Rust News

Any movement in rust would modify your baseline Aimcone so that shots taken while in motion were somewhat inaccurate. This was supposed to discourage "running and gunning". The problem with this is that *any* kind of motion while in a firefight puts you at a disadvantage (minor dodging) and increases the amount of RNG experienced by the player.



What I've done is reduced this penalty to zero to start, and blend it up to the full amount after 4 rapid fire shots. This means is you can now strafe and dodge while tap firing and not experience a huge aiming penalty, however full auto will be penalized.

I've also adjusted the Aimcone curve modifiers for a few weapons so that more shots have a higher probability of landing closer to the center. This has been applied to the Custom SMG, SAP and LR300.






Weapon mods have received some love this month.

[h3]BURST MOD[/h3]
The duration between bursts while using the burst mod has been significantly reduced to 2x firerate instead of 3x firerate.

[h3]HOLOSIGHT[/h3]
The holosight mesh has had its edges thinned so that less of your vision is obscured while using it. This is a stopgap until we produce a new model for it. I've also fixed the Holosight reticle being affected by motion blur.

[h3]MUZZLE BRAKE & BOOST[/h3]
Both the muzzle brake and muzzle boost have had their negatives reduced, they now have less damage reduction and less damage falloff and should prove to be far more useful.

[h3]LR300 TWEAKS[/h3]
In addition, I've made some changes to the recoil, damage fall off, bullet velocity, and burst mode of the LR300. This should now be the best in class AR.

Everything subject to change.





Starting today, Recyclers in safezones have been nerfed. Their cycle time has been increased to 8 seconds and they now yield 80% of what they used to. This is the price you now must pay for safety.



However, the recyclers found at monuments have the same cycle time as before but now yield 120%! This is to reward players taking the risk out in the open.



While I am aware that a great many keyboards may be smashed as the death screen fades in over the droning hum of the active recycler, I still have hope this helps usher in a new era of roaming and monument combat.





Some great items were not used because they were way too expensive. To that end I've made the following changes:

• HV Ammo - Gunpowder cost reduced significantly, and the yield per craft increased to match non HV ammo.
  
• Torpedos - Craft yield increased from 3 to 5.
  
• Incendiary Rockets - The cost has been drastically reduced and their damage + flame spread increased.
  
• Drones - Tech trash is no longer a requirement for drones.
  
• HMLMG - Gear cost has been reduced.
  

Large External Gates and Walls now require the player to stand still for 1.5 seconds when placing, making them less useful for immediate PvP encounters in the wild. We felt that being able to place down such large structures in a short amount of time felt at odds with our style of combat that rewards situational awareness and environmental tactics.



[h2]WOODEN BARRICADE RESIZE[/h2]



To fill the void left by the external wall changes regarding dynamic cover during PvP, we have doubled the size of the deployable wooden barricade. The wooden barricade remains instantly deployable and provides a moderate amount of cover on-demand without being overpowered or polluting the landscape with large, unsightly deployable.

This is without a doubt a large shift to PvP, we'll be monitoring these changes carefully





Some further tweaks to the Bradley this month.

Scientists now spawn in stages, based on the Bradley's health, and there's some Heavy scientists thrown in the mix now, too.

• At 80% health, 2 scientists will spawn
  
• At 60% health, 4 more will spawn
  
• At 40% health, 6 final scientists will spawn
  

There's also been some tweaks to make some of the Scientists more aggressive and use varying attack angles.





You can now use door controllers without worrying about raiders abusing them to open your doors! This is accomplished by unpairing door controllers once your TC is destroyed & requiring code lock authorization for pairing.

They also are much easier to setup as they can now be placed just like code locks.

This should reduce the pain of constantly opening and closing the doors of your base... especially when your teammates tend to leave them open.

• Now deployable on doors like code locks
  
• Automatically paired when placed
  
• Added 2 new side inputs : 'Open' and 'Close'
  
• Unpaired when the associated tool cupboard is destroyed
  

We also carried on improving electricity by adjusting components and fixing various bugs this month. Thanks again to the community for reporting bugs and suggesting ideas.

The full change log of each component can be read in the section at the bottom of the blog.





We know the latest helicopter changes had some mixed feedback, so we've revised them. No go zones should feel a lot more fair, and most major bugs experienced with heli since the last update are now patched.

• Monument Crashing - the helicopter will now attempt to crash at a nearby monument on death. It won't crash at monuments with safe zones: outpost, fishing village, etc. This can be disabled by server owners via: patrolhelicopterai.monument_crashing
• Flee Behavior - heli would previously flee when it sometimes didn't mean to. Damage to start a flee has been tweaked, ensuring a flee every time you quickly remove 30% of its overall HP.
  
• Numerous Fixes & Improvements - heli will now properly target you on boats, cargo, trains and other moving entities. Targeting fixes and performance improvements have been made throughout the code. More legacy bugs: such as heli not exploding immediately on impact with certain terrain are also fixed.
  

The Launch site loot had received an overhaul. Before, the loot inside the main building shared the same respawn group as the rest of the launch site, meaning loot inside the main building was never guaranteed. Loot had a chance to spawn elsewhere at the monument, which felt discouraging when completing the puzzle and running the main building.



The main site building now has a dedicated respawn group, which guarantees 23 loot crates when the puzzle resets.

Additionally, more loot now spawns throughout the monument.





Underwater vision has been improved substantially. You can now see much farther when using goggles and even more so when viewing out a submarine porthole.

In addition, the surface accuracy of submarine torpedoes has been vastly improved and torpedoes were made cheaper to produce by way of an increased craft yield. Lastly, the duo submarine fires torpedoes slightly faster than the solo.






[h3]Tool Cupboard Auth Friend[/h3]
Can authorize other players on a tool cupbard
[h3]Demolish High Walls[/h3]
Can demolish high walls & gates for 10min after placement
[h3]Fixed High Wall Snapping[/h3]
Hold SHIFT to disable snapping
[h3]Foundation Placement[/h3]
Fixed foundation placement under roofs & floors
[h3]Foundation Debris[/h3]
Foundations now drop debris
[h3]Floor Debris[/h3]
Floors now drop debris





We’re making some changes to how the Tech Tree works to try and incentivise new styles of play. Starting this month you will notice that the T2 and T3 workbench tech trees now have a tax rate applied to them which will increase the cost of unlocking items. We’re starting this at 10% for T2 and 20% for T3. This cost increase only applies to unlocking via the Tech Tree, researching items via the Research Table is unchanged.



Our thinking behind this is that we feel the Tech Tree progression path has become a little stale and needs to be shaken up, but we don’t want to lose the advantages that the Tech Tree brought to progression - making difficult to find blueprints attainable in a way that felt fair and not as at the mercy of RNG. While there are a number of avenues we can use to try and make both forms of progression feel more balanced this feels like a simple and understandable starting point.

As with all of our changes we’ll be closing a close eye on this and will likely make further changes in the future.







It’s been great to see the reception to last month's Cargo Ship/harbor update, we hope you’ve all enjoyed some very (very) intense firefights. Based on the feedback we received we’re making a couple of changes this month:

• The Cargo Ship will now dock at both harbors (if they exist) on a map before leaving. Note that any containers that have already been placed on a ship will be deleted when it starts its approach to the next harbor.
  
• You can now mouse over the ship on the map to see if it has already docked.
  
• The containers that are spawned to be placed on the Cargo Ship will now be spawned when it starts its approach (about 100m away from the harbor) rather than when the ship arrives at its dock, giving you more time to hide in the containers.
  
• The container spawn points have been mildly tweaked so that all of the containers should be accessible, although you might need to do some climbing.
  

We hope these changes make the event a bit more understandable at a glance as well as make the combat encounters more interesting.



[h3]VIEWMODEL RENDERERS[/h3]

Since implementing a dedicated viewmodel renderer system back in April 2021, all of our viewmodels have been split between the old and new system. The primary stumbling blocks were viewmodels with lots of particle effects and lights (torches, flamethrowers, etc). While we covered most of the high impact cases of viewmodel jittering by supporting guns (how often do you use the birthday cake on oil rig?) we’ve been wanting to consolidate everything for a while. This month we’ve updated all of the viewmodels to use the new renderer so they should appear smooth and jitter free regardless of where you are in the world. The affected viewmodels:

1. Both flamethrowers
   
2. Water Bucket
   
3. Beancan Grenade
   
4. Molotov Cocktail
   
5. Flashlight
   
6. Birthday Cake
   
7. Garry’s Mod Toolgun
   
8. Poker playing cards
   
9. Lunar New Year spear
   
10. Minigun
    
11. Paddle
    

You should see no visible changes if it's all working correctly.







I've investigated and addressed a couple of AI performance issues that were causing the AI to take longer to process than necessary, especially on servers that have been running for a while.

This should help with AI server performance across the board.







After noticing occasional framedrops during gunfights, I've spent some time investigating the issue and found out that our impact effects prefab warmup wasn't working as intended.

All impact effects are now warmed up correctly during loading times.

This should drastically reduce the stuttering when spawning a big amount of effects prefab for the first time (e.g when a fight starts and bullets start flying). This has a very little if no impact on loading times.





Procedural maps are now automatically uploaded from game servers to our backend so players can just download them instead of generating them when they first join the server.

This should significantly reduce the time it takes to join a server for the first time after it wipes. It may also reduce the number of players seeing "Rust is not responding" popups while joining servers for the first time.





Harmony is Rust's built-in modding platform shipped with the server. It powers modding frameworks like Oxide & Carbon, as well as standalone mods.

We upgraded from Harmony 1.2 -> Harmony 2.3 which brings us up to date with the latest features & additional stability.

This requires mod authors to recompile their Harmony mods. Fortunately the majority of mods only need to change a single line.

Before
using Harmony;

After
using HarmonyLib;

Players shouldn't need to worry as the majority of large servers already started updating their mods before the update went live. Server owners please keep an eye out for mod updates as every Harmony Mod will needed to be updated.





Tesla Coil, Igniter
To stop them from self-destructing, they are now disabled upon reaching No longer take damage when picked up

Electrical Branch
Reduced minimum branch out power from 2 to 1

Button
Reduced press time from 5s to 1s

Storage Monitor
Will now recognize partial stack changes and pass power through when removing or adding a items to a stack

Splitter
Fixed power distribution issue when not all outputs were used

Memory Cell
Fixed side inputs triggerable by 0 power circuits

Timer Switch
Fixed an issue where its side input was triggered inconsistently by circuits update (e.g: industrial conveyor updating its state)

Counter
When set to 'Show Passthrough', it now displays its passthrough even if nothing is connected to its output
No longer requires a connection to its output to display its passthrough when set to 'Show Passthrough'

RF Receiver
Updated recipe:
- Metal Fragments 100 → 150
- Tech Trash 1 → 0

RF Broadcaster
Updated recipe:
- Metal Fragments 100 → 150
- Tech Trash 1 → 0

RF Transmitter
Updated recipe:
- HQM 5 → Metal Fragments 100
- Tech Trash 1 → 0

RF Pager
Updated recipe:
- Metal Fragments 50 → 100
- Tech Trash 1 → 0

AND, OR, XOR Switch
No longer emit light when unpowered

Industrial Conveyor
Can be placed upside down again

Industrial Light
No longer referred as Simple Light when looking at IO connection handles

Smart Switch
No longer referred as Switch when looking at IO connection handles

Last blog I showcased many of the big-hitters in the Rust Creative Arts community. This month they have literally combined forces to play together for an entire month and managed to make a giant amusement park on the water!

I present to you: Rustic Reef



From a life size DDR game, to a roller coaster. They even managed to mimic a ferris wheel.

The masterminds behind this project are: DaVinci, Philieve, Monstera, and Silverfox.

Philieve breaks down who's doing what and how the whole project came about.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

DaVinci gives us the scenic tour!

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

And pyromaniac Silverfox shows off his firework skills.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

I'll try and do a better job of giving you all a heads up next time they do a project like this so people can experience it in real time! Absolute legends.





Who is the greatest rock fighter in Rust? Can a "nobody" defeat the Rock - Boxing World Champion?

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]





Balding Bus brings us a real toe-tapper Rust parody music video!

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]





Our friend over at Real & Game has outdone himself once again.

Made an entire Rust electrical setup IRL.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]





Soon™





If you made something cool or saw something cool, reach out! Tag me on X or u/ErrnieGerrn Reddit.

For the next week, every 24-38 hours in-game hours an Easter egg hunt will begin. You'll have 3 minutes to collect as many eggs as you can. The top 3 players are given special eggs as a reward. These eggs can be cracked open 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 painted eggs you collect can be upgraded to Bronze eggs once you collect 10. If you collect 10 bronze eggs then you can upgrade to a silver egg, eventually all the way to gold!

There are various items available to help you during your hunt. The Easter Basket will allow instant pickup of eggs and the Bunny Onesie and Ears will provide you with an advantage via Egg Vision.

Have fun!




This year we've added a new costume DLC attire, the chicken costume! The chicken costume is a lower body attire which can be crafted with cloth and wood.



You can find the clucking chicken costume in Rust item store along witht he rest of our Seasonal items!

A common story we hear from new players is that they have seen their friends/Twitch Streamer/YouTuber playing Rust, so they pick up the game and then bounce off it due to how harsh and unforgiving the new player experience can be. This month’s Tutorial Island is our attempt to provide new players with a safe environment to learn the basic controls and mechanics of Rust before being set loose in the main game with other players.



Everyone will be prompted to start the tutorial when they first spawn this month, if you’re a long term player feel free to decline the tutorial and we won’t ask you about it again. Once the player starts the Tutorial, they will be respawned on a dedicated island where an NPC will guide them through the first half hour of gameplay. This island is tightly controlled and cannot be reached by other players.

Throughout this process players will learn some key concepts:

• Basic movement
  
• Crafting
  
• Building bases
  
• Upgrading bases
  
• Respawning
  
• Basic combat
  
• Resources
  
• Looting containers
  
• Cooking
  
• Using Furnaces
  
• Workbenches
  
• Using a vehicle
  

This obviously isn’t an exhaustive list of everything there is to learn in Rust, but we feel like this is a good starting point for a new player. Our guiding principle when designing this sequence has been - if a player emulates exactly what they did on the Tutorial Island once they get into the main game, will they have a fighting chance?



The tutorial itself should take less than 30 minutes if you’re familiar with general FPS controls and concepts, likely around an hour if you are not a regular FPS player. Once complete you will be dropped off into the main game with the same resources as any other player - completing the Tutorial Island does not give you any advantages in regular gameplay.

For server owners running mods that change core gameplay features, you may find that parts of the tutorial don’t work or maybe showing the tutorial isn’t appropriate for your server (minigame servers for instance). You can control whether the tutorial is active via the “server.tutorialEnabled” convar - it's false by default. While false players won't be prompted to start the tutorial on your server and they will not be able to manually start the tutorial. We’ve added a server tag to help players find and filter servers by their tutorial compatibility, add “tut” to your server tags to advertise your tutorial compatibility. Brand new players will have this filter on when they first use the server browser.




Our outdated tooltip popup for checking vendor stock urgently needed an upgrade. It felt out of place when compared with the marketplace UI. Thus, a plan was devised to merge both into a single unified system. This update will be rolled out in two parts, with this being part one. This first part fully replaces the old blue tooltip popup with an interface that's clearer, more user-friendly, and scalable. Now, it's easy to understand what you're purchasing and how much is costs. Overall, this first pass on the vendor UI provides a great foundation to expand on.

[h3]New Single Vendor Interface[/h3]
Items are now displayed clearly with the cost and stock counts easily visible.



[h3]New Multi Vendor Interface[/h3]
Accordions are used to hold vendors with large amounts of listings. This keeps everything easy to read, whilst still giving users flexibility to add a bunch of listings.



While working on this, we noticed some QOL issues with finding items before purchasing. The marketplace offers useful features like search and filtering that the standard map doesn't have. It would be great to have these abilities everywhere.

Part two will unify the marketplace UI with the new vendor UI. You will still have to travel to the marketplace to buy things via drone, but the actual underlying UI will be merged together. This will provide the same search/filtering functionalities as enjoyed at the marketplace to the regular map vendor UI, whilst bringing the improved style and ease of use of this new vendor UI to the marketplace.




Today, I'm addressing an issue we often hear about from the Rust community. Navigating the game during nighttime. While the night cycle is a cruicial element of the rust gameplay loop, it can be a literal stumbling block not seeing what's directly ahead. The problem of "gamma hacking" (where players unfairly enhance their night vision by tweaking monitor settings), has been a thorn in our side, necessitating a pitch-black darkness (RGB 0,0,0) to counteract such exploits.



To that end I've come up with the "Nightlight" feature. Basically it's a shader that subtly illuminates a small radius around the player, mimicking the effect of natural moon light. This localized lighting ensures that while you can see just enough to navigate at night, the vast darkness beyond remains dark. Distant pixels are kept at absolute darkness (RGB 0,0,0), effectively rendering gamma hacking useless for spotting far-off threats or resources. ( beyond a few meters)



We believe this approach strikes a good balance, enhancing the night experience without compromising fair play. I hope it helps!





[h3]Rangefinder[/h3]
Rangefinder added to binoculars

[h3]Attack Helicopter Flare[/h3]
Attack helicopter flares now take 30 seconds to reload

[h3]Safe Metal Detecting[/h3]
Metal detectors no longer able to find loot in safezones

[h3]Attire Conflict[/h3]
Visual feedback when switching attire conflict




This month, we’ve made improvements to the store interface. These changes are part of a UI overhaul for the menu screen that we’re currently working through. One of the main improvements is adding in a custom view for each of the general store items, giving a better look at what an item looks like or what is contained within a pack. For example, the Abyss pack, we now show a cut-down version of the trailer, the items contained within the pack in a 3D turntable, media and a bit of information about the pack.

These changes are aimed at improving the experience of using the store, more transparency in regards to what you’re potentially purchasing, and improving it from a visual point of view too.

[h3]Store Interface[/h3]
Re-designed view, with improvements in regards to scaling and legibility of the items.



[h3]Store Item Model[/h3]
We've improved the interface for the model that appears when you tap on an item. A new key addition being an animated 3D version of the skin.



[h3]General Store Model[/h3]
We've added a new view for each general store item. Some of these include cut-down trailers, items contained within as a 3D turntable as well as media and general information about the item. These new views hopefully give a better understanding of what you're getting in the purchase.








Hapis Island and Observer Island custom maps are being retired today from Facepunch servers. Observer Island was first released in November by community members CollapsedOrange and wheatleymf and Hapis Island was brought back to celebrate 10 years of Rust.

If you're a server owner and wish to host your own Hapis or Observer Island, you can check them out at the following links:

• Observer Island - Lone Design
• Hapis Island - Lone design

What's the future for custom maps? We're going to continue working with our amazing map-maker community and highlight and host custom maps.

If you would like to start making your own map, check out Rust's wiki.







Rust and DayZ have teamed up for a bundle featuring both games at 40% off!

The Pioneer Survival Pack on Steam features both titles at 40% off from March 7th 6PM GMT to March 14th 6PM GMT.

Both DayZ and Rust celebrated their 10th anniversaries in December, with in-game events, limited items, and Twitch Rivals competitions, marking many years of updates, changes, and content to the games that have kept them thriving with old and new players alike.

DayZ, with its realistic post-apocalyptic world, has evolved far beyond its origins as a hardcore survival mod. It now stands as a deeply immersive experience that continually draws in players with its intricate blend of survival mechanics, open-world exploration, and player-driven narratives, all while fostering a strong and passionate community.

Rust has transformed from a mere survival game to a global phenomenon. There’s always something interesting or dangerous (or both) happening on the island, captivating all kinds of players with its unique blend of challenges, creativity, ways to play, and community spirit.

Head here to grab both games now!




On March 21st at 19:00 GMT we'll be releasing an optional update to enable this years Easter events and releasing the Chicken costume.

During the Easter event every 24-38 hours in-game hours an Easter egg hunt will begin. You'll have 3 minutes to collect as many eggs as you can. The top 3 players are given special eggs as a reward. These eggs can be cracked open for various types of loot ranging from scrap all the way up to an M249!