Rust News

Season's Beatings!

[h2]Merry Christmas & Happy Holidays![/h2]

From everyone at Facepunch, we'd all like to wish you a Merry Christmas and happy holidays to everyone!

The Christmas Event is once again live! If you haven't been around for this before, here's what you can expect:

Every once in a while you will hear the sound of jingle bells. Run outside and look for a gift! Two gifts are spawned per player, in a radius of about 40m from where you are standing. Run up and bash it open to receive your Christmas presents. They come in three sizes: small, medium, and large. If you have enough small presents stashed, you can "trade up" to a medium or large. The contents of each present vary, but you'll find a mix of resources, weapons, and candy. We've also added wrapping paper allowing you to wrap up items as gifts to other players, perhaps sold in your vending machine...

Once again, you will be able to find Santa hats and reindeer antlers, both of which can be worn and provide a decent amount of protection. There’s also a lickable candy cane club, and two types of stockings. If you hang a stocking inside your base when the jingle bells ring the stocking will fill up with loot. The larger stocking has a higher chance for better items and both last around 5-10 refills.

Have fun!

[h2]New Festive Items[/h2]

[h3]Snowman Hat[/h3]

Get in the festive Rustmas spirit with the new Snowman hat! The Snowman hat new paid cosmetic skin is available from the store.

[h3]Pattern Boomer Firework[/h3]

Create your own firework pattern and broadcast your "art" to the whole server with the new Pattern boomer firework.

Once your design is complete, wait till dark and set alight the firework using a torch, or a flamethrower if you're feeling brave.

Available now on the Rust item store!

[h3]Advent Calendar[/h3]

The advent calendar is a new craftable deployable available to everyone. Once placed you can claim a surprise every in-real-life day.

[h2]Returning items[/h2]

We have brought back the following items from previous years, now purchasable from the Rust Item Store.

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.

Deluxe Christmas Lights

Snow Machine

Snowman

Festive Garlands Pack

Christmas Door Wreath

Santa Beard

Neon sign pack

[h2]Rustmas Base Decorating contest[/h2]

We're excited to announce Rust's first Rustmas base decorating competition!

We're looking for the best festive base Rust has ever seen!

The Christmas content update is now live and will stay in game until January 6th, 2022.
Hoping this Rustmas will be the best one yet. Go big or go home, right?

Winner
£75 worth of skins of their choosing and two Rust DLC keys.

Runner up
£50 worth of skins of their choosing and one Rust DLC key.

[h3]How To Submit[/h3]
Once you’ve completed decorating your base, take a screenshot and upload the image to Twitter using the hashtag #Rustmas2021

The winner and runner up will be announced from Rust's official Twitter account on January 13th.

[h3]Evaluation[/h3]
Submissions will be judged based on the following:
Creativity
Design
Judging will be performed by Facepunch Staff.

[h3]Terms[/h3]
This competition is run by Facepunch Studios Ltd at Concept House, Elmore Green Road, Bloxwich, Walsall, UK. The competition ends on January 6th 2022 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.

Rust gets "massive" excavator changes and a Christmas bash this month

Rust's next monthly update has landed. The survival game's December offering ushers in a bunch of varied changes and content, with "massive" production buffs for the excavator, a revamped first-person spectator mode, some AI improvements, and more. Plus, there's a Christmas-themed bash coming up soon.

Facepunch has revealed that the Excavator monument - which can be used to produce useful materials - has received some big ol' buffs that mean one unit of diesel fuel will now power the contraption for two minutes and produce a high new volume of yields. These are 100 high-quality metal parts, 2,000 sulfur ore, 10,000 stone, and 5,000 metal fragments, which is a pretty big climb from the previous quantities.

The newly revamped first-person spectator mode, meanwhile, should give players looking to catch a look at the action a "more pleasant experience". The devs reveal that they've looked to mimic the perspective of actual gameplay as much as possible to improve the mode, with support for "proper weapon view models, better camera perspectives, alt looking, and much of the standard game HUD like the compass, vitals, hotbar and, teams".

Read the rest of the story...

December Update

[h2]Excavator[/h2]

The excavator has received a massive production buff. One unit of Diesel fuel will run the excavator for 2 minutes and produce any one of the following yields :

100 HQM
2000 Sulfur Ore
10,000 Stone
5000 Metal Fragments

In addition to this, a terminal can now be found next to the generator. While the excavator is powered on, the communications relay will charge. Once it has charged for 100% (10 minutes or 5 diesel by default) you can use the terminal to request airdrop supplies to the excavator.

Hopefully these changes to the excavator will see it be a more viable and widely used monument.

[h2]Excavator Tummy Tuck[/h2]

We have frequently heard from you about the limited real estate left available on some map seeds. One of the main complaint was about the Giant Excavator monument. It was meant to impress by its sheer scale when first introduced, but we have come to recognize that it does sacrifice a good amount of play area. As a result I have remodelled the terrain surroundings of the monument, and shrunk the overall surface it consumes by a good 30%.

[h2]First Person Spectate[/h2]

Spectating players should be a more pleasant experience this month with a revamped First Person Spectate mode. We've tried to mimic the actual gameplay perspective as much as possible, supporting proper weapon viewmodels, better camera perspectives, alt looking and much of the standard game HUD like the compass, vitals, hotbar and teams.

This new mode will automatically activate when spectating in first person, it also works when playing back demos. I've also added a button to easily spectate a specific player in the admin UI tab.

Hopefully this will make spectating players more enjoyable for admins, as well as providing some new cinematic options for demo users.

[h2]Improvements & Fixes Highlights[/h2]

NVG Clarity -Reduced NGV grain and overlay intensity
Vehicle Animal Attacks - Animals will no longer attack players inside cars
MP5 Costs - MP5 research cost increased and drop rates lowered
MLRS Barrage - MLRS rockets cluster less towards the centre
Compound Bow Changes - Compound Bow now unlocked from Tier 1 Workbench
Tech Tree T2 - Electricity and car parts now on a separate branch

Check out the changelog for more changes.

[h2]AI Cleanup & Tweaks[/h2]

This month we were finally able to remove two more of the various AI setups that we've had in Rust over the years. Now pretty much everything is running on one system. This meant we were able to remove a ton of code and prefabs - this is better for maintenance and long term development of the AI. There should also be some slight performance improvements.

We've also made some tweaks to the animal and human AI, such as fixing some annoyances and increasing responsiveness.

There's more improvements to come in this area now that the bigger features are finished.

[h2]Forest Density[/h2]

Since the World Revamp update, we've received a lot of player feedback surrounding forest density, the aim of world revamp update was to upgrade Rust's visuals without sacrificing performance/FPS. While balancing performance to visual fidelity we were conservative with foliage density values while trying to match them closely as possible to the prior procedural generation.

Today we've slightly but noticeably increased forest density, we hope this will bring back some much-needed forest density while keeping performance under control.

[h2]Blueprint Wipe[/h2]

With today's update, all servers will have their Blueprints wiped and player progress reset.

[h2]Permanent Store Launched[/h2]

If you missed our announcement last month then here is a summary of the launch of Rust's permanent in-game store. The new store will feature premium cosmetic items and skins.

We kicked things off by releasing the Nomad skin. The Nomad skin is a hazmat reskin replacement that can be applied when crafting the hazmat suit or by placing the hazmat suit into a repair bench.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Additionally, we've also launched some new items such as new lights, underwear and even a used sofa.

Full details of the permanent store can be found HERE

[h2]Rust's 8th Birthday[/h2]

Rust turns 8 this month and we’ll be celebrating for one day only on 11th December with a birthday cake and hats. In the near future, we plan to talk more about how the last year has gone and what we learned as well as some information about how Rust has performed.

[h2]Facepunch Servers[/h2]

We've retired the following Facepunch servers:

EU 11
EU 12
EU 13
EU 14
EU 15
EU 16
EU 17
EU 18
EU Small 9
EU Small 10
EU Softcore 7
EU Softcore 8
EU Softcore 9
US Softcore 3
US Soft core 4
US East 5
US East 6
US Small 4

Additionally, some Facepunch servers have had their max player limit increased and EU1 has changed to a new IP address.

[h2]Christmas Update[/h2]

On December 16th at 19:00GMT / 14:00 EST we'll be releasing a mandatory server and client update to enable the Xmas event and some festive features!

[h2]Changelog[/h2]

Enhanced First Person spectate
Excavator supply drops
Excavator 2.5x more yeild
Failed code lock entry for after 8 failed attempts now locks out user for 15mins
Exposed bear, boar and chicken populations in Server Admin UI
Increased human AI line-of-sight responsiveness.
Compound Bow moved to T1 Techtree
Compound Bow loses condition while drawn back
Reduced NVG grain and overlay intensity
Fish can now be sold for more scrap at fishing village exchange
MP5 NPC drop chance lowered
Watch tower decay, health and craft time higher
Table item craft no longer need metal fragments
Higher forest density
TechTree T2 electricity and car parts now on a separate branch
[MLRS] Increased the target hit area, and rockets cluster less towards the centre. In general it's now better for larger bases vs. precision targeting.
[MLRS] Increased the MLRS UI map zoom a little to make targeting easier (remember that it will show a marker you've placed as well).
[MLRS] The MLRS UI now supports characters from other languages.
[MLRS] The MLRS rocket explosion ground effect now plays at the true hit point rather than directly below the main explosion.
[MLRS] Reduced MLRS rocket world model size and mass to 25% of actual size and mass. No more giant rockets.
Fixed skull rock skin missing sound effects
Fixed case where ammo would be lost when an auto turret reloads a weapon
Animals no longer continue to attack player corpses.
Animals will no longer attack players inside modular vehicles.
Fixed desync exploit abused by some private hack providers
Fixed gap exploit abused by a large number of hacks
Fixed missions UI enabled on first open and requiring double click to close
Fixed some mission typos, incorrect text and wrong reward amounts
[MLRS] Fixed MLRS rocket backfire effects flashing on when entering LOD range.
[MLRS] Fixed cassette recorders not sticking correctly to MLRS moving parts.
Fixed SAM sites not shooting hot air balloons anymore
The info panel for rocket ammo now shows their true maximum range instead of a semi-fabricated one.
Fixed LOD issues on the excavator

Here's our first peek at how Rust's server transitions could work

Earlier this month, esteemed Rust YouTuber Shadowfrax posted a video looking into an upcoming feature Facepunch has been testing for its flagship survival game: server transitions. The idea behind this, as the 'frax explained at the time, is that players will be able to "move between servers with an as-yet-to-be-confirmed quantity of gear and items" by hopping into a seaworthy craft and venturing out to maps' edges. Now, we've got our first peep at what this might look like in action.

"I'm excited to show you some actual server transitioning - yes, me boldly going between servers," Shadowfrax says in his latest clip covering Rust's work-in-progress features (below). The YouTuber got to test the feature "on a limited scale" as it functions right now, with two servers linked up in his dummy-run example. You can see the other from your current server as depicted by a rough outline of an island in the distance, across the sea. If you hop in a boat and zoom towards the island you'll soon get a pop-up message as you near the map's edges, which tells you how much further you need to travel before you'll hit the other server.

If you keep on barrelling in that direction, you'll then connect to the other server. So, it sounds like it'll be easy-peasy to use. "It appears that right now there's no restriction on what you can take with you in your inventory," Shadowfrax also says, though only boats let you server-hop in at the moment.

Read the rest of the story...

Steam Awards 2021 - Rust Nomination

The Steam Awards are upon us once again and this year we’d like to get your nominations in the `Labor of Love` category by clicking to vote above!

We think the description of the award sums up Rust perfectly, Rust is our baby, quite a big baby at nearly 8 years old but we still continue to spend every day helping it grow, there’s been joy and tears and many sleepless nights but we still strive to bring out fresh content every month for you, our players, to enjoy.

Looking at just the last 12 months, we’ve bought you Tech Trees as another way of researching the items you need, The Marketplace in safe zones so you can efficiently purchase from vending machines using drones, The Freight Transit line and train carts for a new way of exploring and traversing the map, The Poker Table and Slot Machines as a new way of earning more of that precious scrap, Gestures for new ways of expressing yourself along with the Contact System to sort out friend from foe, A World Revamp which brought new life into your surroundings including monuments, rocks, flora and fauna.

We made the ocean a new place for adventure, submarines to get around and new underwater monuments with Labs to visit and earn loot from along with threats from the newly added sharks or you could just sit and relax with a bit of fishing to stock your food supplies.

Each month we bring a whole host of Improvements, balances and fixes mostly from the feedback we get from you, without you there wouldn’t be the passion we have for making the game what it is today and we look forward to bringing you another year of planned updates and many more to come.