3:45pm EST - Some notes on animals after todays update:

Animal meat is dropping again but it's pretty fucked up
- Boar and deer drop chicken (which really sucks cause chicken doesn't provide any health boost).
- Wolves do drop wolf meat (the best meat there is)
- Bear drops bear meat but you can't use it
- Humans drop human meat still
Deer and boar are also crazy fucking fast now

1:05pm EST - Some people are getting kicked due to network exceptions. Garry is working on a patch for this now.

12:50pm EST - A client / server update just came out. We did not need to wipe. If you're having trouble connecting, make sure you have run the most recent client update.

12:20pm EST - We’re almost to the end of this week in Rust development. With several client and server updates (the last one being yesterday), there has been some great progress the past several days. Before I get into what the team is doing today, I’d like to discuss a dynamic dear to many players' hearts...

The state of raiding

Yesterday, the building health regeneration speed shifted in the code. To test these changes, I grabbed a group of regulars, headed into a test server and started hitting some walls. Here’s what we found: The building health regeneration system is still very fucking wonky.

Sometimes, you can get the damage to catch and start bringing down the overall health. Many times, however, the health regeneration is simply way too fast to make a dent.
Health regeneration is slower than it was before, if you are able to make it catch.
This allows 2 people with hatchets to break down a wood wall (500 hp) in a little over a minute (3 people in about 45 seconds).
Subsequently, a stone wall (2500 hp) will come down in about 5 minutes with a team of 2.
With the lower health regen, it does seem possible for one person to take a wall down.
Remember, this is all assuming you can make it catch. Many times, health generation is just too fast.
Although there has been much speculation on what impacts health regeneration speeds (how long ago the item was placed, if it's been damaged before, etc), we have yet to nail down an exact cause.

So, what's the best way to raid then?

Go with a group of 2 or more.
Use hatchets, salvaged axes, salvaged hammers or thompsons (and a shit load of bullets).
Pick a wall, hit it for about 30 seconds.
If the health bar doesn’t start going down, pick another wall.
Eventually, you may get lucky and be able to take the wall down.

Server performance

I want to take a moment to acknowledge how far performance has come in the last week. Decreased load times and other optimizations are allowing us to run smooth with well over 100,000 entities in the server. It’s been nearly 4 days since the last wipe and we’re still running strong. Yes, we’re still getting the occasional mass drop. Overall, however, we’re in a much better place than we were last week.

Update: The update which just came out has some fixes for network congestion which should fix the mass drops.

Rad towns

Garry has delved back into the radtown branch today by working on the loot recipes system. I believe this is what determines which items show up in loot boxes (although I’m not 100% on this). He's also doing some work on blueprints, making them restricted to the players unlock list. This stuff is still a little ways away, however, I can’t fucking wait to see rad towns and loot boxes in the game!

Occupied box fixed

Maurino is back and taking care of business. As his first order yesterday, he fixed the occupied box bug (boxes being stuck in 'occupied' state if you are looking in one during a server restart). This fix is not live yet, however, expect it on the next update.

Update: This is now live

Recoil

Maurino is also doing some work on the recoil system. The recoil branch was just merged into main meaning we should start seeing some kick back when firing weapons after the next update.

Update: This is now live

More remnants!

We’re seeing a lot of great new stuff showing up on the remnants trello board this week. Megan posted some storm drains today and Paul posted an abandoned guard tower. Take a look:

Lighthouse is back

The lighthouse is back and it is indeed taller!

Server owner community

The other week, I started an invite only community for Rust server owners and admins. The goal is to provide a space where server operators can discuss issues around updates and running a server in general. With daily discussions around the state of the game and what's new in updates, we’re off to a great start. If you own, operate or administer a Rust server and are interested in joining this community, please email rustafied@gmail.com with your server name and info.