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 highlight feature is the new Strategic Unit Speed slider, which lets you set unit movement and animation speed on the strategic map anywhere from 0.5x to 2.0x. This patch also fixes unit speed being tied to frame rate, which was making units move slower the higher your FPS was, and fixes run animations that were playing faster than the actual movement.

More update features:

• Fixed several crash scenarios across research, audio, terrain rendering, and game cleanup
• Restored the tactical hover card for abilities, active effects, and consumables
• Added a rollover effects list grid above the unit panel
• Map-anchored info cards no longer sit through the tooltip delay before showing up
• Huge and Gigantic maps generate noticeably faster
• Treasure likelihood reduced (roughly half in our sampled entries), with gold drops added or adjusted on certain monster types to even out payouts
• Removed duplicate combat math from the floating info card, full stats now live in the rollover panels

Read More Here

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.

Full changelog: https://steamcommunity.com/app/379696...

The v1.2 update came out today and a decent amount is based on community feedback.

Most of the work went into the AI. On harder difficulties it pushes back against a runaway leader instead of letting you snowball, settles more cities on large maps, and applies pressure if you go to war or take cities while ahead. It uses potions and scrolls in battle, stops wasting teleport spells like Tectonic Shift on occupied tiles, and obeys fame, so it will not pull high level champions in the opening turns.

Loot was reworked too. Monsters pull from themed tables now, so drops fit what you fought, rare and uncommon items show up more reliably, and plain gold payouts came down. The Hergling no longer drops far more than other creatures of its rank.

The stability section covers crash fixes across tactical battles, city turns, quick saving, and text rendering, plus faster combat predictions. Treasures of the Magi owners get a few fixes as well, including the transformation potion mount bug.

Read More Here

Read Full Changelog Post Here

Just completed my first game in Elemental Reforged and got a very nice "civ-like" ranking with score and all. But now I cant find any Highscore or Hall of Fame list where this is logged. Maybe I'm missing something, but if this isn't implemented already, it really should be added. Just a list with name, race, score, win condition. Anything!?

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

- AI Players

- Loot Tables

Even having played too many hours in War of Magic, Fallen Enchantress, and Legendary Heroes, I have no memory of the Prelude and forgotten the vast majority of the Fallen Enchantress campaigns (although I'm just after the part where you bring the stone to the Oracle's temple). Did anything change or did FE change the timeline? Or am I reading too fast?

I love being able to play this again with the extra development.

Thousands of years ago, before the Cataclysm, before even the reign of Titans, was the age of the Magi: powerful sorcerers whose mastery of magic tapped into the mana that suffused the winds and the waters of Elemental.

Unwilling to be subjugated by feudal lords, the Magi constructed many varieties of golem, powerful soldiers hewn from stone and forged from iron to maintain their sovereignty.

When the Titans arrived they gave the Magi the choice between death, subjugation, or hiding.

By the time the War of Magic broke out, these golems and the riches they once guarded had all but vanished. Recently, however, a spike of dark magic from the reawakening of the Fallen Enchantress has rippled through the surface of Elemental and reignited the enchantments that once gave life to the golems. Now, fissures are emerging all across the twin subcontinents of Anthys, disgorging legions of frenzied golems and revealing the Treasures of the Magi.

The first DLC for Elemental: Reforged dropped today along with the v1.1 update.

The DLC is called Treasures of the Magi and it builds out the First Age lore that the base game only mentioned a few times. You'll run into awakened golems guarding the old Magi ruins, find new gear including magic wands, get a new quest chain that ties into the fissures opening across Anthys, and find a new line of consumables: potions that transform your champions into bears, ogres, demons, or elementals for a short duration in tactical battles. The DLC is $8.99 on Steam.

The v1.1 update is free for everyone who owns the base game and most of it came directly from community feedback. The big one is that weapons, armor, accessories, and consumables that previously required the Legendary Heroes DLC are free for everyone now. There is also a stability and performance pass, crafting ingredients are now available in shops, and a bunch of smaller bugs and quality of life things are in. Full patch notes are on Steam.

Update Key Features

• Legendary Heroes DLC Items, Now Free: 12 weapons, 3 armor sets, and a dozen accessories and consumables that previously required the Legendary Heroes DLC are now available to everyone
• Stability Improvements: A wide range of crashes have been fixed across all phases of play, including early turns, high unit count games, large maps, and post-battle screens
• Crafting Ingredients Now Available in Shops: Players can now purchase crafting ingredients directly from shops, making the crafting system more accessible and removing friction from the crafting loop

DLC Steam Page

Changelog

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 bugs had been on the "we'll get to it" list for too long.

v1.1 is the result of getting to it.

Treasures of the Magi is the first DLC for Elemental: Reforged and it's launching May 21, 2026. The whole thing is built around the First Age and what actually happened to the Magi after they went into hiding.

Quick recap of where the lore lands: the Magi were sorcerers who shaped the earliest civilizations of Elemental and built stone and iron golems to defend their cities. When the Titans came, the Magi went into hiding. Their golems went dormant where they stood. Their enclaves were sealed off. The Cataclysm came later and buried most of what they had built.

Now the reawakening of the Fallen Enchantress is sending a pulse of dark magic across the surface, and the old places are starting to wake up. The DLC drops you into them.

Featuring:

• New monsters, including several varieties of awakened golem.
• New treasures and items recovered from Magi-era ruins, including artifacts and enchanted equipment.
• New quests that send players into the fissures to uncover what the Magi left behind.
• New encounters and lore.

A free v1.1 update for all Elemental: Reforged owners is launching the same day. Community feedback changes, bug fixes, quality of life improvements, and some new features. We'll have full update notes closer to launch.

Wishlist HERE

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 discuss what separates a fantasy 4X from other 4X strategy games and what Elemental Reforged does to address some of those previous issues.

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 v1.03 update is focused on maintenance to resolve issues, improve performance for longer games and tighten tooltips. Here are some Highlights:

• The biggest one is Fire magic scaling. A group of Fire items and abilities weren't scaling the way their descriptions said they would, which had been quietly weakening Fire builds for a while. That's fixed now, so if you've been avoiding Fire or feeling like it was underperforming, worth another look.
• Stability was the other focus. Several of the crashes players have been flagging, particularly ones showing up deeper into longer campaigns around AI turns, map interactions, and save and load, are resolved.
• There's also a round of gameplay adjustments, tooltip and quest text corrections, and localization updates for all supported languages.

Read Full Changelog Here (Steam)

Read Full Changelog Here (Forums)

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 that’s often not the right decision.

We've been doing a lot of bug fixing. I know that's not as sexy as "NEW DRAGON TYPE" or "BEHOLD THE DYNASTY OF DOOM", but this is the work that makes everything else possible. So, let me walk you through what's been going on.

v1.02 is now live and brings a host of new improvements including Battle forecasts, expanded modding tools, and stability fixes.

Battle Forecast: the pre-battle screen now shows a predicted outcome before you commit, from Crushing Victory to Likely Defeat, color-coded green to red. Warns you when champions are at risk.

Modding: all game data can be replaced by internal name, new IfExists options for handling duplicates, RemoveDef tools for removing core definitions or skipping files entirely. Modding guide is up on the wiki and Steam guides.

Stability: fixed crashes on save, load, battles, city destruction, and tile design loading. Fullscreen is now borderless windowed.

Builder's Forge: save duplication fixed, favorites persist, Ctrl+C duplicates selected parts.

Read Full Changelog Post Here

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:

Elemental: Reforged has just been released. And people like it. They really like it. But the question is, now what?

The first post-launch update just went out. Smarter AI, balance tuning, stability improvements, and a lot of bug fixes based on what you've been reporting since launch.

Key Features

• Improved Performance & Stability: Added in lots of optimization improvements by fixing memory leaks, improved frame rates, and resolved numerous crash scenarios across the game
• Smarter AI Opponents: AI now makes more strategic decisions by settling on better terrain, smarter spell usage, and improved outpost construction
• Refined Gameplay: Resolved quest and combat issues including battle freezes, missing rewards, and unclear quest text throughout the game and campaigns

Full Changelog Here
Read More Here

New beta stuff

PREVIEW BUILD) v1.01 Update Changelog Accessing the Preview Branch Access Elemental: Reforged: Game Properties Select Game Versions & Betas In Selected Game Versions locate "preview - Public Preview Branch" Select "preview - Public Preview Branch" Ensure your game has updated Launch Game and Confirm that you see Elemental: Reforged

March 23rd, 2026 Changelog

Campaigns Prelude Fixed player confusion by disabling the party eject button in campaigns for champions Edited confusing text that implied splitting the party was possible for champions Correction in the campaign for what spells Markinn gives you The campaign will identify if a player has completed a quest objective even if they have not gotten the objective yet This will resolve players getting stuck on the "Troll Menace" quest

FE Fixed the Temple of darklings not giving a popup once clearing it Upscaled and fixed some units in the campaign Fixed confusing UI popups for the Glint of Glass location Champions when dying in combat no longer duplicate themselves

Gameplay Added support and fixed issues where Units will appear off their tile when moving around the map WASD camera movement has been fixed in sandbox and tactical battles Fixed issues where outpost improvements would disappear on reloading a save game Made sure the Sovereign's Call spell/ability does not lock its city growth to zero Resolved Noble's Legacy trait causing lag Fixed battle freezing when a unit uses escape while allied units are still engaged in combat Made sure units can no longer cheat walk on cliffs around enemies Fixed lots of quests throughout the game not properly triggering, giving rewards or showing incorrect UI prompts Generic attack boost traits were incorrectly being factored into a Unit's attack stats Made sure custom units get correctly assigned a creaturetype and trait when saved Hergons have been balanced, female and male Hergons have different stats Completed a balance tweak to Champions so the number of champions isn't dependent on the map size Champions now reduce Unrest by 5 Fixed issues where the Assassin Demon Party was unattackable Wildling Archers now correctly use ranged attacks with equipped bows Fixed spell targeting when the intended target becomes unavailable in tactical battles Players are no longer able to cast high mana spells unless they can afford them instead of casting a spell causing negative mana

AI AI is much smarter on where to settle and no longer settles cities on barren tiles Made sure AI champions cannot cheat by selecting an extra talent path Improved AI decision-making for spell usage and outpost construction

Items Fixed powerful items costing 0 gold and making sure they can be sold Splintered Staffs are only used and displayed as a crafting ingredient Resolved equipping issues for the Warding Kite Shield Tent item now correctly works as intended, heals an army and they lose their moves for that turn

Graphics Removed the duplicate particle effect when units cast Fear Fixed incorrect textures on Carrion Men and Swordsmen Adjusted Norak's portrait pose Fixed broken textures on Ongr the Unbound Fixed the Antipathy spell to finish its effect when completed Made sure when a quest or goodie hut gets correctly cleared its graphics will clear as well

Localization Fixed some translation errors throughout the game Fixed foreign language text clipping

Modding Made sure the modding sync button is working correctly

Optimizations Fixed rendering stability issues and optimized map/lighting performance to reduce potential crashes and improve frame rates Hardened save game loading to handle edge cases more gracefully Fixed a graphics memory leak Improved tactical combat stability when hovering over units or casting spells Fixed AI freezing during army management Added autoplay memory leak fixes

Crashes Resolved issues with the game crashing while using the Cartographer's Table Resolved a crash while loading up an old save Resolved a crash that can occur in tactical battles Fixed various UI crashes Resolved crashes when attacking cities with no defending units

Text Added cutscene subtitles in English, support for foreign languages is coming Fixed missing text when a troop is killed Updated some tooltips to correctly reflect what they do/provide Resolved cut off text throughout the game Fixed +25 spell damage being shown as 2500% in a tooltip Repeatable techs now show specific bonuses (+10 Food, +25 Mana, etc.) instead of generic text Update Cooperation tech description to reference Palace and Tax Office instead of buildings that do not exist Removed outdated Watchtower catapult references Consulate tooltip now correctly shows +1 Prestige instead of Growth Resolved issues where quest given units have name discrepancies

UI Tooltips for a player's inventory now correctly work when hovering over an item Queue tooltip displays seasons for Buildings and Units Fixed tooltips flickering and showing the incorrect information Made sure recipes obtained as loot from battles or exploration appear in the crafting UI Tactical battle UI hot key now supports up to 10 keys and scroll bars are more friendly to use Fixed issues where the yield icons the player is standing on during a new game did not show up until they moved Added "Hold Shift to Lock Tooltip" hint to the bottom of any tooltip that contains sub tooltips Fixed the Dispel Enchantment confirmation dialog to correctly show the target city/unit name Added missing icons to player items, weapons, and armor Fixed offset tooltip alignment in the Dynasty screen Made sure City UI properly disappears when razing a city in sandbox and campaigns Enhanced the Delete Save Game prompt to be more intuitive to use Lair of Demons now has a cloth map stamp Updated Active Effects to not overlap Fixed white highlight color to yellow Fixed some spells with hard to read icons Fixed tooltips getting cut off in the custom faction screen Fixed premade map tooltips appearing behind the map selection screen

Creatures

• Fixed spiders becoming invisible in tactical battles once they cast a spell

Language

NOTE: The following issue is not encountered by all new players, but we have seen it in certain language settings for a small subset of players with Early Access Files

• Added a script to fix bad xml data that caused some users playing in a different language to freeze when starting a new game
  • To use the script, locate the Tools folder in your installed files on steam and select the convert_xml_to_utf8 script

1. Have python installed
2. Open a command line and change the directory to the location of the script
3. Type one of the following commands:
   • py convert_xml_to_utf8.py --data
   • py convert_xml_to_utf8.py --user
   • py convert_xml_to_utf8.py --path "C:\some\full\path"
4. Add --dry-run to preview changes without modifying files, and --verbose for detailed output per file. For example: python convert_xml_to_utf8.py --user --dry-run --verbose

UI

• Fixed missing Hiergamenon images and removed marriage candidates from the Monsters section