Key Features

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

June 18th, 2026 Change Log

Gameplay

• Adjusted inventory so that items can be equipped to pets and summons, except for items that grant abilities or spells

• Low tile yield regions now get a boost so they feel less punishing, and a rare handful of regions can roll exceptionally rich yields when founding new cities

• Players are no longer able to make a sovereign with infinite points in the character creator

• Resolved concerns of players being unable to recruit champions on large, huge, and gigantic maps

• The Dragons Breath spell will work if the player is in the blast radius instead of blocking the spell from being casted

• Ensured that the Wildlands properly clear out when defeating all of the monsters in the area

• Fixed an issue where mercenary camps would spawn hunters with no attack

• Made sure the Tower of Knowledge correctly unlocks when researching Refined Economics

• Fixed issues where Noble's Legacy was causing extreme lag in the early game

• Stinking Mud now correctly expires after 3 tactical rounds so affected units regain movement

• Fixed battle previews so they no longer accidentally change unit HP, mana, or modifiers on your real units

• Auto resolve now only triggers from the actual auto resolve button instead of other inputs

• Fixed bosses wandering outside their wildland boundaries

• Fixed defeated bosses not properly clearing their wildland

AI

• AI during autoplay no longer wastes teleport spells like Tectonic Shift on occupied tiles

• Resolved issues where AI would drain a player's mana in battles by spamming spells when auto resolving or auto battling

• AI opponents on harder difficulties now push back against runaway leaders, applying stronger diplomatic and military pressure if you start wars or conquer cities while ahead

• AI is better at founding more cities on larger maps

• AI is less inclined to surrender and will fight back

• Resolved issues where AI opponents would camp on player's quest locations for long durations

• AI players will no longer recruit high-level champions extremely early into a game; they correctly obey fame now

• AI is smarter about where it settles

• AI players now get a small materials boost when founding new cities, helping them grow a bit faster without affecting human players

• AI players are much better at using potions and scrolls in battle against the player

• Resolved an issue where AI was struggling to recruit champions with their fame and gold

Loot

• Added in more loot variety improvements

  • Monsters now drop a wider mix of potions, scrolls, wands, staves, arrowheads, rings, and crafting components instead of falling back on plain gold or the same few items

  • Drop rates on many uncommon and rare items were raised so they show up more reliably

  • Tightened the chance of receiving multiple items from a single kill so big multi-item drops are rarer while single drops are unchanged

  • Reduced plain gold payouts from monsters in favor of more reliable crafting ingredient drops across common, uncommon, and rare tiers

  • The Hergling was effectively a treasure piñata, dropping a large bundle of items per kill. Drop rates were brought down significantly so it now drops loot in line with other creatures of its rank

• Added a new loot table system that gives specific monsters like wolves, bears, and ghouls themed drops instead of generic random rewards, with starter tables for several common creatures

Graphics

• Resolved issues where some players may come across invisible enemies and units when playing after previously turning off a mod

• Pillar of Granza now fits its portrait in the unit details

• Fixed horse heads being tucked into their neck

Performance

• Added in more performance optimizations resulting in faster combat outcome predictions and smoother AI turns

• Resolved a bad animation state when fighting a Stinging Guard that took 10 seconds to finish its animation

• Improved UI rendering stability to prevent flicker, missing elements, or crashes on screens using strip rendering

• Closing the Options menu no longer triggers a slow mod reload unless you actually changed your mod settings

Stability

• Fixed a rare hang in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean text rendering caused by malformed characters

• Fixed a crash that can occur when casting Burning Hands in a tactical battle

• Fixed a crash that can occur when ending a turn while looking through a city

• Fixed a crash that can occur when the battle prediction UI pops up

• Fixed a crash that can occur when cycling through the players units

• Fixed a crash that can occur when shrinking the size of text in the game

• Ensured that edge-case quick saving and loading does not cause crashes or stuck turns for players

• Fixed several rare crashes and stability issues in the game's text and font rendering system, especially in menus and tooltips

• Fixed a crash that could occur while the AI evaluated locations for new cities

• Fixed a crash that could occur when hovering tiles to highlight spell targets

• Fixed a crash tied to the end-turn button sound effect

• Improved stability when cities change their hub type

• Improved stability around AI outpost construction

Settings

• The player’s prefs, debug.err have been moved to a new location \AppData\Local\Stardock\ElementalReforged

Text

• Resolved lots of confusing and misleading text in tooltips throughout the game

• Fixed a missing HP string in the Prelude final battle

• Fixed a missing string when an AI player wants to offer the player a peace treaty

Change log Treasures of the Magi

Gameplay

• Resolved quest rewards not mentioning gold rewards when completing a training ground quest

• Ensured rewarded Golems are the level you battled against and not a lower level

Graphics

• Resolved issues where if you used a transformation potion while on a mount, you became extremely large

UI

• Added the Treasures of the Magi icon to the title screen to indicate that the player owns and is using the DLC