What works well right not:

1. NPC system

2. town building for the player

3. Wandering Monster system has moved from boring to very, very good

4. Overall stability is better

5. Money system is much better

6, Overall balance is better

What still needs work:

1. Magic system is still too clunky.   It's too hard to use and quite frankly is not much fun.

2. Harvesting magic shards still doesn't work most of the time.   The structure alwasys appears but they don't register as mine and I get no benefit from them.

3. The new, more complex, hut, dungeon, etc, system is better but sometimes you cannot finish a low level quest (example is "wild goose chase" becuase you are denied entrance to the last hut.

Overall a really significant improvement over 3.   You and your team are doing a great job.

@frogboy, my suggestions:

-better magic ui, if you have many spells researched it is hard to find the right ones (maybe when you have a caster selected and rightclick on a tile a specific popup turns up, for example i have my sovereign selected right click on one of my cities and i can now choose between city buffs, if i right click on an enemy i can cast debuffs, damage spells and so on)

-i like the aow magic better, where buffs and even some damage spells could be casted anywhere in your territory, while the wizard (sovereign) and heroes (champions) could cast in battle as well.

Frogboy,

I suggest a simple mana system.  Mana is generated by certain buildings and shards.   The player has three uses for mana.

1. Use it to cast spells:  both instantly and over time

2. Use it to improve the amount of magic that can be used in a single fight.

3. Use it to build up a mana supply to use later.

Researching spells has nothing to do with mana - except you can't cast them if you don't have enough mana and see the next note on spell books.

Each Sovereign starts with some number of spell books (types as now) and can find some later in tough dungeons.  The key is the more identical spell books you have the higher level of spells of that type you have access to research.

Xaltotun 

I agree with a lot of this. I would like to add

Don't let me research spells to use a spellbook I don't have! That is like learning calculus formulas when I cannot add.

Don't let me research spells for shards I do not have, or at least make it more expensive to research spells that require a shard you don't have (or in today speak, make it cheaper to research spells for shards you do have)

I disagree. You could get other spells from researching/experimenting on your own couldn't you? And maybe you just research what spells have been created by finding pieces of infomration in various books or other sources. Magic spells do not have to come from a spell book and its not necissarily better that they do.

I just started playing this beta yesterday, and I have to agree the magic system is clunky. 

So far I have used it very little (summoned one thing) because of it's inaccessibility. 

First in my mind is the organization, it seems somewhat random and cluttered - all of the spells. 

I would like to see them more clearly organized, maybe give the option to organize by spell level to see all of the new spells available after you've researched a new level. 

If a spell takes a special kind of magic/shardthing to cast, I would make it so that it requires that to research as well. At first it was confusing to research a whole bunch of spells and try to figure out why I couldn't cast them - especially when there were no corresponding shards on the map that I could find, I thought I had to be doing something wrong which was frustrating. 

Maybe a little tool tip or pop up that tells you "you can't cast this because you don't have enough X" instead of just having them crossed out. 

It also seems more confusing and tough because a lot of times when you build your own character and specialize in only one magic school, it is luck of the draw to have one near you that you can actually use, especially when you're playing on a map with multiple continents or islands. 

It can easily be more than half the game before you can cast something, which doesn't seem right for a game based on a war of magic.

Maybe have more spells (up to level 10) that you can cast with just normal manna and not rely on any shards or anything?

Like I mentioned I just started yesterday, and have tried to play about 8 games, none of which I have been able to finish yet, so I apologize if my info is wrong - this is just my impression of the spell system so far.

Hard to use, somewhat confusing, not all that useful compared to building a large upgraded army.

OK thanks, I'll have to keep playing with the magic side of things to figure it all out. 

Thanks