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Rust update adds ping system, double saddles, and Easter eggs

A Rust update for April 6 is here with improvements to map markers, a ping system for easy communication, a double horse saddle, model updates, and Easter eggs.

Rust update April patch notes - three characters wearing painted egg suits (one white, one watermelon, one pink and yellow swirls), one carrying a basket full of painted Easter eggs
Ken Allsop's Avatar

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Rust 

Communication is key in the new Rust update, which packs in plenty of multiplayer functionality that will be very 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 markers system, the long-awaited introduction of pings, and a way to ride about the open world together with a buddy, co-op fans will be delighted. There’s also Easter festivities, so get your egg baskets ready and read on for the full details.

First up is an update to map markers, with an upgrade allowing you to now place up to five at once and new tools to edit the colour and label type of your markers. You can also add manual labels to them, although these will be shortened to three characters when shown on your compass. Markers placed by team leaders will show up to all teammates alongside their own.

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

Rust update patch notes - a ping wheel with six options: a green marker, a blue dollar sign, a yellow chest, a purple landmark, a cyan pistol, and a red target

If you’ve ever wished you could ride around with a friend cuddled 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-seater saddle, but you can switch this to a double using the horse radial menu once you have one in your inventory. Much like the single saddle, the double variant is available for purchase from the stablemaster or can be manually crafted.

A world model refresh will make it easy to see which ammo types you have dropped, along with updates to several other items. Shotgun shells now display differently for regular buckshot (red), incendiary shells (blue), and slugs (green). Similarly, rockets have new looks, making it easy to spot whether they’re normal, high-velocity, or incendiary. The snap trap and road sign gloves have also received a world model refresh.

Rust update patch notes - several different ammo types with new model updates

To celebrate Easter, there’s a Rust Easter egg hunt happening. Every 24-38 in-game hours, 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 all the way up to an M249.”

You’ll also be able to upgrade your collected eggs when you collect ten of a type, with painted becoming bronze, then silver, and finally gold. If you need some help during the event, there are some items to make collecting the elusive eggs easier. The Easter Basket lets you instantly pick up eggs, while the Bunny Onesie and Ears give you an advantage over your competition with the addition of “Egg Vision.” There’s also a paintable Egg Suit and a handcrafted Rustigé Egg available in the Rust Easter store.

Rust update patch notes - a horse with a double-seater saddle on its back

Rust update patch notes – April 6

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

Computer Station UI

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

Improvements and Fixes

  • Alt-click inventory items to ignore loot containers
  • Computer station UI: Health bar, key controls, hold-to-dismount
  • Floating single items: When subs and boats are destroyed, storage drops single items in a floating container
  • Vending machine genetics: Vending machine and marketplace now display plant genetics
  • Steam nickname fix: Team UI will use Steam nicknames
  • Place doors on deployables: A couple months back I made a commitment to see if doors could be placed on top of deployables, which caused a bit too much excitement. It needed some extra fixes but now should work!

Gameplay Analytics

  • This month we extend our analytics platform by recording gameplay stats on official servers.
  • We are still in the stage of rolling it out so we don’t have many pictures to show off.

Rust update patch notes - pie charts displaying gameplay analytics

CPU Affinity, Priority, and 7950X3D Fix

  • After upgrading to a 7950x3d I realized you can’t change CPU affinity when EAC is running. I added some commands so anyone can change their Rust’s core affinity & process priority. You can specify multiple ranges of cores, like “0-7,15-23”
  • Everyone should try using cpu_priority high and see if it makes any difference.
  • If you have a 7950x3d, try using cpu_affinity 0-15 to keep Rust running only on v-cache cores.
  • You can add these as steam launch parameters too: ‘-cpu_priority high’

Multithreaded Networking

  • Multithreaded networking is now enabled by default for both client and server. This should help with performance of both the client and the server, particularly with network encryption enabled, which should be the case on most servers.
  • As an additional optimization, we improved the way our memory pool handled contention between multiple threads to ensure there are no negative performance edge cases from all those additional threads.
  • Earlier last month, we also addressed an issue where one thread was spinning at 100% utilization at essentially all times with multithreaded networking enabled. Since this was resolved, there are now no known issues and we really recommend all server owners to leave multithreaded networking enabled.

Safe Mode

  • It’s now possible to launch or reset Rust into safe mode – a basic, extremely low quality settings config 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 are experiencing problems with launching the game. Using this feature will overwrite your current settings so be sure to back them up beforehand.

Make sure to keep one step ahead of the game by brushing up on all the Rust console commands to optimise your server, along with checking out all of 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.

Ken is a news writer for PCGamesN. He wants to play everything that comes out, but keeps finding himself back on old favorites. As such, you’ll find him covering the latest updates for FFXIV and Terraria, and diving deep into some of today’s biggest games such as Baldur’s Gate 3 and Diablo 4. He especially loves RPGs, soulslikes, and roguelikes, and just won't stop talking about the Monster Hunter and Like a Dragon games. A masters graduate in mathematics, you’ll also find Ken playing the piano, cello, and guitar in his spare time.