Apparently we’ve made it to update number four without me disappearing for several months. Yay me lol.

Progress.  
The biggest news this time is that **beta sign-ups are now open**:  
[https://www.aetherium.ac/](https://www.aetherium.ac/)

The sign-ups will help us judge overall interest, which eras people actually want to test, and which server or servers we should bring online first.

The site will also become the main Aetherium portal, with account management and other server-related features as they are added. This is not just a mailing list attached to a forgotten landing page but the portal itself is part of the project.

On the emulator side, there has been a fairly ridiculous amount of progress.

Emotes and animations are much more in line with how they should behave. Loot generation and rolling are working properly.   
Magic gestures and casting animations are in place, and enchantments—buffs—are functioning, although they do not persist through logout or restart yet.

Melee is still a work in progress, but the underlying damage formulas and character stats are producing the correct results. More importantly, proper **STICKY MELEE** is working.

There has also been a good amount of optimization work. The emulator can now load and boot the entire world-content dataset in under one second, so startup is not spending enough time loading to let you reconsider your life choices.

There are still systems to finish, edge cases to clean up, and plenty of testing ahead, but this is moving closer and closer to an actual public test rather than just screenshots and development updates.

So, sign up, select what you’re interested in, and help us decide which version of Dereth gets turned on first.

Aetherium update #4: Beta sign-ups are open come help decide which server goes up first