3/4 @ 6:00am - A required update just came out which patches the so called 'mega ammo' hack - it appears this was the source of the crashes and rollbacks last night. Our servers are all updated, game on!

4:10pm EST - Can't get into our main servers? Try the new Rustafied.com - Medium.
200 slots, 2 week wipes. Find it on the official server list!

3:10pm EST - The update and devblog 99.1 is out! 

2:45pm EST - Our update stream is live! twitch.tv/rustafied

2:30pm EST - Server update just hit (no client or devblog yet).

2:05pm EST - "Devblog 100 will be the most significantly important blog we've done, maybe that any game has ever done" -Garry. Now why do I get the sense he's trolling everyone?

1:45pm EST - Garry just tweeted this. I wonder if we've got a surprise coming our way with the 100th devblog...

1:15pm EST - We're still seeing some fixes and tweaks coming down the pike. The update and devblog are not live yet.

7:45am EST - The 'save115' branch has been merged with main, meaning the new dungeon art, smaller map size, and Hapis changes are officially in this update. Our dev branch server has wiped (and I don't plan on wiping it again unless forced). Also, I added a couple new pictures of the dungeons and Hapis below.

12:00am EST - It's that time of the month again. No, your Aunt Flow isn’t coming for a visit - it's forced wipe day! As with all first Thursdays of the month, today's update will include a map wipe on all servers. No forced blueprint wipe appears to be in store - mainly because the leveling system will not be making it in today.

When will the update hit? As always, only time will tell. Although there are the occasional early days (I’m looking at you, last week), most updates go live between 4 and 6pm EST.

Tune into our live update stream starting at 3pm EST and follow @Rustafied for news throughout the day. Now, let's get into it...

Leveling system: Not yet

The new leveling system is not going live today. Although functionality is well underway and there was some great progress made this week, there is still a lot of work to be done before it's ready to hit mainstream. The latest estimate from Garry (yesterday via the server owner slack) is “a month or two.”

If you'd like to see where it's at yourself, simply opt into the prerelease branch and join a server. Fair warning: it’s still pretty buggy and missing lots of functionality. Stay tuned for more detailed posts on this game changer over the coming weeks.

Dungeon art

Expect to see some more details as you walk around dungeons after this update. Vince’s work for the past month is due to go live today, featuring a slew of new textures and artwork for the various dungeons around the map. No new visuals on this at the moment because the branch has not yet been merged. Check back later today for some fresh pics.

Smaller world size

The world of Rust is getting smaller with a new default world size of 3k - down from the previous 4k. You might look at this (as I did earlier this week) and think, “Oh, 25% smaller, that’s not a biggy.” But then some nice person on Twitter points out these are units squared (or whatever), and 3k is actually about 43.75% smaller than 4k. Holy fuck!

So, unless changed by a server owner, the size of the map is going to be significantly smaller after this forced wipe. In the interest of staying vanilla, testing, and all that good stuff, Rustafied servers will be conforming to this new smaller map. That said, if the smaller maps are not working out well, I will consider changing it back.

Edit: Here are a couple pros and cons for your consideration. Have some to add? Tweet it to us.

Pros
Smaller maps use less resources
Faster load times for clients and servers
Easier to find PvP action
Harder to get lost

Cons
Less dungeons spawn (less loot)
Harder to fly under the radar
Harder to find a place to build after a couple days

Hapis improvements

Petur has spent some time over the past couple of weeks ‘unsucking’ the pinnacle of non-procedurally generated maps, Hapis. Although his changes have not been merged in yet, he told me it does look like they will be included in this update. 

Edit: The Hapis changes have been merged. Here are some notes and pictures.

Notes:

• The placeholder rad towns (airfield, apartment, and pipes) have been replaced with art from the new dungeons (water treatment and military tunnels from the looks of it)
• Satellite is still there
• The long tunnel (with entrance near sat) has been closed off
• The other tunnel is still open, however, a bunch of cars and buses have been added to it
• The terrain in general looks more diverse, snow covers certain sections of road

Lock changes

Garry has made a couple tweaks to how locks work. Along with making it so you can’t interact with a lock while a door is moving, he’s shifted the default action when ‘E’ is clicked from ‘lock/unlock’ to ‘open.’ This is a good step towards decreasing those accidental locks and unlocks.

Bug fixes

The team has also fixed a bunch of bugs. Here are some highlights:

• Explosive ammo no longer does double damage on some objects
• The decay timer is now reset when an object is fully repaired
• Low grade fuel is now refunded when extra is placed in hats
• You will now be disconnected from your current server when trying to join another one
• Fixed helicopter not targeting some people at monuments
• Ragdoll head stretching fixed
• Fixed an exploit with turrets and roofs
• Fixed cheat reporter setting reporting player's entityid instead of steamid

Websocket RCONs

Garry has done some more work on the new websocket RCON first mentioned last week. He’s added some new commands, modified how logs and search works, along with some other things. There's also a new github project for the community to collaborate. Awesome stuff, expect some more details on the devblog.

Other things

There have been a couple of other miscellaneous commits this week...

• Large furnaces now shoot items out the chimney when overflowing
• First pass on item pickup and drop sounds
• A bunch of tweaks and fixes to the procedural map generation (icebergs are back!)
• Automatically writecfg after changing vars in the console/binding keys

Snow biome? Female models? Flamethrower?

At the moment, it doesn’t look like any of these will make it in this week.

Rust Players

Fresh wipes are always a great time for teaming up. To help connect lone wolves in Rust, we launched the Rust Players Slack community the other week. With over 800 members and growing, it’s a great resource for matchmaking - regardless of what server you play on. Read more about it here.

Rustafied: IP’s changed

In the interest of improved performance and to allow for slot expansion, we switched to a new, more powerful dedicated box for hosting our servers. This move did force us to get a new IP address. Therefore, you will need to update your favorites list (if you’re into that type of thing). Our servers are still on the official list, so they’re not that hard to find in the first place.

Reserved: Revised - Now Rustafied Medium

Last month we launched a server featuring reserved slots. Modeled after low pop, there was a one month wipe schedule and around 100 slots. After letting it ride for a month, I’ve decided to switch things around a bit.

Rustafied Reserved has 200 slots and wipes every 2 weeks. Still the vanilla experience you’ve come to expect with Rustafied - now running off our more powerful box.

Edit: I just changed the name to Rustafied.com - Medium