This week brings a healthy mix of new features, ongoing projects, and behind-the-scenes improvements as the developers push deeper into several systems currently in the works. A new honey-powered medical item is already taking shape on staging, livestock has evolved into a surprisingly involved breeding system, Nexus is getting another reliability pass, and work has begun on everything from character customization to new underground train rooms.

Livestock in full swing

Livestock development kicked into another gear this week, with cows and sheep now being built around an actual breeding and animal-care system. Male and female variants are being set up, a bull has joined the mix, pregnant animals now have their own behavior, offspring remember their parents and stay near their mother, and breeding currently requires all of an animal's stats to remain above 50%.

There's even a new social stat, with animals happiest around a group of the right size, along with persistent systems for things like aging, giving birth, and producing dung. Animals can also be renamed while you're leading them, while sheep received sleeping behavior and more polish. Pair all of that with the new deployable animal fences and gates also being tested and the livestock update is starting to look less like "put cow in base" and more like a proper little farming operation.

Medical honey bandage

Honey is getting another use with the new Medical Honey Bandage, an upgraded Tier 1 healing option currently being tested on staging. At the moment, using one immediately restores 10 health followed by another 4 health over time, while also removing 50 bleeding and 4 poison. It'll currently set you back 8 cloth and 2 jars of honey, requires a Tier 1 workbench, and sits just below the Beancan Grenade in the tech tree.

The numbers are still very much subject to change — in fact, they've already been adjusted during development this week. Along with the balance work, the developers added its icon, corrected the third-person model, and spent a surprising amount of time convincing its healing effects to actually work. Important feature, that last one.

More Nexus work

Nexus is back in active development as the developers continue polishing the system designed to link multiple Rust servers together. The current setup uses ferries at Ferry Terminals to move players between specially configured servers in the same Nexus, bringing your character and inventory along rather than simply connecting to some random server from the browser.

This week's work was largely about making those journeys dependable. Ferries now prefer destinations that are online and not full, lock in their destination before leaving, retire when they have nowhere valid to travel, and do a better job checking that the dock is clear before spawning. Unloading players and other entities has also been improved to stop things clipping or piling on top of one another, while several Nexus map, connection screen, player-count, and backend issues were cleaned up.

Character customization begins

Following the big player-model overhaul earlier this year, the first proper work on character customization has now started. The initial implementation lets the developers swap between existing player-model features, but it has already moved beyond that basic test with work on a dedicated main-menu interface, selection tiles, and animation blockouts for the customization screen.

It's still very early and sitting on its own development branch, so don't expect to be sculpting the perfect naked beach dweller just yet. Still, this is the first concrete work toward giving players control over their character's appearance rather than leaving everything entirely up to fate.

Underground train expansion

The underground train network is also getting another pass. The developers are breaking apart and refactoring the existing large tunnel rooms while building new randomized spaces, including smaller room variants and early control-room and boiler-room designs. Some experimental rooms have even been set up with NPC vendor spaces, although that idea is specifically being tested and shouldn't be treated as final just yet.

Separately, a bug which could cause procedurally generated train tracks to fail to connect correctly at junctions has been fixed. That one came down to an old track-generation issue which became more noticeable recently, and a previously broken map seed is now generating correctly.

Player maintained monument polish

Work continues on the player maintained monument system after its recent release. Monument blockers have received another balance pass, with health, resource output, and melee clearing times adjusted, while additional blockers have been applied around locations including Military Tunnels, Oil Rig, and Launch Site.

There's more monument-specific cleanup too. Airfield's power indicators have been corrected, Water Treatment's maintainable pipes now use a more predictable road-based spawning system, and Launch Site has gained support for a siren light tied into its control computer. Mostly polish this week, but plenty of moving parts are still being adjusted.

Loot crates get a facelift

Some of Rust's most frequently stared-at boxes are getting a refresh. New versions of the regular, military, and elite loot crates are being tested on staging with significantly more detailed models and new destruction visuals once they're emptied.

The ordinary wooden crate in particular now bursts apart into a pile of wooden pieces when looted. It briefly produced around 90 separate chunks, because apparently opening a box needed its own small-scale physics benchmark, but that has since been trimmed down to a much more reasonable 22.

Wood armor skins

Wood armor is getting Steam Workshop skin support across the set, with the helmet, gloves, jacket, and pants all receiving the models, workshop scenes, icons, and other setup needed for community skins. The underlying armor artwork also received some cleanup, including updated helmet shading and more consistent texture resolutions.

In other words, one of Rust's finest early-game fashion statements is about to become considerably more fashionable.

Other stuff

Unlocked Garage Doors can now be picked up without building privilege, bringing them in line with regular doors.
Testing of a new render pipeline
A Hack Week experiment lets you right-click and drag items around in the crafting queue to change what crafts next.
Another Hack Week project adds a Random option when selecting crafting skins, choosing from your unlocked skins each time an item is crafted.
Early work is underway on a translucent Glass AR, including first- and third-person art, animations, ammo visuals, and store setup.
The Flashlight, Salvaged Hammer, Machete, and Flare are receiving model or animation refreshes.
New apple-bearing fruit-tree functionality is being prototyped, although the apples aren't actually harvestable yet.
Old dog assets have been moved into a new dogs_2026 branch for potential future work.
Scientists received a large batch of navigation fixes covering Cargo, Oil Rig, Underwater Labs, and rebuilt navmesh areas.
Scientists not spawning correctly on Cargo, Underwater Labs, and Military Base have been fixed.
Sprinklers should once again work properly after server restarts.
Boat fuel and engine interactions now only appear while you're in the driver's seat.
Wind Turbine audio no longer keeps playing after the turbine stops spinning, putting an apparent 2019 bug out to pasture.
Foundations with staircases no longer incorrectly block melee soft-side damage.
Painting gets an early brush-outline preview along with several color-picker fixes.
Wood Armor can now be set up for Steam Workshop skins.
Darts received leaderboard and streamer-mode fixes.
Berry bushes should maintain more consistent visibility at a distance.
A large amount of ongoing optimization work targets bases, vehicles, world models, networking ranges, AI pathfinding, textures, and Rust's underlying electrical system.