Elerium-115

Elerium, otherwise known as element 115, is the source of all alien power. Mined from reserves near Cydonia, it can be used for just about any purpose.

You can only obtain Elerium on the battlefield. Each Elerium item is worth 50 units. Elerium is very fragile, and can be destroyed easily. It appears as a small purple ball (much the same as a Stun Bomb), and (with the exception of a certain UFO Power Source found in some alien bases) it is always found in (or, more correctly on) a UFO Power Source. Elerium appears on the Inventory Screen as some small yellow crystals using a 1x1 inventory slot, and weighs (?).

Although you do have the option to sell your Elerium, this is highly unrecommended. It is used to fuel the Firestorm, the Lightning, and the Avenger. It is also used, in varying amounts, to manufacture most Alien Artifacts, and various other technologies. Given that you can only obtain Elerium in the battlefield, selling it is not a good idea. If you choose to, it will fetch you $(?) per unit.

You can only obtain Elerium during UFO assaults, or Alien Base assaults. If upon starting a UFO assualt you find the UFO Power Source to have been destroyed (as a result of a crash landing), the Elerium will surely have been destroyed as well. Perhaps the most efficient way to gain a stock of Elerium is to find an Alien Base and attack the Supply Ships as they land nearby, leaving the base in order to attract the soft targets.

Althought element 115 does not exist in reality, if it did, it would have some interesting properties. For example, it would be the only element that had a gravitational field extending past it's own atomic 'shell'. Simply put, this deviance from the normal rule would be so significant that perhaps the technologies seen in the X-Com Series could become a reality - anti-gravity devices used for both flight and particle acceleration. Because of this, it is often referred to by UFO enthusiasts.

--Bomb Bloke 15:04, 4 Mar 2005 (GMT)