What's New in Rust's "Devblog 150" Update

Devblog 150 arrived in early March 2017 with a three-line summary that undersold it: "Guns are on backs, overgrowth is in, servers are wiped. Have fun!" The headline feature genuinely changed how every player encounter in Rust reads - you could finally see what people were carrying - while the monthly wipe delivered months of overgrowth art and world-generation improvements in one go.

Visible Items: No More Hidden Shotguns

Helk spent most of his week on visible items: the game now scores your entire inventory - not just your belt - and displays your most hostile weapons on your back or hips. "It was a hell of a lot of work, but I'm really happy with it. It really adds to the look of characters and we should have done this a long time ago."

The gameplay consequence was the point: no more pretending to be a friendly naked, then pulling a Pipe Shotgun or Spear "out of your ass" and killing someone before they can react. Helk was unapologetic to the players who'd relied on it: "this is a basic mechanic that has been present in video games since the early 2000s... you're going to have to come up with other ways to be a sicko." But he also promised legitimate concealment would come later - backpacks, maybe ankle holsters, perhaps powerful one-use concealed shanks - "at least they'll be cool and part of the gameplay and not just taking advantage of a missing feature." One known launch bug: holstering a weapon turns off its flashlight or laser, needing a manual re-toggle on draw, with a fix promised for the following week.

The World Update

The wipe carried Andre's accumulated world work: monument overgrowth finally in the game along with new bushes and flowers, updated foliage and building assets, various terrain generation fixes, a bigger snow biome (with the tundra shrunk to compensate), increased minimum distance between caves, and a larger no-build zone around the trainyard. Prefab mountains disappeared from maps smaller than 3000x3000, and a pile of placement fixes landed - warehouse monuments, power substations, rock formations colliding with roads and buildings among them. Diogo added flutter - "high frequency oscillation" - to the foliage wind animation with extra artist-tunable knobs, and fixed a batch of culling bugs: players vanishing when entering caves ahead of you, culling lag when players emerged from hiding, and a spectate-mode error when the target died.

Turrets, Costs and Shop Life

• Auto Turrets now scan slowly when idle instead of snapping to new positions, with a quieter turn sound - and the laser is green in peacekeeper mode, red in attack mode, so you can approach shops with confidence instead of dread.
• Cost cuts: the Pump Shotgun dropped to two Pipes (was five), one Spring (was two) and 20 High Quality Metal (was 30). The Pick Axe fell to 125 Metal Fragments from 150. The Bucket Helmet lost its Sewing Kit requirement and got cheaper, with slightly reduced protection to compensate - a good week to grab something like the Graffiti Bucket Helmet off the workshop.
• One honest warning shipped in bold: the Vending Machine triangle bug was NOT fixed - placing machines on triangle foundations still destroyed them on any stability change. "I thought I fixed it, but I didn't and I'm looking into it. Sorry guys!"

Server Performance Investigation

Thanks to profile samples from the Rustopia server community, the team gathered data on why servers with more than 250 players suffered lag - manifesting as boxes that won't open, rubber banding, and momentary freezes. Analysis was underway, with relief promised in the coming weeks. Andre also fixed the missing light emission from gunfire - broken a couple of updates earlier when effect pooling was introduced - so muzzle flashes lit up the world again, and closed a "local player set up multiple times" exploit.

Art, Animation and Audio

The third-person animation project effectively wrapped its weapon phase - all major holdtypes done - and moved to fun territory: custom guitar animations and sitting animations for the previous week's chairs (which the workshop was already reupholstering with the likes of the Red Leather Chair). Damian, mid-house-move, still produced a new deployable locker for storing precious items; Pilgrim finished the Wolf Skull world model and built the Dropbox - a door-mounted box for depositing items - while starting on the new tier 1 Workbench; and Taylor's Wood Armour rework progressed through baking. On audio, Alex Ramsey recorded Heavy Armor sounds - metal movement, pot impacts, and experiments with muffling world audio and voice chat when you've got "a pot on your head" (he wore one himself as reference, multiple times) - shipped new Vending Machine sounds that play the physics sound of the item you're buying, and started on footwear-specific footsteps. With concealment mechanics, the Workbench, the locker and Dropbox all in the pipeline, Devblog 150 was a milestone patch in more ways than its round number - and its era's skins live on at our skin tracker.