Rust Update History

LIVESTOCK

This patch we are introducing cows and sheep.

What resources can THEY GIVE?

Both produce dung, cows produce milk, and sheep produce wool.

They can also be harvested for meat, bones and leather like any other animal.

Additionally, you can sell a grown animal to an NPC in the ranch.

How to set up a farm?

There are multiple ways to capture wild livestock, some more efficient than others, but they should all be pretty intuitive.

When the new navmesh is enabled, NPCs can enter player structures and respect doors opening/closing, so the sky is the limit.

Like plants, they have genetics and needs, and can be bred to hunt for a god clone.

However, the genes won't behave exactly like plants, so old techniques may not apply.

WILL IT TANK PERFORMANCE?

Each game frame, only a subset of the NPCs are processed, up to a hardcoded max time per frame.

So when we increase the population, the server doesn't directly lose FPS, instead NPCs just become slower to react because we distribute the load across frames automatically when over budget.

We still spent time multithreading and optimising the new navigation system, at least doubling its performance since the last patch.

As usual, we'll be monitoring server performance and fixing problems as they appear.

LIVESTOCK ECONOMY

Growing and caring for your livestock will allow you to access some new resources and rewards.

Grown Cattle and Sheep can be sold at a Stable for a variety of resources. Simply lead your animal to the Stables and speak to the new vendor outside, where you will receive a randomized offer based on the gene quality of the animal. You can reject the offer and get another two more times, at which point the vendor will get annoyed and won't want to buy the animal for 15 minutes.

Wool can be harvested from Sheep and traded in to the same vendor, where you will get up the three offers just like when you sell animals. In this case the rewards offered will be based on how much wool you bring in the one go - the maximum being 400. High risk, high reward.

MILK

Cows give you access to a new resource - milk. It can be consumed as is, but if you refrigerate it for 4 hours, you will gain a new option to skim the milk. Skimming the milk will give you two items - Skimmed Milk and Cream. Cream is a more powerful consumable.

Milk and Cream can also be used in a variety of crafting recipes. Milk will generally increase the duration of tea effects, while Cream can be used to increase the potency of those effects.

LIVESTOCK FENCING

To help keep your new livestock under control, we've added new animal gate and fence deployables - perfect for keeping your pet animals safe (ish!).

BIOFUEL GENERATOR

A way to finally make use of raw or spoiled meat. The Biofuel Generator converts organic matter to low grade, but it must be stirred by hand!

You can fill it up, stir it and let it process. It will take around 30~ minutes before you'll have to stir again, but don't worry - you can hook up some IO to let you know it needs stirring even when you're in the next room.

The amount of low grade you're given depends on the type of organic matter you put in, those with a larger calorific value will give you more low grade.

CRITTERS AND SWIMMERS

Alongside the livestock, we are bringing in some smaller animals to make the world feel more alive! Frogs, Rabbits, Squirrels, Sea turtles, Crabs, and Jellyfish will all be appearing around the island in the biomes that suit them.

Performance

The critters are heavily budgeted and have dedicated behaviours to ensure they don't take up any more server (and client) performance than strictly necessary. For now, they are mostly set dressing, and their performance limits are set with that in mind.

Thanks to our many efforts to optimise other aspects of the game, we can use a part of those savings to give the game more life and vibrancy!

AIR WOLF REPAIRABLE HELIPAD

At the start of the wipe the Air Wolf helipad in Bandit Camp will now be in a state of disrepair. The air vehicle vendor NPC will refuse to sell vehicles to anyone until the helipad is repaired.

Repairing the helipad is a process similar to constructing siege weapons - a certain amount of resources are required and you can transfer resources from your inventory by bashing the helipad with a hammer. Once the helipad is repaired it stays repaired for the duration of the wipe.

The intention is that repairing the helipad requires a communal effort and air vehicles purchased from this vendor should no longer start spawning too quickly into the start of the wipe. If a clan wishes to get quick access to air vehicles they are required to invest a significant amount of resources to do so and they are also opening up access to the vendor to everyone else on the server.

Server admins can change this behaviour via convars [c]vehicle.padrepairsrequired[/c] (if false this change is effectively reverted) and [c]vehicle.setrepairablepads[/c] (force helipad into fully disrepaired/repaired state with 0/1)

SANDBAG STACKING

Sandbags have been reworked. They now have four stages, and each stage is upgraded to the next by stacking another sandbag deployable on top. Each stage grows taller, with the final stage being a pillbox version. All Sandbag skins are supported across all variations.

The crating cost of the sandbag deployable has been reduced to account for needing to stack more of them. When found in loot, Sandbag Barricades will now be a stack of 4. We've also increased the total stack size to 20.

POWERGRID LOOT ROOMS

Building on the Powerplant loot room introduced in the Power Trip update, we’ve added new loot rooms to many other monuments. These rooms are locked by default and become accessible once enough Heavy Fuses have been inserted into the Powerplant to generate the required power. The number of Heavy Fuses needed to unlock each room varies, with more challenging monuments requiring more fuses than beginner-friendly ones.

We won’t spoil the exact locations of these new rooms, but you’ll find them at the following monuments:

• Airfield

• Ferry Terminal

• Harbour 1

• Harbour 2

• Ferry Terminal

• Junkyard

• Launch Site

• Military Tunnels

• Nuclear Missile Silo

• Radtown

POPULATION DECAY SCALING OF HEAVY FUSES

Power phases are intended to fluctuate based on player interaction with the system. This is largely working as we expected on high population servers. However, on servers with lower population, power is often offline for extended periods of time. With the addition of the marketplace needing power to function, this started to lock out basic necessities like trade. To help ease the pain, we’ve made two changes.

Firstly, the decay of heavy fuses will now scale with population. If a server has 10 or less players online, heavy fuses will last four times longer. This gradually scales back to normal values at 100. We’ll continue to monitor this and make adjustments as necessary.

Secondly, we have moved the location of the small heavy fuse box at the Power Plant. It’s now accessible from outside the building via a broken window. This should help keep minimum power phases online.

CLIENT PREDICTED GRENADES/EXPLOSIVES

Grenades/C4/Satchels in Rust are server-sided. This means when you left-click, your client will tell the server that it has to spawn the grenade or c4, etc and then we have to wait for the server to do so. With higher ping, this can feel like a substantial wait.

We are now introducing some client prediction when you use a grenade/c4/satchel. This means that throwing these items will now feel way smoother (especially on higher pings) as your local client will simulate what will happen on the server before the server has to tell us, but don't worry: if there are any discrepancies, your client will be corrected. This shouldn't happen too often, but it will kick in when it needs to.

MACHETE REFRESH

This month, another of our old models gets a long-overdue makeover. The new high-quality machete model features high-resolution textures and a new set of animations.

COUNTRY SELECTION UI REFRESH

The country selection UI was a bit of a mess when it was first implemented. With it now being a large part of the server browser, we felt it was time to give it its own design and freshen up!

PERFORMANCE - VIEWMODEL MEMORY

We noticed recently that the hands model that forms part of every viewmodel was taking up a surprisingly large amount of memory. Each viewmodel had the same hand mesh included - it was the same mesh but duplicated and bundled with the LR, the Eoka, etc. It wasn't the sort of thing that would have been worth optimising years ago (each one was only 0.9mb) but nowadays we have over 100 viewmodels so it's adding up.

We went back through every viewmodel in the game and removed the mesh, then made one standard hands mesh that gets created as well when you equip a viewmodel.

This required us to improve some of our internal tooling as not having the mesh included in the viewmodel made it difficult to preview and inspect animations in the Unity editor. Optimisations are important, but generally not at the expense of our internal workflows and efficiency.

We removed 133 meshes and saved roughly 100MB of memory in total.

NEW WORKSHOP SKINNABLE - ALL LADDER HATCHES

This month’s workshop skinnable is another four items! The Ladder Hatches:

• Ladder Hatch

• Triangle Ladder Hatch

• Armored Ladder Hatch

• Armored Triangle Ladder Hatch

This is sure to open up some doors (hatches) to the skinning community! We’ve put in extra effort to make the top and bottom of these hatches unique, so there’s plenty of opportunity to turn your hatch into a delicious pizza.

To make your own Ladder Hatch skins, head over to the in-game workshop and locate the Ladder Hatch deployable items listed above. From there, you can download the model files and add your own materials.

PLAGUE DOCTOR HAZMAT SUIT ITEM DLC

MONUMENT BLOCKERS

Monument blockers are a new obstacle we're adding to monuments with red keycard puzzle rooms. They’re intended to slow down early access to the loot at these monuments. They require a significant amount of damage to destroy but once destroyed they won't respawn. You may also find a handful of weaker monument blockers which can be destroyed by melee.

We don't think this will have an enormous impact on progression speed but it might make the early wipe a little more interesting for the first joiners.

In the event they aren’t destroyed within the first 24 hours, they will start to decay.

UPKEEP GROUP SCALING

Starting this month Tool Cupboards will now apply an additional upkeep tax based on the number of players that are in a base. When calculating that number we consider a few things:

• Any players directly authed on the TC

• Any players that have been deauthed from the TC in the last 24 hours

• Any players that are authed on a code lock in the base (including guest code access)

• Any players that were deauthed from a code lock in the last 24 hours

The upkeep rates are tiered based on number of players:

• First 4 players incur no tax

• Next 6 players incur 2% tax per player

• Subsequent players incur 4% tax per player

This means a TC with 6 players authed will have +4% upkeep, a TC with 12 players will have +20% upkeep. There is a maximum tax amount of 300%. You can see the current tax rate being applied by hovering over the upkeep cost while the TC is open.

Large player groups are a tricky game balance problem to tackle as they essentially bypass most difficulty mechanics in the game via sheer numbers. We don't want to make this an unviable playstyle - Rust is a sandbox best played with friends and we believe you should be able to play it as you see fit.

We're hoping this adds an interesting problem for large groups to solve that doesn't come at the expense of small groups and solos as we believe these groups don't really have many interesting gameplay problems to tackle.

HQM NODE AND COLLECTABLE

High quality metal ore nodes and collectables can now be found across the island. They're extremely scarce, but you'll have more luck finding the HQM node in the Jungle.

MARKETPLACE POWER

The Drone marketplace is now connected to last months Power Plant system, requiring the server to keep the power plant up and running in order to operate drone deliveries. The marketplace now has a built in power level that slowly increases when 4 or more fuses are active in the Power Plant.

Once the battery hits 50% it can start accepting purchases. As long as at least one fuse is inserted into the Power Plant the battery won't decrease, but if it drops below 50% then the marketplace will deactivate again.

You can see the current charge level from the marketplace map screen.

MEDICAL HONEY BANDAGE

The Medical Honey Bandage is a brand-new healing item on the Workbench Level 1. Designed to bridge the gap between the regular Bandage and Medical Syringe, it gives aspiring beekeepers another way to put their honey reserves to good use. Players with thriving bee farms often end up with more honey than they know what to do with, so we hope this new item makes the surplus feel a little sweeter.

ATTACK HELI/HAB CONDITIONAL ARMOUR

We’ve heard your feedback - the Attack Helicopter is too difficult to counter.

Attack helicopters' existing cockpit armour will now fall off in stages as it becomes damaged, exposing both the pilot and gunner. Pilots will now have to be more careful with how close they fly to the sun.

Attack heli armour conditions

• 80% Left panel - 680hp

• 70% Right panel - 595hp

• 60% Front panel - 510hp

We can't forget about the armoured HABs though, these will also have conditional armour.

Armoured HAB armour conditions

• 90% Left panel - 2250hp

• 80% Right panel - 2000hp

• 70% Back panel - 1750hp

• 60% Front panel - 1500hp

MODULAR CAR HANDLING IMPROVEMENTS

We've given a little bit of love to how modular cars handle. The steering, turning and suspension have all been tweaked to feel better. We have hopefully also improved how well they drive for players with higher latency.

As well as that, we have also added a handbrake mechanic, you can activate it by pressing your CTRL key. Now you will be able to do hairpin turns, take tighter corners, drift, and even do some doughnuts.

RADWATER SPRINKLER BUFF

Yes: we are buffing Radwater again. This time we've given it a large buff when used in Sprinklers, specifically against those with armour.

Radwater will now seep through more armour types, causing significant radiation to those in full kits, or lower radiation protection gear. Hazmats are still an effective counter.

SAM SITE BUFFED VS. DRONES

The SAM site will now do a much better job of destroying hostile drones.

Missiles will fly faster vs drones and have a larger detonation fuse area, meaning drones get taken down much more reliably.

NOTABLE CHANGES

We've made several smaller balance changes across the board this month, some addressing community pain points.

Heavy Plate Helmet

The heavy plate helmet now suppresses noise when worn. We've also increased the crafting costs.

Heavy Plate Armour

Players wearing the Heavy Plate Jacket or Pants will now make noise when moving, audible to other players.

Swamp Trees

The wood harvest from swamp trees has been significantly increased to be in line with other types of trees.

Semi-Pistol

The damage falloff has been increased, meaning less damage at range. We've also increase the crafting cost.

Pies

Various pies have had their durations extended and recipes adjusted. The Hunters pie bleed reduction has increased.

Grenades

FLASHLIGHT REMAKE

Let there be light!

This month, the flashlight has received a new update - featuring a brand new high quality model, high resolution textures, and new animations. We've also updated the functionality, r/click to turn on/off, just like the torches. You'll even get a different admire animation, based on whether it's on or off!

ARROW REMAKE

Arrows have had a facelift. Wooden arrows have now been updated to have more visual interest (complete with new fletching) and to feel more "RUST".

Under the hood, it's been a fiddly one, as each existing weapon contained the arrow mesh directly, so updated rigs and prefabs were required.

If this felt like dejavu, you're right. We accidentally left it in the last dev blog. It's in-game this time, we promise.

NEW WORKSHOP SKINNABLE: WOOD ARMOR

This month’s workshop skinnable is all four pieces of Wood Armor:

• Wood Chestplate

• Wood Armor Pants

• Wood Armor Helmet

• Wood Armor Gloves

Branching out to all four Wood Armor pieces this month we’re pining for the community to spruce up the workshop!

To make your own Wood Armor skins, head over to the in-game workshop and leaf through the Wood Armor attire items listed above. From there, you can download the model files and add your own materials and make something tree-mendous.

CRYSTAL ASSAULT RIFLE DLC

Machined from the toughest gemstones, this Assault Rifle skin will show each and every shot you take.

Coming in 5 unique color variations, the Crystal Assault Rifle shows ammunition in the magazine as well as inner workings of the internals as you fire.

The Crystal Assault Rifle can be purchased in-game or from the Rust Steam item store

NEW WORLD MODELS

It's about time world models have a bit of love. This month, we're introducing over 70 new world models to replace the burlap sack.

We went to effort to make sure they were more or as performant than the burlap sack. Dropped items from electrical components to clothing.

NETWORK RANGE AUDIT

Lots of the entities in the world are usually networked way before they can be seen by players. Sometimes this happens too far out, so if a player was running through a specific grid: they may be getting network data about entities which they likely won't be super close to. These all add up: resulting in extra network overhead for the client + server.

A few months ago we rolled out a system that would allow us to have custom network ranges for specific objects: close, standard, far. This has only been setup for the very worst offenders, but now I've had a proper audit of most of our entities and set a huge amount of entities (around 300) to that 'close' network range. This affects things like signs, mushrooms, driftwood etc, greatly reducing our overhead.

This won't affect gameplay, and nothing has been reduced which is rendered very far in the distance. We hope to be able to better use this system in the future, but this is a great start.

RANDOM SKIN CRAFTING

There's a new "random" skin option at the start of the skin list. With this selected, each craft of that item will get a random, unlocked skin applied.

This is saved per item, so you can have it activated for some items and keep other items with a specific skin selected.

NEW NAVMESH

We introduced a completely new navmesh in a previous patch, disabled by default, accessible by booting servers with the -useNewNavmesh command line parameter.

We since improved performance a lot, reduced the save sizes, and squashed a lot of bugs.

This patch we are going to enable it on some of our servers and monitor how it performs.

The goal is to make it the default as a hotfix or as part of next patch if everything goes well.

What you can expect as a player:

• maybe some animals will enter your base or get in monuments

What you can expect as a server owner:

• navmesh is saved to disk and loaded when the server restarts, potentially leading to faster boots

• the continuous runtime cost of NPC navigation is lighter on the main thread but uses more background threads

This is part of a push to improve performance and stability of NPCs in the long term, but also to have the option to have various NPCs navigate player bases correctly.

IMPROVED SERVER EVENT SAVING

Most Rust servers follow a daily restart schedule, to help with server stability and performance.

These restarts should ideally be fast and not affect gameplay in any way, so players can just keep going about their business after rejoining.

Until now, this wasn't the case with some of the game's biggest events, such as oil rig - if you happened to be taking rig at an unlucky time and got interrupted by the server going down, all of the loot crates and most importantly, the hackable locked crate would just disappear.

This month I've been working on fixing these kinds of issues by improving the way the server saves and loads the state of these events. Affected are the oil rigs, cargo ship, patrol helicopter, Bradley and satellite crash sites.

PAINT BRUSH VISUALIZER

A new option has been added to the painting UI that projects the current paintbrush onto the object you are painting! This should help out a lot when you're painting with different brush sizes and textures at varying zoom levels.