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

The December Update closed out 2021 with a patch that finally gave the Giant Excavator a reason to exist. Alongside the monument's massive production buff came a revamped spectate mode, more AI consolidation, denser forests, a full blueprint wipe, and a bit of housekeeping ahead of Rust's 8th birthday and the Christmas event.

The Excavator Finally Earns Its Keep

The Giant Excavator received a massive production buff — 2.5x more yield per the changelist. One unit of Diesel fuel now runs the excavator for 2 minutes and produces any one of these yields:

• 100 HQM
• 2,000 Sulfur Ore
• 10,000 Stone
• 5,000 Metal Fragments

On top of that, a terminal now sits next to the generator. While the excavator is powered on, its communications relay charges; once it hits 100% (10 minutes, or 5 diesel by default), you can use the terminal to request airdrop supplies delivered straight to the excavator. The hope: a monument that's actually viable and widely contested rather than a scenic backdrop.

And because the excavator was also hogging real estate, it got a tummy tuck. The terrain around the monument was remodelled and its overall footprint shrunk by a good 30% — answering a frequent complaint about limited buildable space on some map seeds, where the excavator impressed with scale but ate too much play area.

First Person Spectate

Spectating got a proper revamp. The new First Person Spectate mode mimics the actual gameplay perspective as closely as possible — proper weapon viewmodels, better camera perspectives, alt-looking, and much of the standard HUD including the compass, vitals, hotbar and teams. It activates automatically when spectating in first person and works in demo playback too, plus there's a new button in the admin UI tab to spectate a specific player directly. Good news for admins chasing cheaters and for demo-makers chasing cinematic shots alike.

Balance and QoL Highlights

• NVG grain and overlay intensity reduced for clearer night vision.
• Animals no longer attack players inside cars (or keep mauling corpses).
• MP5 research cost increased and NPC drop rates lowered.
• MLRS rockets cluster less towards the centre, with a larger target hit area — better against large bases, worse for precision strikes. The MLRS UI map also zooms in more for easier targeting, and rocket world models shrank to 25% of their comedic former size.
• The Compound Bow is now unlocked from the Tier 1 workbench, though it loses condition while drawn back.
• The Tech Tree's T2 electricity and car parts moved to a separate branch.
• From the changelist: 8 failed code lock attempts now trigger a 15-minute lockout, fish sell for more scrap at the fishing village exchange, watchtowers got higher decay/health/craft time, and tables no longer need metal fragments to craft.

AI Cleanup and Denser Forests

The great AI consolidation continued: two more of Rust's legacy AI setups were removed, meaning pretty much everything now runs on one system. That killed a ton of old code and prefabs — better for maintenance and long-term AI development, with some slight performance gains — alongside tweaks to animal and human AI for responsiveness, including improved human line-of-sight reactions.

Meanwhile, forest density got a slight but noticeable increase. The World Revamp had been deliberately conservative with foliage to protect FPS; this change brings back some much-needed forest cover while keeping performance under control.

Blueprint Wipe, Permanent Store, and a Birthday

With this update, all servers had their Blueprints wiped and player progress reset — a fresh start for the new era.

The Permanent Store also formally launched, featuring premium cosmetic items and skins. It kicked off with the Nomad skin, a hazmat reskin applied when crafting the suit or via the repair bench, plus new lights, underwear, and — why not — a used sofa.

Rust turned 8 years old this month, celebrated for one day only on December 11th with a birthday cake and hats. Facepunch also retired 19 under-used official servers (mostly EU and Softcore instances spun up during the January-February 2021 player surge), increased player caps elsewhere, and moved EU1 to a new IP.

Looking Ahead

The changelist rounds out with fixes for a desync exploit and a gap exploit abused by hack providers, SAM sites shooting hot air balloons again, auto turrets no longer eating ammo on reload, and excavator LOD issues. And one date for the calendar: on December 16th at 19:00 GMT / 14:00 EST, a mandatory update would switch on the Xmas event and festive features. Fittingly for a month that balanced the MP5 and Compound Bow, the workshop crop included the Glister MP5 and No Mercy Bow — with the Permanent Store now live, it was a big month for cosmetics, all trackable on our skin tracker.