12:00am EST - We’re near the halfway point for development this month and the team at Facepunch is working on fixes, optimization, and some new items!

Our update preview stream goes live at 3pm EST. Follow @Rustafied for news throughout the day.

Smoke grenades

Helk snuck a new item into the game this week. Smoke grenades can now be purchased at Bandit Town for 10 scrap each. They cannot be crafted and appear to only be obtainable at the weapon shop of the newest monument.

A handy tool, smoke grenades emit a large amount of - you guessed it - smoke. The smoke lasts around a minute and does a good job of obscuring the area. In the interest of performance, Helk has significantly lowered the amount of particles. He's also added a full grey-out effect when in the smoke to prevent anyone from being able to see out.

Available at
Bandit Town

Cost
10 scrap

Duration
~1 minute

Optimization

The team continued working on improving performance. Among other things, Diogo and Helk removed allocations for garbage collections in a bunch of places. Given this appears to have been another source of stuttering in the game, players will hopefully experience much fewer issues come the next update.

Skin icon fixes

For a while now, icons for certain skins haven’t been loading properly. Thankfully, that appears to be resolved this week after Andre has rebuilt all skin icons. He’s also fixed skinned mesh render bounds not always refreshing when rendering icons, which could lead to odd icon scales.

Recycler improvement

Helk has modified an annoying trait of the recycler. Instead of anyone being allowed to turn it off - which opened up for a lot of trolling around communal recyclers - only the user of the recycler may now operate it.

Cargo ship progress

Vince and Damien have continued their work on the art to go with an upcoming server event, the Cargo Ship. As described in the roadmap, the Cargo Ship will occasionally circle the map in Rust, allowing players to approach and board to battle scientist NPC’s and each other to secure loot.

No visuals from the team on this yet, but it does appear to be a priority to get in for this months update. More on this as work progresses in the coming weeks.

Other stuff

• Recycler added to Bandit Town
• inventory.give now takes item condition as an optional third parameter
• Icon for supply signal has been updated