Rust — NAVAL UPDATE

PLAYER MADE BOATS

Player-made boats are here, providing a new way to explore the seas, including the Deep Sea!

Place the new Boat Building Station deployable in the water and get building with your shipmates! Use the new Boat Building Plan to construct your dream boat, utilising a new set of boat-specific building blocks.

Add a steering wheel, anchor, sails, engines, planks, ramps and cannons to complete your vessel and head off into the Deep Sea!

Careful consideration and placement of your engines and sails is important if you want a seaworthy ship, as they will affect its handling and speed. Sails and engines can both be reversed using the radial menu options for some nifty reverse parking.

Be sure to set a lock code on your steering wheel to stop unwanted access or theft of your shiny new boat.

Regular deployables can be placed on your boats. If they work on the Tugboat, they'll work here too.

Need to make a change after realising your boat just goes in circles? Use the Deploy & Edit mode (not available in the Deep Sea) to quickly and easily deploy a Boat Building Station around your boat.

Have fun building and exploring the seas!

NEW BOAT DEPLOYABLES

To get your vessel sea worthy, we've now got some new deployables - specifically for your boat!

Boat Building Station

The boat-building station is placeable in deep water, it's used to build and edit your boat.

Building plan

The boat-building plan is similar to the building planner you know and love, but for boats.

Sails

A sheet of toughened fabric rigged to catch the wind and help propel the boat forwards.

Helm

A must-have for any seaworthy boat. Used to steer and control your direction, with a built-in lock to keep your vessel secure when you’re not at the wheel.

Engine

A powerful motor that runs on low grade fuel and burns through it fast. Loud, thirsty, and inefficient, but invaluable when you need to escape danger, chase down other players, or muscle your way out of a bad situation. Sometimes speed is worth the cost.

Anchor

A heavy anchor used to stop your boat drifting. Drop it to hold position and keep your vessel exactly where you want it. Without it, your boat may drift to shore.

Canon

A powerful naval weapon used to sink other players’ boats. Load it with cannon balls.

Small Ramp

Bridge gaps and create quick access points. Ideal for boarding other ships or reaching land from the water.

Plank

Used to bridge gaps, board other boats, and settle minor disagreements by pushing friends into open water.

THE DEEP SEA

The Deep Sea is a new offshore region you can travel to using boats. It’s high risk, high reward, and intentionally unforgiving.

You can access it by sailing toward the edge of the map using a strong boat such as player-made boats, RHIBs or the new PT boats.

This is not a place to live: you cannot build, and nothing respawns. First come, first served. The deep sea will open and close intermittently, like a world event.

Inside, you can explore new content detailed below in this blog:

• Tropical islands

• Floating cities

• Ghost ships

• Boats controlled by scientists

We have lots of plans to expand deep-sea and use it as a bridge between worlds.

GHOST SHIPS

Similar to monuments, Ghost Ships are stationary ships scattered throughout the deep sea and filled with loot for people to scavenge while navigating on their boats.

Each Ghost Ship is protected by scientists, both on the ship and nearby patrols who will try to keep you off the ship. Some Ghost Ships also contain locked crates, which you'll need to hack while being under pressure of other players and scientist boats.

We hope that Ghost Ships, along with other loot locations such as tropical islands provide enough incentive to visit the deep sea often.

DEEP SEA FLOATING CITIES

While exploring the deep sea, you may come across the Floating Cities. Built from abandoned barges and the framework of an unfinished oil rig, these ramshackle monuments serve as safe haven for all types of players.

Currently, there are four variants of Floating Cities that can spawn on a server with each floating city offering the same type of facilities. These include docks where you can secure your boat and various NPC vendors selling weapons, equipment, food, and medical supplies.

A nearby farming barge can be accessed for a small fee, giving you the chance to harvest fresh crops. Throughout each monument, familiar safe-zone amenities are scattered among the platforms, including recyclers, workbenches, research tables, and refineries.

At the center of every floating city is the Deep Deck Casino, an inviting space offering entertainment and a place to relax to all weary sailors. Here you can meet fellow survivors, unwind in the pool, enjoy music, and gamble away your scrap to your heart’s content.

Just remember to play nice while you're there - stir up trouble, and the security turrets will remind you why that was a bad idea.

DEEP SEA ISLANDS

For years, the ocean has just been a blue void between you and the Oil Rigs. With this update, we are introducing a brand new biome in the Deep Sea, the Tropical Islands.

These micro-islands are fully distinct from the mainland. Expect white sands, dense palms, and even a new delicious natural treat. You won't see any pine trees here.

Their semi-procedural nature will yield different experiences. Some of them might have old ruins, others a motherlode of ore - or both.

But tread carefully. You aren't the only one seeking a fortune out there.

SCIENTIST BOATS

We've added a new boat - the PT Boat. Only found in the Deepsea - It's slower than the RHIB and consumes more fuel, but is stronger and packs a punch.

Beware, the Deep Sea is filled with the new Scientist Boats.

These vessels (including RHIBs and the new PT Boat), are crewed by scientists who roam the Deep Sea in coordinated groups looking for players to engage. You might find them protecting the Hacked Crate on board a Ghost Ship.

Each boat can be cleared of Scientists and stolen by the player. We wonder what you'll find on-board?

Each PT Boat comes equipped with two turrets. One packing dual 50 caliber machine guns, and the other with a single more precise 50 caliber gun. Each can be reloaded with standard 5.56 rifle ammo.

RHIB REFRESH

The RHIB has been in need of a little TLC, and there's no better time to do that than the Naval Update. The model and textures have been updated, along with a new storage box model.

The RHIB now comes equipped with a working compass and map display screens - helping you navigate the ocean.

NEW SCIENTIST AI ON OILRIGS AND AT SEA

If you fought a lot of scientists, you know trying to sneak or flank them is the perfect way to get killed.

The always know where you are, and will instantly 180 and beam you if you try to play smart and outmanoeuver them.

Because of this, it's very tempting to either snipe them from very far away, or camp behind a bottleneck and wait for them to inevitably rush in one by one.

This makes taking a monument guarded by scientists a test of resources with a low skill ceiling.

It boils it down to: _do you know the cheese, and do you have enough ammo and bandages to grind through them? _

New scientist AI is progressively coming out, but only to oilrigs,** ghostships** and deep sea islands for now.

You can tell them apart from their naval camo outfit and square visor.

Unlike their cousins they don't see through walls, and need to rely on noises and recent sightings to find you.

This means you can bait them by peeking or making a noise, then go around and shoot them in the back.

This is further facilitated by their lower reaction time.

If you appear at an angle they didn't expect, they'll be surprised, then you can shoot them down before they can even react.

Additionally they won't rush down into bottlenecks to be slaughtered by a camping player, instead they'll try to flank, throw smoke grenades and rush together, or just wait in ambush on the other side.

They'll also be a lot more cautious against snipers, if they're hit or hear a shot they'll all dive into cover and wait.

We'll keep a close eye on your feedback and keep tweaking them.

Where they're in a good enough state, we'll consider switching the other scientists on the main island to the new AI.

BUILDING PLAN VIEWMODEL

We think it would be nice to have what everyone else sees match what you see so we've added a Viewmodel to the planner.

NEW MISSIONS

We have 5 new naval themed missions in this month's update.

These can be picked up from a mixture of new and existing mission provider NPC's. Some of these require you to venture in the deep sea, some keep you rooted at the mainland.

This update brings in a lot of work to improve how we create and modify missions internally. There is still more we want to do with missions, but we are in a better place to work on them now than we were before.

This work additionally brings in several QOL fixes and improvements to existing missions and NPC conversations, as well as related background optimisations.

LARGE OILRIG BOATS

Scientist boats will now spawn at Large Oilrig with the crate - giving players an additional challenge when taking oil from the sea.

The RHIBs will patrol around Large Oilrig, preventing any players from getting close. These respawn each time the Oilrig resets.

You can kill the scientists and steal the loot on board. Stolen boats will stay around after the Oilrig reset.

ARTIST PACK DLC

Rust has one of the most diverse playerbases of any popular game, from hardcore PVPers to friendly and not-so-friendly RPers. To reflect this, we’ve cracked out our finest digital brushes and created the Artist DLC Pack; a collection of cool and clever items designed to help you express yourself no matter if you want to paint a charming portrait, or tag up your neighbour’s base.

Paintball Gun and Overalls

Turn tactical assault into art with the Paintball Gun and Overalls. Featuring a unique ammo type, load the hopper with paintballs, select your team colour and make a scene. Comes in 5 colours for multiple teams.

Paintballs do different damage amounts depending on if both the hurt player and instigator player have overalls equipped. There are separate server convas to scale these if admins desire, 'paintballstandarddamage' and 'paintballoverallsdamage'.

You can of course also use the paintball gun to tag up whatever you want, not just other players! Additionally, the paintball overalls have a unique feature where the hood is dynamically up or down depending on your choice of headwear.

Paintable Reactive Target

Light up your own targets with this deployable skin for the Reactive Target. You can paint on both the target board and the bucket helmet. As an added feature the bucket acts like a player’s head, allowing you to hone your headshot skills.

Ornate Frames

Bring a touch of class to your base with these Ornate frames. Paint on them or add a photo, and once you’re happy with your masterpiece, give the frame a unique description. Comes in 5 size varieties from small to extra extra large.

Light-Up Frames

Put your artwork up in lights with this collection of 5 light-up frames. Supporting IO, you can display these lights off or on, which will highlight your work for all to see.

Shutter Frames

Unroll your designs with the shutter frames. Coming in 5 size variates, you can roll-up and down the shutters both manually and with IO, enabling endless possibilities from an RP Gameshow Contest to the ultimate trap base reveal.

Frameless Canvases

If the extra large frame isn’t big enough for your ambition, look no further than this set of 5 frameless canvasses. You can use these to create murals of truly epic proportions.

Portable Easel

Take your talent to the great outdoors with this new unique deployable. You can mount any frame up to Large size and paint to your heart's content taking in the crisp air downwind of Fishing Village. In paint-mode, you can toggle the background and even the canvas itself, helping you in your creative vision. The easel supports any colour you want to use, even black…

Paintable Window

Whether you want to make stained glass, a fish tank, a store window or a Home Alone-style decoy, this paintable window will come in handy! This deployable is a skin for the Strengthened Glass Window.

Rosette Award Sprays

Last but not least, awarded with the Artist DLC Pack are 4 custom sprays usable with the Spraypaint tool. Included are sprays for 1st Place, 2nd Place, 3rd Place and… Last Place. Use these as you see fit.

NEW WORKSHOP SKINNABLE: SKS

This month, we're introducing the next workshop skinnable: the SKS

The SKS has been a popular request from the skinning community, and we’re happy to oblige! As one of our newest weapons, we can’t wait to see how the community works with its updated visuals.

To make your own SKS skin, head over to the in-game workshop and locate the SKS weapon item. From