Elemental: Reforged News & Patch Notes

Elemental: Reforged v1.3 Update Now Available

The v1.3 update for Elemental: Reforged is now available. This release resolves multiple crash scenarios, restores tactical UI info cards, adds a new strategic unit speed control, and speeds up map generation while rebalancing loot drops.

Stability and UI Improvements

Resolved multiple crash scenarios across research, audio, terrain rendering, and game cleanup. The tactical unit hover info card for abilities, active effects, and consumables has been restored, with a new rollover effects list grid added above the rollover unit panel, and map-anchored info cards now skip the tooltip delay so information appears instantly.

New Strategic Unit Speed Control

A new Strategic Unit Speed slider in the General options lets you set how fast units move and animate on the strategic map, from 0.5x to 2.0x. This update also fixes unit movement being tied to frame rate, which was causing units to move slower at higher frame rates, along with correcting run animations that were playing faster than the actual movement.

Faster Maps and Rebalanced Loot

Huge and Gigantic maps now generate noticeably faster. Treasure likelihood values have been reduced, roughly halved across sampled entries, and gold treasure drops have been added or adjusted on affected monster unit types for a more balanced payoff. Duplicate combat math has also been removed from the floating info card, with full stats now living in the rollover panels.

Elemental: Reforged v1.3 Update Now Available

View Changelog

Stability and UI Improvements

New Strategic Unit Speed Control

Faster Maps and Rebalanced Loot

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 something the game would just silently fail and go to the next one. So a given sound effect or track of music would try to play, and if the file wasn't there or the file name was not the right case, it would either not play or just skip to the next track.

But then in June this stopped being the case, and the game would either plain crash or the music would do something funky (like go into a loop) and then crash.

This issue mostly happened if you were playing as one of the Empires. That's why there was some consternation in the forums and Discord, where someone would complain about random crashes and others would say "well, it's rock solid for me." In truth, they were both right. If you were playing as the Kingdom, it probably worked. If you were playing as one of the Empires, you probably got crashes at seemingly random intervals.

To address this, we've been updating the game in two ways. First, we hardened the calls so they no longer rely on the underlying sound libraries to fail gracefully, for example when a file is named "WarDrums.mp3" on disk but referenced as "Wardrums.mp3" in XML. Second, we fixed a lot of the missing tracks, so if you play the game, especially as an Empire, you will probably hear a lot of sounds and tracks that are "new" but were always there.

Needless to say, it didn't help the game's review scores, and it's just another blip in the game's technical history of being a very big-scope game made by a lot of very young (back in 2008 anyway) developers.

Making it up to players

So besides fixing the problem, we also moved up the release of some of the additional Sorcerer King quests. In version 1.3 you will see a lot of new quests.

We also moved up the release date of v1.3 from August into July. We expect to have a preview build up by the end of this week.

Version 1.3 has a loot balance pass across the board that we think players will like a lot. It also adds a new tactical battle tooltip that shows what effects, abilities, and tactical items a given unit has on them, so players can make better decisions about who to target. This feature has me excited because now I want to give bandits and other enemies interesting items to make use of (at least a health potion or the occasional scroll, for instance).

So there you have it. Once v1.3 is out, we'll be moving on to v1.4. Let us know in the comments what you'd like to see next.

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 battle, and makes smarter spell targeting decisions.

Overhauled Loot System

A new themed loot table system gives monsters like wolves and bears identity-matched drops, with wider variety, better drop rates on uncommon and rare items, and reduced plain gold payouts.

Stability and Performance Fixes

Resolved multiple crash scenarios across tactical battles, city turns, battle previews, quick saving, and text rendering, plus faster combat predictions and smoother AI turns.

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 model system was completely replaced – havok to FBX) as well as the underlying data system to support non-English characters. Combined, in a game this big (and it is a really, really big game) you end up with endless edge cases. Thank goodness the tools today are so much better than what they used to be. Let me show you what that looks like below:

From Crash to Cure: Our Bug-Hunting Process

Let me give you a case in point: Tactical battle, player running the Japanese version of the game mouses over an Altarian tactical ability called Rush. That tooltip is translated but the control for it is expecting a CHAR (8 bit) and boom crash. And it’s just that one tooltip, not “the tooltip system”. Luckily, with the tools we have we can see these. But it’s still really unfortunate that this wasn’t found before release.

AI players

The AI in Reforged is much better than the AI in War of Magic and Fallen Enchantress. But we want to make it much better. The issue is fairly straight forward – the snowball effect. Your character and champions get extremely powerful. Stacks of doom are nothing new to the genre but Elemental kind of does a “Heh, stack of doom? Hold my beer, I’ll show you a stack of doom.”

So the player just ends up steamrolling the AI opponents one by one. So we are working on improving how the AI reacts to a runaway player.

The goal is not to create an automatic "everyone declares war on you" system. That would be blunt and annoying. Instead, we are making the existing diplomacy system more aware of what is happening.

If the human player is in first place and starts attacking another major faction, nearby AI players will begin to take that seriously. If you are attacking a Kingdom, other Kingdoms will be more likely to sour on you. If you are attacking an Empire, other Empires will react similarly. Kingdoms in particular will show more solidarity with each other.

This pressure builds over time. Every so many turns that you remain at war while leading the world, diplomatic penalties increase. Capturing cities will matter too. Distance still matters: an AI on the other side of the world should not declare war just because it heard you were being a menace somewhere over the horizon. That looks silly, and we try to reserve silly for intentional features.

We are also making sure the system understands who started the war. If the AI attacks you, you should not be punished as if you were the aggressor. That required some new tracking so the game knows which active wars the player actually started.

On higher difficulties, we also want the AI to be more capable of backing up its diplomacy. If the player is rolling around with a stack of doom, the AI needs to build stronger armies, defend better, and attack player cities more aggressively where appropriate.

The intended result is simple: if you become the dominant power and start conquering the world, the world should notice. Not instantly. Not unfairly. But enough that victory feels earned rather than inevitable.

I am hoping we can get this into v1.2.

Loot Tables

Another big change is the implementation of actual loot tables.

So in our current system, when a unit dies, it drops an item and many times these items are simply dropped based on rarity. But what is common a Balrog is not common for a goblin, so to speak.

You probably noticed in 1.1 that the loot got a lot better and more interesting. This was because we did a poor man’s version of this by actually specifying, by creature, what they dropped. This worked reasonably well, but the downside was that it was incredibly labor intensive for us to do and on top of that, some creatures would end up as pinatas (looking at you, ghouls).

So here’s how that works:

A loot table is a list of possible items. Each item can have a weight, which controls how likely it is to be picked. Higher weight means it comes up more often.

Entries can also be gated by SpawnRating. SpawnRating is basically the game's rough measure of how dangerous or advanced the source is. A weak monster can be limited to weak, scrappy loot. A serious monster can unlock better entries from the same general table.

So a table can say:

Dead rats are fine for very low-level creatures.
Wolf pelts are fine for early monsters.
Demon horns should only appear from stronger monsters.
Dragon eyes should only come from things that are actually in dragon territory, power-wise.

What Designers Use A treasure reward can now use:

xml GiveLootTable GoblinLoot

The important part is GoblinLoot. That name points to a table in LootTables.xml.

A table entry can include:

Item: the item that can drop.
Weight: how likely it is compared to the other entries.
MinSpawnRating: the weakest source allowed to drop it.
MaxSpawnRating: the strongest source allowed to drop it.
Count: how many to give, if it should give more than one.
RarityDisplay: an optional extra rarity filter.

So why is this better?

The old rarity-only system answered one question: "How rare is this?"

The loot table system answers two better questions:

What kind of thing dropped this?

How strong was that thing?

That gives us more control with less hackery. Goblins can drop goblin-appropriate junk. Big monsters can drop big-monster loot. And when we want a special case, we can make a named table for it instead of trying to smuggle design intent through the word "Common."

And this should be in v1.2, also.

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 Anthys.

Treasures of the Magi Release Video:

About the Setting

Thousands of years before the Cataclysm, the Magi were sorcerers whose mastery of magic shaped the early civilizations of Elemental. They forged golems out of stone and iron to defend their sovereignty against the feudal barons rising up around them. When the Titans came, the Magi retreated into hiding, their golems went dormant, and the Cataclysm later buried most of what they had built.

The reawakening of the Fallen Enchantress has sent a pulse of dark magic across the surface of Elemental, and the old enchantments that animated the golems have begun to stir once more. Fissures are opening across the twin subcontinents of Anthys, and the golems and the treasures they once guarded are returning to the surface.

What the DLC Adds:

New gear including new weapons, magic wands, unique armor and much more.
New monsters, including several varieties of awakened golem.
New treasures and items recovered from Magi-era ruins, including potions that can transform the player into magical creatures in battle.
New quests that send players into the fissures to uncover what the Magi left behind.
New encounters and lore.

Free v1.1 Update:

Full changelog here

A free v1.1 update is also available today for all Elemental: Reforged owners. Shaped largely by community feedback, the update brings a number of quality of life improvements along with a wide range of stability and performance fixes. Among the highlights, weapons, armor, accessories, and consumables that previously required the Legendary Heroes DLC are now available to all players at no cost, and crafting ingredients can be purchased directly from shops.

Treasures of the Magi Screenshots:

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 who previously played Fallen Enchantress.

While the general improvements coming with version 1.1 will probably get the most attention thanks to the major performance boost, along with broad improvements to balance, stability, AI, and overall polish, we think Treasures of the Magi will be something most players will really enjoy.

The Background

We’ve discussed the history of Elemental before, but as a quick recap: the Elemental games - War of Magic, Fallen Enchantress, and Sorcerer King, which Reforged remasters - take place during the Third Age of Elemental, shortly after the Cataclysm. The world is beginning to recover, but civilization is still only barely returning. That’s why the land is filled with thugs, bandits, and other dangers; nature abhors a vacuum.

But the First Age of Elemental took place during the Age of the Magi. Before the Shards, magic permeated the world, and some people were especially gifted in wielding it. The most powerful of these became known as the Magi, and they crafted many incredible artifacts that were lost during the Cataclysm.

When the Titans came, the Magi hid their Treasures and placed them under the protection of their constructs: golems. Golems were something we always wanted to explore more deeply in the original games because they were such an important part of the setting’s backstory. Their role was somewhat akin to familiars in other fantasy worlds. They were a major part of Magi society and power.

As a result, this expansion introduces many new golems, most of them guarding some of the game’s more powerful Treasures.

By the time of the Fallen Enchantress, upheaval across the world has caused some of the vaults lost during the Cataclysm to become accessible once again.

And now you get to benefit from that. If you dare.

In action

Here’s a case where I have a potion of Ogre form.

Not so tough now, eh?

Here is a case where you discover a Treasures guarded by golems. This will not end well.

Over the course of the game, you will find a lot of new loot. We put in the effort to make sure this loot wasn’t simply like what already exists but with a different stat. We wanted to make sure these items delivered interesting choices.

My particular bugaboo was that I felt like there weren’t enough interesting early game swords. It always felt weird that I would get super excited about getting a “training sword” because that was basically the only sword I was going to get that was better than the one I started with until I got late in the game.

We’re pretty excited about Treasures of the Magi. We hope you like it as much as we liked making and “Testing” it. Let us know what you think.

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.

This isn't a feature release. It's the kind of update that makes the version of the game you already own feel better to play. Here is what is in it.

Now, before I start, I have a minor rant about AI I want to get off my chest. I write these by hand. I enjoy writing them. But every app I use now, every editor, etc. offers to edit it and as soon as I let it, in come the em-dashes and the stupid, pithy, punchy writing style. It’s what’s ruining YouTube. My kingdom for something that is better than a spell checker but won’t turn my writing into AI slop. Ok, rant over. Let’s keep going.

More Items, Better Items

One of the things that has bothered me for a while is that loot in Elemental was a little predictable. By the end of a few games, you knew most of what you were going to find. That is a problem in a game built around exploration and reward.

The good news is that we did not need to invent new art to fix it. Stardock has been making fantasy games for over twenty years, and the art vault is enormous. Swords, axes, staves, helms, cloaks, rings, amulets, trinkets, oddities. A lot of it is genuinely great work that just never made it into Reforged because the original Elemental shipped with a smaller item set.

In v1.1 we have uplifted a substantial chunk of that vault into the game. New weapons. New armor. New accessories. New crafting outputs. The variety is not just visual either -- most of these come with their own effects, and we tried to give each one a reason to exist rather than being a stat bump over the last thing you found.

A few things I want to call out:

More tiers in the middle. A common complaint was that you would find a starter sword, then a great sword, with not much in between. We have filled in the middle of the curve so progression feels more continuous.
More flavor at the high end. Late-game items lean harder into doing something interesting rather than just adding numbers. Following our internal rule that items should do one thing -- sometimes two -- and do it well. See those em-dashes? I did that. Sorry. Moving on.
More reasons to open every ruin. The pool of possible rewards is wider, so the ruin you ignored last game might be the one with the thing you actually wanted this game.

Fewer Items You Already Have Too Many Of

The other half of that conversation: variety only matters if the existing pool is not crowding it out.

If you played a few games of 1.0.3, you noticed it. Tilda Herbs everywhere. Splintered Staves on what felt like every other monster. Guiding Spears stacking up from goodie huts. Those drops were not bugs exactly…the likelihood values were just too high, on too many sources, all at once.

So we did the audit. For v1.1:

Tilda Herbs drop rate is roughly halved. 36 monster treasure entries got rebalanced. The average likelihood went from 42 down to 21. They still drop. They just no longer take over your inventory.
Splintered Staff drop rate is roughly halved. 21 monster treasure entries rebalanced, average likelihood 40 down to 20. The +15 Dodge accessory remains a great early-game find, but you should not be equipping four of them on the same team anymore.
Goodie hut spear oversaturation is on the list for a follow-up: the root cause sits in the goodie hut rolling code rather than in the drop tables themselves, and we want to fix it properly rather than paper over it.

We also did a pass on item descriptions. Some inherited from FE:LH had unfilled template tokens or missing words. The Hunter's Short Sword, for example, has been sitting there reading "The was discontinued when much worse things than bears began killing the warriors" is now fixed.

Performance

The other thing the team has been heads-down on is performance. Elemental is a game where, by turn 200, a lot is going on. Dozens of cities, hundreds of units, an AI thinking about all of it, a tactical battle system sitting in the wings, and a world simulating itself underneath you.

We went through the parts of that pipeline that were costing us the most and tightened them up. Where you’ll notice this stuff the most is when you zoom out and see the cloth map. The cloth map was doing a lot of calculations.

The short version: turns are faster, battles load quicker, and the late game does not grind the way it used to on modest hardware. It wasn’t GPU, it was pure CPU stuff.

Bug Fixing, Big and Small

Some of these you noticed. Some you did not.

The big ones:

Horse and warg counts now work. The top bar was showing you a stable; the unit-training screen said you had zero. Both were right. The data was desynced. Fixed.
Units no longer render one tile offset from where they actually are. You can retire the "click the unit in the panel, then right-click to snap it back" workaround.
Map seeds are honored on the new-game screen. Type a seed, get that seed.
Two tactical autoresolve crashes in the post-battle elimination path, both with surgical fixes.
Bishop's Ring works. Two empty stub definitions at the bottom of CoreSpells.xml and CoreUnitStats.xml were silently overwriting the real spell and stat. Last-write-wins is a brutal rule when the last write is empty. The ring now charges on melee hits and releases the charges as healing.

The small ones: dozens. Tooltip fixes. UI alignment. Spells that did not match their descriptions. AI decisions that did not make sense in specific edge cases. Audio cues firing at the wrong moment. Cropped portraits on four golem variants because they were sharing a Stone Golem Hero camera framed for a much taller model. v1.1 closes a lot of tickets that have been sitting too long.

Balance

Balance is the part of any strategy game that is never finished. We made passes on a few areas where things were either wrong or misleading.

Spells:

Regeneration was telling players it fully heals the target each season. It does not, and it never did at this value. It grants +4 Health Regeneration per season. Some of you reported it as broken. You were right that the description was broken, even if the spell was working as designed. New description matches reality. We may revisit the value itself. For now, we are at least no longer lying about it.
Elixir of Essence now works for non-sovereign champions. Previously it was sovereign-only, and when used through the found-item popup it fired twice and granted double essence. Both fixed. The same fix caught a separate bug where new army members started with HP higher than max for one turn.
Enchantments and city radiance now agree between UI and rules. Cities with fractional radiance below 1.0 (some campaign cities like Kilford generate 0.3) used to let you sneak exactly one enchantment in even though the UI showed no slots.
Bishop's Ring – See above. Charges on melee defense, releases as healing.

Combat and Items:

Loot rebalance pass. Tilda Herbs and Splintered Staff drop rates halved across the board.
Core Armor tweak. A small but felt adjustment to base armor values.
Treasury Vault finally shows its actual percentage benefit instead of "+0%" in tooltips. It had been silently missing its ResourceMultiplier modifier.

Economy:

Festival now provides 40% more food, up from 10%. The improvement was always supposed to be a meaningful growth bump for a celebrating city. At 10% it was flavor.
The improvement modifier double-count bug is fixed. City Food, Gold, Mana, Production, and Storage totals are no longer counting tooltip values twice. If your economy numbers look different in v1.1, that is why. The new numbers are the correct ones.

The goal was not to overhaul anything. It was to look at what players were actually doing, which spells nobody was casting, which improvements were quietly broken, and either fix the bug, fix the description, or fix the value.

When

v1.1 will roll out as a free update for everyone who owns Reforged, and it arrives NEXT WEEK!

As always, thank you for the feedback. Most of what is in this update came from things players brought up on the forums, in Discord, in reviews, in bug reports. We are paying attention. Not in the stalking you on your computer sort of way. I mean, not yet. Soon. But not yet. But we are trying our best to make sure we are adding the things you (and we) want to see to keep making the game better and better.

Stay tuned!

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 a new set of quests tied to the First Age of Elemental, when the Magi ruled through sorcery and their golems stood watch over the cities of Anthys.

About the setting

Thousands of years before the Cataclysm, the Magi were sorcerers whose mastery of magic shaped the early civilizations of Elemental. They built golems out of stone and iron to defend their sovereignty from the feudal barons rising up around them. When the Titans came, the Magi went into hiding, their golems went dormant, and the Cataclysm later buried most of what they had built.

The reawakening of the Fallen Enchantress has sent a pulse of dark magic across the surface of Elemental, and the old enchantments that animated the golems have started to stir again. Fissures are opening across the twin subcontinents of Anthys, and the golems and the treasures they once guarded are coming back to the surface.

What the DLC adds:

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 will release the same day for all Elemental: Reforged owners, bringing community feedback changes, bug fixes, quality of life improvements, and new features. Full details closer to release.

Treasures of the Magi will be available as a DLC for Elemental: Reforged for $8.99 USD on May 21, 2026

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 First Age: The Age of the Magi

Before the first kingdoms, before the first armies, there was Ereog.

Ereog was the second son of a chieftain named Hallas, and by all accounts, he was useless at everything his father valued. Things like war, leadership, administration. He was, however, obsessed with something no one else had thought much about: how magic worked. Not just that it worked. Why.

At this point in Elemental’s history, the world was filled with Magic. The best analogy I can think of is the book series called Xanth. Everyone could use magic. It was everywhere. But why?

While his brothers prepared for battle, Ereog was out in the wilderness studying the world. When his father was killed and the survivors of his clan were hunted through the forests, Ereog was the one who emerged with actual answers. He had spent years in exile learning to channel the raw magical energy that suffuses the world, and he used that knowledge to strike back against Az-Adora, the Dark Prince who had destroyed his city.

Ereog was the first of what would be latter called The Magi. There’s a lot more to his history, such as the Padars and those who worshipped the Elemental Lords, but the point was that Ereog was the first who made the study of magic a rigorous endeavor.

The Magi who came after Ereog built something genuinely remarkable. Kingdoms like Athica, Zabril, Hallas, and Neshin rose to heights of art, architecture, and magical achievement that haven't been matched since. The Aivernach carved tunnel systems through entire mountain ranges. The Illuna built libraries containing the sum of human knowledge.

But the Magi did something foolish. They built The Forge of Overlord. This forge is a recurring quest goal in the Elemental games because it allows the crafting of immensely powerful magical items.

The Forge of Making was a structure of such immense magical power that its creation echoed across the cosmos. The Magic were proud of it. It was a great achievement.

It was also a beacon.

Fundamentally, while Ereog and the Magi understood magic, they didn’t really consider the source of it. And that others might be interested in it.

The Second Age: The Age of the Titans

The Titans (called the Dred'nir in older texts) weren't from Elemental. They were drawn here by the Forge's power, crossing from their own world seeking the source of what they sensed. When they arrived, mankind's age of glory ended essentially overnight.

Not all of the Titans were monsters. Pariden, the first to arrive, presided over what survivors later called a golden age -- an era of genuine flourishing, of exploration, of Titans and men learning from each other. Pariden treated the people of Elemental as something worth knowing.

Then Curgen murdered him.

Curgen is the shadow that falls over the entire Second Age. He built the greatest empire the world had ever seen: The Imperium. With its fortress network, its slave races, and its dungeons.

Here’s a secret that few players realize: The Titans made the various races of Elemental. Before the Titans there were only Men, Dragons and the Quendar who were in-between. There were no Urxen, Trogs, Darklings, Mites, Trolls, etc. The Titans made them.

One can imagine an entire game based on creating fantasy races. The Titans got to play that game. And the first player would have been Curgen.

He shaped the Quendar, the Urxen, and the Trog from raw magic, creating entire peoples designed to serve him. He carved the Pit of Lost Voices from black obsidian, where thousands of "imperfect" experiments were destroyed. He turned the Titan Tar-Thela into a tool, binding her essence to his will.

And yet even Curgen fell.

His former ally, the Titan Kir-Tion once freed from Curgen's influence after discovering spells hidden in the ruins of Al-Ashteroth rose against him. Their war lasted years and ended in the kind of violence that leaves scars in the landscape for centuries. The battlefield where it concluded is still identifiable today: twisted rock formations and craters that no natural force could explain.

Throughout all this, the world’s magic was being bottled up. The various magical shards that players see in Elemental were not always there. The Titans made them. They took the magic of the world and trapped it within these shards, depriving the Magi of their primary source of power.

For a time, only the Titans and their minions could use magic because they controlled the Elemental Shards.

Then came the Cataclysm.

There are different accounts on what triggered it. Some say it was the last gasp of the Magi fighting against the Titans. Others say that the first Channelers rising up and triggering a climatic battle. Still others claim that it was a battle between Tandis the Arnor and Kir-Tion triggered it. I really am not sure.

Nobody alive remembers exactly what caused it. What we know: oceans appeared where mountains stood. Entire continents split. The Pit of Lost Voices was sealed and foul things were trapped inside it. Most of what had built over the First Age was simply gone. The greatest libraries: ash. The bridge networks of Neshin: rubble. Athica, the greatest city of men: swamp.

The few survivors called what followed "the Eternal March" – a desperate journey west by the remnants of the armies of men, led by Procipinee (the only surviving member of the royal family), searching for somewhere to rebuild.

The Third Age: The Age of the Channelers

This is where you come in.

The Third Age (our age) is called the Age of the Channelers because the Titans are gone, and what's left are the mortals who learned to harness the power of the Elemental Shards: physical crystals containing concentrated magical energy, created by the Titans from the raw essence that flows through the world.

The Channelers are sovereigns, magi, and champions who can tap into that power. Well, provided they control the territory around a shard. They're the most powerful figures alive. And "most powerful alive" is doing a lot of heavy lifting when the world looks like this:

No central authority
Ten factions competing for land, resources, and survival
Ruins of two previous civilizations scattered across every landscape
Former slave races (the Quendar, Urxen, Trog) now running empires of their own in the East
Monster lairs filling territory that used to be farmland
Ancient wards and magical protections failing, twisted, or simply gone

The game takes place roughly a century after the Cataclysm. Long enough that new kingdoms have formed. Not long enough that anyone's forgotten what was lost.

Queen Procipinee of New Pariden is two centuries old and still ruling; her channeling ability has kept her alive and has literally restored life to dead land around her capital. Lord Relias of Altar built his kingdom from the ruins of the Athican Empire. General Carrodus of Capitar is nearing seventy and still fighting alongside his troops.

And somewhere in the East, in ancient Imperium, Magnar III: the oldest of the Fallen who stood at Curgen's side when that empire was built and has spent a century gathering power and conducting experiments that reportedly surpass his former master's "in cruelty and dark imagination."

This is a world, a universe, that I’ve spent much of my adult life working with in various forms. If you have any thoughts or questions, please share them below.

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 and abilities had not been behaving as their descriptions implied, which noticeably underpowered Fire-focused builds. v1.03 restores them to their intended behavior.

Stability is the other focus of the release. Crashes tied to AI turns, map interactions, and save and load operations have been addressed, smoothing out longer games that were most likely to run into them.

The patch also includes a set of gameplay adjustments shaped by ongoing community discussion, corrections to tooltips and quest text so in-game descriptions line up with how systems actually behave, and localization updates for all supported languages.

Player reports continue to shape what goes into these updates - keep them coming!

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 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.

Ugh. No doubt some of you have seen me on Discord. If you’re not on our Discord server, you should join. It’s the place to chat live with us. We live there.

The Modding Expansion Hit a Wall

We've been pushing hard to expand modding support. More moddable systems, better tools, smoother Workshop integration. The goal is to make it so that if you can imagine it, you can build it and share it.

But when you open up more systems to modding, you also open up more ways for things to go sideways. We ran into some serious issues where mods that worked fine individually would conflict in unexpected ways when combined. Load order edge cases. Data files that referenced assets the game expected to be there but weren't. XML parsing that was too trusting of what it was being fed.

The team has been burning the midnight oil on this. Not because we had to ship something by Friday, but because modding is core to what makes Elemental special and we want it rock solid. Some of the fixes:

Mod conflict detection and better error handling. Instead of a mysterious crash, you now get a clear message about what went wrong and which mod caused it.
More robust XML validation. The game is now much better at gracefully handling malformed or incomplete mod data instead of just falling over.
Load order improvements. Mods that depend on other mods now resolve their dependencies more reliably.
Memory stability under heavy mod loads. We found and fixed several leaks that only showed up when players were running 10+ mods simultaneously.

If you're a modder, you should notice that things are considerably more stable now. If you're a player who subscribes to a bunch of Workshop content, same deal.

Usability: The Little Things That Matter

While the engineers were buried in mod infrastructure, we also shipped some quality-of-life improvements that I think you'll appreciate:

Battle Advisor

Other Usability Wins

An in general we keep finding places to put more hotkeys in.

The Unglamorous Truth About Bug Fixing

Here's the thing about bug fixing: nobody cheers for it, but everyone notices when you don't do it. A stable game that loads your mods without crashing, that doesn't leak memory over a 200-turn game, that handles edge cases gracefully and that's the foundation everything else is built on. But this is a big game.

This is what Elemental looks like in Clairvoyance’s constellation view. And this doesn’t even include the engine or SDKs.

We've closed out a significant number of bugs in the last two weeks. Some were ancient. Some were brand new, introduced by our own modding expansion work. Some were reported by you on the forums and Discord. Every single report helps, even the ones that are just "it crashed when I did a thing" our crash reporter captures enough context that we can usually track it down. Even when a spell crashes in tactical battles.

What's Next

Hopefully 1.02 is a step in the right direction. We will do a 1.03 if necessary but the goal is to move on towards 1.1 which has meatier gameplay features. But we didn’t want to do that until we solved the bug issues.

Keep the bug reports coming. Keep making mods. Keep telling us what you want.

We're listening.

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 game data can now be replaced by internal name, and new tools let modders control how duplicates are handled, remove core definitions, or skip entire files for total conversions. Load times for mods are faster, and a modding guide is available on the wiki and in the Steam guide section.

This update also resolves several crash scenarios that could occur during saving, loading, battles, and city destruction. Fullscreen mode now uses borderless windowed for better alt-tabbing and multi-monitor support, and the Builder's Forge received fixes for save duplication and favorites.

Some fixes only apply to new games, so we recommend starting fresh to get the full benefit.

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

Bug fixes, usability improvements, AI improvements

Imminent

1.1

User requested features and additions, performance optimizations, any remaining stability/bugs, Modding improvements

This month

1.2

More support for Undead, UI updates, More modding improvements, Dynasty updates

May

DLC 1

More quests, goodie huts, monsters, items, equipment, monster lairs

May

1.3

June

Now, a lot of people online didn’t realize that Elemental: Reforged is a remastering of a 2010 game series (War of Magic + Fallen Enchantress + Sorcerer King). While the visuals and gameplay have been enhanced, it is still very much a game from 2010. That was a very different era of gaming and there are some things we have already changed like the AI players moving from being “good losers” to playing to win to UI conventions that were based on people running at 1024x768 resolution.

Over time, based on player interest, we are looking to continually enhance the game. So while the game is a 2010 era game, the ENGINE is not. It is a modern engine so we can, over time continue to improve it based on what players want. You just let us know.

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. Spell usage and outpost construction decisions have been improved across the board. We also fixed an issue where AI champions could select an extra talent path they weren't supposed to have. The AI plays by the same rules you do.

Balance & Tuning

Champions now reduce Unrest, giving them strategic value beyond combat. Champion count is no longer tied to map size, so smaller maps don't punish you. Hergons have been rebalanced with gender-specific stats. Attack boost traits were being incorrectly factored into unit stats - that's fixed. Several other ability and trait corrections are included.

Performance & Stability

Memory leaks have been fixed and rendering stability has been improved for better frame rates. Save game loading is more resilient to edge cases. Crashes have been resolved across tactical battles, AI turns, spell usage, and various UI operations.

Bug Fixes & Polish

Quest triggers throughout the game have been fixed - quests that weren't properly triggering, giving rewards, or showing correct UI prompts should now work as intended. The battle freeze when a unit uses escape while allies are still engaged has been resolved. Spell targeting in tactical battles now handles unavailable targets correctly. Crafting recipes obtained as loot now appear in the crafting UI. Tooltips have been overhauled - flickering fixed, incorrect information corrected, and alignment issues resolved. Cutscene subtitles have been added in English. Extensive text and localization corrections are included throughout.

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 actual artists and engineers assigned. For the last few months, we got some. You probably noticed. The game went from "really buggy" to "wow, the bugs largely went away suddenly."

We've got budget for two years from release to build an audience.

First up: a DLC. Partly for you, partly for us. We are so tired of the existing monster lairs, goodie huts, and quests. I hate you, Bacco. So much. The first DLC adds new lairs, goodie huts, monsters, and quests. Just more variety. It also helps us gauge demand, which determines whether we get to borrow artists and engineers for the crazier ideas later this year.

So: fix bugs, ship a DLC to show how we can extend this game, and see how much appetite there is. What say you?

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 Stardock’s most ambitious title, players can take advantage of a launch discount for the next two weeks.

Elemental: Reforged is a turn-based strategy game set in an RPG world. Players create their own sovereign hero, establish their civilization, explore a procedurally generated fantasy map, and compete for control of powerful magical shards. Every unit in the game is a unique individual with their own name, stats, equipment, and history. Players can research technology, learn spells, send heroes on quests, craft magical items, and wage war or forge alliances with rival civilizations.

“Elemental: Reforged is the full culmination of Stardock achieving the original vision set out for the Elemental franchise,” said Brad Wardell, CEO of Stardock. “The original Elemental trilogy was a truly unique strategy gaming experience and this project was a true labor of love where we sought to combine the best elements of those three games, and a lot of great new features we’ve come up with, into one neat package for the fans.”

Now, Elemental: Reforged takes a new 64-bit and 3D engine, a remastered set of visuals, features and content of all three games, and collects them all into a brand new package that introduces new content to fully deliver the original vision of Elemental, 16 years after the first game’s release. But it isn’t just the polished returning content that players will have to look forward to. Elemental: Reforged also features a brand new Dynasty System where sovereigns can marry, have children that carry traits of both parents, and forge legacies through multiple generations. Other new features include Mod Support through Steam Workshop, new quests, dungeons, characters and more!

Elemental: Reforged Key Features:

A world of unique characters: Players can design their own units with desired visual customization and attributes, recruit champions, equip gear and watch them develop over the course of a game.

Three Story-Driven Campaigns: The original Elemental trilogy’s campaigns are all included: Prelude, The Fallen Enchantress, and The Legendary Heroes, each exploring an era in the history of this world and its ultimate destiny.

Hereditary Dynasties: Sovereign rulers can marry, have children, and pass down traits and visual characteristics across generations.

Deep Crafting System: Create unique weapons, armor, enchantments, and magical artifacts to equip your armies.

Hundreds of New Quests, Characters, and Dungeons: Never-before-seen content, including new storylines, encounters, and explorable locations that expand the world far beyond the original games.

10 Distinct Civilizations: Each with unique traits, playstyles, and visual identities.

World Terraforming: Reshape the land itself using shards of elemental magic.

Tactical Combat: Turn-based battles with intelligent, non-cheating AI.
Full Modding Suite with Steam Workshop: Create and share custom maps, scenarios, and total conversions.

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 that could be cultivated; a seat for her future empire.

Her keen sense allowed her to weigh the benefits of a land with 4 grain, 3 materials and 2 Radiance. Radiance: something that few spoke of because it wasn’t truly understood. Where did it come from? It was as if the blood of a god had leeched into the soil itself, and in select places where the Titans hadn’t bottled it up into their accursed crystal shads, it could still be found.

Grain meant bigger cities, materials meant faster production, and Radiance meant magical potential of the city.

The crude keep constructed, a few followers now stand guard.

With her power, channeled from far off shards, she enchanted the city. Still a novice, she only knew a few spells.

Meditation and Oppression. It was better this way. “Worship her and be grateful” would be the fate of those under her rule. Paradise.

But she also knew that idle hands were treacherous hands, so she put them to work.

Such a construction would be a beacon for others, powerful others, to join her.

Her minions set to work. In a couple years it would be done. Now, it was time to explore her new realm.

To the north she encountered a nest of Darklings. Inwardly, she fumed, adopting the language of Men to describe these tragic little creatures. What they called themselves she did not know. But they occupied lands she needed and she knew that their lives were wretched and without meaning. They operated on instinct, robbing and murdering any who crossed their paths.

Three versus one. It wasn’t remotely fair, for she was a channeler - gifted with the power to use the shards of power across the world. Even barely armed, they were no match. But this was just the first battle she would encounter.

Upon victory, she began her wanderings to cleanse the land to make it safe for her empire. In the distance, she could hear the magic of others being used. There were other Channelers in this world. Not too close, but not so far that she couldn’t still hear their spell making.

…Time

Passes…

The Tale of Ruah

For two years, Harlax traveled the desolate wastes. When one day, in the distance, she could see the power of the Tower she had ordered constructed radiating into the sky announcing her glory. Ruah was. . . is a psychopath. She sees things that are not there.

Ruah was a Channeler, much like Harlax, but she was also mad. Harlax spent much time trying to weave the lies from the truth but ultimately arrived at what she believed was something resembling where she came from.

Ruah's story was harder to untangle. She spoke freely, even eagerly, about things that would make most people sick. There was no shame in her voice - no guilt, no performance. She talked about killing the way a craftsman talks about their trade. That was the problem. It was difficult to tell what was real and what was a story, she told herself, because Ruah didn't seem to know the difference either.

What Harlax could piece together was this: Ruah had lived in a small village plagued by several murders. She had taken up with the murderer, a mill worker named Kronyu, when one night she had killed him in his sleep. Not because he deserved it, but because she wanted to know what it felt like.

Everything after that was just Ruah being Ruah. She drifted from place to place, selling her skills with a dagger to anyone willing to pay. She was good at violence and unbothered by it, and in a land full of monsters and warlords, that combination kept her fed.

Was she evil? Harlax thought in the quiet, clinical way that a scholar diagnoses a disease. Ruah lacked something fundamental. Whatever it is that makes a person flinch, that makes them hesitate before doing something terrible, Ruah was born without it. Or maybe she had it once and it broke. Either way, it was gone.

She would be useful.

A Shard is Born

Returning home after two years in the wilds, the capital, Ahilga, could be seen from many miles away thanks to the shard.

Given the amount of Radiance still free in the area, this must have been an incredible place before the Titans stole the magic of the world to imprison in their shards. Now this shard was hers to channel, but she needed more. To that end, she ordered her people to “volunteer” to be pioneers to scout this land and find more places to settle and more shards.

Rival

Lord Verga. The self-named Empire of Verga had risen in the East. Possible ally , but likely foe. Verga was ruthless.

Worse, the further she traveled, the more robust were her foes.

The enemies more numerous, better prepared.

And while she slogged through dealing with the wilds, she knew others were consolidating their powers. Was there another way?

That was when she stumbled across The Black Gate.

Steeped in myth, it was known that within these gates was the Forge of the Overlord. Guarded by an immense power in the Pit of Lost Voices, the Forge would give her the power to rule this world and become the immortal Sorcerer Queen. But right now, she stood at a locked gate.

The key would be found at the Shrine…

But in the meantime, Verga had surrounded her.

She would have to trim him back, even if it cost her everything.

War

She would need specialized soldiers for her conquest.

Lacking in weapons technology, they would make up for it with greater training.

But Harlax had become a powerful Necromancer, able to summon hordes of ghouls to do her bidding.

And she aimed to take Verga’s most vulnerable city. It was well defended, but it did not have a Channeler.

One side had brute. Another side had magic.

It was not difficult to tell which was which. Despite the magic, it was a close fight, but Harlax won the day and the city.

Marriage

Harlax could not compete with the greater populations of the Empires of the east. From the West came Tuan, a man. The most famous scout in the world of that time. It was, despite her well known misandry, that Harlax wedded herself to him.

Her power was undeniable, but what of the offspring that was sure to come? Only time would tell.

To prepare for the future, Harlax made sure to spend time in the capital with Tuan. An army of channelers in twenty years could be of great use.

And Verga, chastened, now knew to keep his aspirations to the East.

West to the Shrine

The Shrine of Samarra took much time and lives to reach.

The secret to the shrines had long been held by the Darklings, the very beings she had been spent years exterminating. There were not many of them left, but now she would have to find one.

Thankfully, there were rumors of one of the eldest of their kind lurking in the far north. That would be her next task.

The Shaman, is not impressed.

Oof. This was going to be difficult.

After a costly battle, the shaman turns over the key in exchange for his life.

Harlax inserts the key.

To her dismay a second gate is reached.

A demon, or some creature anyway, appears and whispers that perhaps a night at the sacred camp will clear minds and strengthen hearts.

At the camp, Harlax dreams of terrible things. Visions of beings from another world. The Titans. The beings that came to this world in its youth. The battle for control of this world. That was it. The battlefield. The last battlefield. That is where the second gate key must be.

Moreover, the battlefield’s location becomes obvious. It drew you to your starting location in the first place. The source of all the Radiance! It wasn’t left over. Of course it wasn’t! It was part of the debris of the last battlefield!

Homecoming

On the outskirts of your capital is a nondescript mound of earth. You and your powerful allies approach.

Harlax’s husband, Tuan. Ruah the psychopath. Frizl the ice elemental. Now was a moment of triumph or a moment of doom.

Curgen the Dread Lord, the Titan who slew many here, the fools. The Magi who believed they stood a chance against a Titan. But Curgen’s Maul, it is the key and he left it. But something took it, although the maul would have been useless. Impossibly heavy to be wielded by a normal mortal. Who could have taken it? An ogre. Were there any ogre lairs near?

In fact, there was one…

Very close.

The maul is there.

In fact, it is being wielded.

“Great,” Harlax murmurs.

Using her necromancy, she raises a small army of ghouls in front of them to soften up the ogres.

They don’t last long.

They hurl boulders. They smash.

But her luck would last. Knocked unconscious, the psychopath was out dreaming of peeling the skin off of small mammals.

The maul would kill any being in a single hit. Bax the ogre untouched. No one dared approach.

Her husband was the next to fall. Unlike Ruan, her husband was not a channeler. Would he survive?

Only Harlax remained.

There was no chance she’d survive.

Her husband alive, but now blind in one eye. Ruah injured, and Bax now on their trail, she escaped the battlefield. But Bax was not done.

Another Ghoul army.

The ogre chief was surrounded.

But..

That..

Isn’t.

Bax.

That is Bax.

No escape scrolls.

Now only Bax against her friends and zombies.

Ruah down.

Ghoul down.

Now just Harlax and Bax.

Out of mana.

Blooded.

With her last moments of awareness, she uses her channeling ability to bring those she has a connection with, But Ruah is dead.

The psychopath’s story comes to an end.

And there is now a very angry ogre on the loose.

What’s worse, if Harlax fails to kill him, she knows someone else will and to them goes the maul and the key to enter the Pit of Lost Voices!

…Time

Passes…

Children of the Witch

As. . . luck would have it, Bax wouldn’t need to be hunted. Because he was hunting Harlax.

Harlax’s husband would never recover. And Bax systematically wiped out all of the farms, mines and other outposts that were on the outskirts of the capital. There was nothing to do but wait.

But time was passing and the children of Harlax were growing.

Harlaxis, half man, half Trog, took more after Harlax, but had traits of her father as well as she looked like a cross between Trog and man. Almost…feminine.

Bax, not willing to attack the capital, merely taunted from the gates.

With the benefit of hindsight…

During the siege of Ahilga, Harlax remained in the capital to act as a counter to Bax. But secretly, her daughter, Tuana, was sent off to begin her training.

For some years, she would travel the wilds and go on many adventures that are told elsewhere. In time, Tuana’s fame rivaled her powerful mother’s.

During that time, Bax had reduced the Empire of Yithril down to just two cities. He razed Horzara and murdered every being in his reach in Aliza.

The enemies of Yithril were not idle during this time, and it was only a matter of time before they took advantage. So it would be in the year 231 that Gilden would strike the capital, with Harlax and Ruan present. The boldness.

The War with Gilden

The kingdoms of men were known for their treachery. That they could assemble so mighty an army and make it this far demonstrated just how severely Bax had broken the Yithril’s awareness of the wider world during the siege.

In the battle, Harlax’s first move was to conjure an army of ghouls behind Markinn. While in giant form, he was powerful, but he was also much easier to strike.

His motley crew of villains would be occupied.

The ghouls bought time, but that was all.

With Markinn came Naegach the Summoner. Not a necromancer, but an endless barrage of wild creatures seemed to arrive from moment to moment.

Fortunately, a studded collar was on hand.

In the end it was not enough.

Fate of Yithril

Yithril was down to a single small town.

Bax still held the wilds and Markinn was now on his way to destroy the last city. Princess Tuana was too far away to make a difference, though she sprinted towards home.

And yet hope. . . for on the way she would find a recall scroll. Using it, she appeared at home. The two armies rejoined, Markinn’s army backed off.

Ahilga, in their absence, had become a stronghold. Far too powerful to take now.

And so Ahilga, occupied. And if Alhain, the last city, is left alone, Bax will certainly destroy it.

What happened next…well I leave that to your imagination.

Every game is different. Different quests, different characters. What you saw here will never happen again. But that is, after all, what Elemental is all about.

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 even buy Elemental: War of Magic. The sequel, Elemental: Fallen Enchantress, was greatly slimmed down and was pretty successful. But we couldn’t really do anything with it because if you even looked at it funny, it would become unstable. We also made Elemental: Sorcerer King which was more of an adventure game (fantasy Star Control as a practice run for Star Control: Origins). Now, with the 64-bit remaster of it all, Elemental: Reforged, we have been able to bring it together. We’ve been quietly working on this for several years (first work started I think around 2018 to, 8 years?). Purely voluntary by the team because we love this game. In the Fall of 2025, we mentioned we were working on this and a number of you asked us to put it into early access and we finally agreed to even though the game was still pretty rough. But support was so strong that we were able to bring on additional engineers who weren’t on the original game. And they have opinions.

What were you people thinking?

So yeah, when we made Elemental, we also built a full fledged Ultima/Baldur’s Gate style RPG engine as well. Anyone who has played with the modding tools can tell you that yea, you could remake Ultima IV with this for instance. Why did we do this? Because, obviously, we are crazy people.

We have been really beefing up the mod tools over the past month along with fixing oh so many bugs and glitches that are the natural result of bringing so many almost, but not completely compatible games together. But one thing I can tell you: Modders could use this to make their own campaigns and such. I’m tempted to make one using just Claude or some other AI tool and let it make the whole campaign and release it just as a test.

Anyway, we have added a new campaign called Prelude. It’s pretty short, but acts as the introduction to this world that most people have never gotten.

As some of you probably figured out, Elemental is Altaria in Galactic Civilizations. The kingdom Relias founds (Altar) ultimately becomes the uniting faction. Elemental and Galactic Civilizations share the same universe, they’re just different time periods. So it’s nice to be able to flesh out all the campaigns rather than just sharing the snippet that was in Fallen Enchantress back in the day.

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. Guardian monsters will no longer wander away from their lairs.

New Tutorials

Four new step-by-step tutorials have been added covering terrain and movement, items and equipment, city building, and research and economy.

Gameplay and Balance

Monster defense and combat speed has been rebalanced across all levels. City economy has been adjusted with reduced food and gold multipliers, lowered food per grain bonuses, and adjusted city hub gold output. The AI is now more likely to research companies to field larger armies, and elemental attacks now correctly benefit from generic attack boost traits.

Campaign Fixes

Cities no longer lose food and resources when leveling up, and clearing army bases now properly rewards loot, including rings, amulets, belts, and rare crafting ingredients from Krax and Wraith bases.

Thank you to everyone playing and sharing feedback during Early Access, it's shaping the game heading into launch. Elemental: Reforged officially releases on March 17.

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 launch.

New Sovereigns

Lord Markinn and Warlord Verga are now selectable sovereigns. You can also edit, copy, and delete your custom sovereigns and factions directly from the selection screen.

AI That Puts Up a Fight

The AI has received a significant pass. It now defends the areas around its cities, correctly respects Zone of Control in tactical battles, and properly pays essence to found cities instead of spamming them. Enemy lair upgrade speed now scales with difficulty -- slower on Novice, faster on Insane.

Performance Improvements

Loading into games and loading saves is noticeably faster. City menus open quicker, and end-of-turn processing takes less time with reduced CPU usage during AI turns.

Elemental: Reforged officially launches on March 17!

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 Access and launch on March 17, 2026 on Steam with a launch discount.

Elemental: Reforged is a turn-based strategy game set in an RPG world. Players create their own sovereign, found a civilization, explore a procedurally generated fantasy world, and compete for control of powerful magical shards. Every unit in the game is a unique individual with their own name, stats, equipment, and history. Players can research technology, learn spells, send heroes on quests, craft magical items, and wage war or forge alliances with rival civilizations.

"What makes Elemental unique is that it's a strategy game in an RPG world. The world really is your sandbox. You create your own character, fantasy civilization and bring them into a vast world that is different each game." said Brad Wardell, CEO of Stardock.

The first Elemental game, Elemental: War of Magic, released in 2010 featured an ambitious design that envisioned a world in which every character was unique and existed within a living world of varied civilizations competing for domination. Despite praise of its innovative features, the game struggled under the limitations of 32-bit hardware. Two years later, Stardock released a sequel, Elemental: Fallen Enchantress, which streamlined the feature set to fit better in 32-bit memory space. A spin-off game, Elemental: Sorcerer King, was developed that focused heavily on the features that were removed from the original Elemental such as crafting, quests and character progression. Now, Elemental: Reforged takes a new 64-bit and 3D engine, a remastered set of visuals, features and content of all three games, and collects them all into a brand new package that introduces new content to fully deliver the original vision of Elemental, 16 years after the first game’s release.

Elemental: Reforged Key Features:

A world of unique characters. Players can design their own units with desired visual customization and attributes, recruit champions, equip gear and watch them develop over the course of a game.
Three Story-Driven Campaigns. The original Elemental trilogy’s campaigns are all included: Prelude, The Fallen Enchantress, and The Legendary Heroes, each exploring an era in the history of this world and its ultimate destiny.
Hereditary Dynasties. Sovereign rulers can marry, have children, and pass down traits and visual characteristics across generations.
Deep Crafting System. Create unique weapons, armor, enchantments, and magical artifacts to equip your armies.
Hundreds of New Quests, Characters, and Dungeons. Never-before-seen content, including new storylines, encounters, and explorable locations that expand the world far beyond the original games.
10 Distinct Civilizations. Each with unique traits, playstyles, and visual identities.
World Terraforming. Reshape the land itself using shards of elemental magic.
Tactical Combat. Turn-based battles with intelligent, non-cheating AI.
Full Modding Suite with Steam Workshop. Create and share custom maps, scenarios, and total conversions.

Elemental: Reforged will release on March 17, 2026 with a launch discount

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 after:

And of course the new portraits:

But gameplay is what matters and that’s where we’ve done the most work on this game. Ranged weapons affected by distance, AI plays to win, crafting, dynasties, etc. But all of this has to be balanced. Having monster lairs upgrade over the course of the game is all well and good until you find yourself having a Balrog as a neighbor.

So that’s where we’re at. Balancing, bug fixing and AI!

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 upgrade is now in place.

Campaign Updates

Beta 3 includes two campaigns: Fallen Enchantress and Legendary Heroes. We've not only ported this classic content but expanded upon it as well. The War of Magic campaign is coming soon and will be ready for our full release.

AI and Balance Changes

The AI has received significant attention in this update. The original AI was designed to "lose well", throttling its own performance to ensure players could win while facing some early-game challenge. This approach has been reworked, with restrictions removed that previously prevented AI players from pursuing quests and exploration if the human player appeared to be struggling. We'll be lowering the default difficulty setting to account for these changes.

Bug Fixes and What's Next

Beta 3 also includes extensive bug fixes, which occupied much of our recent development time. Following this beta, we're shifting focus toward release, with plans for a post-launch roadmap based on player feedback.

Thank you for your continued support, your enthusiasm is what drives us.

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 early access. I no longer even buy games in Early Access. I wait until they’re released.

That’s because Early Access games, imo, tend to either be a marketing exercise or a permanent sandbox for an ever growing scope. On the latter side, we are definitely guilty of that here.

We blew up the scope on Elemental: Reforged. We have no regrets in that, but I would prefer that we finish the game and get it out there and then release a roadmap in which NEW things can be looked at to be added in free updates. Remember, we’ve been working on this quietly for the last 5 years. Even if we don’t sell any copies of the game, we’re going to be working and updating this game for years to come.

So let’s look at what we’ve done:

The New Graphics

We have left the PlayStation 1 era graphics.

You don’t even need to create new characters to benefit from the new character models.

I remember when I got the Diablo 2 remaster and thought “The graphics look the same as the original”. Blizzard was smart enough to have a way to instantly switch between old and new to make clear just how much better the remaster looks.

The increased visualization also gives hints as to why the Altarians in GalCiv have a blueish tint in their skin.

We still may need to upscale some of the clothing textures. Take a look.

The Campaign

The plan was to include:

The War of Magic
The Fallen Enchantress
The Sorcerer King

So I admit, I really didn’t think the character model update would make any real difference in game. I mean, look how small they are? I didn’t think anyone would be able to tell the difference. But yea, I can tell. So yes yes I was wrong. You guys were right.

The AI / Balance Update

It’s hard to take screenshots of smarter AI.

The original AI design for Elemental was for the AI players to “Lose well”. In effect, they would throttle themselves to ensure that the player won but with some challenge at the start. It didn’t age well and was a misplaced design because the reality is that it results in good players absolutely wrecking the AI.

The hubris after coming off of GalCiv II and thinking we could easily make an AI that would beat everyone therefore the real challenge is to make it smart enough to be a “Good loser” is breathtaking in hindsight.

So it’s about watching the AI and pouring over lots and lots of C++ code.

For instance, AI players were blocked from taking quests and goodie huts if they thought the poor poor human player was struggling.

We will be lowering the default difficulty as a result of all these changes but I am hopeful players who are really good at the game will notice the AI plays a lot better.

The Bugs

The bug fixing has been monumental. That’s one of the reasons we’ve been so quiet lately. Just head down fixing little bug after little bug.

Stay tuned

We have some surprises in Beta 3 as well. We will discuss soon, but after Beta 3, the plan is to move towards release so that we can start thinking about NEW things in post release based on the level of interest from players in seeing where they want the game to go.

*Updated 01/19/2026

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 remaster to Stardock’s classic fantasy strategy series. This early access update introduces significant enhancements, featuring a new Dynasty system for character legacy, customizable modding tools including Steam Workshop support, a massive set of bug fixes and new content and support for non-English languages.

Elemental: Reforged is a 4X turn-based fantasy strategy game in which the player founds a kingdom, explores a devastated world going on quests, battling monsters and contending with other kingdoms and empires that are also spreading across the world.

The game is a remastering of Stardock's trilogy of War of Magic, Fallen Enchantress and Sorcerer King, all of which were limited by 32-bit memory limitations. Now, thanks to a rewritten engine, the game now supports modern graphics hardware with 64-bit memory space and can fully realize the original vision for Stardock's ambitious Elemental game design.

"The original Elemental game design was ambitious beyond belief," said Brad Wardell, lead designer of the Elemental series. "The first game, War of Magic, was released in 2010 and supported a 'living world' where players could zoom in and see people living out their lives in cities. Every unit was unique, characters could be equipped with different weapons, armor and items and visually change on screen, characters could get married and have children that visually inherited traits from both parents; this is a game where a human and an Ogre could potentially have children together. If that sounds too much to fit in 32-bit memory space in 2010, the answer is, it was."

The original design was famously mired with technical problems in an effort to fit into 2GB of system memory in 2010. As a result the design was split into 3 games, War of Magic, Fallen Enchantress and Sorcerer King, each of which focused on a different aspect of the original design.

"Now, with Elemental: Reforged, we can take the entire design and put it into a single game, albeit, 15 years later than we wished," said Wardell. "This has been a labor of love for us as most of the original team from 2010 is still at Stardock. We've been working on this for the past 8 years in our spare time so players can get a glimpse of what we wanted to do."

Elemental: Reforged Beta 1 was released in Early Access in October. Despite being very rough in terms of bugs and incomplete content, the game has received Very Positive reviews on Steam and a committed fanbase.

"Beta 1 was horrendously buggy," admitted Wardell. "Not wipe out your hard drive buggy but still very buggy. We have been grateful to the fans for putting up with the glitches as we've been trying to bring so many lost features back together, as well as make the game available in non-English languages which has been a challenge unto itself."

Beta 2 brings back the most famous feature from the original design, the Dynasty System. In it, player characters can get married, have children and those children can have children and so forth. These new generated characters, in every sense of the word, can then be brought onto the game map as unique champion units with traits (both visual and gameplay abilities) based on the parents.

In addition, the built in modding tools, which support map creation, quest making, monster lair creation, dungeon creation, particle editing and much more have been brought into Beta 2. They are now localized and integrated with Steam Workshop so that players can make and share their creations.

"Someone could potentially make a turn-based RPG with these built in tools," said Wardell. "Between designing maps, creating monster lairs, quests, items, etc. all of which integrate into each other, along with the use of common art formats like FBX and PNG files, players can create and share pretty much whatever their imaginations come up with."

Elemental: Reforged Beta 2 Highlighted Features:

Dynasties: Players can now engage with an innovative Dynasty system, allowing them to marry, have children, and nurture their offspring into champions, thereby expanding their legacy across generations.
Fantasy Studio: Players can create fantasy maps, spells, monster lairs, spell effects, quests, magical items, etc.
Steam Workshop Support: Right from the in-game main menu, a UI for managing mods and sharing them online is now available.
Localization Support: The original games were English only. Beta 2 includes support for other languages including German, French, Russian, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Polish and more.
Computer Opponent AI. AI players have been substantially enhanced to intelligently craft items for their champions, design their own units, wisely use spells (including ones players make and share online) and much more.
Visual Update. While the remaster can't hide that this was a 2010 era game, the game's visuals continue to be refined and improved as the original high resolution art assets are restored and put into the game.
New Monsters, Champions, Quests and much more. Before War of Magic was released in 2010, a lot of content for it had to be removed in order to fit in 32-bit memory. This content has been brought back and restored; players will encounter many new types of creatures and quests that they didn't see before.

Let me start out with a thank you! As some of you know, I was against doing an Early Access, especially one this early. The game was just so buggy and so many people these days think “Early Access = polished release candidate”, which is NOT what Early Access was ever supposed to be. But nevertheless, here we are. Despite how buggy and janky Beta 1 was, you guys stuck with us and we appreciate it.

This week I want to share with you what to expect in Beta 2.

Let me give you the high level changes first:

Bug Fixes. Still buggy, but a lot closer to what modern “Early Access” is.
Dynasties. You can get married, have children, grandchildren. . . Basically another way to get champions and characters into the game.
Localization. The game is localized into German, Chinese, French, Russian, Japanese, Polish, Portuguese, Korean, Italian. It’s not on by default because we aren’t yet certain how good the localization is. It’s all Greek to me (Which isn’t in the game ironically). We are recruiting people into our MVP program who speak any of these languages natively because we do want to turn these on by default ASAP.
Steam Workshop Support. Not only can you make mods you can also just download them and share them.
Gameplay Additions. To get War of Magic out, we had to pull a ton of characters and content from the game to fit in 32bit. It was heart breaking. None of that made it back into Fallen Enchantress or Sorcerer King either, but now it’s back. You will notice quickly a bunch of new types of monsters, monster lairs, quests, etc. Feel free to cry with us that all this amazing stuff had to be taken out before.
AI Improvements. I won’t call the AI smart yet, but it should play substantially better than before.
Balance. I won’t say things are super well balanced yet, but they are night and day compared to Beta 1.
Progression. There’s now a Dungeon Master AI that looks over the world and gradually places new lairs and other things as time passes. It should make each game feel even more unique. Eventually, we want to use this to put in chained narrative quests.

Let’s take a quick look!

Modding

Players will be able to create and share the following:

Maps

Goodie huts

Quests

Tiles

Items

Factions

Units

Spells

Particle Effects

Recipes

Monster Lairs

Lots of other stuff

We also include tools you can use. For example, the tool below lets you create Tiles which are referred to by Quests and Goodie huts.

The map editor lets you place starting locations, quests, goodie huts,

You can deform the land however you want.

We’ll be taking feedback on how to make these tools easier to use and add new functionality. But if you want to make Mordor, than sure. You want to make your ultimate fantasy RPG game, go ahead. Make it and share with others.

I’ll be making dev journals and uploading new tools to make doing this easier, because I’ll be right there with you.

Localization

I barely speak English. So I can’t tell you if this is written in correct Germanese or not…

For that reason, we’re not going to have the game come up in a localized language by default until you guys give us the “coast is clear” sign. To change the language, click on this:

Here’s Japanese:

Here’s Chinese:

Once we get an idea of whether this is acceptable or not then we can officially say the game supports these languages.

Not only did the original game not support non-English, it didn’t even support non ASCII characters. This was a big effort.

Dynasties

We’ve enhanced the Dynasty system that was in the original War of Magic. Now, your fame makes various suitors available for you to choose from. Until you have some fame, no one wants to marry you. As your fame grows, the higher the quality of characters you will have access to.

Female characters will give birth to children. How often you have children depends on how much time you spend with your spouse in a city. But your children can grow up and you can have marriages arranged for them, they will have children, and so on. You can spend 1 essence on a child to imbue them (you start with 10 essence) in order to bring them onto the map as a character in the world you can use.

These characters inherit the traits of their parents, even how they look visually…and this is a game with non-human characters that can be bred with humans. DON’T JUDGE ME!!!!!!

“She has her mother’s eyes…”

Better

Beyond the obvious, what we hope players will notice is just how much better the game plays. More stable. Less buggy. Faster. Less memory use. More balanced. Smarter.

You will also probably notice more of the original art has been restored.

This has involved digging up old spinny hard drives from a very long time ago to find Photoshop v5 files and re-exporting. I know not everyone loves the art style in the game, but few games before, or since, have as much handcrafted fantasy art in it.

While this is a strategy game, once players start using the tools, I suspect there will be more than one RPG style campaign made.

Confronting a werebard in her hideout.

Visually, we continue to improve the graphics bit by bit. It’s subtle in some places.

Spread the word

As you know, this started out as a pure labor of love for us, working on it in our spare time. Thanks to your wishlists and Early Access purchases, we’ve been able to have people work on it full time. We’d love to expand the team so if you like what we’re doing, spread the word! There is so much that can be done here. We can’t wait to see what you guys do with Beta 2.

Beta 2 is scheduled to go out on December 16, 2025. Stay tuned!

For those of you just joining us, Elemental: Reforged is a remastering and reimagining of the previous Elemental games all rolled into a single game.

Specifically: Elemental: War of Magic, Elemental: Fallen Enchantress and Elemental: Sorcerer King.

We are using Fallen Enchantress as the starting point for Beta 1. We ported it to 64-bit and gave it a new graphics engine, updated visuals, the crafting system and global inventory from Sorcerer King, and a lot of new quests, spells, goodie huts, monsters, etc. that were in War of Magic but had to be taken out due to memory constraints.

Now it’s time for Beta 2.

Beta 2 revolves around 3 key features:

Localization

Modding

Dynasties

Today we are going to talk about Dynasties.

Your Family of Monsters

The dynasty system of Elemental is another case where you can see how far (too far) ahead of its time it was. Trying to fit a full blown “breeding” program complete with generated textures and blended characters (ever wanted to know what a Dwarf and Orc pairing looks like? Well we had the game for you..) for the offspring.

…With the benefit of hindsight, it is kind of obvious why the original Elemental was such a technical disaster trying to fit all this in 32-bit. For Fallen Enchantress, we removed this system entirely. But now it’s coming back.

Unfortunately, putting it into Elemental: Reforged isn’t just a matter of bringing in the code. The UI for the system was designed with 1024x768 displays, so we’ve been needing to redesign the whole thing. We also want to bring over the entire Dynasty system and not just the bits that were in War of Magic…

The original design of the Dynasty system involved 3 parts:

The Family Tree (this made it into War of Magic)

Traditions (this got cut)

Legacies (this got cut)

Mockups:

Beta 2 will have Traditions and Legacy disabled because these basically have to be made from scratch. They were designed, but not implemented in War of Magic. Some of you who were part of the early experience program for Elemental may recall these features discussed back in 2009.

The Mechanics

Fame is the key currency for all this (I think we called it prestige in WOM). Arranging marriages and unlocking traditions all depend on fame. The Legacies, by contrast, are due to accomplishing various feats in a given game.

Right now, the plan is to have BETA 2 out to everyone on December 16th, 2025. We plan to unlock Legacies and Traditions in early January when we get back from Christmas break.

Let us know what you think in the comments below!

Elemental: Reforged news & patch notes

Elemental: Reforged v1.3 Update Now Available

Stability and UI Improvements

New Strategic Unit Speed Control

Faster Maps and Rebalanced Loot

Elemental: Reforged news & patch notes

Elemental: Reforged v1.3 Update Now Available

Stability and UI Improvements

New Strategic Unit Speed Control

Faster Maps and Rebalanced Loot

Making it up to players

Elemental: Reforged v1.2 Update Now Available

Smarter AI

Overhauled Loot System

Stability and Performance Fixes

General polish and bug fixing

AI players

Loot Tables

About the Setting

What the DLC Adds:

Free v1.1 Update:

Treasures of the Magi Screenshots:

The Background

In action

More Items, Better Items

Fewer Items You Already Have Too Many Of

Performance

Bug Fixing, Big and Small

Balance

When

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.

About the setting

What the DLC adds:

The First Age: The Age of the Magi

The Second Age: The Age of the Titans

The Third Age: The Age of the Channelers

Elemental: Reforged v1.03 is Now Available

The Modding Expansion Hit a Wall

Usability: The Little Things That Matter

Battle Advisor

Other Usability Wins

The Unglamorous Truth About Bug Fixing

What's Next

Battle forecasts, expanded modding tools, and stability fixes

Elemental: Reforged v1.01 - AI Improvements, Balance Tuning, Stability Fixes

Smarter Non-Cheating AI

Balance & Tuning

Performance & Stability

Bug Fixes & Polish

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

Introduction

Beginnings

The Tale of Ruah

A Shard is Born

Rival

War

Marriage

West to the Shrine

Homecoming

Children of the Witch

The War with Gilden

Fate of Yithril

What were you people thinking?

Beta 3C "The Menagerie Update" for Elemental: Reforged is now available

New and Upgraded Monster Lairs

New Tutorials

Gameplay and Balance

Campaign Fixes

New campaign, new sovereigns, smarter AI, and faster performance land in Elemental: Reforged's latest update

The Prelude Campaign

New Sovereigns

AI That Puts Up a Fight

Performance Improvements

Elemental: Reforged officially launches on March 17!

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

Elemental: Reforged Key Features:

Elemental: Reforged will release on March 17, 2026 with a launch discount