6/9 @ 10:22pm EST - Our Blue (Medium) Monument Puzzle Solution Guide just went live! The Red solution guide is still in process, but here's a google doc with explanations of the red puzzles in the meantime.

6/8 @ 10:30pm EST - Here's a fresh guide with Green Card locations and Basic Puzzle solutions! Blue and red guides coming soon...

View Green Puzzle Guide

6/8 @ 4:10pm EST - The update is live! Game on!

6/8 @ 3:00pm EST - We are waiting on the final build. Patch should hit soon! In the meantime, check out the devblog.

6/8 @ 1:58pm EST - With about an hour to go before the planned patch time, the devs are still working on some fixes. Looks like it might be later than 3pm before we see this go live...

6/7 @ 4:08pm EST - Update will be tomorrow around 3pm EST.

6/7 @ 2:28pm EST - And it's official - the patch is delayed till tomorrow. We're still going to do an update preview stream in half an hour.

6/7 @ 2:15pm EST - Got some bad news...

6/7 @ 1:00am EST - Update day has arrived, and with it, some huge shifts to how you get loot at monuments.

Given it is the first Thursday of the month, maps on all servers will wipe when the update hits. Facepunch has also announced a forced blueprint wipe, meaning everyone will have a completely fresh start.

There is no set time for when the patch will hit - and Helk warned me it may be a later one. Our update stream will start at 3pm EST (earlier if it looks like the patch is coming out sooner, but that's doubtful). Follow @Rustafied for news throughout the day.

Update summary video

Here's an update summary video from Puddy!

Overview of Monument Puzzles

Monument puzzles completely shift the dynamic of looting in Rust. No longer is loot freely scattered around landmarks, requiring players to simply account for other enemies, radiation, and maybe a little parkour to fill their inventory. Instead, security doors, keypads, fuse boxes, and more now stand in the way of many of Rust’s precious goodies.

Given this functionality was merged in to the staging branch less than 24 hours ago, it is very much still a work in progress. That means you should expect glitches, exploits, lack of balance, and maybe even some game crashes. That said, this new dynamic stands to drastically shift game progression and overall balance in the long run. Also, monuments in general look a lot more interesting and detailed, so that’s nice.

This post summarizes the core distinctions of monument puzzles. All is subject to change, so I’ll add edits as needed. I’m not going to get into how to solve any specific puzzles around the map, but we do plan on launching full guide in the next week or two which will delve into those types of solutions.

Security doors

Much of the loot at monuments is now locked behind various security doors. To open these doors, you must make sure they have power and the proper level access card to open (green, blue, or red).

Once opened, they will automatically close in a matter of seconds (so move through them quickly). On the inside of each door there is a red button to the left which, when pressed, will open it regardless of if there is power running.

Note: we have noticed some inconsistencies with this in testing, so it may be possible to get trapped (although Helk confirmed it is not intentional).

Key cards

Key cards are a requirement to accessing any security door. There are 3 types of cards - green, blue, and red - each with its own level of clearance. Key cards only work on their specific access level (so no using red cards to open green doors).

Cards don't stack and have durability, with a maximum of 10 swipes before they become unusable. In addition, not all cards you find have full durability - so mind your swipes! As expected, you can’t craft cards, they can only be found.

So where do you find them? In general, cards are found on desks located various places around monuments. Green cards - the lowest access level - will also drop from scientists periodically. Blue cards - middle clearance - will be available for purchase from the tool machine in the Outpost, but they will be very expensive. Red cards - top level of clearance - seem to only be found on desks behind blue security doors (makes sense, right?).

Access granted
Basic

Found
On desks
In Scientist loot

Access granted
Medium

Found
On desks
Purchase at Outpost

Access granted
Advanced

Found
On desks in blue access areas

Fuses, fuse boxes, and timed circuits

Once you have the appropriate access card, you’ll need to make sure the door has power. Enter the Electric Fuse. This new item can be pretty unreliable, but allows electricity to pass through for a short period of time when placed in a fuse box. They cannot be crafted, however, you’ll find them in various loot crates around the map. They can also be recycled for 20 scrap if you end up with more than you need.

When trying to solve a puzzle, you’ll want to look for a fuse box in the vicinity of the security doors (they are mounted on walls and often shooting sparks). Open up the box and place your fuse in the single slot. You may need to throw a nearby switch (also mounted on a wall) to get the juice flowing. Hurry up and get to the door with your key card ready to swipe as the circuit will blow within a short amount of time (causing the fuse to disappear). Keep in mind that a passersby can snatch a fuse straight from the box, causing power to be shut off immediately.

There are also timed circuits for certain puzzles. These are similar to normal fuse boxes, but instead of needing to place a fuse item, you can simply activate it to start the timer and get electricity flowing. Keep in mind, this is just a first pass on the functionality. Helk told me he plans on adding visible wires and more in the coming month.

Manual overrides

Occasionally you’ll come across blast doors with a manual override wheel next to it. These can be used to circumvent certain security doors (generally green ones) by simply holding ‘use’ on the wheel. Doing so will gradually open the adjacent blast doors. Once the door is raised enough, let go and run under it before it closes.

Where are these puzzles?

You’ll find puzzles at most monuments including power plant, launch site, military tunnels, sewers, airfield, train yard, water treatment plant, satellite dish, and harbors. Each monument has its own set of unique puzzles, each with various access levels and solutions.

As mentioned above, we plan on creating a guide in the near future which highlights specific ways to solve the puzzles. In the meantime, the main thing to know is: Find the access card, get the power running, and loot like hell!

What loot do you get?

Speaking of loot, what can you expect to get for solving all these puzzles?

It already looks like there are more loot boxes in general spawning in certain puzzle areas. I asked Helk, and he said although there haven’t been many adjustments to loot yet, he plans to make loot boxes found behind puzzles have twice the amount of items. I also wouldn’t be surprised if we see some other miscellaneous balance shifts to loot tables in general given this new dynamic.

The loot behind each puzzle resets every 30 minutes. Given it’s hard to tell when the last person solved the puzzle, sometimes you may hit the jackpot, while other times you may come up empty handed.

Edit: Puzzle doors now do not close until the puzzle resets. This means you'll be able to tell if there is loot in there or not.

Also, puzzles do not reset if there is a player nearby. If a player is nearby, the timer freezes then a 60 second cool-down period begins (so it'll try again every minute till someone isn't there).

That's not all...

Monument puzzles aren’t the only changes to Rust this week. Below is a summary of what else to expect...

Spas12 buff

At the request on the community, Helk has increased the damage dealt by the Spas12 shotgun. It now does 135 damage instead of 105.

Hapis improvements

Alistair has done a bunch of tweaks and improvements to the Hapis island map. Although the monument puzzles have not been added yet, the Outpost monument is now in along with some extra islands in the south. As usual, Hapis additions run a bit behind those to procedural maps, so expect more in the coming month.

New diving gear models

Taylor has done an update on some of the diving suit model art. Although this does not change the functionality in any manner, shape, or form, it does provide a fresh look to the diving tank, mask, and fins.

AI improvements

Pål has done a ton of commits over the past several weeks on improving AI. Along with enhancements to animal behavior, he’s completed a ton of shifts to scientists including better target detection, movement, cover finding, and more.

Misc. fixes and tweaks

Longer despawn timer on gunpowder and sulfur
Fixed being able to drink water from rivers forever to heal, maxes out at 50% now
Various weapon material tweaks
Fixed weapon skins overriding clothing skins on viewmodels
Added Savas offshore junkpiles and dive sites
Options Menu max gibs 2000 because 10000 is a bad idea (can be set higher via console effects.maxgibs)

Looking forward...

There are a bunch of exciting things on the horizon. Here are some broad strokes of what else is being worked on, expect more details from the developers in the devblog.

Andre has started work on allowing for custom maps to be made in the future
Progress on Bandit town continues moving forward
A new model for C4 may be on the way
More work on the new canoe and oar

Unity and performance

Now for the elephant in the room: is performance going to be better this update? The short answer is: probably not.

Yes, the game is running on a new version of Unity. And yes, this new version opens up the possibility of offloading certain processes to alternate threads. Unfortunately, it doesn’t do this out of the box. Each optimization must be manually completed, and the devs didn’t get any of that work in for this update. In addition to this, the new version has created some issues which cause the game to crash. The developers are aware of this, but it’s unclear how many fixes will make it in prior to the update going live.

That means you can expect server performance to still be shoddy across the board (especially on larger or longer wipe servers). In preparation of this, I did upgrade the dedicated box which runs our EU Main server (as performance on that has been particularly poor the past few weeks). Hopefully this upgrade helps a bit, but remember, this is a game wide issue and not related to any particular server / host.

Introducing: EU Hapis

I’m happy to announce we are opening our newest server when the update hits: EU Hapis. Due to popular demand, we are trying out a one month wipe cycle at 150 player slots. Look for it on the official list after the update hits.