# Rust SPRING CLEAN - Product: Rust (https://whatsnew.fyi/product/rust-game) - Vendor: Facepunch Studios - Date: 2026-04-02 - Original notes: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/252490/view/533253650845270783 - Permalink: https://whatsnew.fyi/product/rust-game/releases/2026-04-02-spring-clean What's New is an index, not a publisher: every entry below links to the vendor's own release notes, which are the authoritative source. Entries are labelled where they are hand-curated sample data, pre-releases, or drawn from a secondary source such as a developer blog. Reuse: the summaries, labels and curation here are © What's New. Quote freely with attribution and a link back; wholesale republication of the corpus is not permitted — terms: https://whatsnew.fyi/terms. The vendors' own release notes remain their publishers'. --- - **added** — Armoured Ladder Hatch, a top-tier construction available in square and triangle variants unlocked at Tier 3 - **added** — Water Wheel for renewable energy generation that can be placed in rivers and oceans to passively generate electricity - **added** — Tech tree multi-unlocking allowing selection of any node to preview and automatically unlock the entire path at once - **added** — Visual indicator to distinguish between sleeping bags in the deep sea on death screen - **added** — Ability to set the reset value of the IO counter - **added** — Coloured buttons feature with support for nested radial menus - **added** — Custom chat channel tag colour pickers in accessibility options for Discord DMs, team chat, and cards chat - **added** — Light Toggle Radial menu to toggle equipped light sources individually or all at once - **added** — Overfishing mechanic that makes areas unproductive after too many fish are caught within a time span - **added** — Bunny Costume - **changed** — Chainsaw now always hits the X when farming trees - **changed** — Watchtowers can no longer be spam placed next to each other - **changed** — Plant ripeness stage duration increased from 14 hours to 24 hours - **changed** — Shield hitbox now switches based on whether shield is actively held up, using smaller square hitbox when idle - **changed** — Deep Sea fishing loot pool concentrated towards higher-value catches by removing Herrings and Anchovies - **changed** — Tech tree unlock animation improved and tree is now centered when zooming in and out - **changed** — New sound effects added to tech tree unlocking process - **fixed** — Junkpiles no longer spawn on sleeping bags - **fixed** — Bug that resulted in additional recoil being applied when shooting at a shield with ranged weapons ##### NEW ITEM: ARMOURED LADDER HATCH The Armoured Ladder Hatch is a new top-tier construction. A direct upgrade from the Metal Ladder Hatch, the Armoured Ladder Hatch is built for players who want maximum durability on their vertical access points. Unlocked at Tier 3, it’s available in both square and triangle variants, slots straight into existing frames. Unlocked at Tier 3, it’s available in both square and triangle variants, slots straight into existing frames. ##### NEW ITEM: WATER WHEEL Renewable energy is the best energy. You liked wind and solar? Now it's time for another classic, Hydro! Water wheels can be placed in rivers to passively generate electricity from the water flowing along its base. When placed in the ocean they do generate some charge, but more inconsistently as the tides change. Either way you will need to make sure that the waterflow coming in is not blocked by anything! The wheels can also be used as giant hamster wheels if you want to hop in and convert some calories into power. And before you ask, yes you can force handcuffed players into them. ##### TECH TREE MULTI-UNLOCKING The tech tree unlocking process received a long-overdue upgrade this month! Instead of painfully having to select and unlock each item as you go down the tree, you are now able to select any node you want and will be shown a preview path that leads to the desired item. Pressing the unlock button then automatically unlocks the whole path at once, playing a satisfying animation. New sound effects have also been added, the unlock animation was improved and the tree is now centered when zooming in and out - interacting with this UI should feel a lot better overall. ##### NOTABLE CHANGES **Chainsaw Frenzy** - Chainsaw now always hits the X when farming trees **Watchtowers** - Watchtowers can no longer be spam placed next to each other **Sleepy Junkpiles** - Fixed junkpiles spawning on sleeping bags **IO counter** - Can now set the reset value of the IO counter **Deep Sea Sleeping Bags** - Added a visual indicator to distinguish between sleeping bags in the deep sea on death screen ##### EXTENDED PLANT RIPENESS We've increased the time plants are in their "ripe" stage to 24 hours (was 14). This should hopefully be less punishing for players who can't log back on to harvest their plants more than once per day. Note that the growable flowers were already at 28 hours so they are unchanged. ##### SHIELD COLLISION CHANGE We've noted the new meta around shields becoming a bit too popular over the last month. Ideally shields are a powerful defensive tool but they come at the cost of reducing your offensive capabilities. To better fit that direction we're now switching the hitbox based on whether you are actively holding up the shield. When idle the shield uses a smaller square hitbox and it will use the current larger hitbox while it is being held up. We've also fixed a bug that resulted in additional recoil being applied when shooting at a shield, this was only meant to be applied when attacking a shield with a melee weapon. ##### COLOURED BUTTONS We saw a cool community concept for coloured buttons and decided to implement it as a part of this patch, the functionality is really similar to wires with a similar colour set - the only difference being that red is the default colour for buttons to match how they previously looked. The more technical and cooler side of this is that we previously didn't support nested radial menus, the new coloured buttons are the first to support them and should allow for more complex nested menus in the future. ##### CUSTOM CHAT CHANNEL TAG COLOURS After a recent request, I've added some extra colour pickers to the accessibility options. These allow you to change the colour of the tags for Discord DMs, team chat, cards chat, etc. Hopefully this makes things a bit clearer! ##### LIGHT TOGGLE RADIAL MENU The old ToggleLight feature/bind has had a major upgrade this month! ** _[Truncated at 4000 characters — full notes: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/252490/view/533253650845270783]_