Rust update adds ping system, double saddles and Easter eggs

Communication is key in the new Rust update, which packs plenty of multiplayer features that will be welcome for those of you who enjoy playing with friends (or even interacting with random players) in the survival game. With updates to the map marker system, the long-awaited introduction of pings, and a way to roam the open world with a friend, co-op fans will be delighted. There are also Easter festivities, so get your egg baskets ready and read on for all the details.

The first step is an update to map markers, with an upgrade now allowing you to place up to five at a time and new tools to change the color and label type of your markers. You can also add manual labels to them, though these will be shortened to three characters when displayed on your compass. Markers placed by team leaders will appear to all teammates next to their own.

Pings have been introduced for even more on-the-fly communication. When using cameras, drones, or binoculars, you can now press the assigned ping key once to place a pop-up ping, double-press it for a red ping designed to pose danger, or hold down for a menu radial which includes six different options to choose from manually. All teammates will see pings, and they will last for ten seconds unless manually canceled.

If you’ve ever wished you could ride around with a friend snuggled up behind you, you’re in luck – a new double horse saddle has been added to Rust. By default, wild horses will spawn with a single saddle, but you can replace it with a double using the horse’s radial menu once you have one in your inventory. Just like the single saddle, the double variant is available for purchase from the stablemaster or can be crafted manually.

A refresh to the world model will allow you to easily see what types of ammo you’ve dropped, as well as updates to several other items. Shotgun shells now display differently for regular buckshot (red), incendiary shells (blue), and slugs (green). Likewise, rockets have a new look, making it easy to spot whether they are normal, high-speed, or incendiary. The Pressure Trap and Traffic Gloves also received a global model refresh.

To celebrate Easter, there’s a Rust Easter Egg Hunt. Every 24-38 hours of play, a hunt will begin, giving players three minutes to collect as many eggs as possible. The top three players in the event will receive special prize eggs, which can be opened for “various types of loot ranging from scrap metal to an M249”.

You will also be able to upgrade your collected eggs when you collect ten of a type, with paint becoming bronze, then silver, and finally gold. If you need help during the event, there are items to help collect the elusive eggs. The Easter Basket allows you to instantly collect eggs, while the Bunny Onesie and Ears give you an edge over your competition with the addition of “Egg Vision”. There is also a paintable egg costume and a handcrafted Rustigated egg available in the Rust Easter store.

Rust Patch Notes – April 6

Here are the remaining patch notes and improvements for the April 6 Rust update, courtesy of Facepunch Studios:

computer station user interface

• You can now use the arrow keys or the mouse wheel to switch between selected entities. The UI will also display the health of the entity you are currently controlling.
• We have an existing console variable – vehicleDismountHoldTime
  – which can be set to a value greater than zero to enable hold to dismount on vehicles. This is now also used if you are remote controlling a drone on the computer station. Setting it to even something small like 0.2 seconds can be an easy way to avoid accidentally dismounting and crashing your drone.

Improvements and fixes

• Alt-click inventory items to skip loot containers
• Computer station UI: health bar, key commands, hold to dismount
• Floating Unique Items: When submarines and boats are destroyed, storage drops unique items into a floating container
• Vending Machine Genetics: Vending machines and the market now display plant genetics
• Fixed Steam nicknames: Team UI will use Steam nicknames
• Placing Doors on Deployables: A few months ago, I committed to seeing if doors could be placed on top of deployables, which caused a little too much excitement. It needed a few more fixes but should now work!

Gameplay analysis

• This month we are expanding our analytics platform by logging game stats on official servers.
• We’re still in the rollout stage, so we don’t have a lot of photos to show.

CPU Affinity, Priority, and 7950X3D Patch

• After upgrading to a 7950x3d I realized that you can’t change CPU affinity while EAC is running. I added a few commands so anyone can change Rust’s process affinity and priority. You can specify multiple core ranges, like “0-7,15-23”
• Everyone should try using cpu_priority high and see if that makes a difference.
• If you have a 7950x3d try using cpu_affinity 0-15 to make Rust only run on v-cache cores.
• You can also add them as Steam launch parameters: ‘-cpu_priority high’

Multi-threaded networking

• Multi-threaded networking is now enabled by default for both client and server. This should improve client and server performance, especially with network encryption enabled, which should be the case on most servers.
• As an additional optimization, we’ve improved how our memory pool handles contention between multiple threads to ensure that there are no negative performance edge cases from all those extra threads.
• Earlier last month, we also fixed an issue where a thread would run at 100% utilization almost all the time with multi-threaded networking enabled. Since this has been fixed, there are no known issues and we really recommend all server owners to leave multi-threaded networking enabled.

Safe mode

• It is now possible to launch or reset Rust in safe mode – a very low quality basic settings configuration to help diagnose problems. You can use safemode with a new button in the Options menu or by passing the -safemode command in the Steam launch settings.
• You should only use this feature if you are advised by our support team or if you are having problems launching the game. Using this feature will overwrite your current settings, so be sure to back them up first.

Make sure you stay ahead of the game by going through all the Rust console commands to optimize your server, as well as checking out all the Rust vehicles. We’ve also highlighted our picks of the best co-op games on PC if you’re looking for more games to play with your friends.