12:00am EST - We’re at the end of the month and the force wipe and update will hit next week on March 7th at normal time (2pm EST / 7pm GMT).

Our update preview stream goes live today at 1pm EST. Follow @Rustafied for news throughout the week.

Moon lighting!

Seeing at night will be easier next week with the addition of the ‘nightlight’ branch. This added moonlight gives a soft glow to players for ~6 meters radius. It’s subtle, but should be enough to give you a sense of what is going on around you at night. Also, it ideally can’t be exploited using gamma hacks. There may still be some tweaks to this, so the images below might not represent the final product, but expect it to go live with the update next week.

Tutorial Island

After months in the works, the new Tutorial Island functionality is slated for launch on official servers next week. If it’s your first time joining the game, you’ll get prompted with a message to start a tutorial. Once accepted, you’re taken to your own island, completely separate from the rest of the server.

Starting on this island, you’ll see a helicopter crash and a stranger nearby. Through several conversations with the stranger, you’ll be prompted to go through various basics of the game: gathering, crafting, building, hunting, and the like. Eventually you’ll craft a workbench, kayak, and paddle then be prompted to leave the island. After a little bit on the kayak, you’ll get rolled up on by two RHIBs with scientists on them who promptly kill you. Viola! Tutorial complete and you’ll be able to spawn on the beach as normal.

Updated vendor UI

The UI for vendors on the in game map has been updated! It looks much cleaner and handles clusters of vendors better than before.

New shop UI

A fresh user interface for the in game shop is live on staging and set to release with the update next week! This new look features some more information and a better view of the actual skinned items (offering a 3d spin instead of static pictures). It also features a much better page view of general items (like building skins and DLC packs), providing more information and 3d views of each item in the set if applicable. Here are some shots from staging:

Bradley scientists

Work continues on buffing Bradley by adding scientist NPC’s to roam with him. Expect several scientists to be roaming with Bradley both at Launch Site and when spawning around the map late in wipe. Still on a separate branch, it’s unclear at the moment if this will make it in for the March 7th update.

Other stuff

Initial commit on bikes!
More work on the tool cupboard skin with a screen on the front
More work on the new in-game vendors views
Work continues on the Minigun and Military Flamethrower
Updated pipe tool and wire tool descriptions
Work on full server demos
More work on monument updates on harbor, oil rig, and compound
Add server.favoritesEndpoint to set the DNS hostname to save when favoriting this server (requires query port unless a SRV record also exists)
More work on IO snapping for wire tools and the like