D&D game Solasta: Crown of the Magister leaves Early Access on May 27

A character sheet for a wizard — (Image credit: Tactical Adventures)

A week ago Tactical Adventures announced that Solasta: Crown of the Magister, its RPG based on the rules of Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition, would be leaving Early Access with its next update, and that we wouldn't have long to wait. And we do not: Solasta will hit version 1.0 on May 27, after seven months of Early Access.

In an FAQ, the developers confirm that characters in the full game will have access to seven classes up to the level cap of 10: fighter, rogue, wizard cleric, paladin, ranger, and sorcerer [Update: The sorcerer will be added post-launch as DLC]. No warlock, druid, monk, bard, or barbarian, though "they may be added in future DLCs but we don't want to make any promises before the game is out."

In addition, though the licence for third-party developers using D&D's rules gives access to a Systems Resource Document, it doesn't contain everything that's in the three published rulebooks. "Remember that Wizard of the Coast only granted us a license to use the SRD 5.1, not the full D&D license," as Tactical Adventures explains, "meaning that we can only use what's in the SRD 5.1. This includes the vast majority of the tabletop ruleset and most of the classes, races and spells - but only one subclass for each class. This is why you won't find certain official archetypes, feats and spells in Solasta - which we replaced by homebrew content linked to our own setting."

Even with some things missing or replaced, Solasta feels like a real D&D game—in fact, given how tabletop players tweak the rules and homebrew their own settings, a certain amount of deviation makes it feel more like a game you play sitting around with your friends.

Finally, the developers are working to maintain save compatibility between the last update and version 1.0 so if you're part-way through its roughly 40-hour story right now you should be able carry progress over to the full version. It'll be available on Steam and GOG.

Jody's first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia's first radio show about videogames, Zed Games. He's written for Rock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue, GamesRadar, Zam, Glixel, Five Out of Ten Magazine, and Playboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody's first article for PC Gamer was about the audio of Alien Isolation, published in 2015, and since then he's written about why Silent Hill belongs on PC, why Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is the best fantasy shopkeeper tycoon game, and how weird Lost Ark can get. Jody edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and he eventually lived up to his promise to play every Warhammer videogame.