3/22 - @RustUpdates Twitter is once again working! Also, a bunch more small changes have been committed, see details below.

12:00am EST - With two weeks before the next update and forced wipe, the team is making great progress on new items along with adding a bunch of quality of life improvements.

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

Quality of life changes

Helk has completed a bunch of small changes and fixes which improve players lives in a big way. Here’s the rundown:

Thompson can now take Flashlight and Lasersights
Improved laser effects
Underwater crates untie in half the time
Can only access Minicopter fuel if pilot or engine off
Tightened up Minicopter collision shape
Minicopters now decay when indoors at half the outside rate (instead of lasting forever)
Can recycle empty cans (10 frags for beans, 8 frags for tuna)
Water Jug can go into fridges
Salvaged Axe harvests more animal flesh
Improved flashlight effect wall clipping
Explosive ammo can be heard much farther away (quieter distance sound)
Explosive ammo causes weapons and silencers to lose condition faster

3/22 Edit - Some more changes have been committed. Here’s the low down:

Fixed Muzzle Brake not properly applying recoil reduction
Muzzle Brake reduces damage by 15%
Compound Bow behaves exactly like hunting bow when not charged (same rof/damage etc, was 80%)
Compound Bow costs 25 metal frags instead of 75
Code locks are stackable in players inventory
Tracers are visible from long distance but are 1/4 the length
Shelves can no longer be placed on top of each other
Barricades now stack (10)
Dropbox can now be repaired
Vending machine can no longer be placed through world layer

Building Debris

Andre has added a new dynamic to block the placement of new building blocks during raids. This debris entity system will throw debris on the ground to block placement of walls and doors for 30 seconds after they have been destroyed. This will make it harder for base defenders to rebuild quickly during online raids.

Water optimizations

Changes to this new wave system for water continue to trickle down. This week we’ve seen Diogo optimize waves for both GPU’s and CPU’s, making it 35% faster in the case of CPU’s. He’s also added a graphics.waves console toggle to help profile ocean wave performance.

Compound lighting

The compound (or Outpost) monument is getting a bit of a visual overhaul. Petur appears to be going through various sections of this monument to update the dynamics of lighting. Work is still taking place on a separate branch, so no visuals quite yet. That said, expect to see some visual changes to this point of interest in the near future.

Other things

More work on the new human AI system
Fix for ores spawning inside hilltop rocks
EAC update (third attempt)
Unload certain large static prefabs after loading the map
Test of a super potato quality setting