12:00am EST - The year is off to an awesome start! With a new all-time concurrent peak player’s, a huge update coming next month, and more on the horizon, things are looking bright for Rust in 2025!

Follow @Rustafied for news throughout the week. 

Great start to the year!

Congratulations to Rust and the entire team at Facepunch for setting a new record for all-time concurrent players following the first forced wipe of the new year! This incredible milestone is a testament to the game's enduring appeal and the continuous hard work and innovation from the developers. Here's to many more successful updates and continued growth in the Rust community! Keep up the fantastic work, Facepunch!

Primitive update next month

On February 6th, Rust is set to receive the Primitive update, a new mode which is a game-changer, especially for early-game raiding and combat. This update introduces a range of siege vehicles, primitive weapons, shields, and a dedicated game mode, all designed to adapt to a scenario where advanced technology and typical armaments are depleted, pushing survivors to use cruder methods for attack and defense.

Key new features include:

The Siege Tower
Allows players to scale exterior walls under cover, and features floors with extendable drawbridges. 

The Catapult
Serves as a long-distance projectile launcher capable of firing boulders, radioactive barrels, and propane tank IEDs, and requires horses or vehicles for movement due to its size. 

The Ballista
Combines features of a catapult and a large crossbow, delivering high accuracy and heavy damage with various ammo types. 

The Battering Ram
A driveable vehicle with a powerful ram, can inflict damage on building blocks within a radius.

This update also brings enhancements to melee weapons, a new 4-shot mini-crossbow, and updates to horse capabilities, including towing the new siege weapons. Plus, players can look forward to new skins to customize their gameplay style.

For those eager to get a preview, the Rust Staging Aux2 branch is currently available for public testing, allowing players to explore the new features and provide feedback ahead of the official release. We’ll have more details about all of this as we get closer to the update.

Hopper

Rust is set to enhance your storage solutions with a brand-new attachment called the Hopper. This innovative device can be attached to storage boxes and automatically collects any items dropped within a 1.5-meter radius. While there’s no confirmed release date yet, the Hopper promises to be a significant quality of life upgrade, simplifying item collection and base management. Keep an eye out for more updates on this exciting addition as we get closer to its integration into the game!

Fixes

As is common, the team is fixing some glitches and bugs. Here are a couple in the works this week.

• Fixed exception when a player is disconnected while an effect with the EffectRecycle component was active (was trying to unparent into a non-existent scene)

• Increased the maximum length of a telephone directory name to 30 characters (was 20 but wasn't enforced in the UI so names would get cut)

• Fixed normal compression with workshop imported normal maps and normal maps exported to steam

• Holosight reticle now resets to the default red colour while the NVG camera is on, eliminating the slightly different appearance of the different colours combined with the NVG post fx

Other stuff

• Improvements to demos

• Improvements to underground train tunnels

• Cleanup of avatar masks for player/humanoid animations + added a collection of masks useful for isolated anim playback.

• More progress on the Jungle biome / ruins

• Proof of concept for new spatially aware environment volumes method

• Added armor slots (potentially for the Armor DLC / primitive stuff)

Reminder on our streams

Just a reminder to all our loyal viewers: We're adjusting our streaming schedule. When we first started streaming nearly a decade ago, Rust was on a weekly update cycle. However, with the game now following a monthly update schedule, there often isn't enough new content on staging to fill our weekly streams.

So, moving forward, we'll be switching to a monthly stream that will take place on the first Thursday of each month to coincide with the game updates. Don’t worry, though—we might still pop up on certain off weeks if something exciting hits staging. Keep an eye on these articles to know when we'll go live for those special occasions!