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Meta Shift

Meta changes, huge balance changes and performance gains, custom crosshair, drone storage and much more!  

02 October 2025
DEVBLOG
The current progression meta has grown stale, moving too fast and becoming too easy over the years, with scrap inflation and scrap being everywhere. We don't believe this has been overwhelmingly negative, but it has detracted from world PvP, especially in and around monuments, and we want to experiment more with progression. This is experimental step 1:

We’re introducing a new layer of progression to the Workbench system. The aim is simple: get players back out of their bases, contesting monuments, slow down progression and clashing over territory.

Workbench level 1 remains unchanged, but Level 2 and Level 3 now require blueprint fragments to craft. These fragments are found at key monuments, creating a soft progression gate that pushes players into early fights and slows down clan snowballing.

  • Workbench Level 2 now requires 5 Basic Blueprint Fragments
  • Workbench Level 3 now requires 5 Advanced Blueprint Fragments

Blueprint fragments are tied directly to puzzles and high-end loot, encouraging players to push deeper into monuments and hackable events.

Basic Blueprint Fragments
  • Always spawn in green puzzle rooms (x1)
  • Always found in blue-card puzzles next to the red keycard (x2)
  • Found at all medium to large monuments
  • Found in airdrops
If you chain both green and blue, you've already had 3 Fragments in a run.

Advanced Blueprint Fragments

  • Guaranteed inside hackable crates
  • 1 in 10 chance to appear in elite crates
  • Always spawn in pairs
The main areas where these can be found are:
  • Launch Site
  • Military Tunnels
  • Nuclear Missile Silo
  • Underwater Labs
  • Small and Large Oilrigs
  • Events: Cargoship and Ch47 crate drop
You can also convert 20 Basic Fragments into 1 Advanced Fragment, giving a fallback path.

Scrap crafting costs for workbench levels 2 and 3 are now greatly reduced, allowing players to have extra scrap to unlock items from the techtree.

Larger groups will naturally eventually accumulate more fragments than they need, creating an economy where fragments and workbenches are traded. Smaller groups and solos will be forced to scrap harder for their progression, making monuments hotly contested again.

We'll be watching and reading all feedback, and we'll adjust and balance as needed over the coming days and weeks. As mentioned at the beginning, this is just part 1, part 2 will be released in the December update. 
By design, not all monuments are equal, some have trade-offs, while others should feel bad for groups but ideal for solos or small groups. With blueprint fragments, we want to ensure all mid to large-sized monuments are relevant, so with that said, the following monuments have basic green keycard puzzles added:
  • Dome
  • Ferry Terminal
  • Radtown
In addition, you'll now be able to find a recycler at the Dome, puzzle room. 
The meta of running the same paths in monuments has gone stale, we've not changes some monuments in over 5 years. Do you know where every monument loot crate is? Many of you will.
Today, almost every monument has had the majority of its loot moved to new locations. Areas that previously had little to no loot have been refreshed, making these areas relevant again. Dead spots are gone, and new loot run paths have opened up.
Our goal here is to break old habits and get players rediscovering movements, hopefully making loot runs feel fresh, least for a bit. 
Every day, we see posts on Reddit, X, Discord, Facebook, of someone sharing a screenshot of awful loot roll they just got. Granted, sometimes it is terrible, but Hackable crates should always feel rewarding. 
We've reworked Hackable and Elite crate loot rolls, removing some of the junk. You should now always get something of use, hopefully multiple items. 

Drones now have a single storage slot, able to hold a single stack of any item. While piloting the drone, you will be able to drop the contents by left clicking.

Throwable explosives dropped from the drone are active and will explode with their usual behaviour, keep your eyes and ears open. 

SAMs and Auto Turrets will now treat player drones as hostile and target them, marketplace drones are safe.

The Nuclear Missile Silo monument, first introduced in May 2023 as a blue-card monument. The silo has always been a high risk vs reward location, with forced corridors and plenty of scientists to battle through, and then hopefully not door camped when leaving.
From today, the monument is now a red keycard monument. This change aligns it with other high-tier areas, advanced Blueprint Fragments can now be found here.
3 additional elite crates have been added throughout the silo.

This change should make the silo a more valuable, highly contested destination for groups chasing top-end loot and progression.

Did you know? Rust Repopulation Unit Survival Test
Ever since its introduction, Rust's built in crosshair has left a lot to be desired. There was only one setting - on or off. If you didn't like the default look or behaviour, you were out of luck. This lead to many players opting for third party apps instead.
This month we are adding crosshair customization, which gives you control over settings like Style, Colour, Dot size, Spacing, Line length & width, Outline and Outline colour.
It also lets you choose whether to hide the crosshair when aiming or keep it visible.
Lastly, theres a built in crosshair sharing feature, where you can import & export crosshairs via a code.
The spike trap is a new default primitive trap which slows and hurts players when stepped on. 
Crafting cost: 80 Wood.
The UI popups for Oil Rig resets, Cargo Ship inbound, and Excavator activated have been replaced with global environmental sounds. We hope that this proves to be a more immersive and less clunky way of notifying players to these monument events.

For players that miss the message popups, this can be re-enabled with the console command 'ui.monumentnotificationtoasts'
One of the many data points we collect is how often players are doing certain activities and missions sit towards the bottom of that list. The most common reasons we hear why you don't like missions are: that missions don't suit Rust, you don't want to do missions, and missions are not worth the time for the reward. 
Fair, we don't want to force anyone to do missions if you don't want to, they're supposed to be an add-on to the activities you're already doing. 

We can certainly try to address some of the complaints, so today we've significantly increased mission rewards by offering a higher quantity of loot and additional mission rewards. 


Do give them a try and let us know if they now feel worth the effort to reward. 
A new type of crate can now be found washed up along the spawn beach shore, offering a small boost to help you get started.
They’re not common, so you won’t be able to rely on them for a steady supply, but you may be lucky enough to stumble across one.
The medieval arsenal has had some love this month, with sweeping balance changes across the board. Our goal is to take these weapons and make them feel more viable.

The way shields work has had an overhaul. Your stamina allowing you to hold shields at the ready has been nearly doubled, but when you block damage with the shield, this stamina is reduced. The amount of stamina reduction is dependent on shield type, In addition, shields block a higher percentage of damage than before and also have a slightly larger hitbox. This should make them a more viable defense mechanism than their first iteration.
Catapult Ammo Range
All Catapult ammo fires 30% further
Catapult Reload
Catapult Now Reloads 3 Seconds Faster (50% faster)
Catapult Crafting
Catapult crafting reduced by 1 gear and 1 rope
Battering Ram
Battering Ram sheet metal cost reduced by 2
Propane Explosive
Propane Explosive bomb deployed and thrown, damage increased
Ballista Craft
Ballista craft reduced by 1 gear
Bee bomb
Bee bomb crafting cost reduced by 1 bee grenade
Ballista Incendiary
Ballista Incendiary low-grade fuel reduced by 10
Barricade placement
Fixed ice lakes and train tracks blocking barricade placement when close to monuments
Turret Interference Fix
Fixed turrets powered inside a base being turned off by turrets outside the base
APC Invisible Fire
Fixed Invisible fire around APC debris
Held Item Redeploy
Fixed held items rarely redeploying when moving quickly through the world
Chainsaw Startup
Removed the fail start-up chance from chainsaw, starts first time, every time
Cargoship Pathing
Smoothed ship path shown on the map & no longer sails around Oilrigs
There has been a long term bug in Rust with the Chinook's Crate drop logic. It would often frequently select the same location all wipe. This has now be changed to be a true random, as it should've been.
Considering my humble beginnings as a community modder before Facepunch, it seems fitting to be the one giving back to the modding community who works tirelessly to extend the game past the vision we originally had for Rust.

This month I integrated a previous Hackweek where I allowed the following features to be modified on the client.
  • drone station tax currency item & amount
  • ddraw works without client admin
  • dropped item custom names
  • entity scale
  • item icons
  • maximum health
  • melee weapons throwable
  • send user language when connecting to server
  • vitals

I also took a look at our Community UI modding framework and merged the following features into the base game.
  • 9-slice sprite support
  • activeSelf exposed
  • button hover colors
  • draggable CUI components
  • input field multi-line
  • input field placeholder
  • layout groups
  • pivot
  • rotation
You can make Pull Requests for new CUI features at this github repo.
This month, we investigated the performance of Rust and found that the VRAM usage was significantly higher than intended. This was due to various factors, but the main issue stemmed from how we handled texture streaming. By default, texture streaming was set to use all available VRAM for textures. 

This was problematic as it left no space for meshes and render targets, meaning RAM would be paged to cover the excess memory required for rendering.

To solve this issue, we started looking into a better way to calculate the memory budget for texture streaming by taking the available VRAM and subtracting an estimate of the excess memory we required, but this would have caused issues for devices with a lower amount of VRAM.

To ensure that textures are always loaded at the correct mipmap level, and the minimum amount of VRAM is used for texture memory, we've set the memory budget very high, but enabled discarding. This means that we only ever have the textures that are needed immediately in VRAM, which should improve memory performance for all devices.

We also identified an issue with texture streaming and our batching system, where the required mipmap level wasn't being calculated correctly. This has now been corrected to allow for more efficient use of texture memory.

Another significant change we made to improve the texture streaming system was to enable mimap streaming on all skins to reduce their memory overhead.
This month we're introducing a new workshop skinnable: the bed. 

The bed is always high up on the request list for adding new skins in the community, so we're really happy to kick this process in to action starting this month. We've already enabled the bed deployable to be available to skin creators and the first few skins are starting to come in which is very exciting to see. 

We'll be rolling out other in-demand items over the calendar, so keep an eye out to get the freshest skins.

To make your own bed skin, head over to the in-game workshop and locate the Bed deployable. From there you can download the model file and add your own materials.


We can't wait to see what incredible and inventive skins people come up with! 
Paintings, signs, and photo frames can now be rotated before deployment!

To help with this in the painting menu we have added some hot-keyed controls to help you quickly rotate your artwork, or reset the rotation/pan back to center.

Bicycles and Tricycles have received some additional love this month with a new feature - bunnyhopping!

Pressing Right-mouse-button whilst riding will activate a small jump to help you navigate obstacles in the world. The bikes are now more thrilling to ride and are even better than before in getting you to your destination - logs, rocks, walls and grubs won't stand a chance!

Some key points:
  • Faster bikes provide higher bunnyhops
  • You can only activate 1 bunnyhop every 3 seconds
  • Jumping will require and consume 10% of the bike's stamina bar
  • Jumping is scaled with the bike's health and stamina bar (keep those tyres inflated, chain oiled up and don't wear yourself out too fast if you want a big hop!)

Send me your best skatepark clips!
Every Rust player has been pained by a projectile invalid appearing in their combatlog. These checks exist for good reason to ensure projectiles behave as expected within legal values between clients and the server, preventing manipulation by bad actors or unfair latency. For the most part, these checks work correctly and do their job, contributing to a safe and consistent experience, but we are aware that there are cases in which they go wrong, invalidating a projectile that should have been accepted by the server.

I'm working to investigate and resolve these false positives.

This month, I have been working with the server projectile's code to investigate and reproduce reported issues. This involves pages of code reading, note taking, drawing projectile trajectories in editor, making diagrams and firing thousands of bullets, amongst a whole lot more.

Improvements have been made this month to edge-case false positives affecting the following areas:
  • Firing projectiles when inside vents (like the ones found on the oilrigs) and other tight spaces
  • Firing projectiles at long distances
  • Firing projectiles at fast-moving players
  • Firing slower-moving projectiles (arrows, shotgun bullets...)
  • Additional preventions put in place relating to incorrect projectile movement
I've also got further plans on how to better debug projectiles in-editor to find these edge case false positives that negatively affect gameplay.

How you can help:
If you experience projectile invalids in your F1 combatlog during gameplay then please try and record a video clip showing the entire interaction (GeForce overlay is great for this) and then upload a bug report in-game using F7, stating the full server name and any other important information. You can also reach out to me on discord.gg/rust

Additionally, any information you have regarding possible projectile exploits or cheats is always appreciated. Reminder that we have a bug-bounty 💰 program available at our Hackerone security page
In June, in the "nerfed, buffed, balanced?" update, we reduced the stack size of the wooden barricade from 10 to 5. Today, we're doubling down and reducing the stack size to 3.

 This should continue to help curb the Insta-maze spam in close quarters without gutting their utility entirely. You'll now have to use them more strategically. 

In addition, the barricade health has been reduced by 20%
We have been working on some upgrades to the workshop skin creation scene, and would like to present you with a first pass. With this update comes a host of UI improvements, a few new features, and behind the scenes there's some updates to the interface components that are going to make them easier to work with going forward.

Overall the flow of making skins should be smoother now, with less buggy menus and more clarity of all the different tools available. Notably some new features are: toggles for the player model and depth of field effect, custom workshop icon support, and a new colour picker. If you're interested in skinning but haven't bit the bullet yet, now is the time to check it out!
On October 23rd at 18:00BST / 13:00 EST, we'll release a mandatory server and client update to enable some new spooky features!

This year, we'll be introducing some spooky-themed wallpapers! 

Server owners, please remember this date.

Rust is partnering with both Ronald McDonald House Charities UK and Cancer Research UK to combine the cosyness of your base, with real-world impact!

100% of sale proceeds after Steam fees and tax from the sale of these charity bears will be donated, helping Ronald McDonald House Charities UK provide free ‘home away from home’ accommodation and support to families with children in hospital, while also supporting Cancer Research UK's critical work in funding cancer research and saving lives!

These limited-time items will run through to 30th October.

About Ronald McDonald House Charities UK:

Ronald McDonald House Charities UK is an independent charity, operating 14 Houses around the UK. The Houses provides free ‘home away from home’ accommodation and support for families with a sick child in hospital.

The charity ensures families can stay together, and close to their children during critical times, easing the financial and emotional support for those in need.
https://rmhc.org.uk/

About Cancer Research UK:

Cancer Research UK is the world’s leading cancer charity dedicated to saving lives through research, influence and information. Cancer Research UK’s pioneering work into the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of cancer has helped save millions of lives.   

Cancer Research UK has been at the heart of the progress that has already seen survival in the UK double in the last 50 years. Today, 2 in 4 people survive their cancer for at least 10 years. Cancer Research UK wants to accelerate progress and see 3 in 4 people surviving their cancer by 2034. 

Cancer Research UK supports research into the prevention and treatment of cancer through the work of over 4,000 scientists, doctors and nurses.  

Together with its partners and supporters, Cancer Research UK is working towards a world where people can live longer, better lives, free from the fear of cancer.
https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/


In case you missed it on Monday from Steam, Rust is now 50% OFF until Monday October 6th at 1800 BST / 1300 ET!

Why not treat that friend that's considering joining your squad? Gift it to them here

OCTOBER 8th, 2025 12:00PM PT / 7:00pm UTC



Join us for Twitch Rivals Base Invaders!

Watch & earn and exclusive Twitch Rival Backpack skin for one day only!  This drop will be tied to the Twitch Rivals channel and only active during the broadcast window. 

We will also have general drops across the entire Rust category until October 12th.
Connect your accounts to claim your drops! https://twitch.facepunch.com/

Heads up, server owners! 


On the morning of Sunday the 26th of October, clocks in our native timezone (British Summer Time) will be going back one hour to GMT. European servers will also be doing this. 

BUT clocks in the US also go back on the 2nd of November, meaning we should be in sync for wipe. But better safe than sorry!



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Features

  • Added blueprint fragments
  • Added crosshair customization
  • Added the small spike trap
  • Added a storage slot to drones
  • Added shore crate
  • Added bicycle bunnyhopping
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Improvements

  • Reworked the hackable crate and elite crate loot tables
  • Smoothed the cargo path shown on the map so it doesn't look too jagged
  • Cargo doesn't go around oil rigs anymore
  • Optimised UI overhead caused by animators and scroll views
  • Optimised store UI VRAM overhead
  • Optimised the time spent on checking building privilege when looking at codelocks
  • Optimised garage doors rendering by only using skinned mesh renderers when they're opening and closing
  • Added warning if trying to research a DLC item and that associated DLC is not owned
  • Replaced some monument notification toast messages with sound effects
  • Added new third person attack animation state for the chainsaw
  • Updated sound effects for the chainsaw
  • Various different sound and visual effects for the chainsaw now play in both first and third person
  • Server Occlusion grid generation should be upwards of 50% faster
  • Restricted certain convars behind RCON access only
  • Optimized windows server console to reduce lag when logging many messages
  • Improved the 'test generator': added snapping and fixed broken colliders
  • Added modding support for drone tax
  • Added modding support for max health
  • Added modding support for melee weapon throwable
  • Added modding support for entity sale
  • Added modding support for dropped items
  • Added modding support for custom item icons
  • Added modding support for vitals
  • Added toggleable logging of stability updates
  • Added "ent scale" command
  • Added analytics for twig building cost, puzzle resets & texture memory usage
  • Added additional CUI modding support
  • Added map url to server tags
  • Added convars for hardcore gamemode properties (fog of war, map disabled, etc)
  • Added "logentityspawntime" command for admins to log how long admins take to spawn on client
  • Added logging of all admin commands ran on the server inside "command_DATE.log" file
  • Improved the building guide mesh shader
  • Added puzzles to radtown, ferry terminal and sphere tank
  • Added a recycler to sphere tank
  • Buffed mission rewards across the board
  • Added skin support to the bed
  • Added debug `print_topologies` command
  • Added debug `fillmounts` command
  • Added admin `time.missiontimerscale` command to scale mission timers independently from global timescale
  • Added crafting quality tea stats in the information panel
  • On a map mismatch the client will now automatically re-download the map file
  • Shuffled loot spawns across most monuments
  • Moved most monument diesel spawns behind puzzle doors
  • Improved the collider of high wooden walls
  • Added snapping support to the admin test generator
  • Small Oilrig can no longer spawn in tier 0
  • Added tier-dependent loot to some more monuments - better crates if the monument spawns in higher tier areas on the map
  • Slightly reduced health of the wooden barricade cover, reduced stack size 5 -> 3
  • Tool cupboard UI calculations now take into account the server value of decay.scale
  • Bears now harvest for 20 meat instead of 19
  • Chinook crate will now choose with monument to drop at more randomly
  • Increased the range of catapults, reduced reload time
  • Reduced crafting cost of battering rams, ballistas, catapults, bee bombs, incendiary and pitchfork bolts
  • Increased damage of the propane explosive bomb
  • Added admin `enable_marker_teleport` command
  • Added colour picker for colour fields in the workshop scene
  • Added a button in the workshop scene to toggle the Depth of Field postprocessing effect
  • Added a button in the workshop scene to toggle visibility of the player model
  • Reworked workshop scene item selection from a dropdown to a list with searchbar
  • Added field in the workshop scene to set a custom icon for an uploaded workshop item
  • Added stats display row for anti-vehicle damage on ammunition, removed this damage from the "lethality" number calculation
  • Improved UI feedback for when items are being refridgerated
  • Improved inventory error messages to be more specific
  • Paintings can now be rotated before deployment
  • Added rotation controls in the painting menu
  • Chainsaw starts up every time, first time, removed fail chance
  • Drone marketplace will tell you if its going to be full before buying
handyman

Fixed

  • Restored christmas light bulb facing upwards when deployed on the ground
  • Fixed store cart button blocking clicks when the store page is closed while having something in your cart
  • Fixed workshop items not loading items correctly after certain pages
  • Changing item category in the workshop menu brings you back to page 1
  • Fixed TmProEmojiRedirector NRE when adding vending machine orders
  • Fixed battering ram impact effect string pool warning
  • Fixed siege weapon stuck in pulling mode if the server restarts when a player is pulling
  • Fixed raise/lower action on chandelier showing even if you don't have building privilege
  • Fixed laser detector not detecting fast moving vehicles reliably
  • Fixed RF receiver and seismic sensor staying ON if activated during a server restart
  • Fixed demo shot list UI text sizes
  • Fixed client Translate.Get NRE on startup
  • Added missing wallpaper to jungle store page
  • Fixed some items using the wrong description in the steam inventory tab
  • Fixed Jungle storage barrels having slightly incorrect colliders. They are now consistent with other barrel-type storage
  • Fixed Retro ToolCupboard box contents not fading out at distance at the same range as the ToolCupboard itself
  • Fixed Bed having incorrect icon on the workshop
  • Fixed some older Locker skins not displaying correct specular. These older Locker skins should now look like how the skin creator intended.
  • Fixed being able to potentially clip inside train workcarts
  • Fix various issues with mission timers
  • Fixed consistent noclip violations when traversing up steps at specific heights
  • Fixed incorrect projectile invalids when shooting players mounted to beanbags
  • Fixed shopfront exploit to split item stacks without trade being cancelled
  • Fixed logs not sending a message when logs are turned on & off
  • Fixed turrets getting cleared on the real copy of the base when using copy paste
  • Fixed turrets overloading due to interference when a new turret is turned on
  • Fixed SAM site not reloading when partially empty, improving defence against MLRS
  • Fixed train car storage showing "Occupied" when a player is in the driver seat
  • Fixed texture streaming not enabled on floor wallpaper
  • Fixed texture streaming not enabled on recent DLC assets
  • Fixed user language not being sent when the user first connects
  • Fixed puzzles resetting when players are inside them, such as arctic research card rooms
  • Fixed stability rarely updating over and over causing reduced server performance
  • Fixed client blocking ddraw commands sent from server when player isn't admin
  • Fixed occlusion issues where players could be invisible around hills and cliffs
  • Fixed the server browser prioritizing premium in the community tab
  • Fixed puzzle resetting getting blocked by invisible admin players nearby
  • Fixed hunger, drowning being too fast in some situations
  • Fixed puzzle doors on both oil rigs and launch site becoming openable by hand after the first server restart
  • Fixed oil rig scientists losing the ability to open doors and push into rooms after the first server restart
  • Fixed arctic research base blue card rooms being able to close with players inside
  • Fixed issues with the mission cooldown not applying correctly
  • Fixed players being able to spawn in river edges
  • Fixed gesture settings sometimes not showing owned DLC gestures
  • Fixed the hurt overlay improving visibility with night vision goggles
  • Fixed train storage box saying "Occupied" when someone is in the driver seat
  • Fixed powered water purifier being unable to be picked up
  • Fixed hot air balloons killing players they land on in safe zones
  • Fixed a shop front exploit
  • Fixed various entities spamming players console with warnings when shot
  • Fixed not being able to pickup sleeping bags on tugboats
  • Fixed the drone marketplace deleting items when the inventory is full
  • Fixed barricade placement being blocked on ice lakes and train tracks when near a monument
  • Fixed fire around bradley crates sometimes being invisible
  • Fixed jungle animals not counting towards the Wildlife Cull mission
  • Fixed being able to hide a gun using the rock paper scissors gesture
  • Fixed player sometimes being wet when waking up near water
  • Fixed heavy plate helmet overlay blocking status effects like wetness, temperature, etc...
  • Fixed HUD overlays displaying in painting menu
  • Fixed Chinook dropping crates at the same monument everytime
  • Fixed player metabolism sometimes ticking too fast on populated servers
  • Fixed showing 'prioritize premium' in the community and modded tabs
  • Fixed not being able to pickup the powered water purifier even when its empty
  • Fixed hurt overlay brightening up the view if you have NVGs on
  • Fix not being able to pick up gifted sleeping bags on tugboats/in shelters
  • Can no longer loot the input side of drop boxes from the deposit side

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