1/12 @ 10:12am - Early update today! It's out now, check out the devblog for details. Pardon the lack of Thursday update post for us this week, I nipped the tip of my finger off last night and it's proving to be hard to type! We'll be back next week.

Edit: Our Medium servers had an issue with their save files and had to wipe. Sorry for the invonvenience.

1/10 @ 6:40pm EST - This week of Rust development is well underway, and we’re seeing some changes to loot looks and locations, along with some helpful fixes. Let’s get into it...

New junk piles

Several new variants of the junk piles found across the map have been added. They contain the same types of loot (barrels, wood boxes, and food crates) but they do stand to spice up the look of the Rust landscape a bit.

They also provide a new type of cover for PvP skirmishes. The car, for example, has certain parts which can be shot through, and the tire stack is tall enough to hide an entire Newman. Here are a couple pictures:

Edit: New purple loot boxes are now in and they give full items like hatchets, armor, and starter weapons!

Caves will spawn loot!

The new natural caves will soon have more uses than simply looking nice or building a little base - loot spawns have been added. Taking the form of mining carts and crates, this new source of loot will spawn throughout all 9 types of natural caves. Unfortunately, this change was made on the prerelease/dungeon_art branch - meaning it likely will not be going live till the next forced wipe on February 2nd.

Unity updated

Garry has updated to a new beta of Unity (5.4.4f1). The main takeaway from this new version is a fix for alt-tabbing while using window-mode exclusive. That means you’ll once again be able to switch in and out of the game while using “-window-mode exclusive” in your start parameters!

Why would you ever do this? The benefit was first introduced on Reddit last October, when bobbygfresh shared how this launch parameter can increase FPS and lower input lag.

Optimizations

Speaking of increased FPS, the team has done several changes with regards to optimizations this week. Between Andre reducing the overall client side player collider and rigidbody count by a third, and Garry doing several other optimization fixes, the game will hopefully be running even smoother by the time Thursday roles around.

Jumping seem off? You're not alone...

The devs reduced the physics step rate to speed things up last week. Unfortuantely, it is causing some unforeseen results. To get things back to normal, type this in console (f1):

physics.steps 30

Other fixes

Repair bench collider fix (no more putting them in windows to block incoming shots)
Fix for invisible rock when throw