12:00am EST - Another week in Rust development and we’re seeing improvements to AI, tweaks to the newest grenade, progress on the cargo ship, and more!

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

AI Improvements

Pål is progressing on several improvements to both animal and scientist AI. This includes going dormant properly, awareness of thrown objects, avoidance of explosions, robust sensation data around explosions, and more.

Mainly these improvements have been based around behavior, but some performance optimizations have also been made. Long and short: AI should behave better with less overhead.

Smoke grenade tweaks

After adding smoke grenades in last week, Helk has made a few adjustments. They will now stack to two, players can throw them farther, and you can’t use them under water.

As you may recall from last week, smoke grenades last about 60 seconds, obscure the area they are thrown in, and can only be purchased at Bandit Town for 10 scrap.

Cargo ship event

Progress on the newest server event continues this week as Damian and Vincent polish the art of the Cargo Ship. As mentioned in the devblog, this ship will sporadically circle the waters of Rust, giving players the opportunity to board, loot, shoot, and more.

Damian said he’d send me some shots at some point today, so stay tuned for some initial images.

Edit: Just got the above shot from Vincent!

Hapis 10

Alistair is working on another iteration of the Hapis Island map. With a focus on polishing some areas up, he’s doing more fine tuned work this month with the intention of putting some large changes in next month for longer testing.

Other stuff

Pumpkins and corn and now stackable and no longer have condition
More work on optimization
Misc Bandit Town fixes