Play EliteCabal
One archive with the game and the launcher inside. After that the launcher keeps everything up to date — including itself — so this is the only download you ever need.
Sign in to download
Not to keep it behind a wall — it is free and takes a minute. It means a download can be attributed rather than being an open 2.4 GB pipe.
Getting started
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1
Create an account
You will confirm your email. Until you do, the game refuses the login and the client says the account is blocked — that is expected, and it clears the moment you confirm.
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2
Unzip it anywhere
Documents, a games folder, another drive. Nothing is installed and the registry is not touched. Deleting the folder removes the game.
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3
Run EliteCabalLauncher.exe
Not cabalmain.exe — the game needs a startup argument the launcher passes for you, and on its own it opens nothing. The launcher checks your files, patches anything out of date and starts the game. Play lights up once the files verify.
The client runs under Wine and the launcher starts it for you — but Wine has to be installed first.
Run the launcher — it patches what changed rather than downloading everything again. Missing it, or got an older copy? Download the launcher on its own and drop it in the game folder.
“Windows protected your PC”, because the launcher is not code-signed. Click More info, then Run anyway. The checksum below is the one to compare against if you would rather verify than trust.
Problems and fixes
What players have run into, what causes it, and what fixes it. If none of it matches, the last entry says what to send us so it can be worked out rather than guessed at.
The game crashes a few seconds after you enter the world
You sign in, your character loads, and a second or two later the client closes — sometimes freezing first. It happens every time, on every character.
The game is from 2007 and draws with DirectX 9. Recent graphics drivers — Intel’s integrated chips especially — no longer include a native DirectX 9 path, so Windows emulates it on top of DirectX 12 and this engine crashes inside the emulation. On the laptop this was traced on, it crashed on the NVIDIA chip and the Intel one, in two different drivers, which is why no graphics setting fixes it.
Download d3d9.dll and put it in your game folder, in the same place as cabalmain.exe. Not in System32, not in a subfolder. Then start the game the way you normally do.
Nothing else changes and the launcher leaves it alone. To undo it, delete the file — the game goes straight back to the way it was.
If the game refuses to start once you add it, your drivers are older than that build expects. Use the older build instead and rename it to d3d9.dll.
This is DXVK, an open-source translation layer (zlib licence). It is not ours and we have not modified it.
SHA-256 d3d9.dll 265888c31ca78dffa290c39cb7e50bfb02762590e41927906e46fb32f01497fa
SHA-256 d3d9-legacy.dll b6cfa2cd62af73b80d461085d126004b0e22dd3944c9246c58e3a68e747b56b6
Compatibility mode will not fix anything
Running the client as Windows 7 or Windows 8 has never fixed a problem on this build, and it gets in the way of working one out: the crash report then records the pretend Windows version instead of your real one, so the first thing we read is wrong.
Right-click cabalmain.exe → Properties → Compatibility, and clear Run this program in compatibility mode for.
It crashed and none of the above matches
The client writes its own crash reports into the game folder, beside cabalmain.exe:
MainTmp.RPT
— the most recent crash
cabalmain.RPT
— every crash it has had
Send us both. They name the exact component that failed, which is usually the whole answer. If there are no .RPT files at all, tell us that too — a crash that writes no report is a different fault, and knowing it rules a lot out.
Worth checking if you used the mirror — this is what the archive should hash to.
SHA-256 d08ae5aeb4cc246283daf38a71fc3461b6a874ca86a330149bff73c43edea37b