10:20pm EST - A small hotfix came out to fix the CH47 and barren. We have run it on our servers.

6:18pm EST - The update is live and devblog is out!

3:00pm EST - Our preview stream is live! twitch.tv/rustafied

2:30pm EST - Heard from Helk, estimated update time is 3:45 to 4:00pm EST!

12:00am EST - Update day is upon us and the team at Facepunch has some great stuff in store. We’ve got a new monument, heavy scientists with fresh AI, shifts to the Chinook event, water effects, optimizations, and more!

As with all updates, there is no set time for this patch to go live. Once it does, however, there will be a forced map wipe on all servers (no sign of a forced BP wipe).

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

Update summary video

Here’s our update summary video from Puddy.

Small Oil Rig added

A new source of loot and action has arrived in the form of an offshore monument. This Oil Rig features puzzles, Scientist NPCs, loot, a recycler, and fresh PvP opportunities. Although there are actually two Oil Rigs in the works - one large, one small - we’ll only be seeing the small version in this update as a lot of focus went into reworking the AI (see more on that below).

Overview
Accessible by boat or Minicopter, this monument spawns once per map in the depths of the ocean, far from the main island of Rust (out of view of the in game map even). The Small Oil Rig features two puzzles, several levels to explore, ~20 blue Scientist NPC’s, and one main point of ingress from the water.

Upon arriving via boat, work your way up two levels of stairs to reach the main complex. From there, explore around the three levels of loot and scientists by following the green stripes and arrow indicators found on the floor. After you wrap around a couple times, you’ll reach the top deck with a helipad. Alternatively, just fly a Minicopter in and land on the helipad.

Puzzle solutions
There are two puzzles on the Small Oil Rig: one with a green door and one with a blue and red door. If you have the cards, they are pretty easy to solve given there aren’t any fuses required at the moment.

Edit: There is a fuse on the back of a small building on the top level. It’s a little buggy at the moment but it does look like that’ll be required for one of the puzzles. I’ll update these solutions once it’s working.

Puzzle #1
The first puzzle is a small room on the second level (labeled D2).

Swipe your green card at the door.

Grab the 3 crates of loot inside.

Puzzle #2
The second puzzle is found on the top deck next to the stairs for the helipad.

Swipe your blue card at the first door.

Swipe a red card at the second door to get the elite crate.

Recycler location
There is a recylcer on the Small Oil Rig. You can find it on the second level, right next to the green puzzle.

Sample loot yield
For some rough context, if you recycle all the loot from the Scientists NPC’s and barrels, it’ll yield roughly 1k scrap, 200+ HQM, 1k+ Metal fragments, along with some stone, wood, fuel, crude oil, leather and cloth.

Other pictures
Here are a bunch more pictures, cause you know, they’re nice to look at.

New type of Chinook event

The Chinook event has been completely reworked with this update - and is significantly more challenging. No longer does the CH47 simply spawn offshore, travel to monuments, and drop a timed crate.

Instead, the Chinook will drop a timed crate on the top deck of the Small Oil Rig around 30 minutes after the last player leaves. Once a player starts unlocking the crate, the Chinook swoops in to drop off the newest type of NPC, Heavy Scientists.

Quickly touching down, the Chinook unloads 5 of these imposing adversaries, keen on getting between you and your loot.

Edit: The original Chinook event will still happen, this is simply a new type of Chinook event for the Small Oil Rig only.

Heavy Scientists

As mentioned above, a new type of NPC has arrived. The Heavy Scientist is a stronger version of the blue Scientist NPC we’re all used to. Adorned in bomb defusal gear, these beefy bastards are harder to kill than the boys in blue (300hp, so about 5 headshots from an AK), however, they drop some quality loot. Sporting Spas Shotguns or M249’s, they currently only appear on the Small Oil Rig during the Chinook server event.

Example Loot
Up to 5 items drop per scientist

Bolt Action Rifle
Assault Rifle
Double Barrel Shotgun
Semi Auto Rifle
2 F1 Grenades
24 High Quality Metal
30 Pistol Bullets
Weapon attachments

Rifle Body
Semi Auto Body
5 Shotgun Shells
Targeting Computer
CCTV Camera
3 Tech Trash
5 Pipes
Armored Double Door

Human AI rework

Helk is undertaking the arduous task of reworking the AI systems in the game. Starting with the human NPC’s, he’s rebuilding the behaviors from the ground up. This will not only improve overall actions of NPC’s, it’ll hopefully lower the processing required for them to function, thus improving performance. A system as complex as this is no easy task to take on, so expect shifts, tweaks, and improvements over the coming weeks and months.

New water

Accompanying the new water-based monument, some fresh effects have been added to water in Rust. Specifically, waves are now present in the open sea, which shifts the way boats travel and junk piles sway. There’s also been some new wakes, white caps, and foam effects thrown into the mix, overall making water much more dynamic and interesting to look at.

Hapis changes

Our favorite non-procedurally generated map has gotten some love this update. Mainly, the Oil Rig monument has been added. You can find it on the bottom left of the map (D19), not so far off the shore from the Pumping Station. There have also been a couple miscellaneous tweaks to the map.

Optimizations

With all these new additions, the importance of performance has not been lost on the team at Facepunch. This month we’ve seen various tweaks and changes to underlying components of the game with the intention of cleaning up code and improving optimization. Build times for the server and client files have also been halved to about 40 minutes, lowering the likelihood of delayed patches.

Expect more details on this in the devblog, but long and short, performance will hopefully be even better after the update.

Grenade Launcher coming!

Tom has posted some art for a new explosive weapon on the way. The Grenade Launcher will not make it in for this update, but boy does it look mean!

Other stuff

Flasher and Siren Light now have pass through
Turret parts far less common from boxes
Added ability to loop & skip around music dynamically
Support for location specific music playlists
Cargo ship hull interior tweaks
HBHF Sensor typo fix

New server: SEA Main

I’m proud to announce, due to popular demand, we have opened a server in a new region: South East Asia! Rustafied.com - SEA Main is hosted in Singapore and features 300 players, weekly map wipes (on Thursday), and a 4k map. You can find it now on the official list (but expect a full wipe when the update goes live).