Work continues on Rust's upcoming blueprint progression overhaul, with new loot adjustments and balancing changes this week. Meanwhile, roaming scientist boats are getting ready to patrol the coastline, livestock improvements are piling up, and a new way to renovate bases is taking shape. Here's a look at what's happening in Rust development.

Blueprint progression overhaul

Work continues on the blueprint progression overhaul, which will replace scrap with Blueprint Fragments, Pages, and Books for unlocking technologies through the tech tree. Following last week's initial implementation, developers have focused on balancing how these items are obtained and used, expanding their availability across various loot sources.

Basic crates now have a 20% chance of containing a Blueprint Fragment, while certain standard crates have had their fragment drops increased from one to two. Underwater crates have also been updated, with additional chances to find fragments and pages. Gutting Catfish, Orange Roughy, Salmon, and Small Sharks now has a 20% chance of yielding a Blueprint Fragment instead of the previous cloth bonus. Large Barn and Ranch hunter treasure missions have also gained a 50% chance to reward a Blueprint Page.

Elsewhere, livestock vendor rewards have been switched from Fragments to Pages, and the new Blueprint Book item has received its world model and initial implementation. The Primitive tech tree's additional blueprint cost has been removed because it was rounding up to two items. The Prototype Workbench Upgrade has also been adjusted, with its chance of success reduced to 25%, meaning players will use an average of four blueprints per successful upgrade. All of this is still being balanced ahead of release.

Livestock improvements

The livestock system continues to get a healthy amount of attention, with numerous fixes and some new features in the works. Cows now follow players more smoothly when being led and will no longer push players around in the process. Fixes have also been made for cows clipping through walls while resting, sheep starving despite having access to feeding troughs, and baby animals getting stuck outside feeding range. Lamps can now satisfy cows' lighting needs, while infant animals only need to reach 80% happiness to maximize their potential stats.

There's also a new pair of shears for harvesting wool, crafted using two blades at a Level 1 Workbench. Shears provide 25% more wool than a knife (roughly 12–13 wool per sheep before genetic bonuses), have double the durability, and won't damage or startle sheep when used correctly. Players can also rename cows and sheep, although animals with rare special names and genetics will retain their original names. Recessive genes are now more clearly identified in the UI and livestock vendor, making it easier to understand the genetics of your animals.

Wool armor inserts

A new wool armor insert is also taking shape, giving players another use for their growing wool supply. The current setup calls for 20 wool to craft, with the item available through the Tier 1 tech tree. Initial protection values include 3 cold protection, 2 melee protection, and 1 projectile protection. These figures are still subject to balancing as development continues.

Building improvements and renovations

Several building improvements have landed this week, including the ability to rotate L-shaped and U-shaped stairs after placement. Rotation and flipping now share a slot in the building radial menu, with E and Q used to switch between them. The system also prevents changes when deployables are attached to stairs, avoiding accidental destruction, while improved error messages make it clearer why a building piece can't be changed. Ramp placement has also been improved, making it easier to place ramps by aiming toward the center of a foundation.

Meanwhile, work has kicked off on a new base renovation system. An experimental Renovation Saw allows players to cut existing building pieces into different shapes, including turning a wall into a doorway or window opening. Players select the available cut from a radial menu, then follow a visible cutting track with the saw as sparks fly and the cut progresses. It's still early in development, but could eventually make modifying existing bases a whole lot easier.

Scrap King building skin

The upcoming Scrap King building skin has received another round of polish, with adjustments to roof overhangs, collision geometry, and building piece placement. The latest changes also include rusty corrugated interior walls, revised concrete textures, and mirrored stair variants. Much of the work has now been merged into the main branch, bringing the skin another step closer to release.

Roaming scientist boats

Scientists are getting more active on the water, with work on new roaming boat encounters around the main island now merged into the main branch. Under the current setup, one or two groups of scientist boats will spawn together every five to eight hours, patrolling the coastline for 30 to 60 minutes before leaving. Boats will enter from the edge of the map and move toward shore, with their minimum coastal patrol distance reduced from 100 to 35 meters.

The AI has received significant improvements as well. Scientist boats now steer more smoothly, navigate obstacles more reliably, and can reverse or maneuver themselves out of tricky situations. Scientists can switch between visible targets, remember recently lost targets, and eventually give up a pursuit after losing sight of a player. If a boat's driver is killed, another scientist can take over the controls. Scientist RHIBs also have a 20% chance to drop a Blueprint Page, while the initially planned Blueprint Book drop from PT boats has been removed, leaving Pages as the reward.

Uzi 9mm progress

Development on the new Uzi 9mm continues, with a focus on getting the weapon's animations and handling into shape. The Uzi features a collapsible stock, allowing players to switch between one-handed and two-handed handling, with dedicated animations for deploying and collapsing it. The latest work also includes reload animations, magazine drops, shell ejection, attachment positioning, and recoil adjustments.

Additional fixes have been made to aiming, weapon swapping, and stock animations, including preventing conflicting actions such as reloading while changing the stock position. An initial version has been merged into main, although further animation work and polish are continuing on its development branch.

Performance and optimizations

A substantial amount of optimization work is underway, targeting both client performance and server stability. Recent changes to the level-of-detail system reduce unnecessary processing around large bases, with improvements to object batching, vegetation culling, and how rendering updates are distributed between frames. In editor testing around a large base, one LOD processing measurement dropped from roughly 15ms to 1ms at the 99th percentile, while the slowest LOD switching operations improved from 2.5ms to 1ms.

On the server side, workshop skin optimizations have dramatically reduced temporary freezes, with repair bench reskin lookups dropping from 1,275ms to 0.66ms in editor testing. Network packet batching has also been merged into main, allowing multiple packets to be grouped together to reduce networking overhead. Additional work continues on base occlusion calculations, item handling, and AI processing. As usual, actual performance gains will vary depending on the server and hardware.

Other stuff

Demo tools: The updated demo interface has now been merged into main, featuring improved camera controls, keyframe editing, undo functionality, spotlights, and fixes for invisible players and weather settings.
Birds and wildlife: Work continues on crow and seagull flocks, including groups of seagulls that land, take off when startled, and can be shot. New sounds, animations, and distance-based rendering improvements are also underway.
Lighthouse repairs: Continued work on damaged lighthouse lamps, including multiple damage stages, collision models, and repairable components.
Animal repellent: Shark, bee, bull, and ram behavior has been adjusted when players use animal repellent. Bee swarms won't chase affected players, although walking through them can still cause damage.
DPV improvements: Diving Propulsion Vehicle acceleration has been doubled, fuel consumption reduced, and radial menu options improved.
Milk icons: Updated milk item icons make different varieties easier to identify in refrigerators.
Cargo event timers: Scheduled events now preserve their remaining cooldown through server restarts, preventing events such as Cargo Ship from resetting their wait time.
Friends list performance: Optimizations significantly reduce the time needed to populate large friends lists, with a test involving 1,000 friends improving from approximately 159ms to 14ms.
Grenade animations: Improved predictions for dropped grenades, including more accurate velocity and spin.
Nailgun: Additional animation, firing effect, and projectile visual improvements.
Character animations: Fixed weapon aiming while turning, melee head wobble while jogging, and incorrect player orientation in rowboats.
Workshop improvements: Updated downloadable source models and camera positioning tools for skin creators. The Double Barrel Shotgun world model also received proper sights.
Rust+ cameras: Early experimental work on displaying actual 3D models and textures in Rust+ camera feeds.
High Stakes DLC: Work continues on a new small wooden game table, including its model, textures, icon, and item setup.
Fruit trees: Apple spawn locations and probabilities adjusted, with additional asset and visual improvements.
Radiation water: Fixed sprinklers briefly spraying clear water when activated with radioactive water, along with improvements to water gun effects.
Building fixes: Fixed issues with ladder hatches, ramp placement, and nested entities being processed twice, which could cause problems with doors.
Respawn fixes: Fixed sleeping bag buttons overlapping on the death screen and assigned bags not appearing correctly on the map.
Miscellaneous fixes: Improvements to hemp accessibility colors, swamp tree harvesting markers, plants disappearing from boats, aggressive tutorial chickens, first-spawn rock and torch skins, and store bundles not displaying as owned.