Uberust

[icycalm]

It's been years since we last played Rust, and for me personally it must be closing on half a decade now. I think the last time I played was at the height of Covid. And the game has changed tremendously since then. It must be approaching on twice the amount of both features and content it had since the last time we played, and there's no slowing down as the roadmap looks as stacked as ever. So I've been thinking of getting back into the game for over a year now, but I always envisioned my return as a full month of shutting myself inside a room, and I just haven't been able to make the sacrifice, because of course Battlegrounds takes priority. But then last night, as I was catching up on the latest updates, I had an epiphany. I got the idea from the recent naval update that added, among other things, full blown tropical islands surrounding the game's main island! And immediately I thought of Atlas, because with all the new naval mechanics (including water bases and full granular shipbuilding!), they have basically added Atlas's key mechanics now, so I thought how cool would it be to find one of these tropical islands and take it over and fortify it and base yourself off of it? But remember that my ideal base site includes access to all features in the game, meaning it must be on the coast, but must also have train tracks going through, and a glacier nearby, etc. So there's no way the tropical island would be my main base. So why not just play a session where, instead of trying to build the biggest base ever with all mechanics featured, we just take over a small island and just build a naval yard, and that's it. The biggest and coolest and most functional naval yard, to be sure, but still only a naval yard, which should be doable in a couple of days, so I won't have to sacrifice a whole month or even a whole week for it. Which would mean I can play... pretty much immediately (as in this coming Thursday, more on which in my next post) instead of having to plan my whole freakin' YEAR around it.



And then we can have another weekend, say a couple months down the line, where we just build in the snow with a snowmobile garage, and another with just a farm (when animal husbandry is added in a few months), and another with a normal garage now that there are also motorbikes in the game and look super-cool, and another with a factory, etc. etc. So we focus on one building at a time, we plan it out and document it and refine it and post its blueprint in the Cult Base forum, and then once a year or whatever we can find a less cutthroat server and take a whole month to put all the pieces together and build the latest version of our megabase, and take pics to document it and post in the forum etc.

This way I, and everyone else who loves the game, can keep up with development with the knowledge that we'll be trying the new features soon, perhaps even monthly in single-day sessions, instead of seeing the new stuff come out without any hope of playing it for the foreseeable future. Moreover, people can also jump impromptu on any given Thursday or weekend to test out their own improvements to any of our base modules (i.e. buildings), so it should be viable to just play Rust whenever you want, even solo, while still contributing to our "metagame" so to speak of building the biggest and coolest base ever that features ALL of the game's mechanics and items (which by this point is ridiculously complex and difficult: just unlocking the full tech tree takes 10,000 scrap these days, according to Grok).

Another reason I've been champing at the bit to get back in the game is because I finally have a PC that can run it at 4K, plus a projector to see it on 100+ inches, AND there was a major graphical update a couple of years ago that none of us has seen yet:

World Update 2.0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9smd22_sC4



That was in October '24, so even the schaden-led game that took place in November '23 [ > ] didn't feature these graphics. None of us has seen them. And you know how immersive Rust's world was even before this update. I just need to see it with these graphics at 4K/100".

Don't forget also the June '26 update that improved player models and animations significantly:

Built Different
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_D9HEFkHCdo



They'd been talking about updating the models for ages, and I always thought that would wreck their vast library of item skins, but it looks like they managed the update without breaking anything. So if we add these updates to the world ones, the game's already staggering level of immersion must be through the roof now, let alone at 4K/100". I simply NEED to experience this, and I suspect that with my updated attack plan/metagame I might be able to just keep playing forever, alongside Star Citizen and my Battlegrounds of course.

Which reminds me that I have plans to write lore that connects Rust to Star Citizen (and later, Star Citizen to Battlegrounds). If you remember, I talked about writing lore for Rust many years ago because the devs will never do it (programmers, eh), but when I conceived the idea that the Rust island is just an Atlas-style archipelago planet inside Star Citizen's verse (a kind of Waterworld, if you've seen that movie), I realized this solves many of the devs' lore issues, since you no longer have to have it somewhere on Earth, and thus connected with Earth's history and politics. Cobalt then just ends up being a sci-fi company running human experiments on a distant planet, far from the UEE's reach. And every month they nuke the planet, because why not? That's how experiments work. Very simply, very cleanly, you've provided a full background to Rust that explains everything, and if you're a Star Citizen player you can imagine that you're still playing Star Citizen when you're playing Rust: you're just playing an alt account that has been abducted (or grown from embryo or whatever) to be experimented on. Just some head canon that solves all of Rust's lore issues and makes the experience even more immersive, if you like that level of roleplaying, like I do. At this point Facepunch could just ask an AI to write some goddamn lore for them, but again, programmers are retarded and don't think of these things. I could probably give the above prompt to half a dozen AIs and come up with a novella that explains everything, and I'll probably do it and post it in a new thread and sticky it in the forum. Hell I could get a full OPENING CINEMATIC TRAILER made in due course, and we can watch it every time we start a wipe.



Above btw is the nuke effect found in the game's files that hasn't been implemented yet, although the nuclear missile silo is already in the game and operational, but doesn't go boom yet. So what does the site do? According to Gemini:

The Missile Silo in Rust is a high-tier endgame monument and dungeon. It serves as a major tactical location for high-value loot (including elite crates and a red keycard), requires radiation protection up to level 25 in its deepest levels, and contains game lore revealing that "Rust" stands for Repopulation Unit Survival Test via an in-game bunker computer.

Nuclear Missile Silo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TSZ6ckRYGv4



So every piece of lore the devs have built into the game so far perfectly matches my lore. For example, why is the fucking jungle biome 20 minutes' walk from the ice biome? Makes no sense on Earth, or in any scenario other than a terraformed planet in a science-fiction setting, etc. So my lore might as well be true, if you care about such things, as I do.

I can't stress enough the metric ton of stuff that has been added to the game since we last played, both in terms of standard items, and DLC. In terms of standard items and mechanics, these are all the new ones since schaden's game according to Gemini (but note also there was a lot of stuff added before schaden's game that we still haven't seen/played):

Island-wide electrical grid activation, Power Plant heavy fusebox staging, Green Recycler speed and efficiency scaling, Red Recycler activation, Satellite Crash event triggering, Launch Site computer terminal targeting, Safe-zone apartment renting, Rentable player-operated marketplace shops, Crude Oil pump system extraction at Dome, Small and Large Oil Rig switch synchronization, Supermarket freezer cooling via power grid, Water Treatment Plant gearbox interacting, Water tank filling mechanics, Roadside water pipe dispenser filling, Airfield terminal airdrop fall rate boosting, Chinook helicopter summoning, High External Wall upkeep costs, High External Gate upkeep costs, Sleeping Bag favoriting, In-game Clan system with custom roles, Clan chat channels, Clan map locations and markers, Softcore 2x gather rate scaling, Softcore strict 6PM-9PM raid windows, Master Key lock-picking held-key animation, Center-screen lock aiming during break-ins, Key-jingling lockbreak sound cues, Momentum-based swing set ragdoll ejecting, Public Oxum gas station car lift utilization, Public Oxum garage door powering, Industrial pipe automation, Industrial item splitting, Industrial conveyer routing, Industrial automated crafting, Base turret auto-sorting, Safe-zone marketplace stall renting, Modular shipbuilding, Deep sea diving exploration, Tropical island exploration, Tug Boat floating base commandeering, Attack Helicopter aerial combat, Ranged weapon charm attaching, Modernized player skeleton art pipelining, Smooth running and sprinting character animation logic, Fluid weapon-handling character state layering, Stationary mortar shelling bombardment, Workbench upgrades, Bar games, Clothing statistical buffs, Vendor trade adjustments, Demo UI framework recording, Heavy Fuses, Aiming Module, Tanker vehicle, Green Recycler (monument-managed variant), Red Recycler, LazyCell, LazyLock, Once, OnceLock, M16A2 Rifle, Mortar, Tin Can Alarm (Improved), Weapon Charms, Apartment Complex rent boxes, Master Key (Apartment variant), Apartment Complex swing set, Glowing Wallpaper Pack, Metal Shopfront (Workshop Skinnable), Discord Orbs, Industrial Storage Barrels, Food Freezers (Supermarket variant), Functional Car Lift (Oxum variant), Powered Garage Door (Oxum variant), Roadside water pipes, Craftable modular sea vessels, Sunken ship treasures, Ghost ships, Stationary ballista, Ballistic helmet, Ballistic leg armour pieces, Ballistic vest, Bamboo barrel.

As for DLC, it's crazy. On top of very functional items like weapon racks and working pool tables, they have so many building skins and floor skins and wallpaper skins now that every building can have an entirely unique look. You can easily spend a couple hundred bucks buying all the DLC, in addition to thousands of dollars on community-submitted skins as always. I'll start slowly accumulating stuff, prioritizing whatever feature we're focusing on every session, so naval stuff for our first session on Thursday.

P.S. There is now Warhammer 40,000 DLC in the game. And you should know by now what that means.

For those looking to catch up with the game more fully than the summary I've provided here, head to Rustafied's blog and keep scrolling down/back: https://www.rustafied.com

But if you don't have the time for that, you can catch up in half an hour by just going through the major update trailers:

Power Trip
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynUzYLpvmXs



Common Ground
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9BpyXSjrac



Naval Update
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qVYe0pT6wJc



Jungle Update
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0BHMuwU4Nk



Crafting Update
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGrxEguK0pY



Primitive Update
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctPXY2Ofm_M



Road Renegades
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDb_ukRu2Us



Waves of Change
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-AcOf4L0zw



Bags to Riches
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqPFJQPsKwc



Airborne
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTKll4bk968



Deep Sea
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFY0ZF2XL8w



Eye In The Sky
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ywsSzO7vucM



Industrial Update
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMybqJ2eYSc



I've left out the DLC trailers so, if you're interested in uber-customization, just head to Facepunch's recent videos page on YouTube and you'll find them there: https://www.youtube.com/@fcpnch/videos

And you can browse the items and prices in detail at the slick new store page: https://rust.facepunch.com/store

Finally let me just say that I fully realize many of us have already put hundreds of hours into the game and may not be interested in returning, and I am sure we won't get the large team sizes we used to have (I think we topped out around 9-10 players for our biggest sessions back in the day). But honestly I'll be perfectly happy to play even solo, and anyone joining me will be just a bonus. Even if someone isn't interested in building at all, and just wants to log in and shoot some of my neighbors, that too is helpful, and it's welcome.

Look forward to my scheduling post that will set us up for Thursday! There's a lot to go over in there too.

God I am excited for this.

[icycalm]

The wipe still has half a week to go but I've seen enough of how the game plays today to note an astonishing change in the 4-5 years since I last played.

The monthly servers are catching up in popularity with the weekly ones.

In retrospect it was inevitable. As the devs keep adding more and more systems, content and challenge to the game, fewer and fewer clans have the manpower to run through all of it in a week. Therefore more and more of them move to monthly servers, to the point where midway through a weekly wipe the monthly server now has almost as many players (say 325 vs. 375) as the weekly one: an unheard-of occurrence a few years ago! And I suspect on Mondays to Wednesdays the monthlies might even pass ahead as the weekly ones near their wipes and players therefore lose interest [EDIT: 100% spot on: It's Monday evening and while Rustoria US Main has dropped to 49/250 (i.e. 49 in-game with the max reduced from 850 at wipe to 250), Rustoria US Long is at 212/225, more than FOUR times the active players, and on a freakin' weekday! A complete holocaust for weekly severs at pretty much every time of the month bar the first day or two after Thursday wipes!]

The main change when going from weekly to monthly Rust is... physiological, as the game's focus switches from a sprint to endurance. Athletes will know exactly what I am talking about. Any given day is now far less important than it used to be, which means you can take a fuckin break for a day or two so you don't kill yourself. As long as you maintain the upkeep of course, which is pretty brutal but with good reason, otherwise every solo would have a monster base as in the old (pre-upkeep) days and ruin the map. And in a monthly server the map would be ruined 4x worse than in a weekly one... You wouldn't be able to take five steps before bumping on an abandoned halfassed base, without upkeep. So you have to play an hour a day for upkeep, or two hours every other day etc. Or you can just tack that work onto the end of your last session, for however many days you plan to take off.

Of course the danger of raids increases vastly with the monthly schedule. If you pick a remote spot in a weekly server, you may not get raided at all, but in a monthly any decent spot is guaranteed a raid at some point, especially for cool bases. Which is fine by me; it would suck to spend a month building without any raids. Might as well play Satisfactory or Space Engineers at that point.

So I am slowly reaching a conclusion that... I could be playing EVERY forced wipe from now on. Meaning the first Thursday of every month, when new content is added. Even if I only play on wipe day, that's still pretty much the most exciting part of the game. That 10-hour session once per month will probably be the most gripping gaming I will do all month. So why not do it every month? Or at least every other month? Moreover, because these will be monthly servers, it's no great sacrifice to move the session to Saturday so more people can participate if they want. (Another little bonus is that you don't need to worry about VIP passes, since queues for Saturdays are manageable.)

And btw, my plan for this week to break the base down into modules and only work on one module per weekly wipe has failed, as everyone who's been following us on Discord will have seen. I basically failed to take into account that you still need all the base essentials to tech up every module: furnaces, workbenches, and so on; which means at minimum you need a central base plus the module. But then you also need a farm to feed your team for HP and also for fuel etc., so that's three modules now, and what if you find a cool vehicle near you, so that's four modules. So my plan was dumb, you need a full base every wipe, and the monthly servers facilitate that brilliantly.

That's the plan then: The Cult will from now on be playing Rust on the first Saturday of... either every month or every other month. I still haven't made up my mind about frequency. But let's just say at least 6 months per year. Anywhere between 6 to 12 wipes per year.

Won't Star Citizen clash with that?

No. Not for the foreseeable future at any rate. Having taken such a huge break from Rust to focus on SC, and now coming back to it, has allowed me to compare the feelings that these games engender to a clinical degree, and let me tell you, these games are as different as night and day. In short, Rust utterly obliterates SC at daily- to weekly-timescales, while SC utterly obliterates Rust at monthly- to yearly-timescales. In fact this experience of intense comparison between the two has inspired me to write a VGCULTURE essay (probably titled "Restart Syndrome", though the title may change) comparing the timescales at which different genres dominate. That's all I'll say for now, but young Padawans should be able to guess which genres dominate at the hourly- and even minute-timescales. You've read enough art theory to figure this out, it's not rocket science (it's art science).

What about my Battlegrounds? Won't playing Rust monthly clash with that?

The intense Rust session will be just one Saturday per month, or even per two months. If that proves disruptive, I'll simply move it back to the first Thursday of the month, i.e. the normal forced wipe day, which has nothing to do with Battlegrounds, as we almost never play midweek. And most of the gaming in Rust will happen midweek, whenever people have some free time. So instead of seeing the two games as clashing, you should rather see Rust as merely filling up the dead time in between Battlegrounds sessions. Which is the same role Star Citizen plays for CULT. So why do we need two of them? Well, because Rust provides a far more intense medium-term experience, whereas SC does better at the long-term. So I suspect most people will focus on SC throughout the year, and only add say one or two Rust wipes per year whenever they end up having more free time and miss the intensity of the shorter-term experience. That said there will of course be people who only play SC, or who only play Rust, or who only play Battlegrounds, because different people specialize at different timescales due to their different temperaments. But, as the ultimate generalist since I am the ultimate theorist, I need to engage at all timescales in order to adequately feed my temperament, so of course I will be playing everything.

And of course, since playing games is my job, I HAVE the time to play everything, and to a far greater extent than anyone else. That's why I made it my job lol, precisely so I can do that. But everyone else would have to be retired or taking extended time off work to match my pace. It's not a competition, and the whole reason you're paying me so much money every year, as far as the clan is concerned, is precisely so you can have a reliable hardcore gaming partner whenever you need him, and to set you up precisely for the most hardcore games in every genre, for you to choose from according to your time and temperament. And that's precisely what I am doing here.

So expect my news coverage of Rust to vastly increase from now on, looking in detail into every new expansion and modification of the game's featureset and ruleset and piece of content, including DLC and skin acquisition, in which you're welcome to join and contribute exactly as with Star Citizen. Start times for the wipes in which we'll be participating will be advertised in the forum and via the Discord Events feature, so you'll always be informed well ahead of time when we'll be playing. Strategy planning and reports, as well as base design in the Cult Base forum, will be extensive.



I am super-excited for this. I've put 35 hours in since Thursday (almost a full-time job in half a week lol), and just crossed the 500-hour lifetime threshold (still noob for Rust, many clans won't even look at your application if you have less than 1.5k), and every hour has been a pleasure. And I still haven't even tried half the systems and content in the game, and the roadmap is stacked with insane new features (for example the Nexus system coming up will connect Ferry Terminals across servers, while digging basements under bases will complexify the game's already staggeringly-complex base-building even further, and animal husbandry will take farming to the next level and swallow huge chunks of Ark and Stardew Valley).


P.S. The server we'll be playing in is Rustoria US Long. Unlike US Main, this is classed as a Premium server, which is a new feature introduced by Facepunch to combat cheaters. It means you must have at least $15 worth of DLC or skins in your Steam account to be allowed entry, because this increases the expenses for throwaway accounts to cheaters. Personally I would have raised this to at least $50 or even $100 since the game's €50 pricetag doesn't seem to deter them, but $15 is better than nothing, and reportedly it has made a difference to the prevalence of cheaters. So buy a DLC or two or some skins if you intend to join.