2:00pm EST - The devblog and update are live! Twitch drops go live in an hour!

1:00pm EST - Our update stream is live! twitch.tv/rustafied

12:00am EST - It’s a new year for Rust and a totally fresh start for all!

The update is expected at the normal time (2pm EST / 7pm GMT) and will feature a full wipe along with some other goodies. Our update stream goes live at 1pm EST. Follow @Rustafied for news throughout the day.

Update video summary

Here’s our update video summary from Puddy!

Forced blueprint wipe today

For the first time, in a LONG time, blueprints will be forcibly wiped when the update hits (along with maps). This is due to the addition of tech trees in December, but is also great timing given the recent influx of players (see below). This wipe means everyone on every server will have a completely fresh start after the update hits later today.

Welcome new players!

In case you missed it, over the Christmas break Rust saw a large influx of Twitch viewership due to OfflineTV along with many other streamers playing on a private server (read more here). That, coupled with a well timed Steam sale, had Rust breaking the 1 million viewer mark on Twitch along with new all time concurrent players on Steam!

Congratulations to the team at Facepunch! It’s awesome to see the game continue to thrive and we offer a warm welcome to any newcomers. If you fall into this category, make sure to check out our guides section if you need any help with getting started.

Tech tree recap

Given the forced blueprint wipe today is due to the new progression system added last month, I thought it makes sense to give a quick recap on how tech tree’s work along with the most recent complete trees.

If you’ve ever played a game with tech tree’s before, you’re not going to be surprised to hear this is a linear progression system allowing for the unlocking of various items down the chain. In Rust, there're 3 tiers of tech tree, each associated with the corresponding workbench. Each tier is independent of the others, and players are still able to research individual items on the research bench.

You can access each tech tree at the associated workbench. Items are unlocked using scrap - ranging from 20 to 500 depending on the item's value. The scrap cost to unlock each item matches the items research cost. If you’ve unlocked an item through other means (research) then the item is automatically unlocked on the tech tree. That said, you cannot continue down a tech tree line unless every previous item has already been unlocked. 

Here are updated screens of each tier tech tree:

Edit: Sorry, I fucked up the order / label of the above images on initial posting. It is fixed now.

Twitch drops

Earlier this week, Facepunch announced the update will be accompanied by a new round of Twitch drops. If you’re not familiar, this means you’ll receive exclusive in-game items by watching people stream Rust on Twitch (for a certain duration). No details have been have been released about the drops yet, but I’ll update here once more is available.

Edit: Information on the specific Twitch drops for this week have been released here. Basically, there are 9 streamers specific skins which you can obtain after 4 hours of watching along with 3 general drops for watching any Rust streamer:

New items

Two new items have shown up on staging. They can only be spawned in at the moment, so it’s not clear exactly how they will be obtained — I’m sure it has nothing to do with the section above…

Edit: The Sofa dn Hobo Barrel are two of the general Twitch drops going live today.

Sofa
First on the list: It’s a bit crooked… it might have a couple stains… but damn, if it ain’t comfortable. The ‘Sofa’ item is an old couch which allows two people to lounge around at once. And when I say comfortable, I mean, as this sofa provides 100% comfort when sitting in it (2 people not required).

Edit: This can be obtained by watching any Rust streamer this week for 2 hours.

Hobo Barrel anyone?
The other new item on staging is not really new at all. The Hobo Barrel, as you may have seen already around the map, allows you to cook food and keep warm. Now, however, for the first time, it is deployable!

Edit: This can be obtained by watching any Rust streamer this week for 8 hours.

Sleeping bag cooldown

The team has added a small but useful quality of life shift around bag placement. If on it’s own cooldown, sleeping bag placement guides will continue to be blue. If they are close to another spawn point, however, the placement guides appear orange to signify the shared cooldown. This effect has also been applied for beach towels and beds.

Clear(er) skies ahead

The skies of Rust will be clearer in general after this update as the weather has shifted. The chance of weather events has now been reduced, forecasting much more clear days than previously experienced. 

Centralized banning system

The life of server owners who own more than one server just got a bit better with the addition of a centralized banning system. Previously, if you needed to sync bans across multiple servers, you’d have to manually do it, custom code something, or use a 3rd party. This implementation allows owners to sync bans natively with not much fuss. For more information, check out the wiki page.

Save reliability improvements 

Another improvement in the realm of server hosting, support for maintaining multiple previous map save files has been added. With the new cvar ‘server.savebackupcount’, server owners can now specify how many previous saves to store as backups.

Other stuff

• Reduced research cost of T2 engine parts (now 20 scrap to research)

• No longer receive high amounts of radiation walking past Launch site main building

• Roof conditional corners only apply when the roof tiers match

• Enabled grass displacement by default, renamed convar to grass.displacement (from grass.displace) to ensure old config values are ignored

• SAM sites now ignore uninflated hot air balloons, and ignore grounded vehicles with no one inside (airbourne HABs or helis with no one inside are still targeted).

• Run player voice through a new audio channel with some distortion (still respects player voice volume setting)

• Hide official servers from the community tab in the server list