Soft Refresh

DEPLOYABLE DEBRIS [SOFTCORE]

A selection of deployable objects in your base will now leave behind a destroyed version when killed in the softcore game mode, allowing you to repair them to quickly get your base back up and running after a raid. When destroyed, these objects will drop 50% of their contents, the other 50% will be stored inside and accessible only by the player owners. If the deployable is destroyed due to losing its ground, it will fall to the nearest position and won't be repairable on the spot. You can still pick it up with a hammer and repair it later at a repair bench. This new behaviour is enabled on:

• Large Wooden Box
• Storage Barrels
• Small Wooden Box
• Coffin
• Small Furnace
• Electric Furnace
• Locker
• Tool Cupboard
• Fridge
• Vending Machine
• All Workbenches

In the case of Tool Cupboards, the destroyed version will still provide building authorization in it's normal radius for 48 hours and can only be repaired by players that were authorized on it. Whilst this feature is only applied to the softcore game mode, it's a bit of an experiment, and we may bring it over to the vanilla game in future.

RESPAWN CHANGES [SOFTCORE]

The Reclaim Terminal at Outpost has been removed, and we don’t think you’ll miss it. In Softcore, if you die outside of a building privilege radius, you’ll now respawn with 50% of your inventory automatically. No more sprinting to Outpost, hoping your stuff didn’t get looted, and waiting around to reclaim your bits and pieces. The system is now faster, cleaner, and more forgiving. We’ve also improved how that 50% is calculated. Previously, it would just grab half of your item stacks, meaning you could end up keeping full stacks of low-value junk while losing all your meds or ammo. Now, it does what you'd expect: you keep 50% of your total count for stackables, which makes the whole thing a lot fairer and more predictable. This change should help reduce the friction after dying in the field while keeping the Softcore experience accessible for players who are still learning the ropes—or just trying to get back on their feet.

UPKEEP TAX CHANGES [SOFTCORE]

Softcore mode has higher upkeep rates for doors to discourage massive sprawling bases and encourage more raiding. Building blocks are unchanged. The difference is pretty significant: the average large base will now see door upkeep around 90%, compared to 30% in vanilla. Smaller, tighter bases won’t feel this as much, but sprawling honeycomb bunkers stuffed with doors will now come with a proper maintenance bill. The aim here is to discourage door mazes that sit untouched for weeks and make raiding more viable, even if you’re not rolling with a full zerg. You’ll still need to defend your loot, but you might have to think twice before slapping down that 38th garage door “just in case.”

PVP DAMAGE [SOFTCORE]

Softcore mode has always been about giving newer or more casual players a gentler way to ease into the brutality of Rust. With that in mind, we’ve made a change that should make early PvP feel a little less punishing: bullet damage from one player to another has been reduced by 25% in Softcore. The goal here is simple - give fights more breathing room. Instead of being instantly downed the moment someone spots you with a semi, you’ll have a bit more time to react, reposition, or even fight back. We want to encourage longer, scrappier engagements where you actually get to play the fight, not just die in it.

SLEEPING BAG CHANGES [SOFTCORE]

Sleeping Bags/Towels/Beds will now function slightly differently in softcore mode. When destroyed, they will be replaced with a new destroyed version that will still allow the player to respawn at that point one last time. Once you respawn the bag will be destroyed. Bags in this state have a little skull icon next to them on the map/respawn screen.

ADOBE WALL AND GATE

This month, we’re introducing the Adobe external wall and gate skin pack, now available from the Rust store. The Adobe external wall and gate skin pack allows you to change the visuals of your external walls and gates. You can use the Spray Can item to reskin your external walls.

QUALITY OF LIFE CHANGES

Fridge Changes

Bota Bags and Honeycomb can now be placed in Fridges

Easy Rug Deployment

Can now place rugs under already placed deployables

Crossbow & Turret Arrows

All Crossbows and Bow Turrets now show if they're loaded + the type of arrow to other players

More Unique Impact Details

More impact details are now rotated, and scaled randomly to increase uniqueness

Hanging Banner

Hanging banner can now be placed at a greater distance allowing ease of placement

Pole Banner

The pole banner can now be placed on construction

BEE SYSTEM BALANCE & IMPROVEMENTS

A number of changes are now being rolled out to the Bee System to help balance and improve the overall experience. I'll start with the most important and work down.

Bee Swarms

• Now takes all clothing protection into consideration: This means that when the Bees sting you their damage is reduced according to all of your clothing, just like damage from any other sources. Hazmat suits still block all damage that comes from Bees.
• Swarms no longer directly stack on top of each other: When attacking someone with Bee Swarms you could pile on Bee Swarms and each Swarm would do its own damage. This meant 10 Bee Swarms would do 10x damage. Bee Swarms now do less and less damage with each swarm piled on top.

Beehives

• Adjustments: Beehives were creating too much Honeycomb in the Temperate Biome, this has now been rebalanced.
• Hostile Environments: Beehives now work properly in hostile environments. Remember to use heaters in the snow!
• Is Producing Honeycomb: Due to the slow fill up of the nucleus status bar: it was hard to know if your hive was producing Honeycomb or not. There's now an indicator at the bottom to make it more clear.
• Temperature Readout: it was hard to see what the temperature bar meant. It's now possible to see exactly what temperature is being read out. This should hopefully make it a bit more clear.

A bunch of bug fixes and hardening of the Bee System rolls out with this patch. Hopefully everything is a bit more snappy. I hope you have all been having fun with the Bees!

AREA OF EFFECT VOLUMES

In Rust it was always difficult to know what range a Sprinkler or Heater had. This change provides some visualisation for area of effects. This means you can see the area of effect of a Sprinkler, Heater, Shotgun Trap, Flame Turret, Igniter, Various Sensors etc. This volume only gives a rough outline of where the object will affect and not exactly what objects will be affected, but it's a great start. As with anything: this can be disabled in the settings if you don't like it, and is entirely optional.

ABYSS PACK - NEW SUNKEN KNIFE

August 2023's Abyss Pack has been updated to now include a new free item! The Sunken Knife is a new addition that follows in the aesthetic of the rest of the damaged deep-water items found in the abyss. But don't worry, despite it's corrded form, it still functions fully as a sharp close combat weapon. If you already own the Abyss Pack, the new Sunken Knife skin will automatically be added as a skin option for the Combat Knife. You can get the pack on the Steam Item Store. For more information and all media, head here.

PREMIUM SERVER UPDATE

It’s been just a few weeks since we launched Premium Servers, and we’re happy to report they’ve been a solid win. The goal was simple: create a more secure environment with less cheating by requiring a minimum $15 Steam inventory to join. So far, the results speak for themselves. According to our internal review, players on Premium Servers encounter cheaters around four times less often than those on regular servers. Even with fewer Premium Servers running, their populations have stayed healthy, especially outside of peak hours, where they’ve occasionally outpaced non-premium servers. We’ll continue monitoring how these servers evolve and may adjust thresholds or requirements over time, but for now, we’re calling this launch a success. Thanks to everyone who jumped in early and helped make it work. If you're looking for a better experience, I highly recommend sticking with Premium.

LINUX DEDICATED SERVER UPDATE

Last September we announced that we will have to retire dedicated server support for Debian 10 / Ubuntu 18 soon. This change is now around the corner, so this is one last warning to all server owners and hosting providers to update their infrastructure accordingly. Our new minimum requirements will be Debian 11 / Ubuntu 20.

CREATIVE MODE: NO FUEL/ALWAYS ON

I've added a way to make all fuel sources such as furnaces, candles, etc, work without fuel in creative mode. The following new commands can be used to toggle it for individual entity instances:

• toggleAlwaysOnAll <true/false> - Toggles the mode for all supported entities on a server (admin only)
• toggleAlwaysOn <true/false> - Toggles the mode for the entity you are currently looking at
• toggleAlwaysOnRadius <true/false> <radius> - Toggles the mode for all entities in specified radius

All these commands and features require creative mode to be enabled for the player or all players. I've also added the creative.AlwaysOnEnabled convar which needs to be enabled for the whole thing to work. When in this mode, some new item specific features help make the process smoother, such as torch holders spawning a torch item if the commands are used on empty torch holders and other items such as the candle now don't use up durability and can run forever.

HACKERONE BUG BOUNTY PROGRAM

We've been testing Hackerone for a good while now and have had some good experiences with it. For those that don't know, Hackerone allows reporting security vulnerabilities and exploits in exchange for a bug bounty as a win-win for both us and whoever submitted the report. In order to make this easier going forward, we've set up a dedicated security page on our website that makes submitting reports extremely easy, secure and straightforward. If you or someone you know are aware of something that fits our bug bounty program rules as laid out on our security page, please don't hesitate to submit a report via the link above.

DISCORD SOCIAL INTEGRATION REWARD

In February, we rolled out a social integration layer to Rust, no more alt-tabbing - you can view, chat, invite, and add friends, all from right inside the game, all through Discord. The feedback for this has been fantastic and now we've partnered with Discord to provide players that sync their accounts with a reward - a Discord Trophy that is craftable and deployable in-game! Not linked your accounts yet? Head in game and sync your Steam and Discord friend with ease, right from the main menu!

JUNGLE UPDATE TEASER

The Jungle Update is coming and approaching final development stages, and with it comes a brand new biome, new early-game weapons, and a whole cast of deadly new wildlife including crocodiles, snakes, and more. We’re planning to kick off public testing early this month, so if you’re eager to get a first look (or first bite), keep an eye on our socials and Discord announcements for when testing begins. We'd love to hear your feedback.

COMMAND LINE ARGUMENTS OVERRULE

Some server command-line arguments weren’t being applied correctly if conflicting values were already saved in server.cfg. We’ve now updated the server bootstrap process to reload command-line arguments after loading server.cfg, ensuring that command-line values always take precedence. If you're a server owner and running Rust on Linux or using a third-party server manager like Pterodactyl, we recommend reviewing your setup to make sure everything is working as expected.

EASTER

On April 10th at 19:00 BST we'll be releasing an optional update to enable this years Easter events and releasing the Horse costume. During the Easter event every 24-38 hours in-game hours an Easter egg hunt will begin. You'll have 3 minutes to collect as many eggs as you can. The top 3 players are given special eggs as a reward. These eggs can be cracked open for various types of loot ranging from scrap all the way up to an M249!