Nerfed, Buffed, Balanced?

JUNGLE POLISH

One of the loudest bits of feedback we heard after last month's Jungle update: “I can’t find anything!” Fair. The jungle was a bit too good at being a jungle.

Wild hemp has been reworked with taller stalks and purple flowers, so you can actually see it against the overgrowth. (Player-grown hemp remains unchanged.)

More ore nodes now spawn throughout the jungle thanks to increased rock formation density and a general boost to ore availability.

Berry bushes have their own dedicated Jungle population to help keep food distribution more even across the map.

Cars and bikes now spawn along jungle road sides, you’ll no longer feel stranded in the canopy.

Players no longer spawn directly in the jungle biome. It’ll still generate near spawn areas, but you won’t be dropped in the middle of the Jungle unless you choose to live there.

Additionally, we've added several new trees that did not quite make it into the initial release.

We’ve also made a pass on monument distribution. This has been a long-standing issue, and it worsened with last month's Jungle update. Good news, it's fixed! overall, you can now expect a healthy increase in the number of monuments per map.

Some key highlights in testing a world side of 4500:

• Airfield +37%

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• Trainyard +34%

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• Excavator +45%

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• Military Tunnels +28%

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• Powerplant +17%

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• Water Treatment +16%

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• Sewer Branch +14%

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Overall, we hope all these changes bring Jungle into a balanced position.

INCAPACITATE DART

I've made some changes to make this dart less OP, but still useful.

There's now a blur and dim effect instead of the full screen blackout, and the fade speed has been decreased.

The movement speed reduction duration has also been decreased from 6 to 4 seconds, to match the blur duration.

IMPROVED INDOOR LIGHTING

We have worked for the past couple of months on lighting improvements for the game interiors.

Simply put, in the past our lighting model would darken the entire world if you were located indoors. This caused disadvantage for players looking out and advantage for players looking in as the interiors were fully lit from outside.

Thanks to the efforts of the team we now have a spatially aware solution to this problem that also brings some benefits such as soft physical transitions in and out of interiors.

We are still improving this new system and while this goes on, some trickier interior spaces such as large pipes and complex cylindrical buildings remain on the old system temporarily.

SILENCER CHANGES

We’re making several changes to the silencer system this month, introducing two new silencer types and making the existing silencer non-craftable (now renamed to Military Silencer).

The Soda Can Silencer is the cheapest to make (40 metal fragments, Workbench 1) and will last around 12 shots on an Assault Rifle firing standard rounds. It also mildly decreases shot damage and velocity.

The Oil Filter Silencer is a bit more expensive (10 HQM, Workbench 2) and will last for around 48 shots on an Assault Rifle firing standard rounds.

Both new silencers will apply a decrease to damage and velocity compared to the Military Silencer.

Our goal here is to ensure Silencers remain a powerful tool for ambushes and surprise tactics, but don’t become a default tool to keep on your weapon during a full firefight. The existing Military Silencer’s durability is unchanged so it will still last quite a long time and should hopefully become quite a valuable item to find in high end monuments.

NOTABLE CHANGES

Seat swapping keybinds

New keybinds have been added to let you switch directly to specific seats in vehicles

Interaction crosshair

You can now customize how much information is displayed on your crosshair

HBHF Sensor

The range of the HBHF sensor can now be adjusted

Neon signs

New inputs have been added to neon signs, allowing you to control which frame is displayed

Propane Explosive Bomb

Propane explosive bomb crafting recipe no longer requires explosives

Monument Heaters

Heaters at the small and large oilrig now provide heat and comfort

Water Pump Protection

Pump health doubled

LR300 Rifle

Quicker LR300 deploy and improved animation

MP5 Durability

MP5 Durability increased, allowing for an additional 300 rounds before needing to be repaired

Vending Machine Order Editing

Can now edit orders in a vending machine without having to recreate them.

Shelf pick up

Can now pickup shelves if they have nothing on them.

IO Wire snapping

Hold Shift to snap wires in 90 degree increments.

Lighting Polish

Wires, Most Electronics, and even some Light Fixtures have gotten visual update to make your base even more cozy.

BUILDING QOL

I made some improvements to building this month. There were quite a few issues with our line of sight checks, leading to some frequent frustrating "Line of sight blocked" error messages when building.

This is much better now, the checks are more forgiving and more consistent.

FLOOR & CEILING WALLPAPER DLC

This month, we’re expanding wallpaper to floors and ceilings.

Wallpapers can now be applied to foundations, floors and roof building blocks. Like the original wallpapers, they are entirely visual and do not provide any additional protection.

We’ve also made significant improvements to its functionalities:

• The wallpaper item is now the Wallpaper Tool

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• It works like a building plan and consumes cloth when placing wallpaper down

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• Walls, floors and ceilings have a different skin sets - each only works on its appropriate surface

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• You can select your skin using right click

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• You can easily reskin placed wallpaper by simply placing it again

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The wallpaper tool includes 8 new default skins, 4 for floors and 4 for ceilings.

Floor & Ceiling Wallpaper Pack

In addition to the 8 floor and ceiling wallpaper skins unlocked by default, you can purchase the Floor & Ceiling Wallpaper Pack which features a hefty 34 extra floor and ceiling wallpaper skins for decorating your base.

Skins included in the Floor & Ceiling Wallpaper Pack, as pictured above:

Floors

• Carpet (2 variants)

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• Parquet Painted (3 variants)

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• Parquet Wood (4 variants)

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• Marble Tiles (2 variants)

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• Metal Treadplate

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• Asbestos Tiles (4 variants)

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• Tatami Mats

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Ceilings

• Plaster (2 variants)

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• Parquet Wood

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• Parquet Painted (5 variants)

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• Subway Tiles (5 variants)

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• Metal Sheets (3 variants)

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• Wood Beams and Plaster

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The Floor & Ceiling Wallpaper Pack is available for purchase in-game or through the Steam Item Store

DIRECTIONAL ITEM DROPPING

You can now drop items to the ground around you in the direction of your choosing.

I've added a new keybind option which you can set under the keybinds UI. Look for "Directional Drop".

With this key held, drag the item icon in the direction you wish to throw it - dragging directly up will throw it in front of you, dragging to the right will throw it to your side, etc.

To make it easier to drop items with a direction, holding the keybind also lets you drop items by dragging them anywhere on the UI, even over other inventory slots. This means you don't need to drag an item all the way off the inventory UI in the correct direction. The item icon will turn red to show the item is always going to be dropped, not moved.

TUGBOAT FRIEND AUTHING

The TC friend list authing UI and functionality has now been extended to the Tugboat, making it much easier to auth your friends or team mates to your Tugboat.

COOKING & MIXING TABLE QOL

I've made a couple more QOL upgrades to the recipe UI for these tables.

Any recipes that you currently have all the ingredients for will appear at the top of the list. This will also update as your inventory content changes.

Additionally, the colour of recipe text now also updates correctly with inventory changes instead of only when the UI is first opened. This also matches ingredient availability - recipes you have all the ingredients for are bright white, other recipes are grey.

EXTERNAL WALL & GATE UPGRADING

Wooden external walls and gates can now be upgraded directly to the adobe versions if you have the correct items in your inventory, without needing to go through the long winded process of upgrading to regular stone and then reskinning them.

LARGE DEPLOYED ITEM DEMOLITION

Large, non-pickup, deployed items can now be demolished using the hammer within 10 minutes of their placement.

The initial list includes:

• Large Furnace

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• Refinery

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• Watchtower

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• Barricade variants

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• Wind turbine

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• Large paddling pool

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• Water catchers

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You'll need building privilege to be able to demolish large deployables with the hammer.

INDUSTRIAL LIGHTS PACK UPDATE

Something members of the community have been asking for is a blue light to accompany the red, green and white lights in the Industrial Lights pack that was released in November 2021. We’ve listened and have added it to the pack!

If you already own the Industrial Lights Pack, the new blue light skin will automatically be added as a proper skin option for the white Industrial Wall Light.

We’ve seen some very industrious ideas for the possibilities with this new light, and we can’t wait to see what the community comes up with. Check out the Industrial Lights pack here.

BEE BOMB

The catapult is a fun tool for inflicting pain on your enemies, but it hasn’t fulfilled its potential without the Bee Bomb.

The Bee Bomb is a new Catapult Projectile. On impact it will create a few Bee Swarms.

TEA TIME

Earlier this year, we introduced a few new teas, but they were missing some key ingredients - namely, consistency. These teas didn’t have advanced or pure crafting options.

That’s now sorted.

Advanced and Pure variants have been added where they were missing for warming, cooling, harvesting and crafting teas. These teas offer enhanced and longer duration of buffs. Some of the basic tiers have released a slight nerf.

PVP BARRICADE

We’ve taken a swing at reducing barricade spam in PvP fights - a bit too effective (and a bit too annoying).

The wooden barricade stack size has been halved from 10 to 5. This should help curb the Insta-maze spam in close quarters without gutting their utility entirely. You'll now have to use them more strategically.

Barricades on train tracks will no longer stop trains dead in their tracks. You can still be a nuisance, just not a locomotive-destroying one.

Small changes, but they should make PvP a little less about throwing down walls and a bit more about the fight itself. We're not opposed to reducing the stack size down further, we'll be monitoring these changes closely.

ARMOR SLOT CRAFTING CHANGES

While creating the Advanced and Pure versions of the crafting tea we noticed that the random chances weren't quite what we had initially planned when implementing the feature. We've made some adjustments to bring them in line with our original vision.

Old chances:

No slot: 50%

1 slot: 20%

2 slots: 10%

3 slots: 20%

New chances, no teas:

No slot: 50%

1 slot: 25%

2 slots: 15%

3 slots: 10%

New chances, Standard tea:

1 slot: 50%

2 slots: 30%

3 slots: 20%

New chances, Advanced tea:

2 slots: 60%

3 slots: 40%

New chances, Pure tea:

2 slots: 33%

3 slots: 66%

TARGETING ATTACHMENT

A new internal weapon attachment is available this month, allowing you to use the Ping system without having to switch to the binoculars. This should help players in teams more effectively call out locations and points of interest. Costs 10 HQM and 1 Tech Trash to craft and requires a Workbench 2.

AUTO TURRET NERF

Earlier this year, in the primitive update, we introduced bow turrets, which were added to support the primitive gamemode, but the vanilla meta has shifted to players spamming turrets early game with bows, we don't feel this is a healthy meta.

Today, bow weapons placed in turrets now have reduced damage and longer reload times. We will keep a close eye on these changes, and I'm sure the topic will continue to be a highly debated subject within the community.

We are currently exploring broader, more significant changes over the coming months to turrets.

FOLIAGE RENDERING IMPROVEMENTS

We’ve reworked how ground foliage is rendered - shifting to a more GPU-driven system with smarter, per-instance camera culling.

In plain English: your system should now spend less time and effort rendering grass you can’t even see.

You’ll notice improved performance, especially when sprinting or flying across the map. This update reduces load on both GPU and CPU, keeping things smoother even in foliage-heavy areas.

WATER VEHICLE CAMERA CHANGES

Several water based vehicles use camera rotation that involves rolling the camera from side to side, either in response to waves or input. That sort of camera rotation can be disorientating to players that are more sensitive to motion sickness.

In the case of Boogie Boards and Inner Tubes, their camera rotation was entirely due to ocean waves, which was likely made worse with the latest ocean refresh. I've entirely removed the camera rotation while using these vehicles.

In the DPV's case the rotation is due to player input which was intended but is quite severe. To solve this I've added a new option in the Accessibility menu that will remove the rolling behaviour.

EXTENDED FOOD SPOILING

The food spoiling system from the Crafting Update is being extended to include fruit, vegetables and eggs. These items will spoil into a generic Spoiled Produce item and will last 48 hours outside of a fridge, making them a more long term food item.

HIGH POPULATION LOOT SCALING

With the increasing popularity of higher population servers, we’ve heard a lot of feedback about how fast loot can spawn on these servers. Our loot spawning scales have been static for quite a while and were never really intended to scale beyond the 500 player mark.

To improve this, we’ve added a new server convar called “Spawn.population_cap_rate" which is set to 300 by default. Our loot respawning system will now cap how many players it considers on the server by this number, meaning the loot spawn rate will not increase beyond 300 players regardless of how many players are on the server.

The results on a standard monument crate spawner:

• 1 Population: 15m-30m refresh

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• 1000 pop with no cap set: 50s-100s refresh

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• 1000 pop with cap of 300 set: 3.75m - 7.5m refresh

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Various monuments use different timers and mechanics to respawn, but this should illustrate just how fast loot was spawning as player counts increased.

Setting this convar to 0 will restore the loot frequency to it's previous rate.

Obviously changes like this are very hard to test in isolated testing environments, we felt 300 was a good starting value but we’ll adjust as needed once we see how this plays out on live servers.

ANTICHEAT UPDATE

As part of our ongoing efforts to provide you with regular updates and transparency on our anticheat initiatives, I'm pleased to announce that this year we've doubled the size of our dedicated anticheat support team and are currently recruiting for developer positions with a anticheat focus.

These support staff are dedicated to investigating players from your reports and other sources. They're actively joining servers, watching and enforcing fair gameplay.

In March, we released premium servers, and we've seen strong and healthy retention across these servers. They're doing an excellent job at gatekeeping cheaters out. Very happy with how this is working. At present, the $15 price point is working well and see no need to raise the barrier to entry.

In May, we enabled server-side player culling by default across all servers. As a reminder, this is tech which no longer networks players behind terrain and rocks, preventing or limiting several high-impact cheat features.

In April, we opened our Hackerone program to the public, allowing the reporting of security vulnerabilities and exploits in exchange for a bug bounty. We've set up a dedicated security page on our website that makes submitting reports extremely easy, secure and straightforward. We've now paid a total of $261,000.00.

Within the past few weeks, our anticheat partner, EAC, has begun additional efforts targeting recoil cheats, often referred to as scripting. As always, they're working very hard in the background to ensure Rust and many other games are cheat-free.

These are just a few of the efforts we're willing to talk about, there have been many cheat-related exploits fixed or limited, new preventions and detections.

Below, are some in-depth ban insights.

Our ban volume has remained steady, even as we left the busy seasonal period. Some additional metrics have been included to help understand the scale of the problem in the form of the percentage of players banned relative to the daily active users.

Rest assured cheaters make up a tiny fraction of the players in the game and we are actively combatting them on a daily basis through both automated and manual measures.

We have been observing a notable decrease in identified cheaters via cheat reports over the last few wipes, and our conclusion based on other metrics is that we believe this is a reduction in cheating activity. Let us know your thoughts, have you been observing more or less cheaters recently?

We have observed a clear decrease in the time cheaters are able to spend in-game before they are banned over the last few months which is a great thing to see and we hope players are able to enjoy their wipes with minimal cheater interruption.

In total this year we've banned over 142,000 cheaters and we hope to keep this momentum up as we work towards our goal of ensuring a fair and competitive environment for all players.

SERVER PROFILER - ALLOCATION TRACKING

With this update we'll be releasing an update to Server Profiler that will allow server owners and mod developers to more easily catch anomalous memory consumption. Server Profiler gains the "Allocation Tracking" capability - once enabled, it'll start to continuously record allocations for each frame and counting relevant metrics. Once one of the metrics passes a user-defined limit, it'll trigger the export of a snapshot, containing 1 frame of data. This snapshot will only contain allocation events, with each allocation event having a callstack recorded with it.

Here's an example of snapshot:

To start, run watchallocs \[Name] \[MaxStackDepth]

• Name (default “Allocs“, no extension, max 32 chars) - controls generated snapshot filename

  [/*]

• MaxStackDepth (default 16) - controls how much of the allocations callstack to record

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To stop, run stopwatchingallocs

The following server-var metrics are available as server vars and can be changed at any point:

• NotifyOnTotalAllocCount (defaults to 16000) - will snapshot once all threads during 1 frame exceed allocation count across all threads

  [/*]

• NotifyOnTotalMemKB (defaults to 8096, aka 8MB) - will snapshot once a frame allocates more than specified memory across all threads

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• NotifyOnMainAllocCount (defaults to 0, aka disabled) - will snapshot once main thread exceeds allocation count during 1 frame

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• NotifyOnMainMemKB (defaults to 0, aka disabled) - will snapshot once main thread exceeds total memory allocated during 1 frame

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• NotifyOnWorkerAllocCount (defaults to 0, aka disabled) - will snapshot once all worker threads exceed allocation count during 1 frame

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• NotifyOnWorkerMemKB (defaults to 0, aka disabled) - will snapshot once all worker threads exceed total memory allocated during 1 frame

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Warning

Allocation tracking is not free and will impact the performance - it’ll be worse the more allocations are made. This tool should be used for debugging for a limited amount of time.

Plans for the Future

Server Profiler is getting to the point of where it has enough features to be complete, with only incremental improvements to do. These are my outstanding plans(not in a particular order):

• Expose method filtering to users as a json config

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• For Allocation Snapshots, attempt to visulize recorded callstack as slices (so it looks closer to performance snapshots)

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• Add ability to record user scopes and associated metadata with those scopes

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COMMAND BLOCK

The command block is an admin-only deployable, and an exciting new tool for creative mode enthusiasts.

Once set up, it can store any server command and execute it when powered. Chain multiple together to create more complex circuits.

We look forward to seeing what creative use cases you can come up with!

TWITCH DROPS - BELLUM

Join us from the 25th of June to the 2nd of July as the Spanish speaking Rust community returns to Twitch for all out action, adventure, and unprecedented amounts of raiding in Bellum: Conquest!

All Twitch Drops and participating creators will be available to view in the coming weeks.

Please be aware of scams. Facepunch will never contact you.

Only ever use our official website: https://twitch.facepunch.com/