Today at 19:00 UTC, we're issuing a mandatory update - We are rolling out Premium Servers, an experimental way to filter out cheat users and create a better experience for legit players.
To access Premium Servers, your Rust Steam inventory must be valued at $15 or more. This includes items from the Permanent Item Store, such as building skins, décor packs, and hazmat skins, as well as any other tradable Rust items with an attached value. Currently we do not include Rust's standalone DLC such as Instruments, Sunburn and Voice Props packs (this may change in future).
We initially communicated a $20 threshold, but after analysing data from millions of accounts, we've settled on $15 as a more effective starting point. This is based on a comparison of banned accounts versus regular players, aiming to strike a balance between accessibility and cheat deterrence, although opting on the lower end.
Premium Servers will only be visible if your account meets the $15 threshold.
Premium Servers will show a Premium (and clickable) Tag to provide details about eligibility.
This won’t stop every cheat user, but it’s an extra layer of friction against disposable cheat accounts.
Server owners can opt-in by enabling the following convar: "server.premium 1"
The $15 threshold may change over time, and we may introduce additional factors to refine premium status.
Depending on Steam traffic, brand new purchases may take up to 20 minutes to reflect onto the Premium Server authorization.
You can manually refresh or check your premium status by going to the server listings, clicking the premium server tag and clicking the refresh icon.
If we encounter any abuse or exploitation of Premium servers or the market, user accounts will be banned. All trades of Rust skins are logged.
SERVERS
There are currently several new freshly wiped official premium servers going live today at 19:00 UTC.
To connect to these servers, you'll find them in the official server list or connect directly from the mainmenu, open the console by pressing F1 and typing "connect" followed by the IP or endpoint. For example, "connect eupremium.rustopia.gg" or "connect 79.137.98.213:28015"
MONTHLY MAP WIPES:
EU Facepunch
EU Premium 1 - 79.137.98.213:28015
EU Premium 2 - 79.137.98.146:28015
EU Premium Small 1 - 79.137.98.146:28020
EU Premium 3 - 79.137.98.117:28015
EU Premium 4 - 79.137.98.117:28020
EU East Facepunch
EU East Premium 1 - 57.128.211.55:28015
EU East Premium 2 - 57.128.211.53:28015
EU East Premium Small 1 - 57.128.211.53:28020
EU East Premium 3 - 57.128.211.54:28015
EU East Premium 4 - 57.128.211.54:28020
US West Facepunch
US West Premium 1 - 148.113.198.88:28015
US West Premium 2 - 148.113.198.86:28015
US West Premium Small 1 148.113.198.86:28020
US West Premium 3 - 148.113.198.87:28015
US West Premium 4 - 148.113.198.87:28020
US East Facepunch
US East Premium 1 - 40.160.19.6:28015
US East Premium 2 - 40.160.19.218:28015
US East Premium Small 1 - 40.160.19.218:28020
US East Premium 3 - 40.160.19.217:28015
US East Premium 4 - 40.160.19.217:28020
WEEKLY MAP WIPES:
US Community Officials
us-medium.rusticated.com:28010
us.premium.rplayrust.com
main.us-premium.moose.gg
EU Community Officials
eu-medium.rusticated.com:28010
eupremium.rustopia.gg
AU/Asia Community Officials
aupremium.rustafied.com
premium.rustoria.asia
Community-run officials may have their own separate blueprint wipe schedules. We recommend seeking out their individual discords/website for specifics.
LOOKING AHEAD
We will stress, this is an experiment, and we’ll be closely monitoring its impact. We will know more in the upcoming months if this is something we can expand upon and refine.
We will also take this opportunity to also encourage everyone to set up and use Steam's mobile authenticator. It both protects your account from intruders, and also allows quicker Steam/Rust skin trades among friends.
The Crafting Update
COOKING WORKBENCH
The cooking workbench is a new deployable that allows you to cook up some new food recipes. Mixing table recipes can also be crafted here.
Many of the new items unlocked by the cooking workbench offer stat and modifier bonuses, so give them a taste!
Cooking food now has a visual model on all cooking deployables and cooks in real time.
CHICKEN COOP
The Chicken Coop is a new deployable that lets you hatch and care for your own flock of Chickens. To get started, you’ll need to find an Egg from a chicken in the wild. Wild chickens have a chance to drop an egg every minute as long as a player is nearby.
Once you have an egg and build your coop, you can insert the egg and use the “Hatch” button to grow your first chicken. Each chicken has 4 stats - Hunger, Thirst, Love and Sunlight. HUnger and Thirst are pretty self explanatory, chickens will eat and drink from the item slots in the Chicken Coop. Love is satisfied by giving the chickens a little pat on the head every now and then, while Sunlight will be satisfied as long as your chicken coop is exposed to the sun. If these needs are met your chickens will gain health, whereas if they are neglected chickens will slowly start losing health and eventually dying.
If your chickens are happy, they will start laying eggs in the Chicken Coop periodically.
FOOD SPOILING
Meat based food items can now spoil over time, meaning you will need to store them in a Fridge or cook them before they become unusable. Raw meat will spoil after 6 hours, while cooked meat will spoil after 24 hours. The timer is reset when the meat is cooked and will be paused entirely as long as the meat is in a powered fridge.
Any item that can spoil will have a timer on its item information panel that tells you how long you have, as well as showing an icon if the item is being refrigerated and not in danger of spoiling.
TRIANGLE PLANTER
To maximise the space in your farms, we’re releasing a new version of the planter that can fit on a triangle foundation or floor piece. You can plant 4 seeds in it at once and it has the same max soil saturation as the small planter (3000).
We’ve also added a matching Railroad version of the planter that will be unlocked for owners of the Frontier DLC pack. To better support planter skins we’ve made the existing Railroad planter and the new Triangle version proper skins, so they won’t appear as standalone items in the crafting menu and will be compatible with the Spray Can.
BEES
Bees are useful to players in a number of ways. They can be farmed or turned into weapons.
Natural Beehives
First: you have to find a Beehive in the wild. They have a chance to create a home on an Oak Tree.
Next comes the harvesting, but don't expect them to take it lying down, once you destroy a hive the Bees will come. They can be a formidable opponent and can be countered by wearing a Hazmat Suit, throwing water over yourself, using a Flamethrower or using a Torch or another source of fire to prevent their attacks.
After collecting some Honeycomb: Extract the honey from it in your inventory. Honey is useful in a number of cooking recipies, as well as a food in its own right. It can also be sold to Bandit Camp for some extra scrap.
Beehive
When creating honey there is a chance for a Beehive Nucleus to spawn. This is required for our next item: The Beehive.
This is a player placed deployable that allows you to make Honeycomb. Place your Nucleus inside. Each Nucleus will slowly level up, going from Grade 3 -> Grade 1. Grade 1 Honeycomb is the best, and will net players the most Honeycomb over time. Remember your Hazmat Suit whilst you're harvesting the Comb!
Beehives have a few stats you need to manage:
Being Outside, Humidity and Temperature.
Beehives like to be Outside: this means that they have a few open air walls around them.
They don't like it when it rains: so keep them under shelter or have a fire running nearby,
They are fussy with temperature. Ensure you build in more Temperate areas or use heaters.
Bee Grenade
Finally: We have the Bee Grenade. This is a new weapon that lets you create pesky Bee Swarms on demand.
These thrown Swarms will slowly create up to 3 smaller Swarms to attack players in a nearby radius and operate the same as the Natural Beehive Swarms. Use a source of fire, water, wear a hazmat suit or run like the wind to get away.
PIES
Finally!
There's a whole batch of new pie recipes ready to be cooked and devoured!
Each different pie has a unique stat or modifier bonus, so give them all a taste and find your favourite.
ENGINEERING WORKBENCH
We're adding a brand new Engineering Workbench, a dedicated tech tree for water, electricity, and industrial systems. If you've ever wanted to take your base automation to the next level, this one's for you.
The Engineering Workbench unlocks at Workbench Level 1, giving early access to basic circuits, water management, and industrial setups.
As you progress, you'll be able to research and craft more advanced components, making it easier to set up automated factories, efficient electrical grids, and complex water systems.
QOL CHANGES
Drones Drone range increased to 600m from 300m and HP doubled.
Wood Armor Reduced crafting cost of wooden Armor
Meat's Back On The Menu All meat models have been replaced and many icons updated.
Hide genetic info Can now hide genetic info when looking at plants
Crafting Times Over 40 items have received a reduction in crafting times
Neon Signs Power Neon signs power usage halved
PREMIUM SERVERS
Next week, we'll be rolling out Premium Servers, an experimental way to filter out cheat users and create a better experience for legit players.
To access Premium Servers, your Rust Steam inventory must be valued at $15 or more. This includes items from the Permanent Store, such as building skins, décor packs, and hazmat skins, as well as any other tradable Rust items with an attached value. Currently we do not include Rust's standalone DLC such as Instruments, Sunburn and voice props packs (this may change in future).
We initially communicated a $20 threshold, but after analysing data from millions of accounts, we've settled on $15 as a more effective starting point. This is based on a comparison of banned accounts versus regular players, aiming to strike a balance between accessibility and cheat deterrence, although opting on the lower end.
Premium Servers will only be visible if your account meets the $15 threshold.
Premium Servers will be ranked higher on the server listings against their non Premium server counterparts.
This won’t stop every cheat user, but it’s an extra layer of friction against disposable cheat accounts.
Server owners can opt-in by enabling the following convar: server.premium.
The $15 threshold may change over time, and we may introduce additional factors to refine premium status.
I'd stress, this is an experiment, and we’ll be closely monitoring its impact. If you meet the requirements, you’ll see Premium Servers available in your list. If not, time to upgrade that inventory
Premium Servers will go live, Thursday, March 13th.
HOPPER
The Hopper is a new attachment that can be attached to a Large Wood Box or the Storage Barrels. When powered, this will suck up any dropped items in a small radius around the Hopper and deposit those items in the box. It also acts as a storage adaptor so you can connect industrial pipes directly to the box without needing an extra adaptor.
If a player or animal is killed while in range of the Hopper it will be sucked up and harvested, with the resulting meat, bones, animal fat, etc, deposited in the box.
If a backpack is dropped in range of the Hopper it will be sucked up and unpacked.
All of the above interactions require the Hopper to be able to see the item/corpse and not be obstructed by building blocks.
ITEM OWNERSHIP
Items now show the name of the player who created the item and how it was made when hovered over. This information allows you to piece together the story of where each item came from... or brag that you stole every weapon someone crafted!
Unlike the original version released back in the XP system, this version has a number of simplifications. Only unstackable items support ownership and there can only be a single owner per item. Items will retain the original ownership no matter how many times they change hands.
ARMOR SLOTS
Several pieces of player crafted armor can now have armor slots . Armor inserts can be placed into these slots. There are several different types of armor inserts available, each providing different bonuses.
Armor items can have 1-3 slots and you can mix and match the inserts that you choose to insert.
Only player crafted armor can have slots. The number of slots an item has is randomised during crafting. You can increase your chances of crafting a piece with more slots by drinking a new Crafting Quality Potion.
COSMETIC FLOWERS
Roses, orchids and sunflowers can now be found in the wild, picked and planted back at home. These flowers are cosmetic only and are not used in crafting.
There's also a new plant pot item, for all your gardening needs.
TEMPERATURE TEAS
The new cooling and warming teas can help make your life as a survivor much more comfortable.
Specially brewed to help fight the elements, they offer some much needed protection against the harsh environmental conditions found in Rust.
BREAD & WHEAT
This month we have add in a brand new food item; Bread!
Alongside this we have also included wheat plants for players to collect and grow themselves to be used in the baking of bread.
TRAIN TUNNEL ALTITUDE
We've moved the underground train tunnels further up, closer to the terrain surface, in order to reduce the length of the elevators, staircases and rail transitions and make it significantly faster and easier to travel between the above ground world and the below ground world.
To achieve this we raised the underwater terrain in any areas where the train tunnels are close to the surface, while leaving it low in all other areas.
We've tested a lot of seeds to make sure we're not introducing any issues with this, but it's a big change that affects many aspects of the world generation, so we can never be 100% certain. If you notice any areas where the triggers from the underground train tunnels stick out of the terrain or any areas in the underground train tunnels where cliffs or rocks stick into the underground train tunnels, please report this together with a seed and the position on the map.
We are now in a position where we can confidently say the system is both functional and stable, and we can look forward to additional optimisations and improvements. As we continue to improve and iterate on this system we will continue to hinder the effectiveness of cheaters, primarily those using wallhacks (ESP), and while we fully acknowledge this is only one piece of the puzzle we believe it is a big piece.
Optimisations and Improvements
We have some notable changes in testing that we expect to launch on wipe or in a follow-up server update, these include:
Rocks and cliffs will be included as part of our occlusion grid bake, this will improve the overall effectiveness of the system and help mitigate those cheaters getting that edge
Optimisations to our line algorithm that we use to calculate the visibility between two players (which should boast notable performance improvements, especially on servers with larger player counts)
(For server owners) The occlusion grid generated on server startup will now be saved to a file, this results in faster subsequent startups as loading the grid from a file takes a fraction of a second compared to the minute(s) it can take to generate the grid
Future Plans
This is just the start of our server-based networking occlusion goals as we continue to strive to ensure we maintain a fair and competitive environment for all players. We will be exploring more changes as the year progresses and you may see:
Enabling player server occlusion on all servers by default (server owners can optionally disable)
Applying culling to players within monuments
Applying culling to players and entities contained within player bases
GRAPHICS MENU UPDATE
The graphics menu has received an update, bringing a bunch of new preset quality levels and even a few new options.
It's worth mentioning that there is no performance gain or loss as a result of these changes, they simply move us away from having to use the built in Unity quality settings.
Several new options have been exposed and some pre-existing convar-only options have been added to the UI. It's also now much easier to quickly change between quality levels using the presets.
SERVER PROFILER IMPROVEMENTS
Memory Tracking Improvements
Original Server Profiler released with barebones memory tracking support. I've spent a bit of time this month to expand it out to make it easier for server owners to diagnose problems with memory in either their mods or our systems.
Increased the amount of info gathered for allocation events - the type, the size and what was the method in which allocation has happened.
Profiler gathers whole-process working memory (how much memory is actively in use) and virtual memory set (how much memory OS allows to page out). See Windows/Linux docs for specifics.
Server Profiler emits a graph and allocation track per thread. Those can be matched by the name
Main Thread graph resets every frame
Server Profiler duplicates allocation events onto the Thread Execution track - this makes it easier to track down where memory consumption is coming from
I've been using this internally and it has allowed me to identify a couple problem spots worth fixing. I hope this will be useful for server owners.
Validated Linux Support
During the "Primitive" dev-blog I mentioned that Server Profiler should be able to run on most Linux distributions. Above memory changes caused profiler to need specific versions of runtime libraries, which are not available on every Linux distro. We've downgraded our build environment, and confirmed that the following distributions should work:
Ubuntu 20.04 LTS and onwards
Debian 12 and onwards
Other distros should work as well, but I haven't tested them directly. They should work if they have GlibC 2.14 or more recent versions available.
As a note, if the Server Profiler can't start for what-ever reason then it'll just report an issue and let the server run as normal - no need to rush update your Linux environment if you don't need Server Profiler.
Public Testing Feedback
The new version of the Server Profiler has been trialled out by a number of server owners, ranging from low pop unmodded to high pop modded servers. They've shared that the 500+ population servers are able to run with Server Profiler in the background(not actively recording) without performance degradation.
From this public tests I've also got reports of Server Profiler failing to generate snapshots on high-pop servers from time to time - the patch fixes this issue.
Future Plans
I think Server Profiler has reached a good point where it's features allow for basic investigation work. So I'd like to explore how can we make it more useful in general. I'd like to:
Explore lifting 10 frame limit for snapshots (risky, as it can eat a lot of memory)
Explore continuous profiling mode - right now if there's an issue we need to manually catch it via RCon. But ideally the server should be able to track it's own state, and in case something abnormal is detected, it should automatically produce the record with vital info.
Expose method annotation filters, so server owners/modders can focus on areas they care about
SERVER OPTIMIZATIONS, PART 1
Network Message Leak
As part of public testing of the Server Profiler's memory tracking, a high-pop community server has shared their performance snapshot during a "memory leak" scenario. The graph at the bottom revealed that our thread for decrypting messages suddenly started to allocate quite a lot - at a rate of about 10 MB/second.
This was unexpected, as on our official servers we didn't see such behaviour. I've investigated and found a `gotcha` in the code of ConcurrentQueue that comes with Mono - it's now been fixed.
Analytics Optimizations
Another thing that popped out of Server Profiler's memory tracking feature is that our analytics processing logic can be hungry for memory. It was a surprise, considering we were using routines that were designated as non-allocating - but turns out formatting floats are a silent exception to that set. The above screenshot was taken on an official 110-player server, and it shows that analytics contributes to 15605 allocations, totalling about 1 MB of garbage.
I've removed the unexpected allocations around floats and around using async tasks to perform the upload. I'm hoping this'll reduce the pressure on Garbage Collection processes and trigger them less frequently on a high-pop server.
Text Table Optimizations - Testing on Aux
Another unexpected source of slowness and allocations is Text Table - a utility class that allows to gather data and spit it out as a formatted table (or JSON), making it human-readable. This utility is used both by us internally, as well as modders externally.
I recently saw this case during our internal server profiling - running server.playerlistpos on 200-person server:
Not only it allocates aggressively(2.7k allocations), it also ends up being slow - it took 5 milliseconds to process 200 players.
I've rewritten the implementation to allow more efficiently working with Text Table - it now has a number of opt-in mechanism and hints you can give to speed up it's internal operations. I've additionally eliminated 99% of allocations we created during the process. Additionally, it still generates binary matching output, meaning it shouldn't* break any of existing processes/mods.
I've updated the above playerlistpos routine to use all the options, and now it looks like this:
It can handle 300 players at 0.8ms while only needing 18 allocations - a win on all fronts.
*It's currently undergoing testing on the Aux branch to confirm I haven't actually missed anything. Depending how the testing goes, it'll either land in the next big update or during one of the fix patches.
Batched Player Processing - Ongoing work
Majority of my time has been spent on prototyping a different way to process all the connected players to the server. Here's how it looks like now:
We spend about 19ms to process all 200 connected players in a server tick. Part of it is profiling overhead (there's a lot of data to record), but part of it is the amount of work we need to do. And we're also doing it in potentially-sub-optimal manner:
First, player runs it's own water query to determine if it's underwater
Water queries in turn might run physics queries or might look into our acceleration structures
Then the player need to process tick state - this can either call physics queries or lookup memory in the game.
Then, after we processed tick state, we might want to gather analytics or other processing - this will require recaching player state, including water queries.
Now we also update Player Occlusion as part of the steps - so we have to do occlusion grid lookups.
As you can see, each player is processed by calling individual, isolated routines(each different color on screenshot is a unique routine), each of which might need to work with different memory causing cache thrashing loosing us performance. Additionally, Unity has support for running physics queries in parallel, which we can't utilize if we run these checks sequentially. Lastly, there's a good number of workload that could be converted to Burst jobs and also parallelized - which we again can't utilize to full extent in the current architecture.
My work is focused towards rewriting player processing logic to do all operations in batches(closer to ECS-style processing):
Pack all state into compact arrays to reduce cache thrashing
Replace processing routines that work on single instances to work on sets of instances (water queries, for example)
If we do physics queries, organize them into parallel jobs
Convert managed code to Burst jobs that can work on batches.
So far the results of my prototype showed that we lose about 18% of performance doing things the naive way - using full server demo recording of a 56 player server, the routine of batching water queries cost us 130 microseconds instead of 110 original.
The good news is that we lost 18% before I started focusing on optimizing the logic, applying Burst processing and parallel jobs(section 4 is example, section 3 is candidate) and reducing data organization overhead(section 2). In my eyes, the prototype is successful as it shows that we gain access to heavy duty processing tools. I'm hoping to reach testing phase of batched water queries in the next patch cycle.
NETWORK OPTIMIZATIONS
This month I pushed an optimization to reduce the amount of data saved to ProtoBuf (our networking protocol). This should significantly reduce the amount of bandwidth used by servers and also improve the networking qualify of players on low-end network connections.
BUILD PRIVILEGE CALCULATION CHANGES
Another area of server performance we looked at this month was how we calculate if the player currently has the ability to build things.
As you would expect this is something we check quite a lot (when building things, repairing things, when opening boxes, etc). This check is somewhat expensive as we need to do a physics query to find the nearest TC/Building Block and it will be more expensive in locations with lots of collision - like a dense base.
Last year we pushed some changes to limit how much information we were sending to clients to limit cheat effectiveness. This involved checking if a player had the ability to build before sending them privileged information (eg. what player is assigned to bags, RF device frequencies, Auto Turret auth lists, etc). This was successful, but we've now realised that this caused us to check the building privilege a lot more often.
Entering the network range of a base with 20 Auto Turrets would trigger a separate build privilege check for every turret we needed to send. This resulted in up to 50ms of processing just to determine what information to send.
We've resolved this in a few ways:
In places where we definitely need to check the Building Privilege but we don't want to check too often, we can now define a minimum gap between when checks could run. Even a tiny time window (eg. 0.1ms) will resolve the repeated checks mentioned above.
If we can avoid checking Building Privilege, we do. Instead of sending the RF code of a Receiver when entering network range if a player has Privilege, we send it to the player when they open up the UI panel to modify it. This also results in less data being sent, so it's a win-win.
Thanks to some server owners for providing bases using the copy+paste tool, we were able to do 1:1 checks to see what impact these changes had. One base that resulted in 50ms of server side processing time when a player triggers an RF receiver now only takes several ms.
We believe we've resolved the most critical areas but we have further improvements that will be rolled out in hotfixes and next month to resolve some other problematic entities.
COPY PASTE IMPROVEMENTS
When the CopyPaste commands were originally launched it stored the pastes on the server. This was a result of it's origins as an internal editor tool where the server would run locally, however in practice this required you to connect to the physical server and grab the file if you wanted to paste it on a different server.
CopyPaste will now store pastes on your client. This makes it a lot easier for us to grab a base off a server and load it in the editor to test performance and/or bugs. It should also make it easier for admins & moderators to share bases with eachother.
We've made some big improvements this month with our physics performance in a few areas, not all of which will be going out in this patch but should be rolling out in the update at least.
Previously when any physics queries were made that cared about terrain, we were required to do extra physics queries to determine whether we needed to account for holes in the terrain (cave entrances, tunnels, etc.). We've made some improvements that replaces the expensive additional physics query with an almost free check in the vast majority of cases, yielding a great improvement on server performance.
We've also made some changes to the way in which our trigger colliders are configured, which should massively reduce their impact on the physics tick. The saving from this was also significant, however it is initially disabled by default and we will roll it out slowly on our own servers post-wipe. This can be toggled with the triggerbase.useexcludelayers convar if server owners would like to enable it themselves before we switch over the default settings.
Coming up later, we also have some improvements that will greatly reduce the impact of vehicles on server performance. This will also be a big win for server performance, as it drastically reduces the overhead of inactive vehicles.
FRONTIER BASE DECOR PACK UPDATE
With the release of the new Triangle Planter in this month's update, we've added a skin for it to fit the style the Frontier Base Decor Pack that released November 2023!
If you already own the Frontier Base Decor Pack, the new Frontier Triangle Planter skin will automatically be added as a proper skin option for the Triangle Planter so it won’t appear as a standalone item in the crafting menu and will be compatible with the Spray Can.
Last month, we rolled out a social integration layer to Rust, no more alt-tabbing - we've now made playing the game with your squad even easier - you can view, chat, invite, and add friends, all from right inside the game, all through Discord.
Over the last month, we've improved the integration and have seen so many positive responses to the new addition.
Not linked your account yet? Head in game and sync your Steam and Discord friend with ease, right from the main menu!
They also teamed up with the Art of Rust community to paint people's pets in game!
So many amazing artists that participated in this event! Many of which you can find on X here.
Oh, and Nightshade gave us a speedpaint!
Overall they were able to raise over $9,000 for BestFriends.org. Well done everyone!
HOW 2 ZERG
If you're into highly educational tutorials dripping with dark humor and sarcasm then you're going to love Dirty Trout!
He normally edits for other creators but recently came out with his own banger.
We're digging this out-of-norm video style and hope to see more!
GLOBAL WARFARE 2 TEASER
Last summer FancyOrb put together and hosted the Global Warfare 2 event. Where the map was the real world and Rust players from all walks of life competed for territory standing. There were politics, betrayals, victories, and an amazing timeline.
He's almost finished with the literal movie about the whole thing and offered up a teaser. Full-length coming soon!
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.
