12:50pm EST - After months in development, the Giant Excavator Pit is now on the staging branch! Going live game-wide with the August 1st update, this new monument is unlike any before it. This post summarizes what to expect with the excavator, how to operate it, and provides some sample yields.

Our update preview stream will go live on Thursday at 3pm EST. Follow @Rustafied for news throughout the day.

Quick look video

Here’s a quick look video of the Giant Excavator Pit from Puddy!

Overview

The Giant Excavator Pit is the latest point of interest added to the landscape of Rust. Unique from other monuments, the Excavator Pit actually allows groups to mine resources. Think of it like a bigger, more complicated Quarry.

Operating this beast is no small task. Here’s a rundown of how to get it started:

Add Diesel fuel to the tank in the engine room
Start the engine
Go to the control room and select a resource to mine
Collect said resources from the two deposit spots

Now that may sound easy enough, but keep in mind there are Scientists NPC’s littering the Excavator along with lethal doses of radiation. That said, the loot yields appear to be quite generous.

Keep in mind: This is a first iteration. Changes, bug fixes, and balance are all inevitable. This is intended to be an overview of what to expect once the Excavator is added; we’ll update this post as things change and more information becomes available.

Diesel

Before trekking to this new monument, you’ll want to stock up on a new resource: Diesel. A higher quality fuel, Diesel is required to run the Giant Excavator. At the moment, it appears this is Diesels only use in the game, although that is subject to change in the future.

It stacks to 20 and burns relatively slowly in the Giant Excavator - about 1 Diesel fuel every 2 minutes of run time. Only one stack can be loaded into the Excavator at a time.

Specifics of Diesel at the time of writing this are still up in the air. It’ll spawn in loot at Junkyard, Oil Rig, and Sphere Tank. According to the commits, it’ll also be purchased for ‘a tonne of low grade fuel.’ That said, Alistair told me the price is not finalized yet, so stay tuned for more details once an exact price is nailed down.

Edit: Diesel now costs 300 low grade fuel.

Purchased at
Outpost

Cost
300 Low Grade Fuel

In stock
10

Stacks to
20

Excavator run time
2 minutes per

Start ‘er up

Once you have your Diesel, you’ll want to make your way to the engine room located in the center of the Excavator. Work your way up a couple flights of stairs and enter the room from either side of the monument. Head down one set of stairs and place your Diesel in the big tank. Then, go back up the stairs and start the engine on the control panel to your right.

Select resource type

As you’re adding fuel and starting the engine, you’ll want a teammate to get in position at one of the two control rooms located on either side of spinning excavator head. Reached by traveling up several flights of stairs above the engine room, up a ladder, then down the large arm, the control room allows you to select which resource you’d like to mine.

Once selected, the arm will start slowly swinging back and forth as the excavator head starts spinning, collecting the selected resource.

It can only mine one type of ore at a time. Also keep in mind, fuel will start burning the second you turn the engine on, however, nothing will be gathered until a resource type is selected in the control room (which can only happen once the engine is started).

Collect resources

Once the engine is started and a resource type is selected, the large excavator head will start spinning and those buckets will start gathering material and sending it down the conveyor belt. This belt extends back down the length of the arm, past the engine room, then splits off into two directions; one leading to a rail car, the other to a pile on the ground near a bulldozer.

The resources are distributed equally between both places. Given the drop points are about a 30 second run from each other, you’ll probably want to post up a person at each one to make sure no resources get snagged by a sneaky passerby. Each output pile has 36 slots to collect resources in.

Don’t stand too close to the falling debris, however, as the resources will deal damage if you stand under the drop points. Also, you’re not going to want to stand in the path of the giant spinning excavator head, unless that is, you’re looking to get crushed to death.

Resource yields

Here are some sample yields of what you’ll get for your efforts. Keep in mind, these are very likely to change prior to going live, so try not to get your panties in a bunch about being too OP or not worth the trouble. Also, the price of Diesel isn’t even finalized yet, so this is all pretty arbitrary at the moment.

Examples

Sample yield burning 10 Diesel (for each resource)

Stone
28,280

Metal Ore
14,120

Sulfur Ore
4,740

HQM Ore
400

Scientists

Operating this rig isn’t just a matter of getting some Diesel and a couple of people in the right location. There are a number of Scientists posted up throughout the pit in order to fend off any would be miners. At the moment there are about 12 to 15 scientists throughout. As with other monuments, they will respawn in a period of time after they are killed.

Radiation

Radiation protection is a must when operating the Giant Excavator. Starting near the outskirts of the Pit, radiation levels rise as you get closer to the engine room. A Hazmat Suit provides adequate protection from rads throughout the entire area.

Broadcast signal

Similar to the Oil Rig, there is a broadcast signal you can set your pagers to in order to know when the Giant Excavator is running. This should provide a bit of balance by allowing groups to be notified when there’s someone excavating.

Other things of note

There is a Recycler in the corner of the engine room (on the same level as the fuel tank).
There are some loot boxes around, but no high tier loot to be found.
This monument is only on procedural generation maps at the moment, however, it might be added to Hapis in the near future. Alistair told me he is attempting to add it, but it’ll be a lot of work to fit in properly.
This was modeled after a real excavator, the Bagger 288.

Other news

The team is still trucking along on other functionality and features for the coming update. Here are some highlights:

Graphics overhaul in the form of HDRP and environmental shaders continues.
Garry is working on a movie maker on the HDRP branch (exciting news for content creators!)
Barren now has harbors, oil rigs and water wells
Take server identity into account when determining the default seed (easier to run multiple instances on the same hardware without getting identical maps)
Removed large monuments and prefab mountains on smaller maps
Allow items to be deployed under water barrel
Water optimizations