What's New in Rust's "January Update"
January 2021 was a deliberately light patch after the holidays, but it carried two big items: Twitch Drops opening up to every Rust streamer, and the first forced blueprint wipe in years to reset the playing field after tech trees.
The January 2021 update was a small one by design - Facepunch had just come back from a couple of weeks off, and the devblog said as much. But it happened to land at the exact moment Rust exploded on Twitch, and two of its items ended up mattering a lot more than a quiet post-holiday patch usually does.
Twitch Drops for everyone
Twitch Drops were switched on for all Rust Twitch streamers, not just a selected group. Watching any Rust channel earned items on a simple time ladder:
- Sofa - watch for 2 hours
- Industrial Door - watch for 4 hours
- Hobo Barrel - watch for 8 hours
On top of that, Facepunch partnered with Auronplay, Jacksepticeye, lilypichu, ludwig, Myth, pokimane, shroud, Sykkuno and xQc for channel-exclusive drops that could only be earned by watching those specific streams - the xQc Assault Rifle and Pokimane Garage Door among them. Details lived at twitch.facepunch.com.
Blueprint wipe
For the first time in years, blueprints were force-wiped across every Rust server. The reasoning was the recent arrival of tech trees, which had changed how blueprint progression worked enough that Facepunch wanted everyone starting level. The devblog was blunt about the frequency: don't expect another BP wipe for a long, long while.
Server save backups
An incident during the Christmas patch had wiped EU2 mid-month, which prompted a reliability pass on saves. The underlying bug was fixed, and rotating backups of older saves were added so there's something to revert to if it happens again.
A new server.saveBackupCount convar controls how many backup copies are kept, with a default and minimum of two. Restoring one is refreshingly low-tech: strip the number suffix from the file name, so craggy.sav.2 becomes craggy.sav.
Centralized banning
The dedicated server gained a system for routing server bans through whatever external system an operator already uses. It's aimed squarely at people running multiple servers - Facepunch uses it themselves - and is documented on the Centralized Banning page of the Rust wiki.
Server capacity
With enormous player counts expected in the days ahead, Facepunch was watching capacity closely and adding servers ahead of demand, including 13 extra official servers brought online preemptively that day. New servers were announced through Twitter and Discord. Official servers also stopped appearing in the community listing.
Fixes and small improvements
- Sleeping bags placed too close to another bag are now tinted orange while placing, which also applies to beds and beach towels
- Telephones got some incorrect sound effects fixed, and voice audio through them now has audio filters applied
- Push to talk is respected on phone calls - if you have it enabled, you need to hold your key to speak into a telephone
- Voice boost moved out of the console and into the options menu
- SAM sites no longer target hot air balloons that aren't inflated
- Reduced research cost of T2 engine parts
- Weather event chances reduced, meaning more clear skies
- Car lock info tooltips wait a while before reappearing
- Fixed non-English characters in player names causing display issues in the inventory, and some clothing casting incorrect shadows
The Christmas event and its craftable item were disabled, closing out the holiday season.
Looking back at 2020
The devblog opened with a recap of what 2020 had added: the Ring Road, modular turrets, CCTV cameras, Farming 2.0, night vision goggles, electric heaters, Rust+, modular vehicles, Airwolf, the boat shop and stables, the mixing table, elevators, the weather system, telephones and tech trees. A busy year for a game already seven years old at that point.
If you want to see how those Twitch Drop skins have held up on the market since, they're all tracked in our skin tracker.