The developers have some pretty significant gameplay changes in testing this week. Group size may start affecting base upkeep, vehicle armor is becoming destructible, monument progression continues to spread into existing systems, and HQM is getting its own rare ore nodes. There's also a sizeable round of performance work, balance changes, animal development, and fixes mixed in.

Group upkeep testing

One of the bigger experiments this week could make maintaining a large group's base more expensive. A new system is being tested which adjusts TC upkeep based on how many unique players are authorized. The current placeholder setup leaves the first four players alone, adds 2% upkeep for each of the next six, then 4% for each player after that. Under those test values, six authorized players would add 4% upkeep while twelve would add 20%.

There are already measures aimed at stopping groups from simply deauthorizing everyone to dodge the added cost. Players authorized on code locks connected to the TC can count toward the group size too, and authorization remains part of the calculation for 24 hours after someone is removed. The TC interface now shows the current group tax when hovering over upkeep. This is explicitly marked as very WIP and intended for internal evaluation, so don't get too attached to those numbers yet.

Player maintained monuments

Player maintained monuments continue to get more intertwined with the rest of the map. Monument blockers have been adjusted across Launch Site, Military Tunnels, Missile Silo, Large Oil Rig, and Small Oil Rig. Their health and protection have been tuned, with the current target putting a blocker at one C4 or five satchels to destroy. They also have visible health when attacked and effects as they move through their damage states, making the whole process a little less mysterious than beating on a pile of debris and hoping for the best.

The Drone Marketplace is also being tied into Power Plant progression. Under the current setup, the marketplace begins charging once Power Plant has at least four active heavy fuses and can accept orders once it reaches 50% charge. Four fuses take about 21 minutes to reach that point, while a completely loaded Power Plant cuts that to around five minutes. Having at least one fuse active stops stored charge from decreasing, and transactions no longer consume charge individually. A power indicator and supporting terminal UI have been added to explain when the system isn't available. Over at Dome, crude storage in each fuel pump has also been capped at 1,000.

Attack helicopter and hot air balloon armor

Both the Attack Helicopter and armored Hot Air Balloon are getting a more physical damage system. Attack Helicopter armor panels can now be removed as the vehicle takes damage, with separate thresholds currently set for its left, right, and front armor. Collision is being updated along with the visuals so shots can actually pass through the gaps once a panel is gone instead of bouncing off an invisible helicopter that remembers where its armor used to be.

The armored Hot Air Balloon is getting similar treatment. Its armor has been split into individual chunks that can break away, eventually leaving the bare frame behind. The developers have also added destruction pieces and collision work for the system, plus a three-second hold interaction when fitting the armor to help prevent accidental clicks. Separately, passengers aiming weapons from the Attack Helicopter now receive aim sway based on the helicopter's movement speed.

New HQM ore

HQM is getting its own proper resource nodes and ground collectibles. The developers have created dedicated art and prefabs for both, then separated HQM into its own spawning population so it can be considerably rarer than the usual stone, metal, and sulfur scattered around the map.

The values are already being tuned. HQM node and collectible spawn rates were cut heavily during testing, while the current resource amounts sit at 20 HQM from a node and 5 from a collectible. They're also set to appear more commonly in the jungle than other biomes. HQM has been added to the random ore spawner at a low weighting as well, with a dedicated HQM spawner using longer respawn delays. As with most staging balance work, expect those numbers to move around.

Events survive server restarts

A pretty welcome batch of work is going into making Rust's world events behave properly when a server restarts. Oil Rig crates can now survive a restart instead of disappearing, including hackable crates that keep their hacking progress. The Oil Rig puzzle reset has also been changed so nearby players aren't simply wiped out by a reset when the server comes back online.

Cargo Ship now saves its loot rounds and available crate spawn positions, allowing the event to resume properly after a restart. Patrol Helicopter, Bradley, and Satellite Crash sites received similar treatment, with their crates, debris, and burning states now saved. Those event crates are also being standardized around a 30-minute despawn time instead of 60 minutes.

Livestock and critters

Livestock development continues to fill in the actual day-to-day mechanics of keeping animals. Livestock can now become thirsty and seek out nearby water containers, rivers, or lakes to drink from. Work has also started on selling animals at the stables, including dialogue screens which list nearby animals following you and preview what you'll receive for selling one. The reward side isn't hooked up yet, but the basic flow is taking shape. Calves picked up some visual variations too.

The smaller wildlife roster is growing alongside it. Rabbits and squirrels have their basic setups in place, while frogs now have an early behavior which sends them looking for shallow water before they start croaking. Movement and animation blending are being adjusted across the critters, including a fix for animals hovering above the ground. Sea turtle models, textures, and LODs are also being worked on.

Performance and rendering

There is a lot happening under the hood. NPC navigation received one of the biggest passes, with map navmesh generation measured around 30% faster and path following roughly doubling in performance during developer testing. There are fixes for scientists getting stuck at Oil Rig, missing navigation aboard Ghost Ships, AI failing to enter rooms behind doors, crocodiles spawning too far from rivers, and several other pathing problems.

Texture memory is also being trimmed aggressively. Hundreds of weapon, deployable, prop, vehicle, tool, food, and structure textures have been resized or converted to more efficient formats where the extra resolution wasn't doing anything useful. Individual passes cut VRAM use dramatically without intended visual changes. Work on the new render pipeline remains active too, with Deferred+ lighting support, ambient lighting fixes, spotlight corrections, shader compatibility work, and a lighting memory leak fix. The in-game store is also being reworked around dynamically loaded UI assets, although that system is very much still under construction.

Other Stuff

Random skin crafting has received a larger cleanup pass. The random option now includes an item's default appearance alongside owned skins, with fixes for the repair bench and a new random icon.
Modular cars are getting another handling pass. Steering is smoother and more responsive, body roll is reduced, high-speed drifting is more controllable, and the handbrake visually locks the rear wheels.
The Honey Bandage now gives 8 instant health instead of 10, while healing over time increases from 4 to 6. Its cloth cost has been cut from 8 to 4, and the item received new world model work.
F1 grenades, bee grenades, flashbangs, and Molotovs have had their maximum stack size reduced from 5 to 3. Beancan grenades drop from 5 to 4.
Mortars are getting a cheaper recipe with 5 less HQM and 2 fewer pipes.
Hazmat Suits cost 1 less HQM and 1 less tarp to craft.
The Prisoner Hood is becoming a default blueprint and is being removed from the tech tree.
HMLMG crafting costs are being reduced by 30 HQM.
Medical Kits now remove 20 radiation, matching two syringes.
The Boat Planner's tech tree cost drops from 120 scrap to 30.
Longswords get a larger swing radius and a shorter delay between swings.
Several underused pies are getting longer bonus durations, while Hunter's Pie increases its bleed reduction from 75% to 90%.
Hunter's Pie and Fish Pie now require one mushroom instead of two.
The Heavy Plate Helmet now muffles game audio while worn.
The Heavy Pot Helmet is getting a more expensive recipe, increasing from 1 to 2 sheet metal and 4 to 8 HQM.
The Homing Missile Launcher locks on 30% faster and now displays a "Keep on target" message during targeting.
The Semi-Automatic Pistol gets more damage falloff at range and increases from 4 to 6 HQM to craft.
Radioactive water is being made much more dangerous against heavily protected players, including new protection scaling when it is used through sprinklers.
SAM Sites are being strengthened against drones. Missiles use proximity detonation and improved targeting against them, and can destroy explosives dropped from drones while they're still in the air.
Swamp trees now provide 1,000 wood instead of 300.
SMG bodies are getting a small spawn-rate increase while rifle bodies become slightly less common, intended to put a little more component availability into the Workbench Level 2 stage.
The handheld flashlight is being refreshed and now uses right click to turn on and off, similar to a torch, instead of the F key. New first and third-person animations and sounds are being set up around the change.
The Nailgun is getting a model refresh, with new viewmodel and worldmodel assets, textures, and materials.
Character customization continues to take shape with improved category handling, live preview experiments, new character creator animations, camera improvements, and more polish for the player preview.
The underground train network is getting a new randomized large boiler room as the developers continue expanding the variety of underground spaces.
Early High Stakes DLC work includes a Russian roulette game, with updated game art, ammunition models, textures, and prefab work.
Halloween DLC work includes a new Skull Wall Torch with finished textures, an icon, material work, destruction pieces, and prefab adjustments.
A new tall stepladder is being built with open, closed, and bare variants plus collision and LOD work.
Fruit tree testing is back, with apples currently being placed on an oak variant while the older hack-week logic is reimplemented.
Rugs no longer block the installation of Workbench upgrades.
Hotbar swapping has been fixed for overstacks.
Authorizing friends on turrets and similar entities should no longer cause huge lag spikes for players in very large teams.
Player-owned boats now correctly remember when they were last used across server restarts, fixing a decay issue on servers that restart daily.
Players mounted inside submarines can no longer loot bodies clipping through the vehicle and must get out first.
Long server descriptions can no longer stretch the connection window so far that the disconnect button disappears.
The MIDI plugin now warms up during game startup, avoiding the 10-plus-second freeze that could occur the first time an instrument was deployed or mounted.
The Launch Site rocket factory ledge has been made taller.
Rentable shop vending machines become refrigerated while Power Plant is powered.
Large wooden boxes, mixing tables, planters, world models, and numerous other assets received another round of rendering and LOD optimization.
The mixing table's water bucket is visible again after apparently being completely transparent for years. Better late than never.