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

July 7th, 2026 Hot Patch

• Replaced a music track that on some systems was causing random crashes late-game.

• Unique monsters get their stuff back

June 30th, 2026 v1.21 Hot Patch

We have just posted a new update to the game that hopefully will fix some of the issues some people have been having.

There's been an intermittent crash issue related to the audio code in the game. The audio code is almost 20 years old and we think something changed (system update? driver update? we don't know) that has started to make it incompatible thus causing (best case) audio looping/hanging or outright crashing (worst case).

Tonight's update should take care of it. I was able to reproduce this on my PC finally and I think we have it fixed.

As a way to make it up to you guys we ALSO attached some old and new loot to the high end monsters AND added a bunch of new Ancient Battlefield quests to the game along with a little bit of AI tuning.

We'll be monitoring things so if anyone has any problems, let us know.

Thanks for your patience.

June 23rd, 2026 v1.21 Change Log

Gameplay

• Ensured that AI players do not camp on players quest locations for multiple turns

Stability

• Fixed a crash that could occur during some sound effects

• Fixed a crash that could happen when many sounds played at once

• Fixed a crash that could happen when opening certain in-game lists, like unit, spell, or building lists
  

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