Friends with Benefits

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Jake_Rich

One of our long-term goals has been to reduce friction for new players. This month, we’re rolling out a party system to make jumping into a server with your friends easier than ever.

To invite friends to a party:

Open the friends menu (bottom right of the main menu)
Right click on a friend
Click "Invite To Party"
Wait for them to accept the invite

Once all your friends have joined your party the party leader can connect to a server. This will cause all party members to connect to the same server.

There is also an in-game advantage to joining a server as a party. When you first spawn on the server your party members will spawn nearby each other and automatically be put on the same team. Future respawns will remain random scattered on the beach.

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Outpost Spawning

Jarryd Campi

After several years of waving a radiation detector around, we’ve finally given CZ-721 in the Outpost something to do. He now offer players a mission to travel to a Fishing Village and back to unlock a new, permanent spawn point in Outpost. This new spawn point has a 30 minute cooldown and won’t count towards your bag limit. This mission is available in both Vanilla and Primitive modes, but is disabled in Softcore (as there is already a permanently available spawn point in that mode).

Along with this new mission we’re also shipping a bunch of under the hood improvements to the mission system. This has been a longer term project over the last few months as we all want to make more missions and flesh this system out but the process to create new missions internally is quite cumbersome and error prone. Prior to these upgrades, creating a new mission involved a long process of manually setting up conversation nodes, filling in translation fields and lots of manual data entry.

We’ve automated as much of this as possible, allowing us to iterate and create more missions faster. We’re not quite there yet but we’ve got more missions planned this year that will allow us to push these tools further.

In terms of player facing upgrades, we’ve improved the conversation screen so that it doesn’t bounce around as the text is animating in, added a Mission Complete panel to communicate when a player has finished a mission and applied a lot of performance improvements as the conversation screen was quite heavy.

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Team Invite changes

Jarryd Campi

We’ve made several improvements to the invite process this month in order to make it easier to find and play with your friends. You’ll find a new Invite button in the bottom left Team UI that allows you to add friends to your team even if they aren’t on the current server or online.

You can also now send team invites via the chat panel by right clicking a players name in the chat.

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Notable Changes

Peacekeeper Mode Now display a holster warning to offending players (like the old safe zones)

Headshot Sounds Added dedicated UI sounds slider (affects headshot sounds)

Surrendering Holstered Weapons are now holstered when surrendering, no longer hidden

Optimized Turrets Optimized Turrets aiming calculations on the server for better performance

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Legacy Gate and wall DLC

This month, we’re introducing the Legacy External Wall and Gate skin pack, now available from the Rust Store. The Legacy External Wall and Gate skin pack allows you to change the visuals of your wooden external walls and gates with this rustic throwback.

You can use the Spray Can item to reskin your external walls.

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Deployable Snapping

Ian Henderson

Placing Deployables has always been a bit of a chore in Rust, especially if you want it to be properly in a corner or against a wall. We've finally implemented a solution to this, one that will hopefully be unintrusive, easy to use and help open up the building system by allowing quick and accurate placement of deployables for all.

Plenty of Deployables can now be snapped. This snapping is enabled by pressing Left Shift whilst ready to place an object. It comes in two flavours: Simple and Advanced (default). These modes can be changed in the settings menu.

Simple:

Simple mode will try to snap the object to a wall whenever possible. It will not force any other changes, and can be used to use the wall as a simple slider, allowing custom placement wherever you would like, but with the walls help.

Advanced:

Advanced will do everything simple does and more. Deployables will snap into corners, and will try to snap onto similar Deployables nearby. For example a box will snap to a box, or a shelf will snap to a shelf.

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Abyss Pack - New Storage Tanks

August 2023's Abyss Pack has been updated to now include another new free item!

The Vertical and Horizontal Storage Tanks have been bought up from the depths. Holding as much as a Large Wood Box, they're great places to store your salvaged loot.

If you already own the Abyss Pack, the new Storage Tanks will automatically be added as an option in the crafting menu.

You can get the pack on the Steam Item Store.

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Patrol Helicopter Changes

Ian Henderson

I know the most recent set of Patrol Helicopter changes weren't the best in some respects, so we want to try and improve them. It may be best to discuss some of the reasoning behind the previous changes as well as the reasoning to these new changes before getting into it.

Background

Our main drive with the Patrol Helicopter changes is to encourage PVP across the map, whilst simultaneously stopping the same clans from getting Patrol Helicopter every time it comes out. Our previous set of changes included two main parts:

Tug of War

Before the last set of changes, the Patrol Helicopter would simply aggro on the player that shot at it, providing it wasn't mid missile attack and enough time had passed since its previous aggro. This meant that 'the last player that damaged it' could tag the Patrol Helicopter predictably and easily.

Therefore a system known as 'tug of war'/danger zones was developed. When a player attacks the Patrol Helicopter an invisible bubble is generated, players attacking the helicopter from within this this bubble increase the bubbles score according to a specific set of factors (damage dealt etc). This allows multiple groups or individuals to fight for aggro of the Patrol Helicopter in a more serverwide style.

Multi-Stage Fights (Fleeing Mechanics)
When these 'bubbles'/danger zones ranked up too much score too fast, then the Patrol Helicopter will flee. With the idea being that the flee would happen 2/3 times and players would be required to chase down the Patrol Helicopter: fighting it across the map to encourage PVP serverwide.

In my opinion: most of the issues with the above changes lie with Multi Stage Fights, with the main one being that players end up feeling frustrated or unrewarded for taking the helicopter.

New Mechanics

The Tug of War system has been left virtually unchanged, with most of the following changes have been made to try and improve the Multi Stage Fight/Fleeing behaviour.

Patrol Helicopter has been changed to work the following ways:

Will always flee towards a monument.
Flees will be capped to 1 grid maximum.
Flee location is now shown on the map.
Patrol Helicopter will no longer flee if you take it from nearby/inside a monument.

These changes are meant to preserve and improve the best parts of the previous changes (increased serverwide engagement and more PVP) whilst also trying to fix the issues players had with the multi stage fights.

It's possible these changes wont work, but I want to try them out.

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Improved Erosion

Grigler

We've improved the erosion simulation that is done as part of the procedural map generation with this update.

It will now do a better job of blending the canyons and lakes with the rest of the environment and generally make a larger impact in the generation of the world. The improved simulation adds a relatively small amount of time to the map generation, but is aggressively multi-threaded to try and mitigate this.

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LEGACY VIEwMODEL CAMERA ANIMATION UPDATES

Alex Webster

As of April 2024 we've been adding hand animated camera animation to our viewmodels via a new camera bone in the rig. For older viewmodels, we've continued using the code based system implemented back in 2017. While this was functional, the camera didn't accurately track the movements on screen as well as it could.

We are now able to assign any object to be the camera for our viewmodels, so we have intended to bypass the lack of a camera bone on these legacy assets, by creating hand animated movements directly in Unity. We have now completed these animations for all our older assets (pre 2017). Admires now have camera animation as well.

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Roof Stability Fix

I want to take a moment to explain the bigger picture of our development process after noticing a large amount of outrage following a commit regarding "roof stability being fixed".

At Facepunch one of the core objectives of our mission statement is as follows:

Valuing Player Feedback: Our community is the lifeblood of Rust. We actively seek out and incorporate player feedback, ensuring that our development process is aligned with the desires and needs of our community.

We understand and respect that some bugs are better left in the game once they turn into important gameplay mechanics. Bunkers and External TCs are well known bugs that we have intentionally left in the game until we find a suitable official game mechanic to replace them. It's not ignorance: we actively keep an eye on them and only fix the variations that we feel cross the boundary from "cool mechanic" into "game breaking".

Roof stability bunkers and disconnect-able TCs were not considered game-breaking so what happened? Well, often these bugs end their life in the same way they were created: unintentionally.

After the Jungle Update we noticed players started making more pyramid bases and "Jungle Temples" but there was a problem: roofs would break after server restart and/or it would be impossible to build despite it showing enough stability. The root cause of this bug as well as disconnect-able TCs was the same: the stability system was using the lowest number of links to the ground instead of the highest stability for support. To fix pyramid bases meant disconnect-able TCs would also be fixed. We weighed the options and this seemed acceptable: there are many alternative bunkers in the game & you can still break external TCs manually before replacing the main TC.

I hope this gives a bit more clarity on why we fixed roof stability and gives a better explanation of our development process than a single line commit message did.

TLDR: We didn't break all bunkers in the game nor plan to, we fixed stability calculations primarily affecting stability with roofs which caused a single type of bunker to break.

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2025 Recap & Looking Forwards

Alistair

Rust is fast approaching its 12th birthday. That’s nearly 12 years of guaranteed monthly updates - over 380 content updates and 2,500+ hotfixes since launch. This year, we passed 1 million positive reviews, making Rust the 6th most reviewed game on Steam. Thank you.

In 2025 we hit a huge milestone: over 20 million copies sold on PC alone.

We also shipped some of our most ambitious updates yet:

Primitive Update – Four siege weapons, a new bow, shields, and a new game mode. We also rolled out updates to horses, ragdolls, and more.

Crafting Update – A feast of changes: new ways to cook and craft, pet chickens, bees, pies, armor inserts, optimizations, and plenty more.

Jungle Update – A whole new biome! Climbable trees and vine swinging, deadly tigers and crocodiles, new monuments, boomerangs, blowpipes, and more.

Looking ahead:

Next month brings a Hardcore mode refresh alongside some long-requested quality-of-life improvements.

Later this year, we’re setting sail with the Naval Update - introducing modular, player-built boats complete, with cannons, of course and much more.

Also in the pipeline: AI and animal overhauls, including new animals, a Warhammer collaboration, and more we’re not quite ready to talk about yet.

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40% off rust and steam store dlcs!

ashcook123

The Steam Summer Sale is here!

And with just a few days left, why not pick up a copy for that potential clan partner mate you've been trying to convince to join? Get it to gift here.

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Features

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New Main Menu Party system
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New mission to unlock an Outpost spawn point
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New deployable snapping system
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Storage tanks added to Abyss DLC pack

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Improvements

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Improved Procedural erosion
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Turrets in peacekeeper mode now display a holster warning to offending players (like the old safe zones)
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Optimized Turrets aiming calculations on the server
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Applied new camera viewmodel animation to most older held items
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Patrol Helicopter will only flee up to 1 grid tile
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Patrol Helicopter will always flee towards a monument
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Patrol Helicopter flee location is now shown on the map
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Patrol Helicopter will no longer flee if attacked from a monument
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Can now invite Friends to team from inventory (including offline players)
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Can now invite players to team from RMB chat popup
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Weapons are now holstered when surrendering
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Added “fps.startlogging”, outputs a csv of frametimes (“stoplogging” to stop)
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Spray Can now reskin large objects (external gates/walls) from further away
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“Quit” command is no longer saved in F1 history between sessions
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Added UI sounds slider (affects headshot sounds)
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Improved performance when there are a large number of water bodies in the world
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Wire slack controls now have dedicated keybinds
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Can now bind mouse wheel movement to keybinds
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Removed driftwood from buildable cave sections
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Upped texture resolution on the Fridge in the Workshop from 1024 to 2048
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The `lookingat` command now provides more useful information
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Added `killbees` admin command
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Snakes now handle LOS visibility better client-side

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Fixed

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Fixed demolish timer restarting when reskinning large objects eg.external walls/gates
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Fixed suicide cooldown timer being triggered in some cases when running the kill command but the player was invulnerable
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Fixed UI flickering when multiple attack helicopters were entering and exiting the gunner UI
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Fixed small boxes not casting shadows
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Fixed powered water purifier calculation error causing lost water when transferring to an almost full container
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Fixed spray can free spraying not working on some wallpaper pieces on the inside of roof blocks
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Fixed case where Team UI would display incorrectly when switching servers or spectating
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Fixed Tunnel and Underwater Dwellers still spawning if ai.scientist_spawners_enable is false
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Fixed Vsync preventing limit FPS in background options from functioning
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Fixed Menu FPS cap not always applying correctly
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Fixed long server uptimes causing calorie consumption to be calculated incorrectly
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Fixed long server uptimes sometimes causing freshly harvested food to spoil immediately
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Fixed toggling streamer mode while connected to a server not resulting in censored nameplates
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Fixed missing SFX when equipping the Tool Gun
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Fixed being able to reskin the regular chair into an Ice Throne on Tugboats
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Possibly fixed a rare error when equipping a bow
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Network threading parameters are now admin only
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Fixed X tree minigame not working properly on some vine swinging trees
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Fixed not being able to reskin the computer station with the Spray Can
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Fixed exception when cancelling a voicemail recording
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Fixed all horses mounted on trophies using the same skin pattern
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Fixed some impact FX flying away when shooting a Locked Crate on Cargo Ship
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Fixed picking up a ladder on an external wall resulting in all other ladders on that wall getting destroyed
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Fixed missing Photo item in Industrial Conveyor filters
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Fixed Items category in Industrial Filters displaying as “#bp_deployables”
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Fixed players getting stuck in fishing animation if they cancel by switching to a weapon
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Fixed audio error when disconnecting from a server while on a moving train
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Fixed missing interact icons when using the radial menu on berries
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Fixed rare server error when a Hopper harvests a player corpse that is already partially harvested
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Fixed players spawning with two rocks in the tutorial if they have the jungle rock skin selected
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Fixed a way for players to clip inside moving trains
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Fixed food spoil timer getting reset when shift clicking into a Cooking Workbench
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Fixed a flyhack kick when jumping on a particular truck in Junkyard
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Fixed player not dying when disconnecting underwater with a diving tank
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Fixed missing SFX when opening/closing Excavator engine
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Fixed Sleeping bag being slightly off centre
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Fixed softcore looting restrictions not being respected if a player is downed and handcuffed
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Fixed satchels that fizzle out getting detonated if they clip through a wall
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Fixed rugs being very difficult to pick up with a hammer
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Fixed being able to deploy stashes too close together
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Fixed above water gibs moving in slow motion when spawned by an object that was below water
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Fixed Chippy arcade machine not being repairable
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Console commands debug.refillvitals, debug.refillvitalsall, debug.heal now also recover players if they are in the injured state.
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Console command inventory.clearinventory playername now clears whole inventory of the target player.
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Fixed graphics settings affecting icons generated, temporarily switches to Max (Workshop Editor)
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Fixed pressing the randomise character button while a deployable is selected spawning a player (Workshop Editor)
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Camera movement is no longer enabled by default (Workshop Editor)
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Fixed some parts of meshes not appearing in icons, double armored door as an example (Workshop Editor)
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Fixed harvesting scientists/players bodies not working when aiming at the head
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Fixed being able to place drones inside inaccessible parts of monuments
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Fixed an exploit that made it possible to get shelves floating in the air
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Fixed being able to switch out items into containers that don't allow player input
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Fixed player skin appearing completely white on certain resolutions and FOVs
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Fixed sometimes getting noclip building errors when building near ramps and stairs
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Fixed wood teas playing the wrong sound when consumed
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Fixed being able to harvest items above stack size from animals and resources
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Fixed some inaccurate colliders in launch site and on the oil rigs
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Fixed being able to clip inside some containers in harbour
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Negative modifiers such as incapacitate dart effects are no longer added to players in god mode
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Fixed a loot exploit for handcuffed players in softcore mode
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Fixed snakes occasionally trying to attack a non LOS target resulting in them just slithering away
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Fixed Patrol Heli not flying above jungle trees
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Fixed server side chat mutes not being properly saved