Older, wiser and better than ever: Rust celebrates its seventh birthday and amazing Movember initiative

Celebrating its seventh year of Rust this month, today Facepunch Studios is proud to announce that approximately $80,000 has been raised for men’s health charity Movember, working to make a difference in men’s mental health & suicide prevention, prostate cancer and testicular cancer. This made Facepunch and its community one of the biggest donors to Movember in the UK this year.

This month also celebrates Rust’s seventh birthday, and with it a seasonally-festive update full of new content, new features, optimisations and improvements. To find out more, visit the Rust blog from 19:00 GMT tonight.

Movember

The efforts of thousands of players within Rust, the hit survival multiplayer FPS game for PC, saw over 20,000 wearable in-game Movember Moustaches purchased from the Rust item store on Steam in November 2020. A knockout success, the charity initiative raised approximately $80,000 for men’s health awareness. This also included valiant efforts by some of the Facepunch team to grow their own moustaches, the results of which can be seen here!

Justin Coghlan (JC), co-founder of Movember, said: “a huge thank you to the Facepunch crew and the community for getting involved in Movember this year, helping us change the face of men’s health. Your support will have started many conversations and encouraged the community to check in with their mates. On top of this, it will help fund some of the world’s most game-changing projects in mental health and suicide prevention, prostate cancer and testicular cancer around the world – thanks for being a part of the journey with Movember”.

Even though November is over, it’s not too late to donate to or learn about Movember, which is working to make a difference in men’s mental health & suicide prevention, prostate cancer and testicular cancer.

7th Birthday

Rust turns 7 this month and we’ll be celebrating with a birthday cake item that can be used (and thrown) in-game. In the near future we plan to talk more about how the last year has gone and what we learned as well as some information about how Rust has performed.

Christmas

Prepare to get chilly and seasonal, as Facepunch will release a patch on December 17th at 19:00 GMT / 14:00 EST to enable this year’s Christmas festivities.

New Feature

Tech Tree 

• Since 2017 Rust has added over 130 craftable items. As a result, random Workbench experiments have become increasingly costly and frustrating due to the larger crafting pool. To solve this there is a brand-new Tech Tree system, allowing players to unlock blueprints in a linear manner and pick their own upgrade paths.
• Players will still be able to find and research items found in the world as normal, whilst interacting with any Workbench will now open the Tech Tree itself. We can’t wait to see players respond to this quality-of-life improvement, as we know it’s been a common bug-bear for many.

Airdrop Rework

Since the inception of Rust Legacy in 2013, the airdrop has become iconic, yet unchanged. Today we introduce a complete visual makeover, bringing it in line with Rust 2020 standards. To accompany this, there is now an associated loot rework, removing lower quality items in favour of higher quality and rarer loot. We hope players will now be encouraged to contest airdrop events!

Balance Changes

This update will see a huge array of balance changes, containing popular requests from the community, as well as our own fixes. Numbering over 300 changes, they touch upon nearly every item to provide a consistent ripple effect across the game:

• Majority of crafting times reduced
• Hazmat suit now uses condition
• Road sign armor crafting cost reduced
• Reduced all Electrical crafting costs
• Majority of electrical items now stackable
• Increased Rocket Launcher deploy time
• Smoke grenade now craftable and researchable
• Removed blueprint drops from barrels and crates
• Complete rebalance of torso under armour clothing
• Large medkit now provides small amount of instant health and cheaper to craft
• Greatly reduced the amount of dehydration when consuming anti-radiation pills
• Reduced Medical Syringe crafting time
• Reinforced window bars now have glass
• We’ll be keeping an eye surrounding these changes and hopefully see a slight shift in the meta.

The full extent of these changes can be viewed here.