Wipe Board
Game updates · Monthly update · 01 October 2026

Livestock

TL;DR of the Facepunch post, by Wipe Board
Wipe impact
This is the October force wipe update, Thursday 1 October 2026, so every server's map was wiped. Facepunch does not mention a blueprint wipe in the post, so blueprints reset only where a server's own schedule says so. The post also flags a separate mandatory Halloween update on 22 October at 18:00 BST, which is a patch rather than a map wipe.
Matters most to
Farmers and builders gain most from livestock and fences, while groups will care about the fuse powered loot rooms and the communal helipad repair.
Next force wipe
Thursday 05 November
Force wipe October 2026
Date, times and which servers wipe

What changed

LivestockCows and sheep can be captured in the wild and kept in player structures, because the new navmesh lets NPCs use doors. Both produce dung, cows produce milk and sheep produce wool, and both can be harvested for meat, bones and leather. They have genetics and needs like plants. Facepunch says the genes do not behave the same way, so old plant techniques may not apply.Livestock economyA new vendor outside the Stables buys grown cattle and sheep for a randomised resource offer scaled to gene quality. An offer can be rejected twice more, after which the vendor refuses to buy for 15 minutes. Wool sells to the same vendor under the same three offer rule. Rewards scale with how much is brought in one go, up to a maximum of 400.MilkMilk can be drunk as it is, or refrigerated for 4 hours and then skimmed. Skimming gives Skimmed Milk and Cream, with Cream the stronger consumable. Both are used in crafting: milk generally lengthens tea effects, while cream raises their potency.BuildingNew animal gate and fence deployables help keep livestock penned in. Sandbags have been reworked into four stages, each stage built by stacking another sandbag deployable on top, with the last stage a pillbox. The crafting cost per deployable is lower and loot now gives stacks of 4. The stack size rises to 20, and all sandbag skins work on every variation.MonumentsPowergrid loot rooms arrive at 12 monuments: Airfield, Ferry Terminal, Harbour 1, Harbour 2, Junkyard, Launch Site, Military Tunnels, Nuclear Missile Silo, Radtown, Sewer Branch, Trainyard and Water Treatment Plant. They are locked until enough Heavy Fuses are inserted at the Power Plant, and harder monuments need more fuses. Facepunch does not give the exact locations inside each monument.Air vehiclesThe Air Wolf helipad in Bandit Camp begins each wipe broken, and the vendor refuses to sell until it is fixed. Repair works like siege weapon construction: hit the helipad with a hammer to transfer resources, and it stays repaired for the rest of the wipe. Facepunch intends this as a communal cost that slows down early wipe air vehicles and opens the vendor to the whole server once paid.BalanceHeavy fuse decay now scales with population: at 10 or fewer players online fuses last four times longer, easing back to normal values at 100 players. This was done because low population servers lost power for long stretches, which locked out the marketplace. The small heavy fuse box at the Power Plant has also moved so it can be reached from outside through a broken window.CombatGrenades, C4 and satchels are now client predicted, so the throw simulates locally instead of waiting for the server. That should feel much smoother on higher ping. The client is corrected if the server disagrees. The machete gets a new high quality model, high resolution textures and a new animation set.WildlifeFrogs, rabbits, squirrels, sea turtles, crabs and jellyfish now spawn in the biomes that suit them. They are tightly budgeted with dedicated behaviours and are mostly set dressing for now.Quality of lifeThe Biofuel Generator turns raw or spoiled meat and other organic matter into low grade fuel. It must be stirred by hand about every 30 minutes, and an IO output can signal when it needs stirring. Output depends on the calorific value of what goes in. The country selection UI in the server browser has been redesigned.PerformanceThe duplicate hands mesh was stripped from every viewmodel and replaced with one shared mesh, removing 133 meshes and roughly 100MB of memory. The in-game store now streams images from Facepunch's backend and unloads them. That saves about 250MB at startup and around 450MB a minute after the store closes. Animation inverse kinematics is multithreaded, cutting UpdateScene from 9.36ms to 8.29ms with 100 players in scene.RenderingRust has moved from Unity's Built-in Render Pipeline to the Rust Render Pipeline, a custom scriptable pipeline built in house. Facepunch expects slightly better performance now and more gains later. The old pipeline can still be selected under the experimental tab, and that toggle is planned to last only one month.AnticheatSix more Facepunch servers now require TPM and Secure Boot, following the six enabled in March. Facepunch reports a reduced cheater presence on secure servers and still wants the requirement to go global. Crash dumps are now uploaded automatically, so fixes should come faster.DLCThe Plague Doctor Hazmat Suit is sold in game and on the Rust Steam item store. This month's workshop skinnable is the four ladder hatches: Ladder Hatch, Triangle Ladder Hatch, Armored Ladder Hatch and Armored Triangle Ladder Hatch, with the top and bottom faces made separately skinnable.ModdingTwo convars control the helipad change: vehicle.padrepairsrequired set to false reverts it, and vehicle.setrepairablepads forces the pad fully broken or fully repaired with 0 or 1. Server owners are also told to note a mandatory client and server update on 22 October at 18:00 BST for Halloween features.

See which servers wipe today Original post on Steam

Full patch notes from Facepunch

Reproduced as published by Facepunch (2,874 words); "we" in this section means Facepunch. Images and text belong to Facepunch Studios.

LIVESTOCK

This patch we are introducing cows and sheep.

What resources can THEY GIVE?

Both produce dung, cows produce milk, and sheep produce wool.

They can also be harvested for meat, bones and leather like any other animal.

Additionally, you can sell a grown animal to an NPC in the ranch.

How to set up a farm?

There are multiple ways to capture wild livestock, some more efficient than others, but they should all be pretty intuitive.

When the new navmesh is enabled, NPCs can enter player structures and respect doors opening/closing, so the sky is the limit.

Like plants, they have genetics and needs, and can be bred to hunt for a god clone.

However, the genes won't behave exactly like plants, so old techniques may not apply.

WILL IT TANK PERFORMANCE?

Each game frame, only a subset of the NPCs are processed, up to a hardcoded max time per frame. So when we increase the population, the server doesn't directly lose FPS, instead NPCs just become slower to react because we distribute the load across frames automatically when over budget. We still spent time multithreading and optimising the new navigation system, at least doubling its performance since the last patch. As usual, we'll be monitoring server performance and fixing problems as they appear.

LIVESTOCK ECONOMY

Growing and caring for your livestock will allow you to access some new resources and rewards.

Grown Cattle and Sheep can be sold at a Stable for a variety of resources. Simply lead your animal to the Stables and speak to the new vendor outside, where you will receive a randomized offer based on the gene quality of the animal. You can reject the offer and get another two more times, at which point the vendor will get annoyed and won't want to buy the animal for 15 minutes. 

Wool can be harvested from Sheep and traded in to the same vendor, where you will get up the three offers just like when you sell animals. In this case the rewards offered will be based on how much wool you bring in the one go - the maximum being 400. High risk, high reward.

MILK

Cows give you access to a new resource - milk. It can be consumed as is, but if you refrigerate it for 4 hours, you will gain a new option to skim the milk. Skimming the milk will give you two items - Skimmed Milk and Cream. Cream is a more powerful consumable.

Milk and Cream can also be used in a variety of crafting recipes. Milk will generally increase the duration of tea effects, while Cream can be used to increase the potency of those effects.

LIVESTOCK FENCING

To help keep your new livestock under control, we've added new animal gate and fence deployables - perfect for keeping your pet animals safe (ish!).

BIOFUEL GENERATOR

A way to finally make use of raw or spoiled meat. The Biofuel Generator converts organic matter to low grade, but it must be stirred by hand!

You can fill it up, stir it and let it process. It will take around 30~ minutes before you'll have to stir again, but don't worry - you can hook up some IO to let you know it needs stirring even when you're in the next room.

The amount of low grade you're given depends on the type of organic matter you put in, those with a larger calorific value will give you more low grade.

CRITTERS AND SWIMMERS

Alongside the livestock, we are bringing in some smaller animals to make the world feel more alive! Frogs, Rabbits, Squirrels, Sea turtles, Crabs, and Jellyfish will all be appearing around the island in the biomes that suit them.

Performance

The critters are heavily budgeted and have dedicated behaviours to ensure they don't take up any more server (and client) performance than strictly necessary. For now, they are mostly set dressing, and their performance limits are set with that in mind.

Thanks to our many efforts to optimise other aspects of the game, we can use a part of those savings to give the game more life and vibrancy!

AIR WOLF REPAIRABLE HELIPAD

At the start of the wipe the Air Wolf helipad in Bandit Camp will now be in a state of disrepair. The air vehicle vendor NPC will refuse to sell vehicles to anyone until the helipad is repaired.

Repairing the helipad is a process similar to constructing siege weapons - a certain amount of resources are required and you can transfer resources from your inventory by bashing the helipad with a hammer. Once the helipad is repaired it stays repaired for the duration of the wipe. The intention is that repairing the helipad requires a communal effort and air vehicles purchased from this vendor should no longer start spawning too quickly into the start of the wipe. If a clan wishes to get quick access to air vehicles they are required to invest a significant amount of resources to do so and they are also opening up access to the vendor to everyone else on the server.

Server admins can change this behaviour via convars vehicle.padrepairsrequired (if false this change is effectively reverted) and vehicle.setrepairablepads (force helipad into fully disrepaired/repaired state with 0/1)

SANDBAG STACKING

Sandbags have been reworked. They now have four stages, and each stage is upgraded to the next by stacking another sandbag deployable on top. Each stage grows taller, with the final stage being a pillbox version. All Sandbag skins are supported across all variations.

The crating cost of the sandbag deployable has been reduced to account for needing to stack more of them. When found in loot, Sandbag Barricades will now be a stack of 4. We've also increased the total stack size to 20.

POWERGRID LOOT ROOMS

Building on the Powerplant loot room introduced in the Power Trip update, we’ve added new loot rooms to many other monuments. These rooms are locked by default and become accessible once enough Heavy Fuses have been inserted into the Powerplant to generate the required power. The number of Heavy Fuses needed to unlock each room varies, with more challenging monuments requiring more fuses than beginner-friendly ones.

We won’t spoil the exact locations of these new rooms, but you’ll find them at the following monuments:

POPULATION DECAY SCALING OF HEAVY FUSES

Power phases are intended to fluctuate based on player interaction with the system. This is largely working as we expected on high population servers. However, on servers with lower population, power is often offline for extended periods of time. With the addition of the marketplace needing power to function, this started to lock out basic necessities like trade. To help ease the pain, we’ve made two changes.

Firstly, the decay of heavy fuses will now scale with population. If a server has 10 or less players online, heavy fuses will last four times longer. This gradually scales back to normal values at 100. We’ll continue to monitor this and make adjustments as necessary.

Secondly, we have moved the location of the small heavy fuse box at the Power Plant. It’s now accessible from outside the building via a broken window. This should help keep minimum power phases online.

CLIENT PREDICTED GRENADES/EXPLOSIVES

Grenades/C4/Satchels in Rust are server-sided. This means when you left-click, your client will tell the server that it has to spawn the grenade or c4, etc and then we have to wait for the server to do so. With higher ping, this can feel like a substantial wait.

We are now introducing some client prediction when you use a grenade/c4/satchel. This means that throwing these items will now feel way smoother (especially on higher pings) as your local client will simulate what will happen on the server before the server has to tell us, but don't worry: if there are any discrepancies, your client will be corrected. This shouldn't happen too often, but it will kick in when it needs to.

MACHETE REFRESH

This month, another of our old models gets a long-overdue makeover. The new high-quality machete model features high-resolution textures and a new set of animations.

COUNTRY SELECTION UI REFRESH

The country selection UI was a bit of a mess when it was first implemented. With it now being a large part of the server browser, we felt it was time to give it its own design and freshen up!

PERFORMANCE - VIEWMODEL MEMORY

We noticed recently that the hands model that forms part of every viewmodel was taking up a surprisingly large amount of memory. Each viewmodel had the same hand mesh included - it was the same mesh but duplicated and bundled with the LR, the Eoka, etc. It wasn't the sort of thing that would have been worth optimising years ago (each one was only 0.9mb) but nowadays we have over 100 viewmodels so it's adding up.

We went back through every viewmodel in the game and removed the mesh, then made one standard hands mesh that gets created as well when you equip a viewmodel. 

This required us to improve some of our internal tooling as not having the mesh included in the viewmodel made it difficult to preview and inspect animations in the Unity editor. Optimisations are important, but generally not at the expense of our internal workflows and efficiency.

We removed 133 meshes and saved roughly 100MB of memory in total.

NEW WORKSHOP SKINNABLE - ALL LADDER HATCHES

This month’s workshop skinnable is another four items! The Ladder Hatches:

This is sure to open up some doors (hatches) to the skinning community! We’ve put in extra effort to make the top and bottom of these hatches unique, so there’s plenty of opportunity to turn your hatch into a delicious pizza. 

To make your own Ladder Hatch skins, head over to the in-game workshop and locate the Ladder Hatch deployable items listed above. From there, you can download the model files and add your own materials.

PLAGUE DOCTOR HAZMAT SUIT ITEM DLC

The Plague Doctor is in town. 

The Plague Doctor delivers no cure - only death and decay. Bring out your dead, or prepare to join them.

The Plague Doctor Hazmat Suit can be purchased in-game or from the Rust Steam item store.

PERFORMANCE - DYNAMIC STORE ASSETS

One area where we could save a bit on memory is our in-game store. We use a lot of different assets to have our store looking great. But when playing the game, you literally can't see them, and yet they're still there either actively hogging up memory or putting pressure on Unity's GPU streaming system. So wouldn't it be nice if we didn't have those assets to worry about when we don't need them?

Over the past month we've been working on reorganizing how our in-game store deals with assets. We've made a couple important changes:

You also might see blurred placeholders(done via BlurHash) while fetching fresh images that you don't have cached:

Not only does this allow us to ship content more easily in the future (though there's more work in that direction), but it also saves us RAM:

PERFORMANCE - ANIMATION IK JOBS

We moved all of our inverse kinematics, which are secondary procedural animations like spine or hand movements, to be multithreaded this week. Previously, they were all running one by one for each player at the end of a frame, right after the animations had played. 

Other than performance, this actually lets us do a couple of things:

- We can use IK in our new animation subsystems and still keep them multi threaded. Any subsystem can just modify the IK before it runs. 

- We have a lot more control over existing IK, we previously relied heavily on built-in IK from Unity. 

Faster:

Update: 1.99ms → 1.47ms = -0.52ms~

LateUpdate: 0.98ms → 0.27ms = -0.71ms~

AnimationGraphFinish: 0.99ms → 0.75ms = -0.24ms~

Worse:

DirectorUpdateAnimationBegin: 0.42ms → 0.62ms = +0.20ms~

UpdateIkJobData: 0ms → 0.11ms = +0.11ms~

Overall:

UpdateScene: 9.36ms → 8.29ms = -1.07ms~

Director begin+end: 1.41ms → 1.37ms = -0.04ms~

Performance-wise, the new IK saves us around 1ms of frame time with 100 players in the scene, this will probably be a lot less drastic if you play on a lower-population server and only end up seeing 5-10 players at once. 

RUST RENDER PIPELINE

Because Rust has been around for so long, we were still using Unity’s old Built-in Render Pipeline, which has worked for the most part but has been very limiting in the optimisations we can apply and the effects we can render.

We have now migrated to the new Rust Render Pipeline, which is a custom Scriptable Render Pipeline made specifically for Rust by our graphics team. This gives us a lot more control over the rendering of Rust as a whole. This wasn’t easy, as we had to remake almost every effect in the game to work with this new pipeline.

The main benefit of this will be performance. At first, you should see slightly better performance in most areas of the game, as the new pipeline comes with less overhead. However, this is just the beginning. Our initial goal was to get this pipeline working in tandem with the original pipeline to ensure everything worked correctly and that we could still switch between them at runtime. Once we have fully transitioned, we will be able to optimise this pipeline further, meaning there will be more performance gains in the near future. We also have plans for improving the quality of graphics in the game where we weren’t previously able to do due to the old pipeline.

The Rust Render Pipeline can be toggled via a setting under the experimental tab so players can switch back and forth between pipelines in case there are any issues initially. This setting is only going to be here for the first month in case anyone encounters graphical or performance issues that we missed while testing. Hopefully, after the next patch, we’ll be able to remove this fully and have RRP as the default once we know that no serious issues remain.

ANTICHEAT: ADDITIONAL SECURE SERVERS

Back in March we introduced the ability for servers to require TPM + Secure Boot, enabling it for 6 of our own servers. 

Over the last 6+ months we have seen security feature adoption grow at a steady pace and we're ready to switch more servers to secure, continuing with the following Facepunch servers:

Our desired end goal is still to make it global for all servers in Rust, but we still have some ways to go for adoption, see adoption rates over the last 6+ months:

If your hardware supports it, we would strongly recommend you take steps to enable these features, see this support page. If you have TPM and Secure Boot already enabled feel free to give a secure server a chance, we were able to determine a reduced cheater presence on these servers a month after release.

CRASH UPLOADING

Last month we fixed EAC preventing the game from dumping crashes. This month we added uploading of crashes to our backend automatically. We now get a direct report when it happens instead of having to chase down players and manually reproduce the crash in our development builds of the game.

You should see increased game stability going forward as we can respond to crashes much more effectively now.

RUST ISLES - TWITCH DROPS

Don't forget to tune in to Twitch and catch the last few days of Rust Isles - your favourite creators battling for control of the seas! Sync your accounts here to claim all Twitch Drops. And stay vigilant of scams!

STEAM AUTUMN SALE

The Steam Autumn Sale is here! Save 50% off Rust and all DLCs, and 20% off the Rust - Warhammer 40,000 Pack!

Already got Rust? Treat that new clan member to a copy!

HALLOWEEN UPDATE

On October 22nd at 18:00BST / 13:00 EST, we'll release a mandatory server and client update to enable some spooky features!

Server owners, please remember this date. Full Devblog & Changelist: https://rust.facepunch.com/news/livestock

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Questions

Does the Livestock update wipe servers?

This is the October force wipe update, Thursday 1 October 2026, so every server's map was wiped. Facepunch does not mention a blueprint wipe in the post, so blueprints reset only where a server's own schedule says so. The post also flags a separate mandatory Halloween update on 22 October at 18:00 BST, which is a patch rather than a map wipe.

What changed in the Livestock update?

Facepunch's October 2026 update adds cows and sheep: they give dung, milk and wool, and they can be bred for genes like plants. Grown cattle and sheep can be led to the Stables and sold to a new vendor for a randomised reward based on gene quality. New powergrid loot rooms unlock at 12 monuments, including Launch Site, Military Tunnels and Trainyard, once enough Heavy Fuses power the Power Plant. The Air Wolf helipad at Bandit Camp starts the wipe broken, so the vendor sells no air vehicles until players repair it. Sandbags now stack through four stages ending in a pillbox, and grenades, C4 an

Who does this update matter for?

Farmers and builders gain most from livestock and fences, while groups will care about the fuse powered loot rooms and the communal helipad repair.

Summary written by Claude for Wipe Board from the official post and checked against it. Wipe Board is independent and not affiliated with Facepunch Studios.