What's New in Rust's "Arctic Update" Update

The Arctic Update landed in February 2022 and finally gave Rust's snow biome an identity beyond "the place you freeze to death on the way to somewhere else". A new monument, a new vehicle, the game's deadliest animal and a genuinely useful new tool all arrived in one patch, along with quality-of-life changes that players had been requesting for years.

Arctic Research Base

The Arctic Research Base spawns exclusively in the arctic biome. Brave the cold winds and you can explore various lab modules and buildings scattered around the base, scavenge a decent haul of loot, or warm up next to an electric heater between fights. The catch: the resident scientists shoot trespassers on sight. Most importantly, the base is the exclusive home of Rust's newest vehicle.

Snowmobiles

Snowmobiles are obtained through a puzzle at the Arctic Base, arrive with 20 low grade fuel ready to go, and carry a small storage container on the back. They're fast on snow and sand and slow everywhere else, driving smoothly over rough terrain but demanding some skill to control well. A passenger can sit on the back facing any direction - meaning they can shoot to the sides or even directly behind while you drive, which makes for some very entertaining drive-bys.

Polar Bears and Smarter Scientists

The Polar Bear now stalks the arctic biome as the strongest and most hostile animal in the game, though it yields extra resources when harvested compared to its brown cousin. Regular bears no longer spawn in the arctic at all, and took a slight health and hostility reduction across the board.

The AI side got scarier too: scientists can now use medical items to heal themselves, with a chance of spawning with the ability. It was initially enabled at the new Arctic Research Base with plans to roll it out to other areas soon, alongside timing, balance and movement tweaks to scientist AI generally.

The Spraycan

The Spraycan is a new default-blueprint tool, craftable for 100 metal fragments, that lets you reskin items already deployed in the world. Instead of picking things up and hauling them to a Repair Bench, just hold the Spraycan and press RMB to open the skin options and pick a new look. It can't be used while building blocked, and some further spray functionality spotted on Staging that month had issues and was delayed to a future update.

General QOL

This patch's QOL list was one of the better ones in recent memory:

• Tool Cupboard storage - dedicated slots for tools in the TC
• Tech Tree improvements - shows the total cost to reach an unlock, how much scrap you're holding, and click-and-hold to unlock
• Native auto walk keybind and toggle crouch option
• SAM Defender Mode - a mode that targets MLRS rockets only, plus IO outputs like Auto Turrets have
• The Patrol Helicopter's position now shows on the map
• A new mute menu for managing muted players
• Looting a wounded player no longer kicks you out of the inventory if they suicide
• Contacts can be sorted by recently seen, and wounded team members show orange in the team UI
• The hobo barrel can now be picked up and repaired

The full changelist runs deeper still - repair-cost popups on failed repairs, a warning when researching something you already know, an option to require holding Jump to dismount vehicles, and a three-minute cooldown on reporting the same player.

Performance Fix

A notable framerate investigation also paid off this month. Players' framerates were predictably dipping hard for no apparent reason before recovering - the higher your base framerate, the worse the dips felt. Profiling traced the stalls on the render thread to the tree impostor system. With the fix, framerates became far more consistent and slightly higher overall, particularly in bush-and-tree-heavy areas like Bandit Camp.

Store, Drops and Merch

The permanent store gained the Arctic Pack, a three-item bundle: the Arctic Suit, a hazmat skin trading slightly higher cold protection for lower radiation, melee and explosive protection; the Tomaha Snowmobile skin, applied to snowmobiles using the new spray can; and the Ice Assault Rifle cosmetic. Twitch drops ran from patch day until February 11th at 23:59 UTC, with all drops moving to general availability for the final 24 hours. And For Fans By Fans released new merch including a heat-sensitive mug and a No Mercy mousepad.

The arctic theme spilled into the skin market too - pieces like the Polar Bear L96 and Ice Garage Door fit the frozen aesthetic perfectly, and you can watch their prices along with every other skin on our skin tracker. Between the new monument, the snowmobile and the polar bear, the arctic went from dead space to destination in a single patch.