The October update is here, and the developers have been busy. Appropriately dubbed the “Livestock Update,” this month’s patch is headlined by new livestock animals, critters and swimmers, the Biofuel Generator, new food recipes, and an overhaul of Sandbag Barricades. There’s also powered monument loot rooms, a repairable Air Wolf helipad, skinnable Ladder Hatches, new achievements, optimizations, and a bunch more.

The update is expected to hit today at 2pm EST / 7pm BST, followed by a forced map wipe across all servers. Due to unforeseen circumstances, there will be no update stream today. Sorry about that, we’ll be back next month! I’ll post on @Rustafied as soon as the update hits.

Livestock arrives

Rust is getting a whole lot more crowded this month as the new livestock system makes its debut. Cows, bulls, calves, sheep, and lambs are being introduced, complete with taming, breeding, genetics, resource production, and their own needs to manage.

Wild livestock appear primarily in open grassland areas and can be tamed and led back to your base, including leading multiple animals at once. Leads can break if you run too fast or an animal gets hung up on an obstacle, although their pathfinding generally does a decent job of keeping up. You can even transport livestock with vehicles, with cows fitting on the double flatbed module.

Back at base, the new Animal Fence and Animal Gate snap together similar to external walls and keep livestock contained, while the Hitch & Trough provides food and water. Animals need to be kept fed, watered, and in decent living conditions, and will naturally graze on grass when available. Overcrowding also becomes an issue if you pack too many together, with the crowded threshold currently starting at 5 animals and severe packing at 9 within the relevant area.

Wild animals won't simply tame themselves by hanging around players either. Familiarity toward taming decays until a full bond has been established, sleeping players won't passively tame animals, and wild livestock won't die outright because their needs aren't being met.

Breeding and genetics

Livestock can breed, producing calves and lambs with their own genetics. We've already spotted herds in the wild producing calves, while young animals progress through growth stages relatively quickly during testing.

Genetics are displayed through the animal interface for both cows and sheep and influence things like production and the eventual value of the animal. Inbreeding is also accounted for, so repeatedly pairing closely related animals may come with some less-than-desirable results.

There's a financial incentive to breed your own stock, too. Wild and purchased animals receive a penalty when their Ranch sale value is calculated, while animals born through breeding receive their full value.

Milk, wool, and new food

Livestock provide some new resources beyond the usual pile of meat. Female cows can be milked directly, with our test cow producing 2 Milk at a time. Milk stacks to 10, with genetics also playing a role in how productive your cows can be.

Sheep are a little more hands-on. Rather than simply pressing a button, you actually shear their coat by cutting it away with a knife. Our fully coated test sheep produced 10 Wool, although genetics appear to influence wool production as well. Be careful where you're swinging once the wool is gone, as hitting an already-sheared section damages the sheep.

Milk can also be refrigerated for 4 hours, after which it can be skimmed into Skimmed Milk and Cream. Both tie into the new food system, with Milk generally increasing the duration of tea effects while Cream increases their potency. Livestock also produce dung and can be harvested for meat, bones, and leather, with new Beef, Mutton, Shepherd's Pie, Beef Pie, and Creamy and Milky tea recipes rounding things out.

Ranch livestock vendor

The Ranch is also getting in on the livestock action, serving as the place to both buy and sell animals. Players can purchase either male or female calves for 300 Scrap and lambs for 150 Scrap, choosing the sex while genetics are randomized. From there, you can raise and breed the animals before eventually bringing them back to the Ranch to sell.

Selling livestock works through dialogue with the vendor, who presents up to three randomized offers based on the animal's gene quality. You can reject an offer and try another two times, but turn down all three and the vendor won't be interested in that animal again for 15 minutes. Better-quality animals can produce dramatically better offers, with our testing turning up rewards including Pythons and sizable amounts of HQM while lower-quality stock offered considerably less. The potential reward pool also includes ammunition, rifle and SMG bodies, Ladder Hatches, high-tier doors, Scrap, and even a rare Red Keycard.

Wool can be sold separately through the same dialogue system, with up to three offers based on how much you bring at once, up to a maximum of 400 Wool. Between breeding, genetics, animal sales, and wool, the Ranch now gives players an entirely new farming economy to mess around with.

New critters and swimmers

Livestock aren't the only new creatures showing up this month. A collection of smaller critters and swimmers has been added around the map, including squirrels, rabbits, frogs, crabs, jellyfish, and sea turtles.

Jellyfish and sea turtles can be found throughout the ocean, while squirrels and rabbits appear across several land biomes and frogs can be found around forests and the jungle. These are largely ambient additions rather than another source of resources. Rabbits, frogs, squirrels, and sea turtles can be killed but don't provide anything when harvested, while jellyfish can't be killed at all. Land critters can also trigger Tin Can Alarms, so don't immediately assume that alarm going off means you've got company.

Biofuel Generator

Got a pile of food you're not going to eat? The new Biofuel Generator provides another option, converting consumable items into Low Grade Fuel. The generator is a Tier 1 blueprint on the right side of the tech tree, requiring 105 Scrap to reach, and takes 5 power to operate.

Different foods produce different amounts of Low Grade and process at different speeds, with both fresh and spoiled food accepted. The developers have also specifically balanced some foods for Biofuel production, including lowering the effective value of potatoes and fish. The generator can hold up to 500 Low Grade Fuel in its output.

There's a catch: this isn't a set-it-and-forget-it operation. You'll need to stir the generator to kick off production, which keeps it running for 30 minutes. Adding new material during that time pauses production and requires another stir. Stirring takes a few seconds and can be interrupted if you move away.

Thankfully, you don't have to stand around staring at it. The generator has a "Needs Stirring" electrical output which provides 1 power when attention is required, allowing you to hook it into a light, alarm, or other electrical setup. Once running, production also continues while you're away or offline.

Powered monument loot rooms

Heavy Fuses have a much larger role this month with new powered loot rooms appearing across a whole bunch of monuments. Rather than inserting fuses at each individual monument, these rooms are tied into the island's power grid. Insert enough Heavy Fuses at Power Plant and the corresponding loot rooms around the map become accessible, with more challenging monuments requiring more power.

On the cheaper end, Ferry Terminal requires 1 Heavy Fuse for 3 basic crates, Harbor 1 takes 1 for 4 basic crates, and Harbor 2 takes 1 for 3 basic crates and a Military Crate. Junkyard is particularly interesting, requiring just 1 Heavy Fuse for 2 Military Crates.

Mid-tier rooms generally require 4 Heavy Fuses. Airfield offers 2 basic and 1 Military Crate, Train Yard has 2 basic and 2 Military Crates, Radtown has 3 basic crates, Water Treatment has 4 basic crates, and Sewer Branch has 3 basic crates.

The expensive rooms require 10 Heavy Fuses. Military Tunnels contains 2 basic and 2 Military Crates and still involves the existing green card puzzle, while both new Launch Site rooms contain 2 basic and 2 Military Crates each. At the bottom of Nuclear Missile Silo, 10 Heavy Fuses get you access to 3 Military Crates and 1 basic crate.

Heavy Fuse decay now also scales with server population. On servers with 10 or fewer players online, Heavy Fuses last four times longer, gradually scaling back to their normal lifespan at 100 or more players. The small Heavy Fuse box at Power Plant has also been moved so it can be accessed from outside through a broken window.

Radiation and the usual monument dangers still apply where appropriate, so bringing a stack of Heavy Fuses doesn't magically make Military Tunnels, Launch Site, or the Missile Silo friendly places to hang out.

Repair the Air Wolf helipad

Air Wolf is no longer immediately open for business when a fresh map starts. The helipad now begins damaged and players must collectively repair it before helicopter purchases become available.

Getting it operational requires a hefty 30,000 wood, 10,000 metal fragments, and 100 rope. Repairs are performed directly on the structure with a hammer, similar to repairing a normal building piece, and multiple players can contribute toward getting the job done.

Once repaired, Air Wolf goes back to functioning normally and helicopters can be purchased as usual. The helipad remains repaired for the rest of the wipe, making this a one-time community project designed to slow down the arrival of purchased air vehicles early in the wipe.

There's also a new CCTV camera overlooking the area using the identifier "AIRWOLF."

Sandbag Barricade overhaul

Sandbag Barricades are getting a significant overhaul this month, turning the old deployable into a much more flexible defensive building system.

Individual sandbag pieces are around one-third the height of the original barricade and can be stacked on top of one another. Stack four together and the upper section turns into a firing window, effectively creating a small sandbag pillbox you can shoot through from inside.

The blueprint sits at Tier 1 and costs 15 Scrap to learn, with each sandbag costing 50 stone and 5 cloth and taking 10 seconds to craft. Health scales with the size of your barricade: a single layer has 150 health, two layers have 200, three have 250, and a four-layer stack has 300 health. Sandbags stack to 20 in your inventory, while those found as loot come in stacks of 4.

Placement is also pretty flexible. They can be deployed on foundations, rocks, normal terrain, and player-built boats, along with terrain around monuments as long as you're not trying to build directly on the monument prefab itself. Once placed, however, they can't be picked back up. All existing Sandbag skins are supported across the new variations.

Skinnable Ladder Hatches

Ladder Hatches are getting a visual refresh and, more importantly for the skin collectors out there, they're now skinnable.

Workshop skin support applies across the square and triangle Ladder Hatch variants, including their armored counterparts. Despite the refreshed models, our testing found no meaningful changes to their existing health, cost, collision, opening clearance, or general gameplay behavior. This is primarily a visual and Workshop upgrade rather than a balance change.

Animation improvements

Another batch of character and item animation work makes its way in this month. A new third-person animation subsystem has been worked into a variety of held items, particularly one-handed weapons and tools.

The Machete received a more substantial refresh with updated models and first- and third-person animation work, while hatchets, knives, medical items, grenades, the hammer, pipe wrench, Eoka, syringe, spray can, and other held items have received various animation-system improvements.

Player movement has also seen additional turn-in-place and crouched-turning work, along with fixes for weapons visibly sliding around in players' hands while running.

New achievements

Achievement hunters have eleven new objectives to knock out this month, covering several newer additions to Rust.

Rust Render Pipeline

A huge amount of work has gone into the new Rust Render Pipeline, which makes its debut with this month's update.

Development throughout the month has touched lighting, shadows, water, foliage, post-processing, UI rendering, viewmodels, effects, and a long list of shaders. The final stretch has largely consisted of fixing visual differences and edge cases, including overly dark contact images, missing Tin Can Alarm wires, player-preview post-processing, foliage shading, deep-sea color grading, store backgrounds, skin previews, and disappearing viewmodels.

Alongside the visual work are a number of rendering optimizations aimed at reducing unnecessary work and improving performance. Players can switch between the new Rust Render Pipeline and the old pipeline through a setting under the Experimental tab, with the developers expecting slightly better performance in most areas initially. The fallback toggle is planned to remain for the first month in case any graphical or performance issues pop up, with further RRP optimizations planned going forward.

Optimizations

Rendering isn't the only area getting some love under the hood. Livestock and critters have received extensive texture and behavior optimizations, while audio occlusion now prevents distant cows and sheep from loudly announcing their existence through everything around them.

Procedural map generation has also seen some significant optimization work. Recent changes saved around 67 seconds, or roughly 18%, when generating a 4,000-size test map, including improvements to erosion, topology generation, and cliff placement. Other work this month has included navmesh optimizations, background processing, memory reductions, server fixes, store UI improvements, and a variety of smaller allocation and performance changes.

Memory usage has received some sizable improvements too. Removing duplicate hand meshes from viewmodels saves roughly 100MB, while changes to how the in-game store loads assets save around 250MB at startup and roughly 450MB once unused store resources are unloaded. LOD texture optimizations can save another 100 to 300MB in some instances, while multithreaded animation IK showed around a 1ms frame-time improvement with 100 players in view during developer testing.

Other stuff

Scientists have received hit detection fixes.
Crossbow arrow visuals and rotation have been cleaned up.
Honey Bandage received additional fixes and cleanup.
Apartment Complex interactions and item transfers received fixes.
Oil Rig received a fix for rare duplicated puzzle-room crates after an improper server shutdown.
Motorcycle and bicycle dismounts now prioritize positions beside the vehicle instead of dumping you on top of it.
Underwater Labs mission objectives have been made more forgiving, including team progress for activating a boombox and support for labs that spawn with only one.
Cargo Ship lighting received a regression fix.
Elevator lighting and flare visuals received fixes.
Fluid Switch visual feedback was fixed at low object-detail settings.
The server browser received a fix for errors caused by overlapping refreshes.
Jungle animal spawning was fixed after the newer NPC system caused existing proximity checks to block many spawns.
Various server stalls, crashes, NREs, save/load problems, monument issues, visual bugs, and other assorted annoyances have been cleaned up.
C4, grenades, and satchels received client-side prediction, making throwables feel more responsive, particularly at higher ping.
Oil Rig crude pumping now takes 15 minutes to begin producing.
Water Wheels have around 4–5x more melee protection.
Boat steering wheel lock codes can now be changed.
Smart Alarms can now be deployed on top of other deployables.
Attack Helicopter armor plates now fall off in a random order.
Remotely controlled turrets can now hit reactive targets.
Horses produce considerably less dung, while livestock are more efficient.
Country selection UI in the server browser has been refreshed.
The F8 performance overlay now has more detailed frame-timing information to help identify CPU/GPU bottlenecks.
HQM collectables have been made smaller.
Carvable Pumpkin placement has been improved.
Neon sign painting received a color wheel and larger brush size.