2:30pm EST - Devblog and patch postponed due to a bad burger... Expect both to launch early tomorrow. The launch of our new, low pop server is subsequently delayed. Also, if you're trying to get into our dev branch server, make sure you've opted your client into the development branch.

1:50pm EST - With only a couple hours before launch, the team is focusing on a bunch of bug fixes and finishing touches. Here’s two important ones:

• Top tier wall upgrade costs are fixed - Upgrades to armor now cost 200 wood, 200 stone and 200 metal frags per building block.
• graphics.lodbias - This fresh cvar appears to be a valuable new tool in improving FPS. The default value is .5 and, in my initial tests, lowering it to .2 showed a boost of 10 fps or more. It is not yet on the F2 menu so you’ll need to set it manually in console.

2:20am EST - It’s our favorite day of the week again, update day! We’ve still got some hours till the she blows, the average launch time in the past several weeks has been between 3-4pm EST (7-8pm GMT). That still leaves a full day of development for the team and, as always, I’ll update as the day progresses. In the meantime, here’s what’s in store so far...

Unique character models

Stone Pickaxe

New foundation features

More new icons

New funky fauna

Other things

• Corpses last 30 minutes instead of 2

• Raiding with tools is harder

• Airdrops fly higher, move faster, and are quieter

• Admins can target specific players to spectate

• Server and client performance enhancements

• Larger maps might not be so fucked

• Horizontal building glitch is fixed

Introducing: Rustafied.com - Low Pop

There are those who love wipes and those who hate them. Given the current state of the game, with 200 people playing and building at any given time, the quality of gameplay can drop in a matter of days. This has us, up till now, catering more towards the pro-wipers.

Garry does not fall into that category. One of his goals is to have servers be able to last for 6 months between wipes. A day I look forward to, however, we’re not there yet. Here at Rustafied, we’d like to start catering to both groups of people. The fact is: less players and less shit equals better gameplay for longer. Therefore, when the update hits today, we’re opening a new, low population server.

Starting at 100 slots (and we’ll lower it if we have to) this server aims to last as long as possible between wipes. Currently, the Facepunch team is shooting to only force wipes once a month. Given a wipe was forced last week, we’ll hopefully have upwards of 3 weeks before the next one. If you’re looking for a (slightly) more relaxed environment with less wipes, keep an eye out after the update for ‘Rustafied.com - Low Pop’ on the server list (and I’ll post the IP here when it launches).

Question? Comments? Join the conversation at Rustaforum.com