The team got a Saturday build up. Kudos to Boogiebac and the team burning the midnight oil to squash some fairly basic stability issues.

Using my cheese tactics, I was able to beat the included map in 61 turns.

Before the end of beta 1, Elemental has to pass the following tests:

1. Is there a reasonable expectation of being able to play through a game without it crashing?

2. Are saved games reliable?

3. Can you load a game from within a game. [Fail in current build]

4. Are the game mechanics far enough along to allow 2 people to play each other? (the game mechanics are still very early but that isn’t the issue here as a lot of mechanics can’t be finished until beta 4 – the tactical battle beta).

If you’re in the beta, go ahead and try it out and let us know.  Refer to this as Beta 1Z1 in the beta forum.

We are leaving the beta open until the end of next week so that (for now) new users can join up and try it out. 

That said, it is still NOT what I would consider a fun experience. Not by a long shot. But for those who have survived (literally) since beta 1A can hopefully see progress. For me it’s still fairly torturous. Let us know what you think.

This next week, we expect to release beta 1Z2 which will have additional stability fixes, bug fixes, features, and hopefully nail down item 3.

One thing to be aware of: You must be on the Internet to start the game since it downloads our data files from the server (this is only during the beta and then only until the mod beta).

Also, in c:\programdata\stardock there is an Elemental directory. Crashes and such get zipped up automatically.