12:00am EST - As we gear up for the potential release of a significant crafting update on March 6th, the Rust development team is hard at work refining and enhancing the crafting system. With everything still very much in flux and subject to change, this update aims to bring more depth and functionality to how players interact with crafting in Rust. 

Premium Servers Incoming

The developers are introducing a new feature—premium servers—with an initial gateway price of $15, launching on March 6th. This initiative is rooted in an analysis of millions of accounts, distinguishing between banned accounts and regular players. The data shows that cheaters typically have Rust Steam inventories valued at less than $20, whereas long-term, regular players often have inventories worth over $20.

To reduce the prevalence of cheaters and enhance the gaming experience, access to these premium servers will be restricted based on the value of a player’s Rust Steam inventory. This criterion was chosen because it's difficult to falsify, making it an effective measure of a player’s genuine engagement with the game.

We’re looking into launching some premium servers with the update next week. Stay tuned for more information.

Cooking V2 Progress

Cooking 2.0 is making significant strides, with several exciting developments enhancing the culinary experience in Rust:

• Visual Cooking: Players can now see world models of food items as they cook, adding a realistic visual element to the cooking process.

• Chicken and Coop Updates: New interactions with chickens are being implemented, including a call gesture for better handling (and you can no longer pet chickens while they're sleeping, because that’s rude)

• Recipe Benefits: Recipes now have added benefits for animals; for example, certain foods can enhance horses' digestion, evidenced by increased pooping frequency, which is part of the broader adjustments to how animal feeding impacts their physical behaviors.

• Floral Expansion: Progress continues on the introduction of a variety of new flowers, which are set to enrich the environment and potentially have uses in crafting or as decorative elements.

Here’s a sneak peak at some of the pie recipes:

• Chicken Pie: Gives a +5% better genes chance for 4 minutes when planting seeds.

• Apple Pie: Provides 2 minutes of 100% better night vision, enhancing visibility of node sparkles and bright X's on trees.

• Pumpkin Pie: Offers a +5% chance for 5 minutes of getting double loot when picking up a collectible.

• Hunter's Pie: Provides 150% Increased Harvesting for 5 minutes

• Fish Pie: Increases player strength while fishing by 50% for 5 minutes, allowing faster reeling and reducing the rate at which fishing rods break.

• Survivor's Pie: Provides an extra 150% yield for 5 minutes when harvesting animal and human corpses.

• Pork Pie: Boosts metabolism by 200% for 5 minutes, enhancing healing over time effects by three times.

• Bear Pie: Applies "Digestion Boost" effect, doubles effect of harvesting Teas but halves their duration.

Crafting Quality Tea

Crafting Quality Tea affects the probability of crafting items with better quality and the likelihood of those items having additional armor slots. Drinking this tea provides a +50% crafting quality boost for 30 minutes, which significantly increases the chances of producing higher-quality items with potentially more beneficial mods.

Armor Inserts

Armor inserts are a significant new feature still in the experimental stages on the Aux2 branch, which is a preliminary testing phase before even reaching the main test branch. These inserts are intended to add customization and additional protective stats to player armor.

Crafting and Utilization:

• Armor inserts can be crafted with materials like wood, metal, asbestos, and lead. The specific costs and requirements for crafting these inserts are still under development and are expected to evolve based on player feedback and further testing.

• These inserts can be added to armor pieces to enhance their protective qualities. For instance, adding a lead insert to an item of clothing will increase its radiation protection stats.

Types of Armor Inserts and Their Effects:

• Asbestos Armor Insert: Adds heat protection.

• Lead Armor Insert: Provides radiation protection.

• Wooden Armor Insert: Increases projectile and melee protection.

• Metal Armor Insert: Offers higher levels of projectile and melee protection compared to wooden inserts.

This system might expand to include more types of clothing and armor, potentially allowing for further customization like padding or specialized mods that could improve other types of resistances or benefits. Given the current stage of development, many features and specifics about armor inserts are subject to change. 

Discord Integration

Efforts are underway to integrate Discord chat capabilities directly into Rust. This feature aims to enhance player communication by allowing seamless in-game access to Discord chats. While the development team is actively working on this integration, it's still uncertain when or even if this functionality will go live. As this project progresses, updates will be provided to keep the community informed about the potential rollout of this exciting new feature.

Other Stuff

• Workbench 2 and 3 unlocked by the tier below them

• More work on bees and the bee grenade

• Initial work on premium servers (barrier to entry servers to combat cheating)

• Profiling improvements (for performance enhancements)

• Caching for building privilege (potential performance improvements)

• More work on jungle ruins and tigers

• More work on the boomerang