Livestock development continues to lead the charge this week, with milk processing, animal sales, and a bunch of new critters taking shape. Elsewhere, stacked sandbags, power grid loot rooms, terrain deformation, controller improvements, explosive prediction, and more are all in the works.

Livestock development continues

Work on Rust's upcoming livestock system continues this week, with cows, bulls, sheep, lambs, and calves all getting attention. Animals are receiving improved behaviors, animations, models, genetics, fencing interactions, and navigation. Cows now better avoid each other and players, while a new bonding system and various herd behaviors continue to take shape. Attacking livestock will also mark players hostile around safe zones.

The larger farming loop is coming together too. Sheep can be sheared, cows produce milk, and livestock introduces beef and lamb meat. A new ranch selling system also allows players to sell animals for randomized item offers. You can reject an offer twice and try for something better, but reject the third and the vendor gets annoyed and won't deal with you for 15 minutes.

Got milk?

Milk is becoming more than another food item. After spending four hours in a refrigerated container, milk can be skimmed into skim milk and cream. Skim milk retains half the calories and health along with 80% of the hydration, while cream retains half the calories, 20% of the hydration, and provides 50% more health.

Both can also modify Pure Teas. Creamy teas generally provide a stronger effect for a shorter duration, while milky teas extend the duration. For example, a Pure Ore Tea's 50% bonus for 30 minutes becomes 65% for 24 minutes with cream, or stays at 50% but lasts 45 minutes with milk. As with everything livestock-related, these numbers are still subject to change.

More critters

The livestock work is expanding beyond the farm with smaller wildlife including rabbits, squirrels, frogs, and sea turtles. Rabbits and squirrels now flee when players get too close, frogs have several randomized jumping animations, and sea turtles are getting improved spawning, swimming, water avoidance, and death animations.

Critter populations and behaviors are still being tuned, but this work has now been merged into the larger livestock development branch. There's even early work on jellyfish, making this increasingly look like a broader expansion of Rust's wildlife.

Stack those sandbags

Sandbag barricades are getting an upgrade system allowing the standard barricade to be built up into larger stacked configurations. Instead of crafting each version separately, players start with the normal sandbag and upgrade it through additional levels.

Placement guides now show where each upgrade will go and even warn when your current placement would prevent a future upgrade. Skins transfer between levels, upgrades can't clip through nearby objects, and damaged sandbags retain their percentage of health rather than receiving a free repair. Recently damaged sandbags also can't immediately be upgraded.

Power grid loot rooms

The developers continue expanding power grid gameplay into additional monument loot rooms. Work this week includes Launch Site, Train Yard, Water Treatment Plant, Sewer Branch, Nuclear Missile Silo, Radtown, and Junkyard.

Loot spawns are now being adjusted to better reflect the tier of each monument, alongside additional visual and layout polish. This remains on a separate development branch for the time being.

Controller support

Rust's ongoing controller overhaul saw another solid week of progress. PlayStation 4 and 5 layouts have been added, controller glyphs and bindings continue to be cleaned up, and Steam's controller configuration screen can now be opened directly from Rust.

Vibration and haptic feedback support has also been added, along with an option to disable haptics. A larger refactor of Rust's controller input and binding systems continues behind the scenes.

Making a dent

Early work continues on terrain deformation, including support for explosions leaving craters in the terrain. The system can account for nearby objects when applying deformation, protect areas that shouldn't be modified, and gradually heal terrain over time.

The developers are also experimenting with how foliage should react to modified terrain. This remains very early development, but could eventually result in explosions leaving actual marks on Rust's landscape.

Better throwable prediction

Client-side prediction for grenades has now been merged into the game, helping thrown explosives appear more responsive without waiting entirely on the server to determine their movement.

That system has already been expanded to C4 and satchel charges, with the C4 prediction branch also merging into main this week. The latest work improves rotation and visual handling while supporting the different throwing animations used by these explosives.

Underground expansion

Work continues on the upcoming underground train network expansion, with more polish going into a new randomized underground room. Wiring, pipes, decals, and other environmental details were added this week as the new sections take shape.

Separately, improvements to procedural rail junctions have already merged into main, fixing rare connections trains couldn't properly traverse and some confusing junction layouts.

Rendering improvements

More work on the Rust Rendering Pipeline merged into main this week. Recent changes include improved hair and beard rendering with TAA and DLSS, fixes for water reflection flickering, decals, player previews, fog, map layers such as train tunnels, and mesh painting.

Additional experimental work continues on lighting performance and image upscaling as the developers keep pushing the new rendering pipeline forward.

Fruit trees

Fruit tree development saw some balancing this week. Apples now have only a 10% chance of surviving if a tree is harvested before the fruit is picked, while coconuts are planned to have a much higher survival chance. Fruit will also no longer randomly fall simply from hitting the tree.

Natural beehives have also been restored to several oak tree variants. Fully harvesting a tree containing a hive will continue to produce honeycomb and a bee swarm.

Biofuel generator

The upcoming biofuel generator is taking shape as another use for excess food. Players will be able to put food into the generator and process it into Low Grade Fuel, with the mixture needing to be periodically stirred for successful production.

A dedicated UI is also being developed for the generator. Rates and final balancing are still being worked out, and the feature remains on its own development branch.

Other stuff

The upcoming Scrap King building skin received additional model, frame, LOD, and foundation work.
The Machete is receiving a model refresh with updated projectile, entity, world, and view models.
Ladder hatches are being set up to support Workshop skins.
Marketplace terminals now display "No Power" when unpowered, although shops can still be browsed.
Bots no longer appear in the report player window.
Server browser game mode filtering was fixed to prevent incorrect player counts and unrelated modes appearing in searches.
Apartment Complex is now properly recognized as a safe zone, fixing the missing hostile warning when approaching.
A construction restriction around Apartment Complex was fixed so the "too close to apartment complex" error works correctly.
Frontier and Pilot Hazmat Suits had a missing component restored following their rerig.
The new navigation mesh is being prepared to become the default, with the old system still available through a server launch option.
Several animation IK improvements and fixes have merged into main.
The salvaged cleaver received an audio fix.
A mini fridge shortname issue preventing it from working as a chat emoji was fixed.
Colored sky lantern descriptions were restored, an outdated Research Table warning was removed, and a typo in the Bolt Action Rifle description was fixed.
Additional automated testing has been added for building placement, world models, and other game systems.
Various server logging, RCON, profiling, store UI, and developer-tool improvements continued this week.