward you the way they should. The item pool felt thin in some places and oversaturated in others. A handful of…
Treasures of the Magi , a New DLC for Elemental: Reforged New expansion adds monsters, treasures, items, and quests drawn from the lost age of the Magi, launching May 21, 2026. Stardock Entertainment today announced Treasures of the Magi , a new DLC for the fantasy turn-based strategy game Elemental: Reforged . The expansion is priced at $8.99 and adds new monsters, new treasures and items, and…
Fantasy 4X is a sub-genre of strategy game with a very definite set of mechanics that came from a couple of very early titles, with Master of Magic being the primary inspiration. Stardock's series of games in the Elemental universe aimed to improve on some of the bigger flaws that some fantasy 4X games suffer from, and Elemental Reforged is no exception. In this video developer journal, we disc…
You’ve loaded up the game, created your sovereign and started playing. You are alone. Well, kind of alone. There’s lots of monsters and goodie huts. The question is, why? Today, I want to give you a bit of a lore dump. Why is the world filled with bandits and ruffians at the start? Why can you only found cities in a few areas? The answer requires us to go back thousands of years.. The First Age…
Elemental: Reforged v1.03 is Now Available View the full changelog Stardock has released v1.03 for Elemental: Reforged, a maintenance patch that corrects a long-standing issue with Fire magic, resolves a handful of crashes that were surfacing in longer campaigns, and tightens a range of tooltip and quest text. The most significant change is a fix to Fire spell damage scaling. Several Fire items…
In this video developer journal for Elemental: Reforged, we discuss post-release updates, including critical bugfixes, improved game AI, a new ability for Heroes and a "will I win?" indicator for the pre-battle UI.
You know those weeks where you're heads down, coffee-fueled, and the commit log looks like a novel? That was this week. And last week. And honestly the week before that. It’s been a bit of a rough few weeks here. Too many big changes got put in too late without enough testing. Sometimes, enthusiasm overwhelms judgement. We just want you guys to have all the cool stuff as fast as possible. And t…
Battle forecasts, expanded modding tools, and stability fixes View the full changelog The biggest addition is a new battle forecast system. The pre-battle screen now shows a predicted outcome before you commit to a fight, ranging from Crushing Victory down to Likely Defeat, color-coded green to red. If your champions are at risk of falling, it tells you. Modding support has been expanded. All g…
Lots of cool things going on. We’ve been reading the feedback closely as well as reviewing and fixing crash reports. Your posts are extremely helpful in narrowing things down. So today we want to talk about the roadmap for Elemental: Reforged. We have two years (at least) of budget now. Thank you for all your support! So let’s dive right into the near term: Version What is it When is it 1.02 Bu…
Elemental: Reforged v1.01 - AI Improvements, Balance Tuning, Stability Fixes v1.01 is now available. This update focuses on AI decision-making, balance adjustments, performance and stability fixes, and a long list of bug and text corrections reported by the community since launch. Full Changelog Smarter Non-Cheating AI The AI settles cities more intelligently and no longer picks barren tiles. S…
Elemental: Reforged has just been released. And people like it. They really like it. But the question is, now what? We now have a modern, 64-bit 4X strategy engine with extensive modding support. We've been quietly working on this for years. Nights, weekends, off the books. The "1.0" release was fairly arbitrary. That matters because there's a difference between spare-time effort and having act…
Elemental: Reforged, the Remastered 4X Strategy RPG is Now Available Features three campaigns, dynasty system, deep crafting, and hundreds of new quests, characters, and dungeons A unique mix of 4X Strategy and RPG gameplay is now available as Stardock Entertainment has officially released Elemental: Reforged . To celebrate the release of this passionately crafted and expanded remaster of Stard…
Introduction Going to use this as a bit of a walkthrough. I have created my character, Harlax. She is a Necromancer Enchantress belonging to the race known as Trogs, but that’s the name Men gave them. In the time after the Titans, they formed their own Empire known as Yithril. This is her story. Beginnings The world had been destroyed… After her wanderings, she came across one of the few areas…
Because of course we also made a full-fledged RPG game inside of our 4X strategy game… Let’s recap: 16 years ago we released Elemental: War of Magic. A ridiculously ambitious game that came crashing down because it couldn’t fit in 32-bit memory and all our dancing around this made the game incredibly unstable and required us to do terrible things to it to get it to work to the point you can’t e…
Beta 3C "The Menagerie Update" for Elemental: Reforged is now available View the full changelog New and Upgraded Monster Lairs Monster lairs now feature greater variety with new creature types including Ghouls, Bone Hounds, Feral Slaves, Embers, Prowlers, and Herglings. Lairs also drop more loot, with specific monster types tending to drop specific types of rewards and crafting ingredients. Gua…
New campaign, new sovereigns, smarter AI, and faster performance land in Elemental: Reforged's latest update View the full changelog The Beta 3b update for Elemental: Reforged is now available. Here's what's new. The Prelude Campaign The final campaign, Prelude, is now playable. This joins the existing Fallen Enchantress and Legendary Heroes campaigns, rounding out the campaign lineup ahead of…
Stardock Announces March 17 Release Date for Elemental: Reforged The remastered fantasy 4X strategy RPG exits Early Access with three campaigns, a dynasty system, deep crafting, and hundreds of new quests, characters, and dungeons Wishlist or Join Early Access Stardock Entertainment today announced that Elemental: Reforged , the remastered and expanded fantasy 4X strategy RPG, will leave Early…
As we start to near the finish line, our focus has moved to bug fixing, AI updates and balance. This is a delicate thing to get right. It isn’t as exciting or flashy as the graphics update but it is what will matter in the long run. Though, mark my words, there will still be “that guy” who will say the remaster didn’t update the graphics. Below is Janisk (before and after). Campaign before and…
Beta 3 brings a substantial visual overhaul, expanded campaign content, and reworked AI View the Changelog | Join Early Access Visual Overhaul The most immediately noticeable change is the updated character models. We've left the PlayStation 1 era behind with new models that apply retroactively to existing characters. We may still need to upscale some clothing textures, but the core visual upgr…
Happy New year! We have been burning the midnight oil over here at Stardock to get Beta 3 out. Your support and enthusiasm is what drives us and we have been making the most of it! So what’s in BETA 3 and when is it coming out? Besides a massive list of bug fixes we have 3 main focuses: · The long awaited art overhaul · The campaigns · The AI/balance update As many of you know, I don’t love ear…
Fantasy Strategy Game, Elemental: Reforged hits Beta 2 on Steam with Dynasties, Modding, Updated Opponent AI and much more Stardock's remastering of its popular fantasy strategy game series, Elemental, combines War of Magic, Fallen Enchantress and Sorcerer King into one game to rule them all View the full changelog Stardock Entertainment has released Beta 2 for Elemental: Reforged , the remaste…
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Announcements are the developer’s own posts to the game’s Steam news feed: updates and their patch notes, in-game events, releases and sales. The important ones are marked on the players chart.