Rust News

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!

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

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:

[h2]World Update 2.0[/h2]
This HUGE update completely changed the world and added many new unique points of interest around the world

[h2]Road Renegades[/h2]
Added new forms of transport, bicycles and motorbikes

[h2]Bags To Riches[/h2]
Finally added backpacks allowing players to carry more items and added the metal detector item

[h2]Waves Of Change[/h2]
Updated the cargoship and helicopter events, additionally overhauled the Harbors

[h2]Lighting The Way[/h2]
Allows players to see and navigate at night, we add a small illumination area around the player

[h2]Seismic Shift[/h2]
Added a new item which will send notifications to your phone if an explosion is detected

[h2]Quality Of Life[/h2]
Over 300 QOL changes from saving codelocks to floating items

[h2]New Weapons[/h2]
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.





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.

[h2]Next Month[/h2]
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.

[h2]Forwards[/h2]
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.

[h2]But what about?[/h2]
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
  

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!







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!

It's almost Christmas, which means Santa is coming to distribute presents to all the good little children—and, somewhat weirdly, put coal in the stockings of kids who have been "bad." Look, Santa is an immortal Elflord, it is not for us to understand his motives...
Read more.

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!





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.







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!



[h2]Winner[/h2]
£120 worth of skins of their choosing, and two Rust DLC/Items.
[h2]Runner up[/h2]
£75 worth of skins of their choosing, and one Rust DLC/Item.
[h2]How To Submit[/h2]
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.
[h2]Evaluation[/h2]
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 :)

[h2]Terms[/h2]
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.





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!





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.






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.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

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

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.





[h3]Peacekeeper Turret Hostile Indicator[/h3]
A turret icon now appears next to the usual hostile indicator when you are hostile and near a peace keeper auto turret.

[h3]Workcart Storage[/h3]
A small box has been added to all Workcarts so you can store that extra loot.

[h3]Waterpump Depth Change[/h3]
Waterpumps now work with a smaller depth of water, perfect for the new rivers.

[h3]Propane Tank Stack Size[/h3]
Propane tanks can now stack up to 20.

[h3]Dropbox Input Increase[/h3]
Increased to 4 input slots.

[h3]Junkpile Despawn[/h3]
Junkpiles will now be eligible to despawn after they are partially looted.

[h3]Fridge Storage[/h3]
Fridge storage increased to 48 slots

[h3]Homing Missiles[/h3]
Homing missiles have been added to Bradley and attack helicopter loot crates





We spent this month bug fixing and improving the counter-plays to the wolves, as we want them to feel challenging but not unfair.

[h2]The problems[/h2]

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.

[h2]Closing words[/h2]

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!





[h3]Tesla Coil[/h3]
Reduced tesla coil maximum power usage from 35 to 25 (no difference in time to kill)

[h3]Storage Monitor[/h3]
Added a passthrough slot to the Storage Monitor

[h3]Elevators speed[/h3]
Increased speed of player placed elevators by 50%

[h3]Battery full charge indicator[/h3]
Added an output slot for when your battery is fully charged





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





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!





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.





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.





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.





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).








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.





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.






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.







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.





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.

[h3]// Old[/h3]

var net = Net.sv.StartWrite();
net.PacketID(Message.Type.Message);
net.String("Top Text");
net.String("Bottom Text");
net.Send(new SendInfo(conn));

[h3]// New[/h3]

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.

[h3]Only servers clearly listed in the modded section may utilize this feature.[/h3]





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
  

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.





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.

[h3]How to Generate a snapshot[/h3]
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.

[h3]Exploring The Snapshot[/h3]
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.







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.

And don't forget, there are generic Twitch themed Drops that you can grab by watching your favourite creator on Twitch not participating in the event too!

As always, we'd like to thank Rustoria for working with us and Twitch to make this event possible.







We've added more prefabs for the mapping and modding community this month.



Below is a list of the additions and changes:

• Additional concrete, charcoal, gravel, ceiling, roof and plaster tiled cube prefabs
  
• Coloured wood panel tiled cube prefabs (pictured above)
  
• Road and tarmac tiled cube prefabs
  
• Cold and heat volume variants (low, med, high)
  
• 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
  

We'll release a mandatory update at 19:00 UTC on December 16th to enable this year's festivities.

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.





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.







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.



[h2]The why[/h2]
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.



[h2]The how[/h2]
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!





[h3]IO Arrows[/h3]
New arrows that show input/outputs when looking at IO deployables

[h3]Floating objects drift down rivers[/h3]
Corpses, Boogie Boards, Boats now float down rivers

[h3]Hear player voices over CCTV[/h3]
Listen in on the group taking Oil Rig

[h3]Disable Monument CCTV[/h3]
Can now damage monument CCTV cameras to disable them for 5 minutes

[h3]Copy Paste IDs in F7 menu[/h3]
Easily get a player's ID when using the Report menu

[h3]Add vendor NPC's to all Water Wells[/h3]
Every Water Well variant now has killable vendor





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)

[h3]Rock Paper Scissors[/h3]
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.





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.





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.





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.





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
  

[h2]Notes[/h2]

• 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.

[h2]Next[/h2]
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 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!





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.







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.





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.