The early game of Rust can be the most exciting, unfortunately players rush to fully automatic rifles as fast as possible to get an edge over their enemies. What if the early game could last forever....?
The primitive mode brings us to a distant future where the knowledge of high tech items have been lost, leaving the inhabitants of the island only able to make basic items.
The following changes apply to the primitive game mode.
Removed Helicopters (Minicopter, Scrap Transport Helicopter, Attack Helicopter)
SIEGE WEAPONS
Introducing 4 new vehicles: the siege weapons!
Designed for early game raiding, they're all craftable and deployable in the wilds. A great addition to your raiding and grubbing arsenal.
In addition to the cost to craft, building them will require extra materials and a hammer
They are both available in the primitive and vanilla game modes, from the workbench level 2.
CATAPULT
The catapult is capable of launching powerful projectiles with a large impact radius.
It comes with 3 new ammunition items:
Scattershot: multiple rocks in a spread
Firebomb: ignites on impact, spreading flames
Propane Explosive Bomb: high-damage explosives, damages construction
It can also launch players. Use at your own risk.
CATAPULT AMMO
You can also use the Firebomb and Propane bombs as a deployable raiding tool. Once deployed they will start to spark when they take any damage and explode after several seconds. When used in this way bombs will do less damage.
SIEGE TOWER
The Siege Tower provides a new way to get into compounds, high open windows or help with a raid. As the heaviest Siege Weapon, these towers lack some mobility, but make up for it in strength. Like the other Siege Weapons: The Siege Tower can be towed by a horse, or pushed to get it into position.
Each tower is 3 levels tall, with a drawbridge on each level. Use the drawbridge to provide some protection as you assault a base.
Each tower can have a door placed at the bottom for an added layer of security.
BATTERING RAM
The battering ram is a heavy fuel-powered vehicle you can drive around. Its reinforced arm can be used to destroy wooden and stone constructions
The ram takes damage with each hit and will need high-quality metal to stay operational.
BALLISTA
The ballista is a massive, wheeled crossbow designed for long-range combat. It can be deployed on terrain and towed by horses.
It can fire 4 new bolt items:
Pitchfork Bolt: large sweeping projectile
Piercer Bolt: penetrates armored vehicles
Hammerhead Bolt: heavy and solid, deals damage to doors
Incendiary Bolt: ignites on impact, spreading flames
A stationary version is also available, which can be deployed within your base for defensive use.
SHIELDS
Shields are a new backpack slot item that allows you handle frontal threats with ease. Simply equip the shield in your backpack slot and equip a compatible single handed weapon and the shield will automatically appear.
While holding a shield it takes over the function of RMB, so you won’t be able to aim down sights or throw weapons. Instead holding RMB will raise the shield in front of you, giving you more protection at the cost of reduced visibility and not being able to sprint.
You can only hold a Shield up for 4 seconds before having to put it back down, this is shown via a small progress bad near the crosshair (similar to the Compound Bow).
There are 3 shield variants, each with a different damage block amount. This amount is the percentage of damage that the shield absorbs from any incoming attack, the remaining portion will be received by the player holding the shield. While equipped you’ll see a new shield durability bar appear above your health bar, any damage a shield takes is applied to its durability and once broken the shield will be unequipped.
Items that are compatible with shields will mention this on their item information panel when selected.
When not in use Shields will appear on your back, note that while they are on your back they provide no protection. You will need to equip the shield in order to block any attacks.
4 SHOT MINI CROSSBOW
In the spirit of a primitive mode, we wanted to add another arrow weapon. The Mini Crossbow is a fresh take on the Crossbow. Providing 4 shots in a rotating barrel, at the cost of some damage and range.
The Mini Crossbow will not only be a great addition to the base game, but also the new primitive gamemode.
HORSES
Horses have been completely overhauled and should feel much better to play with.
They can now traverse most terrain types and monuments
New movement mechanics allow them to skid by pressing CTRL when galloping
They can swim, auto-avoid trees and be pulled when led
Horses can also tow siege weapons, including the catapult, siege tower, and ballista.
Additionally, their impact on server performance has been massively improved.
MEDIEVAL PACK DLC
This month, we’re introducing the new Medieval Pack DLC - a themed collection featuring 8 new items and skins consisting of the new Medieval Barricade, Knights Armour clothing skins, Medieval Large Wood Box skin, the Medieval Assault Rifle skin and Medieval skins for the Sheet Metal Door and Double Doors.
Arise a brave Knight with these chivalric skins for the Coffeecan Helmet, Roadsign Jacket and Roadsign Kilt.
Medieval Barricade
Lay down this barricade to stave off the most ardent attackers, or augment the battlefield with its unique middle-age-themed visuals. Note that you will need to know the Barbed Wooden Barricade blueprint to craft this.
Medieval Assault Rifle
Kingmaker or Kingslayer - you call the shots with this resplendent relic.
Medieval Large Wooden Box
Every Lord needs a sturdy coffer to store their spoils of war. Look no further than this stalwart companion.
Medieval Sheet Metal Door & Double Door
Survey your lands from behind these imposing castle doors, uniquely adorned with spikes to keep the p̶e̶a̶s̶a̶n̶t̶s nakeds out.
Temporary player ragdolling has been added for bikes and horses.
Taking large amounts of collision damage on bikes and horses will result in the player being flung from their seat and eventually getting back up (assuming they haven't died in the process). Players can also be flung from the saddle of a horse if it's had too much airtime or has slid too far. Horses will ragdoll in these cases as well.
If you're unlucky enough to be used as ammunition for a catapult, you'll also ragdoll and are guaranteed to die on impact.
Collision damage on bikes has been re-balanced with ragdolls in mind, with the aim of making it less likely to instantly die from hitting obstacles on a bike.
FIRST PERSON ADMIN ESP
We've been slowly building up the feature set of our admin ESP system over the years, mostly due to the demands of various streaming events. This was restricted to using the debug/flying camera, it will now work as expected while in first person perspective spectating. Many server admins have asked for this to have better situational awareness while spectating players.
It uses the same convars as the normal ESP system so you shouldn't need to do anything new. All of the existing convars will apply, this includes:
ESPCanvas.MaxNameplates
ESPCanvas.OverrideMaxDisplayDistance
ESPCanvas.DisableOcclusionChecks
ESPCanvas.ShowHealth
ESPCanvas.ColourCodeTeams
ESPCanvas.UseRandomTeamColours
ESPCanvas.DisplayDistanceMultiplier
If there are further improvements that would help in live spectating, please let us know!
QUALITY OF LIFE CHANGES
Pickup sleeping bags Players can now pick up any sleeping bag as long they are in TC range
IO Reskinning Can now reskin IO deployables with the spray can without disconnecting it entirely
Phone names Phones can now have names up to 30 characters long
Pumpkin Rolling Dropped pumpkins no longer roll indefinitely
Backpacks on Weapon Racks Backpacks and shields can now be used with weapon racks.
SOCIAL INTEGRATIONS
We're rolling out a social integration layer to Rust this month, no more messing around with overlays or alt-tabbing - you can now view, chat, invite, and add friends, all from right inside the game.
Your Steam friends list will automatically sync up in-game. No setup required. Prefer using Discord? No problem! All you need to do is link your account, and your Discord friends will be right there, ready to connect. This way, you’ve got the best of both worlds.
Give it a try, and as always, let us know what you think.
TWITCH DROPS - HOME BREWED 2
Twitch Drops are back!
And from more of our favourite creators on the rise that you should definitely start to recognize!
Be sure to sync up at to claim your Drops after watching these fantastic creators on Twitch.
SERVER PROFILER - LINUX & REDUCED OVERHEAD
TL;DR - Shipping Linux binary; Server profiler should have less impact when idle and recording by gathering less data; if it fails to generate a snapshot, you can now export a debug binary snapshot and share it with us.
Linux Support
This update will contain a library built for Linux environment. The library is a native recorder, so the interface (the "perfsnapshot" command) works the same.
The library has been built on Ubuntu 24.04.1 via GCC 13.3 in C++20 mode and it depends on POSIX utilities (dlopen, dlsym) - so it should be accessible everywhere.
Profiler Overhead
Since the first release of our internal profiler, we got the opportunity to test it in the real world conditions. My first tests were rough (could only capture 1-2 frames worth of data before ballooning to multiple gigabytes of data) and I got feedback from number of server owners that not only it doesn't produce snapshots in some situations, it also has idle overhead - just enabling profiler can have a 5-10fps on a high-pop server.
I've spent some time this update cycle to to reduce this overhead, as in the current conditions it severely reduces the benefit we can get out of the tool. I've tackled it from a couple angles:
Reduced how much Code we capture
The profiler works by annotating every code method that it encounters, wrapping it in a set of calls that dispatch to different Mono profilers. Comparatively, for complex and expensive methods these call are unnoticeable, but for small utility functions that do a trivial thing (change a bool, set a bit, append to a list, etc) the dispatching calls add massive overhead (we're talking 10x+ the cost of the utility function). Lastly, these dispatching calls are cheaper when the profiler is enabled, but not capturing - but they are still not free.
Originally I set up a number of annotation filters to exclude some known and safe code (stuff from System.Collections.Generic namespace, for example), but it still left a lot of "fat" that we could trim. Here's the before and after of the changes affecting our player processing loop:
As you can see there's much less of nested calls(reduced verticality), and instant calls (triangles, they take less than Perfetto is able to track) appear much earlier.
This update we no longer capture:
Hash functions
Casting & comparison operators
Property getters
UnityEngine.CoreModule related code
Enumerators
Anything Math related
Our internal collections (like BufferList)
Serialization code
There's more, but hopefully you see the principle behind the choice - anything small, trivial or reliable gets ignored.
This allowed us to massively reduce the amount of data we generate during capture - on staging server, we used to generate about 17MB of json per player, after these changes it's gone down to ~0.5MB of json per player. This should also reduce the "idle" overhead, since there's much less "dispatch code" that's scattered around.
Improved json generation logic
One of the quirks that we have to deal with profiler-gathered data is that it doesn't know where the frame begins and ends - it's just a stream of "method enter/exit" records + "frame end" record that happens somewhere deep in the managed callstack. And since we want to display the data in a per-frame organized matter, we need to scan this stream to figure out how to partition all records.
Originally I implemented a less-efficient version of this because I assumed that there wouldn't be too much data to overwhlem this process. Since the previous section showed that I was wrong on the scale of data, I've also spent a bit of time to improve the export process - we now only need 2 whole-data-set scans to figure out frame grouping, instead of 3 originally, so using napkin-math, this gives us 33% export speedup.
Additionally, I've received reports that profiler can fail to generate snapshots. There are a couple scenarios in the above frame-reconstruction logic that can cause it to fail, so for these cases I've added the option to dump a binary debug snapshot - just run "perfsnapshot 1", and you should see a ".bin.gz" in "/server//profiler/" folder. I'll be able to inspect it in our internal tool to see what am I missing:
Future Plans
I've been using this tool on the daily to inspect the state of our Staging servers, and I'm hoping to do the same with our medium and high-pop release servers as well. To squeeze out the most, there are additional improvements that I'd like to pursue when the time allows:
Continue trimming down on annotated functions - there's still plenty to reduce.
Need to expose the annotation filter to server owners - right now it's all hardcoded which is limiting
Need to expand allocation tracking - right now we just track how much we allocated on main thread. We could track allocated object types, and figure out a better way to display it on Perfetto.
Emit more metadata about the performance state - provide manual annotation tools to emit the scope of workload for our team, or to show cross-thread dependencies.
Explore automatic capture during frame spikes.
WELLIPETS
The wait is over!
The exclusive Rust x Wellipets wellington frog boots have started shipping, and codes for the in-game frog boot helmet are ready to redeem* from 11AM GMT on Friday 7th February.
Thank you again to everyone for taking part in this special collaboration, and don't forget to redeem your codes here.
*The digital item is complementary to the purchase and only redeemable for the PC version of Rust. A unique product key code will be sent after the delivery of your physical item. Should you wish to exchange sizes of the physical item, please refrain from submitting your digital keycode until you receive your exchanged sizes. Once the digital code is redeemed, you forfeit the right to return the physical item.
48 HOUR FLASH SALE!
To celebrate the release of this month's Primitive update, we're having a flash sale! For the next 48 hours, Rust and all Steam DLC's will be 50% off.
Happy Lunar New Year to everyone! This year, we celebrate the Year of the Snake. In Chinese culture, the snake symbolises wisdom, intuition, and transformation—qualities that everyone playing can appreciate!
To help you embrace the Lunar New Year spirit, we've stocked the Steam item store with a mix of new and returning Lunar New Year-themed items.
SNAKE MASK
Celebrate the Year of the Snake with Rust’s new Snake Mask! Inspired by the serpent’s elegance and wisdom in Chinese mythology, this intricately designed mask features vibrant scales and symbolizes transformation and resilience.
Enhance your base this Lunar New Year with 3 stunning Chinese-themed wall dividers! Featuring intricate patterns and traditional designs, these decorative pieces bring a touch of cultural elegance to your base.
In addition, we’ve added items back from previous Lunar New Years celebrations to the Steam item store. The New Year Gong, Dragon Door Knocker, and the Chinese Lantern are all now available with links to all of the items below:
11 YEARS STRONG
11 YEARS
Servers are now wiped and Santa is packing up and clearing out the bodies, but we hope you enjoyed the Holiday Season. We're getting back to work after a couple of weeks off, which is why this blog is lighter than usual, but we're looking forward to the journey ahead in 2025!
At the end of last year, we celebrated Rust's 11th anniversary, marking an incredible journey. The game continues to experience year-over-year growth, which is quite remarkable for being 11 years old. Rust is now bigger than ever!
This year, we saw:
Over 325 million game sessions
Over 40 million hours played
Over 5.5 million unique players
Here's a recap of some of the major updates we did last year:
Added a new item which will send notifications to your phone if an explosion is detected
Quality Of Life
Over 300 QOL changes from saving codelocks to floating items
New Weapons
Added 5 new weapons, the minigun, military flame thrower, SKS, High Calibre Revolver, Handmade SMG
Alongside a metric ton of improvements and bug fixes.
Rust continues to be a labour of love from all of us at Facepunch, and we couldn't have done it without your passion and feedback. Thank you for your continued support, be it playing the game, telling friends, and engaging and communicating with us. We've very much enjoyed everything we've worked on for the game this year.
LOOKING FORWARD
What’s in store for 2025? Consistency! Continued guaranteed monthly updates on the first Thursday of every month, alongside regular fixes, quality-of-life enhancements, improvements, and exciting holiday events.
Next Month
On February 6th, we'll release the Primitive update. The update will be one of the most impactful updates to date in changing the dynamics of early-game raiding and combat by introducing siege vehicles, primitive weapons, shields, and a dedicated game mode.
The Primitive update represents a time in Rust where the already scarce technology and the usual homemade armaments and ammunition have been depleted from Rust's current setting, forcing survivors to fashion crude weapons with less sophisticated methods of attack and defence.
The Siege Tower can be used to climb over exterior walls while players remain in cover. And it can be pushed or horse-drawn and has several floors, with extendable drawbridges that double up as shutters.
The Catapult will be a projectile launcher for longer distances that can utilise multiple projectiles such as boulders, radioactive barrels, and propane tank IEDs. While it does have wheels, its size makes it something that a vehicle or horse will have to help you move it towards your next target.
The Ballista is a combination of a catapult and a large crossbow which was highly accurate given the heft of its projectiles. And in Rust, those features remain with the Ballista also having multiple ammo types, being able to do heavy damage to people, doors, and vehicles.
Finally, the Battering Ram will be another addition that is driveable like a traditional vehicle, with a triggerable ram that damages building blocks in a radius.
As well as these new weapons and vehicles, we have been working on a variety of shields, a 4 shot mini-crossbow, and updates to melee damages and ranges.
With this comes some improvements to horses, including their ability to tow the new siege weapons, and new skins to customise your primitive approach to gameplay and expression.
Can't wait till February? Rust Staging Aux2 branch is publicly playable, allowing everyone to test and give feedback.
Forwards
Alongside next month's Primitive update, we have a ton of content currently in development, and if you're keeping an eye on our commits page, you'll already know some of what's on the way. This year, you can expect to see Cooking 2.0 bringing many changes to food management and unique buffs to foods, a Jungle biome featuring dangerous animals such as crocodiles and tigers, and changes to softcore and hardcore game modes.
Outlined above is skimming the surface of only a few key features. We have a lot more planned.
But what about?
Performance?
Performance is always an ongoing process. We're constantly adding and improving new features monthly, often hidden in changelogs. There is no magic button to increase performance. Instead, it is a slow process of small gains.
We hired several people over the past couple of months whose sole job is focused on performance-related tasks, these are positions which never existed before, we never had staff dedicated to performance full-time, they're getting to grips with the Rust project and are already hard at work identifying and fixing issues. A recent example is Daniel's server profiler.
We'll continue to share news on performance in our monthly development blogs.
Old Content?
As like with prior years we've set aside multiple months in our internal roadmap of light or no content. These gaps are deliberate to allow us to be versatile and adaptive to community feedback, have time to focus and address old content and improve recent content. We have a lot we can keep building upon, not all content we add to Rust is supposed to become meta, but rather adding yet another way of achieving a goal.
Cheating?
Repeating the words of last year's blog: Anticheat is a hugely complex topic. We work closely with Epic Games' Easy Anti-cheat, to aid in detecting and banning cheaters in Rust. We don't disclose what we do and don't do when it comes to anti-cheat for good reason. The more information we disclose publicly, the more it can assist cheaters and cheat developers to circumvent measures, it's a huge cat-and-mouse game.
One of the best anti-cheat measures is obscurity. The fewer people know what EAC and we are doing, the better. This comes with the drawback of not communicating enough, on the outside, it appears we're doing nothing. Almost every month, we're shipping improvements or fixing/restricting cheat features. We've fixed several high-priority exploits upon discovery or disclosure within hours through hotfixes we don't note publicly. EAC sometimes pushes several improvements weekly, which are applied when you start the game.
We continue to promise to you is we're actively monitoring and combating cheaters daily. Our internal systems keep improving, as do EAC.
In past blogs I talked about server-side player culling, if a player is behind a hill and you can't see them, don't network the player to disrupt ESP cheat features. We're slowly iterating this and have tested it on live servers, we're working on getting this to the most performant state possible to work on mid-high population servers.
Another feature we're exploring and want your feedback on it, is a form of premium servers. The overwhelming number of cheaters banned have Rust Steam inventory valued at below $20. A large number of long-term regular players have Rust Steam inventories of over $20. If we used this as a gate to entry for some servers, it would mean these servers would see considerably fewer cheat-related players, is this something you want? Would you play on these servers? We're still collecting data to determine the exact barrier to entry. The reason for looking at Rust's Steam Inventory price, in short, is because it's a metric that can't be spoofed and gamed easily, unlike game data. The big negative here is servers rely on a steady flow of players, new and old; this gate could have a net negative impact on the server's population and, thus, the overall gameplay experience - we'd love to hear your thoughts.
This year:
We've taken down over 1300 cheats-related media on social platforms.
290,000+ bans applied
57,000+ Temporary
233,000+ Permanent
The majority of cheaters have been removed from the game in less than 12 hours of playtime
This has lowered this to 10 hours of playtime in the last 3-months
12,617,47 Cheat reports received
1,200,000~ cheating reports received on Facepunch servers
11 YEARS OF RUST IN NUMBERS
While we celebrated a fantastic 2024 for the game, we realise a lot of what we've achieved boils down to 11 years of passion from the team. And passion from the community.
It's not always easy to put that into words, but we've managed to put it into numbers below.
Take a look at what you've helped us achieve over the last 11 years!
THE LAST DAYS OF RUSTMAS
Twitch Drops! Hurry!
Yes, Santa has packed up and cleared out, but there are still a few days left to claim free rewards for watching creators on Twitch!
All you need to do is check out anyone streaming Rust on Twitch by Monday 6th of January, and you can bag yourself some sweet Christmas-themed Twitch Drops to make sure you and your base look jubilant all year round if Christmas is more than just a holiday to you!
SEASON'S BEATINGS
HAPPY HOLIDAYS!
From everyone at Facepunch, we'd like to wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
The Christmas Event is once again live!
If you're new to the island, here's what you can expect:
As you play, you will start to hear the distinct sound of jingle bells. As soon as you do, leave the warm comfort of your base and start looking for your gifts!
Two gifts are spawned per player, in a radius of about 40m from you.
Run up and bash open your present to receive your Christmas gift.
They come in three sizes: small, medium, and large. But if you have enough small presents stashed, you can 'trade up' to a medium or large gift.
The contents of each present varies, but you'll find a mix of resources, weapons, and Christmas candy.
This year, you'll still be able to find Santa hats and reindeer antlers, both of which can be worn and provide a decent amount of protection. And the lickable candy cane club is back! As well as two types of stockings.
If you hang a stocking inside your base when the jingle bells ring, the stocking will fill up with loot whether you've been good or not - no coal here!
The larger stocking has a higher chance for better items and both last around 5-10 refills.
The advent calendar also returns and is a craftable deployable, available to everyone during the Christmas event.
Once placed, you can claim an in-game surprise once every in-real-life day from the 16th of December.
The Christmas event ends on January 2nd @ 19:00GMT / 14:00EST
Make it a December to remember!
RUSTMAS STORE
We have brought some items from previous years, now purchasable from the Rust Item Store.
Since last year the festive garland pack now includes a double door garland. If you've already purchased this pack, you'll now be able to craft this item.
RUSTMAS BASE DECORATION CONTEST
We are excited to announce that the annual Rustmas Base Decorating Competition is back for 2024's festive period!
We're looking for the best Christmassy base that Rust has ever seen!
Winner
£120 worth of skins of their choosing, and two Rust DLC/Items.
Runner up
£75 worth of skins of their choosing, and one Rust DLC/Item.
How To Submit
Once you’ve completed decorating your base, be sure to take 3-4 screenshots or a video walkthrough (MTV Cribs style) and upload them to X/Twitter, using the hashtag #Rustmas2024
The winner and runner up will be announced from Rust's Official X/Twitter account on January 13th.
Please make sure you are following the Rust X/Twitter account so we can DM you if you win. If we do not get a response within 1 week of the winner announcement, a new winner will be chosen.
Evaluation
Submissions will be judged based on the following: Creativity Design Judging will be performed by Facepunch Staff.
Bonus points if you remove the UI and your graphics are set higher than 1 :)
Terms
This competition is run by Facepunch Studios LTD. The competition ends on January 2nd 2025 23:59UTC. No more than three entries per person. The winner and runner-up will be selected based on which Facepunch thinks is the most original/creative and any decisions Facepunch makes will be final. The winner and runner up must claim their prizes within one month of the closing date (which Facepunch may exchange for an alternative of the same or greater value). Our terms of service apply to any content you make for the competition: https://facepunch.com/legal. Winning entries must pick items from the Rust marketplace with market value.
RUSTMAS TWITCH DROPS
It doesn't matter if you've been naughty or nice this year, as part of our ongoing commitment to creators on Twitch, we're pleased to unveil Drops on Rustmas!
All you need to do is check out anyone streaming Rust this festive period, and you can bag yourself some sweet Christmas themed Twitch Drops to make sure you and your base look jubilant this December and January.
As usual, don't forget to sync your Twitch and Steam accounts here. And remember; Facepunch will never contact you about Drops or access to any of your accounts.
Stay frosty!
ICE SCULPTURES
Over the last few months, we've been hard at work on a new decorative features for your base. You've probably seen bits about Ice Sculptures floating about on YouTube, Twitter, and Reddit, and maybe you've even had a quick play with it on the Staging Branch, and we were really looking forward to releasing it in time for Christmas, however, we've decided to postpone the release of the Ice Sculpture DLC.
This was due to concerns about the quality of what will be achievable to carve by players while it's in its current state. And due to it being a paid DLC item, we want to ensure its value and not leave players disappointed.
The plan is to continue experimenting with it until we're happy, and we may look at releasing it in a different carvable material at some point next year, if it fits.
2024 REAP - RUST TURNS 11!
This month marks Rust's 11th anniversary!
Thank you to our incredible community for yet another spectacular year of farming, raiding, and roleplaying!
With all the work we've done to consistantly release new content this year, we have seen record player counts, as well as massive increases in viewership of our Twitch events, and now more than ever, we're seeing even more ways that you all enjoy playing Rust on lots of other platforms too.
So we thought we'd share some highlights from 2024 to remind ourselves of the significant changes we've brought to the world of Rust this year. And to remind ourselves that we couldn't have done it without you, the players and creators.
Don't forget, to celebrate this monumental milestone, and as a thank you for your support this year, Rust is 50% off until January 2nd! And all DLCs are 40% off! Get it here or tell your new duo partner about the discount: https://fcpn.ch/r11yt
POLISH AND PROGRESS
RUST'S 11TH BIRTHDAY CELEBRATIONS
We can't believe it either.
It feels like just yesterday that we were celebrating 10 years of Rust, getting emotional over our recap video, but it is true - Rust turns 11 years old on Wednesday the 11th of December!
It's been another incredible year for Rust, with record player numbers, Twitch events, and monthly content updates bringing some of the most significant changes to the world of Rust in the past 11 years.
Here are just some of the key gameplay additions we've delivered as we look back on 2024:
World Update
Backpacks
Tutorial Island
Digital Clock
Night Light
Harbour Monument Rework
Cargo Ship Docking
Minigun + Flamethrower
Seismic Sensor
Handcuffs + Prisoner Hood
Motorbikes + Pedal Bikes
Travelling Vendor
Tin Can Alarm
Metal Detector
Wallpaper
GCO Attachement
Hand-held Diver Propulsion Vehicle
Refreshed Divesites
Radtown
Radioactive Water
T1 SMG + T3 SKS
...and much more!
To celebrate Rust turning 11, next week, you'll find a cake and balloons in-game. And your friends can enjoy 40% off Rust for 10 days, starting on Monday!
On behalf of everyone at Facepunch, we'd like to thank you for a great 2024. In January, we'll release a full end-of-year blog in which we'll discuss how 2024 has gone, with highlights, learnings, and our plans for 2025.
QUALITY OF LIFE CHANGES
Peacekeeper Turret Hostile Indicator
A turret icon now appears next to the usual hostile indicator when you are hostile and near a peace keeper auto turret.
Workcart Storage
A small box has been added to all Workcarts so you can store that extra loot.
Waterpump Depth Change
Waterpumps now work with a smaller depth of water, perfect for the new rivers.
Propane Tank Stack Size
Propane tanks can now stack up to 20.
Dropbox Input Increase
Increased to 4 input slots.
Junkpile Despawn
Junkpiles will now be eligible to despawn after they are partially looted.
Fridge Storage
Fridge storage increased to 48 slots
Homing Missiles
Homing missiles have been added to Bradley and attack helicopter loot crates
WOLF PACKS BALANCING
We spent this month bug fixing and improving the counter-plays to the wolves, as we want them to feel challenging but not unfair.
The problems
Using fire against wolf sometimes felt less impactful than expected, especially when wanting to avoid the fight. Even though wolves wouldn't attack as long as you kept distance and a lit torch, they would follow for a very long time.
This was especially aggravating when driving wolves away from your corpse to get back your loot, but then having them still follow you and potentially cause a death spiral. Furthermore, when jumping on an elevated position to escape the wolf, it would ignore the lit torch and rush to jump up.
The wolf could do very fast huge jumps sometimes up to your base's roof. The jump motion also looked weightless and not really believable.
Another problem was packs of 4+ wolves. They didn't appear all the time, but players that had to face them had a really hard time. Even though packs never spawn with more than 4 wolves, they could sometimes merge. That's because wolves always come to investigate when their hear a howl, even if it comes from a wolf that does not belong to their pack.
Once the player shot a wolf or they got close enough, wolves would give up stalking and weave at high speed towards their prey. For players that only had a bow, this made it hard to land more than one or two shot as the pack of wolves closed the gap. And once enough wolves were in melee range, while it was possible to prevent a single one of them from attacking thanks to hit stun, you easily got overwhelmed.
Lastly it felt harder than it should have been to crouch and sneak around wolf packs, forcing players to take very long detours if they didn't want to fight.
Closing words
You can find more details about how we addressed those issues in the patch notes at the bottom of the page.
Congrats to the players who found some of the hidden features that could be used to get the upper hand on wolves!
ELECTRICITY QOL
Tesla Coil
Reduced tesla coil maximum power usage from 35 to 25 (no difference in time to kill)
Storage Monitor
Added a passthrough slot to the Storage Monitor
Elevators speed
Increased speed of player placed elevators by 50%
Battery full charge indicator
Added an output slot for when your battery is fully charged
MODULAR CAR RADIOS
Modular car radios are now in Rust!
This means that you can now craft a radio to place in your modular car for 120 metal fragments if you own the Voice Props Pack.
Simply craft the radio and then deploy it onto the cockpit of your modular vehicle. The radio will only be operational whilst the car engine is switched on. Once the radio is deployed, anyone will be able to interact with it.
Anyone with authorisation to the vehicle will be able to pick up the radio with a building hammer.
The radio comes with all the same built-in and internet streamed radio stations you find in the Boom Box
HELICOPTER SHREDDING
Purchased Helicopters can now be picked up by the magnet crane and shredded at Junkyard. You will receive Scrap based on the helicopter type and it's current health (50% health = 50% of the Scrap).
Minicopter - 200 Scrap
Scrap Transport Helicopter - 300 Scrap
Attack Helicopter - 500 Scrap
Stolen a helicopter from your neighbours? Why not destroy the evidence and get paid at the same time!
UPGRADABLE HIGH EXTERNAL WALLS & GATES
Wooden high external walls and gates can now be upgraded to their stone versions via the hammer context manner, similar to regular building blocks.
Additionally, high external walls now craft in batches of three. The stone high external walls requiring 1 sheet metal per craft.
The stone high external gate has also been adjusted to require 1 sheet metal and only 3 gears, with its crafting cost reduced to 4000 wood/stone (down from 4500) for improved inventory management.
VENDING MACHINE STATISTICS
You are now able to see a bunch of statistics about your vending machine. This includes:
Transaction History
Highest Revenue Items
Best Sold Items
You can browse these stats in a wide variety of timescales: from the last 30 minutes to all-time.
Some 'long term stats' are also available (all anonymous), these are:
Total Sales: The total number of items purchased from the vending machine
Total Unique Customers: The total number of individual customers who have made a purchase
Total Repeat Customers: The total number of instances where existing customers have returned to make additional purchases.
Best Customer: The customer who has made the most purchases (total count of their transactions)
These stats are processed on the Serverside then communicated to clients.
Here are a few Server Convars to help server owners:
vendingmachine.max_returned - Specifies the maximum number of entries to return when fetching purchase history or aggregated stats (e.g., best-sold items, most revenue-generating items, etc)
vendingmachine.max_processed - Limits the maximum number of sales records to process when performing operations like filtering or aggregating data, even if more records are available
vendingmachine.max_history - Defines the maximum number of purchase records that the vending machine will store in memory (on Serverside) before removing older entries to make space for new ones
Server owners can also run: vendingmachine.clearallvendinghistory and vendingmachine.clearallvendingcustomerhistory to clear all Vending Machine stats and long term stats respectively.
LEGACY SHELTER REVOKE
Once you placed your Legacy Shelter, it was possible to die and then be unable to place another. When placing down another shelter, your first one is now destroyed.
There's one trade off: Shelters now take a few seconds to place (just like high external walls). This gives enough time to warn you that your old Shelter is going to be destroyed, as well as preventing them from being used in PVP.
VARIABLE ZOOM SCOPE
The 16x scope was significantly under-used considering it's intended to be military loot. This seemed to come down to it being too high of a zoom.
This scope has now been renamed to the "variable zoom scope" and supports 3 zoom levels: 4x, 8x & 16x. This makes it better than both of the old scopes combined & adds in a new zoom for quick target acquisition.
The default keybinds are 'Page Up' to increase zoom and 'Page Down' to decrease zoom, however I fully expect more experienced players to rebind these.
Try scroll wheel (if you aren't using it to switch weapons) or mouse 3 & mouse 4 (if those aren't already bound).
SCRAP EXCHANGE VENDOR CHANGES
Now that we've reached a point where we are happy with the dynamic pricing behaviour when purchasing items with Scrap, we've decided to apply the same logic to items being sold for Scrap. Starting this month, you will notice that items that you sell to NPC vending machines for Scrap have a dynamic price applied to them. It will start the wipe with 50% less value per item sold, and can increase to an extra 100% value per item sold if no items are sold.
This will hopefully make it more valuable to sell items as a wipe goes on. As with the previous changes, we'll be monitoring these and making changes as needed.
UNDERWATER VISIBILITY
We recently tweaked this, but your feedback made it clear there was further room for improvement. So we did just that. Underwater visibility is now nearly doubled, allowing players to see further and more clearly underwater.
Additionally, we've slightly increased the depth of water players can sink to before the oxygen level starts to tick down. During swimming, you are now less likely to drown to high waves.
RISKY LANDMINE DISARMING
Landmines now have a 15% chance to explode when being disarmed by another player, so be careful when clearing out minefields!
This was always meant to be the intended gameplay behaviour for landmines, but I discovered an old bug that prevented this from working as intended.
NODE SPARKLE CHANGES
We've slightly modified the behaviour when hitting nodes this month. Nodes will no longer show a sparkle before they are hit for the first time, once they are hit the sparkle will appear underneath the first hit. This first hit is considered a sparkle hit and will reward the appropriate amount of resources, so it's a very slight buff to ore collecting.
We did this for a few reasons:
This brings their behaviour in line with the tree X marker minigame
Finding the sparkle at first was slightly awkward, this feels smoother
Each sparkle was a networked entity that had to be streamed in and out as the player moves around
We had a sparkle per node in the world, so an average server will now have around 4.5k less entities in the world
While I was at it I made some slight memory improvements so each node will take up less client and server memory.
QUEUE IMPROVEMENTS
While looking at collecting some data around queues, we decided to do a few minor improvements to the queue system. Up until now, the client was unaware of being in a queue, it was simply using server messaging to show the queue. Now the client knows when it has entered and exited a server queue, and can act accordingly. We now display Steam rich presence for waiting in a queue and connecting to a server. This also opens us up to do more client side related queue features in the future.
The other change to queues we made impacts modded server owners specifically. The queue messaging system was being leverage by modded servers to implement loading screen messages via a plugin. These loading screen messages would often fight with the client messaging, and generally didn't look great.
As a nice compromise, we've implemented the ability to change the "menu tip" message displayed in the loading screen. This can allow modded server owners to implement their own tips that may be more relevant for the particular game mode and changes specific to the server. To keep things backwards compatible, the same network message sent before will continue to work with one caveat.
// Old
var net = Net.sv.StartWrite(); net.PacketID(Message.Type.Message); net.String("Top Text"); net.String("Bottom Text"); net.Send(new SendInfo(conn));
// New
var net = Net.sv.StartWrite(); net.PacketID(Message.Type.Message); net.String("Bolt"); net.String("This server has instant craft!"); net.Send(new SendInfo(conn));
Instead of having top and bottom text, you can change the menu tip icon displayed. Existing loading screen plugins will continue to function, but won't display a top message as that field is now used for an icon. A list of available icons names has been published on our Community GitHub repository.
Only servers clearly listed in the modded section may utilize this feature.
RCON SECURITY ENHANCEMENTS
Another one for all the server owners out there. We've started updating the security around RCON. The server will output very prominent warning messages if you're using an insecure RCON password. In some cases, the RCON server will fail to start if the password is bad enough (i.e. "password" or "changeme")
We've also added some safeguards against brute force attacks. Now when a RCON client attempts to connect with a bad password, after 5 attempts the IP address will be banned for 5 minutes. These values are all configurable through a number of new convars. There are also a few convar commands that allow you to permanently ban both IP addresses and networks.
rcon.banduration (default: 300) Number of seconds to apply to any automated ban.
rcon.maxpasswordfailures (default: 5) Number of failed password attempts before applying a temp ban
rcon.logfailedattempts (default: true) Debug.Log all the various failed password / ban connects. Defaults to true, but large servers may want to disable due to spam
rcon.permanentbanfailedips (default: false) Permanently ban IPs that exceed the failed password threshold
rcon.ban_ip Permanently bans an IP or network
rcon.unban_ip Removes an IP or network ban from both the permanent bans, and any temporary bans/attempts
rcon.print_rcon_failed_logins Prints out the table of attempted logins that failed and if they resulted in a ban or not
rcon.clear_rcon_failed_logins Removes all of the temporary failed login history/bans (does not remove permanent bans of any kind)
rcon.print_rcon_bans List the permanent IP/network bans
NATIVE ARM64 HARDWARE SUPPORT
We've been waiting for a while for all of our third party software to natively support ARM64 hardware. This has now finally come to fruition and as the first platform to test this on, we've switched the Mac version of the game to use our native ARM64 build on Apple Silicon hardware. At the moment, Intel hardware is still supported on Mac as well and remains unaffected by this change.
If this works out well, we will investigate native ARM64 support for other platforms in the future. The next most important one would likely be to natively run on ARM64 hardware in Windows laptops, but we are still waiting for some third party software to fully support this, so this will stretch a good amount into the next year at least.
BUILT-IN SERVER PROFILER
Up to recently we've been focusing on server performance health via tracking aggregating performance telemetry. It allowed us to have a general overview of a server's performance from birds eye view. There are point where high-level overview is not sufficient to identify where exactly slow-downs are coming from.
This past month I've been working on a built-in profiler for the server. If used, it allows us to see all the code that is executed for a particular frame - allowing us to see more detail about what & how things are going wrong.
With this, we can now combine our high-level telemetry as an "hotspot-warning" system, while using the built-in profiler will allow us to investigate what those hotspot consist of and which parts are the most worthwhile to optimize. This will help guide our efforts in optimizing the server performance while also validating that we have successfully optimized a particular block of logic.
The profiler comes with an extra benefit: this feature is going to be available for public use. Any server owner will be able to trigger it and take a look at the data. You'll be able to see both what vanilla server does, as well as if there's anything that Mods are actively doing.
How to Generate a snapshot
Note 1: This is currently only available for servers hosted on Windows machines. Linux support is next to come.
First, the feature needs to be activated when starting the server. You must launch the server executable with `-enableProfiler`
Once the server boots up, you can run the following console command: `profile.perfsnapshot [delay] [name] [frames]` (all parameters are optional)
delay is in seconds, by default set to 15
name is the name of the snapshot file, by default is "Profile"
frames is the number of frames to includes in the snapshot - default is 10, has a max of 10
Once the delay expires (you'll see messages in global chat), it will record the requested number of frames, generate and compress a snapshot - you will find it in /server//profiler/.json.gz
Note 2: if something goes wrong during generation the file won't be created(youl'l can it in server log file). I'll be continuing iterating on the profiler, so I'll iron out any left-overs.
Note 3: Taking a snapshot causes server to take a performance hit for a couple seconds. Make sure to give enough delay to avoid disturbing the server population too much. When not taking a snapshot, the impact is none/unnoticeable.
Exploring The Snapshot
You can extract the compressed snapshot using any utility that understands GZip (Windows11 explorer, 7zip). The snapshot uses Google Event Format, so you can use any tool to view it. For example, I've been Perfetto UI to visualize the data - just drag and drop the json into the view and you can start exploring.
TWITCH RIVALS IS BACK!
That's right, Twitch Rivals - Team Battle V is almost here!
Starting Monday 9th of December and finishing Friday 13th, up to 150 Twitch creators from around the world will compete in our yearly global Rust PvP competitive event, with a prize pool of $100,000!
Last year's event saw some incredible plays from some rather understated competitors so be sure to tune in every day at 1900 GMT / 1400 EST to watch as tensions rise and the teams find their feet while they gather their resources, build to protect themselves, then raid, loot, and fight it out to be crowned victorious!
This year's Captains include Team Battle IV's winning team captain, Blooprint, as well as Oilrats, NoraExplorer, Willjum, and more! Full schedule and teams list from Twitch here.
As usual, there are some incredible looking Twitch Drops available to collect by watching the competitors, and by tuning in to the official competition broadcast from Twitch Rivals. Sync your accounts and find links to all channels at twitch.facepunch.com.
Radiation cube volumes - minimal, low, medium and high rad levels
Toxic/radiation water cube + cylinder prefabs
Admin spawnable invisible 3x3 cube + wall
Static xmas light string prefab
Static fire prefabs
Static spraycan decals
Birthday cake prefabs (from previous years)
Invisible static PressButton
Fixes for material changes to glowing cubes and glass cubes
CHRISTMAS
We'll release a mandatory update at 19:00 UTC on December 16th to enable this year's festivities.
ARMED AND ANIMATED
T1 HANDMADE SMG
This month we're adding new weapons, firstly filling a gap in the weapon lineup, the Handmade SMG is unlockable near the end of the T1 tech tree.
While it lacks accuracy and raw damage, it compensates for this with sheer volume, letting players unleash a hail of bullets. Skilled survivors can use it to stay competitive by timing their attacks and positioning themselves carefully, allowing for surprise bursts against better-equipped foes.
SKS
Unlockable at the start of the T3 tech tree, the SKS bridges the gap between the SAR and the M39. This mid-tier powerhouse combines punchy damage with accuracy, making it a reliable pick for players who want a no-nonsense rifle with solid range and stopping power. The SKS delivers balanced performance with a kick that seasoned survivors will appreciate.
IMPROVED WOLF AI
Hello I'm Maverick! I recently joined Facepunch to work full-time on the AI and it's been a blast so far.
This month we're releasing the first step of a major AI overhaul. We're starting small by just updating the wolf, but long-term the goal is to update scientists and all other animals.
The why
The current wolf feels a bit like a landmine: if you're walking around and you didn't see it or hear its footsteps, you die. That issue is of course amplified in the pitch black night.
Since wolves runs faster than players, once spotted your only options are to try to kill it before it kills you, or jump out of reach if possible.
Since the wolf charges in a straight line, you don't really have to aim and if you have a nailgun or better it's just a matter of unloading the magazine as fast as you can.
Assuming you spotted the wolf before it spotted you, hunting it was not really engaging. When shot from a distance wolves don't charge and just flee very far away, often forcing you to engage in a long hike to get its loot.
The result of this is that the wolf was either frustratingly hard to handle, or trivial, with no in between. This motivated us to reshape the wolf into something that would pose a challenge that feels fair, and can be tackled in multiple ways.
The how
I could write an exhaustive list of all the new behaviors, but I think it'll be way more fun for you to experiment and I'm confident the community will find even the cool hidden ones.
Forget everything you know about the old wolves and just try out stuff that seems like it should work!
QUALITY OF LIFE CHANGES
IO Arrows
New arrows that show input/outputs when looking at IO deployables
Floating objects drift down rivers
Corpses, Boogie Boards, Boats now float down rivers
Hear player voices over CCTV
Listen in on the group taking Oil Rig
Disable Monument CCTV
Can now damage monument CCTV cameras to disable them for 5 minutes
Copy Paste IDs in F7 menu
Easily get a player's ID when using the Report menu
Add vendor NPC's to all Water Wells
Every Water Well variant now has killable vendor
GESTURE PACK DLC
This month we've added more ways for players to communicate and express themselves with the introduction of our first gesture pack - available now on Rust's permanent item store.
The pack includes 8 new gestures:
Rock Paper Scissors (Mini-game)
Loser / L Hand
Knuckle Crack
No-No / Wagging Finger
Cut Throat
Shush
Watching You
Finger Gun
NOTE: You'll need to assign the gestures to a slot on the gesture wheel via our new gesture wheel customisation on the main menu under Options > Gestures (learn more below)
Rock Paper Scissors
Included in the pack is our first ever gesture minigame; Rock Paper Scissors.
Trying to decide which teammate does the next farming run? Or who gets to use the L96? Now you can settle the score with a round of Rock Paper Scissors.
To play, select Rock Paper Scissors from the gesture wheel then wait for an opponent to interact with you to start the minigame. (Note: you'll need to assign the gesture to a new slot via the main menu for it to appear on the gesture wheel)
Once a 2nd player joins, you'll be prompted with UI to choose a hand/option to play - use the numerical keys on your keyboard to make a selection of either rock, paper or scissors. Both you and your opponent will have 10 seconds to make a choice; If the timer runs out or a player moves too far away, the mini-game will end.
After selections are made by both parties, each player will "shoot" simultaneously on the count of three to determine a win, lose or draw result.
We look forward to seeing how you all use the minigame - our plan is to add similar interactive gestures in the near future.
GESTURE WHEEL CUSTOMISATION
In order to support the new gesture pack we’ve added the ability to customise your gesture wheel this month, as well as adding a new wheel so you can access double the gestures. You’ll find this in the Options > Gestures menu.
Customising your wheel is straightforward from this menu. Simply click on a slot to change what gesture is assigned, or use RMB to clear a slot. You can access the second wheel via the arrows at the top, and use E/Q to switch between gesture wheels in-game.
We’re just exposing two wheels as even with the new gestures you won’t be able to fill them up, but we’ve now got the system built so we can add more wheels as we release more gestures down the line.
RADIOACTIVE WATER BUFF
The introduction of Radioactive Water last month was pretty weak. We felt it needed a buff to bring it in line with the original vision.
Here are the changes to Radioactive Water:
We have increased the radiation amount from sprinklers by 70%
We have increased the radiation amount from splashes by 40%
This makes Radioactive Water the counter against full kits that it should be.
MIXING TABLE IMPROVEMENTS
This month I added some nice QOL improvements for the mixing table.
You can now click a recipe to add the required ingredients to the mixing table inventory, in the correct slots.
Repeat clicking will stack the additional ingredients required to produce another of the same item.
Shift-clicking will add the ingredients for the maximum number of items you can afford to produce.
The recipe names of recipes you cannot afford to produce are now also greyed out, making it much quicker to see what you can currently create.
Finally, I made some minor performance and memory improvements for the mixing table UI.
ANTICHEAT UPDATE
Since our last anti-cheat update back in July, we have applied an additional 91,676 bans, 19,398 of these were temporary, and the remaining were permanent bans. Here's the breakdown per patch:
World Update 2.0 - October
22,473 permanent bans
6,735 temporary bans
113,580 reports
Time To Kill - September
14,885 permanent bans
5,294 temporary bans
77,871 reports
Stay Alert - August
22,827 permanent bans
1,386 temporary bans
105,031 reports
Road Renegades - July
12,093 permanent bans
5,983 temporary bans
102,764 reports
Notes
Patch-specific report data is only from Facepunch Official servers due to data reliability originating from non-official servers, the total number of reports across all server since July is 5.3 million.
Bans that were later reverted are excluded from these metrics.
Bans are placed for multiple reasons. The numbers above do not strictly reflect only cheat-related bans, but cheat-related bans make up the vast majority of bans.
A single player can receive multiple bans, for example, if a user is temporarily banned and then later switched to a permanent ban, this is counted as 2 bans in the above metrics
. The above is to provide context and transparency, not to state we're doing a good job, there is much more to be done in this area, and we are continuing to work on it.
Next
In July, I talked about server-side player culling, if a player is behind a hill and you can't see them, don't network the player. We feel we've done all we can in internal testing and will now roll out this change slowly across all official servers starting this month.
We teamed up with a third party to handle takedowns on our behalf. One of the core objectives is aimed at cheat-related material. The takedowns will be made at the request of Facepunch staff after manual review. There is no automation, and there is no room for innocent content to be taken down.
We've taken down over 1200 cheats-related media on social platforms.
We're working continuing to work on several other legal fronts to disrupt cheaters.
COPY PASTE
Copy Paste is a new admin tool that allows server admins to copy, paste & save bases!
This opens up a number of new workflows such as allowing admins to submit a copy of a base when they are submitting a bug report. It also will speed up testing on staging, allowing you to paste platforms with every item you need to test new content.
If you are interested, head over to the wiki page to learn how to use it!
TWITCH DROPS - RUST KINGDOMS RETURNS
Rust Kingdoms returns! The ultimate battle for control begins this Friday on Twitch!
Watch live as some of the biggest creators both in and out of the Rust scene stake their claim for the throne, through serving/defying their masters, picking battles carefully, or risking all their rewards - who will rule the kingdom by Sunday 17th?
Don't miss out on lots of epic Twitch Drops too! You can sync your account at any time here.
FLASH SALE - 40% OFF RUST THIS WEEKEND
In case you or your friends missed the World Update 2.0 sale, the game is now 40% off again for this weekend!
This also includes all standalone DLC on the Steam store
Head on over to Steam to take advantage of this 48 hour sale, just in time for this month's wipe and the latest patch update.
FACEPUNCH SERVERS
Many official Facepunch servers, especially those in Eastern and Western Europe and Eastern US, have been upgraded to new, higher-performance hardware. This long-awaited upgrade should significantly improve stability in these regions during peak time. Some servers also received a slight increase in their max player capacities.
Following this update, you may find that your favourite Facepunch server is no longer on your favourites list. To find it, please use the search bar in-game and, if needed, enable the "show empty servers" option.
Upgrades for other regions will be rolled out in the coming weeks.
All blueprints have been transferred, so no progress has been lost.
HALLOWEEN 2024
HAPPY HALLOWEEN!
The yearly Halloween event is now enabled!
Once roughly every two in-game days, the Candy Hunt event will begin. You'll have 3 minutes to collect as much candy as you can, then top 3 players are given special loot bags as a reward. These candies and loot bags can be opened for various types of loot, ranging from scrap, all the way up to an M249!
If you don't make the podium, that's okay. The candies you collect can be upgraded for better loot!
This year's Halloween event will run until November 7th.
HERE BE MONSTERS
Wondering what to do with all those body parts you've collected? Build your own monster!
To start putting together your morbid creation, first, you must slay the scarecrows and mummies that roam the lands. Once you've collected a head, torso, and legs, craft yourself a Frankenstein's table and place the body parts within it.
Awaken your new pet monster and control it by pressing "P". The monster will follow your orders without question. It'll follow you around the map, defend you if attacked and help slay foes you wish to attack.
If you're having trouble accessing the pet menu or already have a key bound to "P" then use the following console command: bind X +pets or open the in-game controls menu.
THE RIFTS OPEN
Cultists are said to have been opening portals across the island, while others believe it's a Cobalt experiment code-named R.U.I.N gone horribly wrong.
Not much is known about these portals - what they do or where they go, but only a few brave souls have entered through and made it back alive.
Do you dare to enter the rift?
Server owners can adjust the portal count using the halloweendungeon.population convar.
CURSED ARTICLES
This year, we've added three Halloween-themed items - one purchasable, and two free.
One of the emblematic locations from legacy Rust makes a comeback: Radtown.
We turned this monument from a bunch of blocky garage buildings, into a refreshed new gameplay space. We tried to preserve the proportions and purpose of each location while opening up new paths and adding way to improve the flow of movement and cover throughout.
Exteriors
Interiors
CLIFFS
We have completely reworked all cliffs in the game. The new cliffs come in two types, tall coastal cliffs placed close to the ocean and sloped inland cliffs covering hills and mountains.
A lot of effort was made into making them not only look realistic, but also easy to traverse. You can run up the inland cliffs with ease, while the coastal cliffs can be scaled by jumping on the rocky ledges and protrusions.
In addition we have added many new coastal rocks close to the shore to further spice up the world.
REVAMPED ROCK FORMATIONS
We have completely revamped all large rock formations in the game and decided to bring back some of the old fan favorites.
Formations such as the god rock, anvil rock and arch rock all return to the game. Completely new rock formations have been added and some of them even spawn off shore allowing for more base building possibilities than ever before.
UNIQUE ENVIRONMENTS
In Rust, you will now find several different canyons, lakes, and oasis of various sizes in each procedurally generated map.
Canyons, Lakes, and Oases – each offering a fresh way to play with their own pros and cons. Canyons provide narrow pathways for ambushes but can be risky to navigate. Lakes create opportunities for resource gathering and farming but leave you vulnerable in open water. Oases are lush safe havens with valuable resources but will become hotspots for fierce competition.
Canyons
These towering landscapes offer fresh opportunities for ambushes and base building. While the narrow pathways and steep drops make for thrilling combat and strategic locations.
Canyons can be rich in resources, but don't get too greedy and get caught out.
Lakes
These scenic water bodies add a new twist to the gameplay, offering great spots for fishing, resource gathering, farming and base-building by the shore. However, the open water leaves you exposed to attacks, and swimming can slow you down when trying to make a quick escape.
Oasis
These rare paradises amidst the harsh desert. These lush areas are perfect for setting up base, gathering, farming, and finding vital resources like water. But be warned: Oases will attract other players looking to take advantage of these havens.
RIVERS
Rivers are now longer, flow more naturally, and widen the longer they get. This as well as the new unique environments required a larger water system overhaul to support different water types at any altitude.
The ocean is now fully culled underneath the terrain, and lakes no longer stretch beyond their boundaries. Overall, it's a much more robust and future proof system.
The High Caliber Revolver is a hand-crafted, single-action revolver that uses 5.56 ammo. Built for precise, long-range shots rather than rapid fire, it demands a steady hand for maximum accuracy. Its slower fire rate reflects the single-action design, but the power and precision make each shot count.
Unlockable at a Tier 2 workbench, the High Caliber is for survivors who prioritize accuracy and impact over speed.
LEGACY WOOD PILE
Welcome back wood piles! These will spawn in the snow, and temperate biomes.
They function just like our traditional ore piles, but for wood! Harvestable with a rock, hatchet or chainsaw. A great source of wood early in the game to start off your Rust journey.
DIVE SITES
Ocean Wreck Buoys
We’ve remodelled the old floating bottle indicators on the surface of dive sites into more solid buoys. They are much more visible which will help with finding dive sites.
Dive Sites
The Dive Sites themselves have been refreshed this month, with an entirely new set of three possible options replacing the old sites. All sites now spawn the same amount of loot (6 crates). Each site has new unique environment art and topology.
Flora and Fauna
Alongside the new Buoys and Dive Sites, we've overhauled the underwater foliage with a graphical update, and tweaked the visuals on fish so they behave more naturally. You might even find a couple of other critters down there.
DIVER PROPULSION VEHICLE (DPV)
We've added small new handheld dive vehicle this month. The DPV can be crafted and kept in your inventory until you need it.
It's then used like so:
Select it and deploy it into any water that's at least 1 metre deep
Interact with the fuel tank and add some low grade fuel
"Mount" it to hold onto the handles and drive it around
Using the DPV, you can travel underwater significantly faster than you could by swimming. Once you're done with it, simply dismount and pick it up. Fuel will automatically be removed and added to your inventory, or dropped if you don't have any space.
Note: Currently players will need to manually remove fuel before picking up the DPV. This will be corrected in a hotfix asap
WATER WELL UPDATE
Waterwells aren’t exactly the most popular monument in Rust, so this month we decided to make them a little more interesting. You will now find a new vendor at some NPC’s that can offer a random selection of teas and farming equipment that shuffles every X minutes.
What’s special about this NPC is that this is the first vendor that is available in non safe zones. This means they can be killed! If that happens they will respawn after a while, but that won’t trigger the vendor to refresh or have any loot so there’s no real purpose. Try and be nice!
You will also find a new food cache with basic teas and high quality food items, and some planters that are automatically filled with random plants periodically. These plants have a high priority of having good genes, so they’re a great way to give your farm base a quick boost.
RADIOACTIVE WATER
We've added a new gameplay feature to the world: Radioactive Water! This is available at two locations in the new Radtown monument. Players will be able to harvest it with any regular water container, be it: a bota bag, water jug or the tanker module for vehicles.
Radioactive Water has a few properties: splashing it on plants will instantly kill them, splashing it on players (via throwing your water from a container, or via a sprinkler) will irradiate them. Carrying a large amount of it in your inventory will damage you, and finally looting a players body will irradiate you if there's enough radioactive water in their inventory.
These properties make Radioactive Water a great choice for a number of things: from instantly resetting your farm, to being a great counter to those players raiding you in full gear.
The backend work done on Radioactive Water opens up a number of gameplay possibilities in the future as any item (in code) can now be marked as Radioactive.
We can't wait to see what creations you come up with!
FRONTIERSMAN PACK
This month we're introducing a new addition to Rust's permanent store, the Frontiersman Pack.
The pack includes three items: Frontier Hazmat Suit, Frontier Hatchet, Blunderbuss
Frontiersman hazmat suit
The Frontiersman Hazmat is a handcrafted survival suit, built for those who brave the wilderness. Forged from durable felt and leather, it’s designed to shield its wearer from the harsh weather, unseen enemies, and the dangers of the wild. The Frontiersman suit is a hazmat replacement skin that can be applied while crafting the hazmat or skinned using the repair table. The Frontiersman suit offers no in-game bonuses.
Blunderbuss
The Blunderbuss is a handcrafted, frontier-inspired shotgun that brings a classic, rugged aesthetic to the Double Barrel. This skin reimagines the weapon, turning it into a more traditional tool of survival from a bygone era
Frontier Hatchet
Inspired by the traditional tomahawk, featuring a rugged design with several charms attached. This unique skin transforms the hatchet into a symbol of frontier survival.
Available now on the item store.
WALLPAPER CHANGES
Based on your feedback following last month’s wallpaper release, you can now place wallpapers on building block hardsides, but only inside your base!
Any exposed hardside wallpaper will be removed by the next decay tick.
QUALITY OF LIFE CHANGES
Spray Can Improvements
Spray Can will now remember the shipping container colour through deaths and restarts
Note World Model
Note World Model Added
Underwater Visibility
Underwater visibility improved, allowing for enhanced long-distance sight
Repair Bench
The repair bench now displays icons alongside text for repair costs.
CHARITABLE RUST 2024 - TWITCH DROPS
October 12th - October 19th!
Join us and Rustafied for the annual Charitable Rust! The main event takes place on October 12th from 11:00AM EDT until 11:00PM EDT On Rustafied's Twitch channel. Tune in for tons of mini games, talent shows, and some of your favorite creators battling it out in Rust Reborn's Bedwars! Check out the full schedule here.
There will be 4 store items this year. Proceeds go toward the Direct Relief Charity. These store items will be account bound. Meaning, you will not be able to sell or trade them once purchased.
You will be able to collect all the Twitch drops for the remainder of the week on any Rust stream with drops enabled!
WORLD UPDATE 2.0 SALE - 40% OFF RUST
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To celebrate the release of The World Update 2.0, Rust is now 40% off until October 8th!
Whether you want to role play, survive as a solo, find a new duo partner, or finally join your friend's clan, The World Update 2.0 is here to bring a fresh new feel to Rust for you to explore!
Or why not use The World Update 2.0 sale to gift Rust to that friend that would make a good survival partner?
There’s no better time to jump in to build, explore, raid, and survive with legacy items returning, new weapons and a hazmat, a new monument, AND the newly tuned terrain!
If you're a map maker, please note that next month, we'll be removing the old rock and cliff assets from the game. Map makers should update their maps with the new rock assets to maintain compatibility.
The reason we're removing the old assets is to ensure we're keeping the game running as optimal as possible and not needlessly loading unused assets into memory.
TIME TO KILL
DIGITAL CLOCK
Meet the Digital Clock, a new craftable item, a simple but powerful addition to your base's electrical setup.
When powered, it displays the current server time
Consumes 1 power
Available at the Tier 2 Workbench
Craftable for 100 Metal Fragments
The clock also allows you to set up alarms. When an alarm goes off, the power will pass through, allowing you to trigger any sort of circuit inside your base at specific times.
Whether you want to automate your farms, activate traps, or control lighting systems, you can set up to five alarms simultaneously.
CGO WEAPON ATTACHMENT
A powerful new cutting-edge experimental weapon attachment for those who crave more damage and speed in their shots. The Gas Compression Overdrive attachment boosts projectile damage and velocity, allowing you to hit harder.
However, this extra power comes with trade-offs, a slower fire rate and increased recoil. If you can handle the extra kick, this attachment is maybe for you.
The GCO attachment works on the following weapons: Thompson, SAR, SAP, M92, M39 and the Custom SMG.
WALLPAPERS
This month, we're adding wallpapers, a new way to decorate your base's interior.
Wallpapers can only be applied to the interior side of your walls. Purely visual, they don't provide any additional protection, are easy to remove and won't interfere with the deployment of any other items.
Default blueprint
Crafting cost: 20 cloth per wallpaper piece
Includes 'Vintage' default skin in 4 colours - blue, red, green and yellow
Just like other deployable items, wallpapers can be skinned during crafting, in a repair bench or after being deployed using the spray can.
Wallpaper Starter Pack
In addition to the 4 wallpapers skins unlocked by default, you can purchase the Wallpaper Starter Pack which features 22 extra wallpaper skins for styling your base.
Skins included in the wallpaper starter pack, as pictured above:
Clouds
Yellow Stripe
Blue Diamond
Fleur (3 variants)
Retro (3 variants)
Subway (2 variants)
Geometric (2 variants)
Polka Dots (3 variants)
Wainscotting (3 variants)
Venetian Plaster (3 variants)
The Wallpaper Starter Pack is available for purchase in-game or through the Steam's item store.
COLOURBLIND ACCESSIBILITY
As part of my Hackweek last month, I explored some ways we can make playing Rust more accessible for players that experience different forms of colour blindness. Colour blindness is experienced by up to 8% of men and 0.5% of women, so it likely affects a good portion of our player base.
We’ve tried to identify problematic areas in the game world, as well as in our UI, and then make those colours configurable so every player can customise the look of their game to meet their needs. Since colour blindness comes in many forms, we’ve exposed each option individually as well as some presets that we think will help for more common forms of the condition.
We’ve exposed the following options:
Tree marker colours
Health Bar colour
Hunger Bar colour
Hydration Bar colour
Team Name tag colour
Enemy Name tag colour
Ally Name tag colour (eg. marked friendly in the contacts system)
Monument blocked colour (the new radius that appears when building close to a monument)
Mushroom colour
We also adjusted the contrast of the icons in the Hunger/Health/Hydration bar to make them stand out a bit more when in snowy/very bright regions.
Please get in touch if we’ve missed a colour you find problematic to see, or if there are other accessibility options you think could help make playing Rust more comfortable. You can contact us via the F7 report menu, or opening a new Support ticket.
TUNNEL NETWORK VISIBILITY LAYER
Way, way back in the ancient times of December 2022, we shipped a feature that allowed us to separate the above ground and below ground networking groups, improving client performance and reducing network traffic. Unfortunately, we had to disable it pretty quickly on launch as we discovered an edge case where a small number of elevators that started in the above ground layer and ended in the below ground layer would teleport players into a void. To resolve this, we needed to rework how elevators functioned internally.
This work has finally been completed, so we’re re-enabling the feature this month. Fingers crossed the feature sticks this time! This change should be invisible to players and offer better performance.
ERRORS QOL
I think it was time to say goodbye to this debug gibberish spammed in chat everytime you try to build anything.
These errors have been moved from the chat to toast messages, which are just as responsive and most importantly, visible to players playing with the chat disabled.
We wanted to reduce the confusion by making these errors more specific, when possible.
The common "Cannot build in this area" now becomes "Blocked by X", mentioning the name of the entity blocking you. It works with deployables, vehicles, building blocks and players.
The infamous "Too close from another building" error message will now be "Too close to X". It will also briefly highlight the building block in question.
When trying to upgrade a building block, you'll now get a clear explanation of what exactly is preventing the upgrade.
We've also re-ordered the message priority of a few common deployables. So you now get "Must be placed on a construction" instead of "Not enough space" message when trying to place a bed on the terrain for example.
A new convar has been added if you prefer to keep the error messages in chat:
client.errortoasts_in_chat
LOCALIZATION
A lot of effort has been put into improving Rust's localization this month.
Most of the UI screens are now displaying right-to-left languages correctly
Many screens with truncated texts have been fixed
Unlocalized texts have been addressed
This is ongoing work, it's not finished yet, and more improvements are planned for the coming months.
Thanks to everyone contributing to Rust localization, dedicating their time to make the game more accessible to non-English speakers.
WORLD UPDATE PLAYTEST
Today, we're opening Rust Staging - Aux02 beta branch for public testing to gather feedback and bug testing ahead of next month's world update release, which is one, if not the most significant updates, this year.
The World Update aims to address many long-standing community requests surrounding the world. The update will revamp cliffs, rivers, dive sites, and add new, unique environmental areas such as canyons, lakes, and desert oases. Additionally, some throwbacks to Legacy Rust by bringing back an updated Radtown monument and Legacy Wood Piles.
There is plenty more to look forward to with a new weapon, the high-calibre revolver, new Hazmat skin, and so much more.
We're excited about this world update and want your feedback to allow us to adjust and tweak as necessary. As a note of caution, everything on the branch is subject to change, and map wipes will happen at irregular intervals over the month.
The world update will be released on October 3rd.
How to access
To access the playtest, please follow the steps below:
On Steam download Rust - Staging Branch
Right-click Rust - Staging Branch on your Steam library, and select Properties
Navigate to "Betas" tab
Next to "Beta Participation" select "aux02 - upandcoming"
Steam will begin to download and apply the update
Open Rust - Staging Branch via Steam and play
How to give feedback
To give direct feedback in-game, press F7 and fill out the form, additionally, you can join our Discord and discuss the changes in the channel "staging-aux2"
Mappers
An unfortunate side effect of this revamp is that new assets will be added, and old assets will be removed. This will cause some instability for custom maps and map makers, one example is the older cliff and rock formations will be removed.
We'll post updates on the exact changes in community mapping Discords and our social media closer to release.
TWITCH RIVALS : BASE INVADERS
Buckle up! Base Invaders is back!
This Tuesday, tune in from 8PM BST // 3PM EST as *20* teams of 5 battle it out for up to $1000 per player for the winning team, from a $50,000 prize pool! With a 20x gather rate and teams only being allowed one base and one Tool Cupboard at a time, players need to score points with kills, by controlling hard points, or by destroying enemy Tool Cupboards and more!
The teams feature a range of PvP community favourites, as well as creators from our recent Home-Brewed event, and more! For the full list of teams and rules head here.
Heads up:
The exclusive hoodie and pants Twitch Drops for the Twitch Rivals stream will only be live for roughly 5 hours on Tuesday the 10th of September, on the Twitch Rivals official channel.
The rest of the Twitch Drops will be available from the start of the event until Sunday 15th.
And remember - Facepunch will never DM you about Twitch Drops or giveaways. Beware of any fake websites and scams!
WELLIPETS X RUST
Wellipets’ iconic Frog Boots were added to Rust as a gift for players who owned the game while it was in Early Access between 2013-2018 - as a thanks for supporting us while we took the game from its very humble and janky beginnings, to becoming what it is today.
And now, we've officially partnered with Wellipets to unite both the digital and physical world - An IRL Frog Wellington Boot in original Rust colours (one green, one black), and an exclusive in-game Frog Boot Helmet if you buy the Rust edition of the boots.
Executed in black and Batrachian green and contrasted with their hallmark yellow eyes, these wellington boots boast a distinctive colour combination, both as a legacy Rust item, and now a real, practical but fashionable item. They feature a ladder grip outsole to provide improved traction during wet weather and are decorated with hand painted details at the logo and mouth.
Every physical pair comes with a key to unlock the new in-game item, once shipped. The boots are expected to start shipping at the end of November.
Heya! My name is Daniel, I'm a new member of the Rust development team - I've joined about a month ago. My primary objective is to work on Performance and it's various facets for Rust. I'm hoping to be posting about the ongoing work in the future.
In the coming update, I've made some changes to code that we'll be shipping that will break some mods that rely on our internal object pooling utility, Facepunch.Pool. If you're the owner of one of these mods that see errors around invalid use of "Pool.Free", then you should try switching to "Pool.FreeUnmanaged", and if that still doesn't work, then "Pool.FreeUnsafe"(in last case if you're using FreeUnsafe with a collection, make sure to clear it).
I'm making this breaking change because our old API were unsafe and allowed for memory leaks and bugs. Instead, I've introduced a couple replacements that aim to be stricter and as a result safer.
Pool.Free is now 3 separate methods:
Pool.Free where T : Pool.IPooled or a couple collections with T : IPooled. Calls Clear() and optionally returns each element back to Pool
Pool.FreeUnmanaged where T is a collection of non-IPooled-implementing types. Calls Clear() or an equivalent
Pool.FreeUnsafe for any T, just returns it back to pool
The following methods are marked obsolete and will be removed when October Update lands or have been removed:
Pool.GetList - obsolete
Pool.FreeList - obsolete
Pool.FreeListAndItems - obsolete
Pool.FreeMemoryStream - obsolete
Pool.ClearList - obsolete
Pool.FreeDynamic - removed
LINUX DEDICATED SERVER UPDATE
Our dedicated server builds on Linux currently support Debian 10 / Ubuntu 18 or later. Due to third party software we rely on slowly removing support for these platforms, we will soon be forced to change the minimum requirement for our Linux dedicated server builds to Debian 11 / Ubuntu 20 or later. If you're hosting your own server or offer managed servers to your clients, please update to Debian 11 / Ubuntu 20 or later as soon as possible.
STAY ALERT
TIN CAN ALARM
This month, we're adding the Tin Can Alarm, a new primitive trap made from hanging tin cans.
Crossing its wire will trigger the trap and cause a loud clatter, alerting anyone nearby to your presence.
You can deploy it anywhere from your base to inside monuments. Use it strategically to cover access points and defend your positions.
REPLICATED BUSH SOUNDS
This month, we are changing how the classic bush rustle sounds work. Bush sounds will now be audible to players around you. Just like with footsteps, you now need to take care of when you make noise in bushes. Going slower through a bush makes a quieter sound than when running through it.
This change will also cause the rustles made in hot air balloon tarps to be audible to players nearby, and operates in the same way as the bushes.
UNDERWATER ITEMS
Dropped items that end up in bodies of water will now sink more realistically instead of just dropping like they are still falling through air. As well as slowing down and getting shifted around by currents they will also emit some bubbles as they move and when they hit the ocean floor. This should make finding these items a little bit easier.
ZIPLINE IMPROVEMENTS
We’ve made several changes to the powerline zipline system this month to make it a bit more pleasant to use.
Ziplines will now pick the furthest possible destination instead of the closest
We’ve increased the maximum length a zipline can run from 150m to 185m
Ziplines can now terminate at a higher point on the powerline structure and will pick these higher destinations when possible, reducing the amount of climbing required to continue the zipline.
You can no longer get dismounted by trees when on a zipline. We already had several systems in place to prevent trees spawning in zipline paths, but it still happened very rarely.
These changes should result in longer, higher ziplines that are safer to use.
NPC VENDOR PRICE CHANGES
After looking over the data from last months wipe, it was clear that the dynamic vendor pricing system wasn’t operating as well as it could have. It tended to drop to 50% off all items relatively quickly in the wipe. We’ve made a couple of changes this month:
Price changes now operate in real time rather than based on in-game time. This should be more understandable and will work correctly on servers that manipulate in-game time.
Price changes now take place every 5 real time hours. Last month the prices changed every 15 minutes in real time by default, so this will make the prices change much more slowly.
As usual we’ll keep an eye on this and make changes going forwards.
QUALITY OF LIFE CHANGES
Trains break barricades
Trains can break through barricades that are deployed too close to the tracks.
Bike fast turns
Hold the Crouch key while driving to perform a faster turn
Sidecar bike physics
Sidecar bikes now drive more like regular motorbikes.
Horse terrain holes
Horses can now enter terrain holes - Train tunnels, the launch site ramp etc.
Fire mode switch
Switching your gun firemode will now play a sound.
Storage Adaptors collision
Can now walk through Storage Adaptors attached to boxes.
Hurt screen overlay toggle
Can now turn off the blood on screen when getting hurt.
Saved code lock input
The last entered code is now saved between sessions.
SHOCKBYTE X RUST - PARTNERED SERVER HOSTING
We're extremely excited to be partnering with Shockbyte for managed server hosting rental!
After seeing their work with the Minecraft community, and hearing great things from existing Rust users, we've decided to partner with them in an official capacity - endorsing their stability and reliability. You can enjoy full file access, full customization, and oxide support.
Promotional Offer
As part of the promo, new customers can receive an in-game Tool Cupboard skin by renting a server of any tier! Once your new server is delivered Shockbyte will send you information about how to get your sweet freebie!
Here's Shockbyte's story so far:
"Born from a passion for multiplayer gaming in March 2013, Shockbyte has become a leading provider of game server hosting. Over the past decade, our team of dedicated gamers has delivered reliable multiplayer servers worldwide to over 700 thousand customers. Since October 2019, we have supported the Rust community, continuously improving our services based on feedback. Our mission is to simplify game server hosting, allowing absolutely anyone to create their own multiplayer community with ease.
With a growing network of global locations, comprehensive DDOS protection, and a commitment to 100% uptime, Shockbyte has become a trusted provider for Rust communities. We understand the complexities of server hosting and are beyond thrilled to now offer our expertise in a partnered capacity with Facepunch. We believe this is the most exciting era for gaming and are proud to provide community-driven hosting opportunities.
By harnessing player feedback we’ve recently completely revamped the hosting experience and we’re extremely excited to be soon rolling out this new modern experience alongside our partnership with Rust. Our top-tier global hardware and robust DDOS protection ensure the Rust community receives only the best multiplayer support. At Shockbyte, our focus is on delivering an enjoyable online experience, committed to innovation and excellence."
We look forward to hearing about your experiences with their servers and you can get the skin by signing up to any level of hosting through this link or use the button on the in-game menu!!
TWITCH DROPS!
Here we go again! We have worked in a group of your favorite Twitch Streamers and Youtubers that you might recognize!
