Rust Livestock Update (October 2026): Cows, Sheep, Biofuel

Rust's October 2026 update, the Livestock Update, went live on Thursday 1 October 2026 - that month's force-wipe day. It adds cows and sheep you can capture, breed and farm for milk, wool and meat; a Biofuel Generator that turns raw or spoiled meat into low grade fuel; sandbags that stack up into a pillbox; an Air Wolf helipad at Bandit Camp that starts every wipe broken; and new powergrid loot rooms at twelve monuments. Everything below comes from Facepunch's devblog and October patch notes.

Livestock: cows and sheep

Cows and sheep are new farmable animals. Both produce dung, cows produce milk and sheep produce wool, and both can be harvested for meat, bones and leather like any other animal - the patch notes add Beef and Mutton as new meats.

Facepunch says there are “multiple ways to capture wild livestock, some more efficient than others” without listing them. With the new navmesh enabled, NPCs can enter player structures and respect doors opening and closing. Like plants, livestock have genetics and needs and can be bred “to hunt for a god clone” - but “the genes won't behave exactly like plants, so old techniques may not apply.” New animal gate and fence deployables help keep them penned in.

Selling animals and wool

Grown cattle and sheep can be sold at the Stables: lead the animal to the new vendor outside and you get a randomized offer based on its gene quality. You can turn an offer down and get a new one two more times; after that the vendor won't buy that animal for 15 minutes. Wool goes to the same vendor, with up to three offers based on how much you bring in one go - 400 at most.

Milk, cream and new food

Milk can be drunk as it is, or refrigerated for 4 hours, after which you can skim it into Skimmed Milk and Cream - “a more powerful consumable”. Milk generally makes tea effects last longer and Cream makes them stronger: the patch notes add Creamy and Milky versions of most pure teas, along with a Shepherds Pie and a Beef Pie.

Biofuel Generator

The Biofuel Generator finally gives raw and spoiled meat a use: it converts organic matter into low grade fuel. It has to be stirred by hand - fill it, stir it and let it process, and after around 30 minutes it needs stirring again, which you can wire up IO to warn you about. Food with a higher calorific value gives more low grade.

Sandbags you can stack

Sandbag Barricades now have four stages: stack another sandbag on top to grow it, and the last stage is a pillbox. Every sandbag skin works on every stage. The crafting cost is lower to make up for stacking, sandbags found in loot come as a stack of 4, and the stack size is now 20.

The Air Wolf helipad needs repairing

At the start of every wipe the Air Wolf helipad at Bandit Camp is in disrepair, and the air vehicle vendor won't sell anything until it's fixed. Players repair it by hitting the pad with a hammer to transfer resources from their inventory, the same way siege weapons are built, and once repaired it stays fixed for the rest of the wipe. Server owners can turn this off with vehicle.padrepairsrequired, or force the pad broken or fixed with vehicle.setrepairablepads.

Powergrid loot rooms

Building on the Power Plant loot room from August's Power Trip update, locked loot rooms now open at more monuments once enough Heavy Fuses are in the Power Plant - tougher monuments need more fuses. They're at the Airfield, Ferry Terminal, both Harbours, Junkyard, Launch Site, Military Tunnels, Nuclear Missile Silo, Radtown, Sewer Branch, Trainyard and Water Treatment Plant.

Low-population servers get more power time: with 10 or fewer players online, heavy fuses now last four times longer, scaling back to normal at 100 players. The small heavy fuse box at the Power Plant can also be reached from outside now, through a broken window.

Everything else

• Decorative frogs, rabbits, squirrels, sea turtles, crabs and jellyfish now appear in the biomes that suit them - “mostly set dressing” for now.
• Grenades, C4 and satchels are client-predicted, so throwing them feels smoother on higher ping.
• Oil Rig crude pumping now takes 15 minutes to start producing.
• The Water Wheel's melee protection is “4-5x as strong”.
• Armor plates on the attack helicopter now fall off in a random order.
• Horses drop considerably less dung.
• 11 new achievements.
• The machete has a new model and animations, all four ladder hatches can now be skinned in the Workshop, and a Plague Doctor Hazmat Suit item DLC is in the store.
• Rust now uses the new Rust Render Pipeline; for the first month you can switch back under the Experimental settings tab.
• Memory: about 100MB saved by sharing one hands mesh across viewmodels, about 250MB less at launch, and about 450MB once the store has unloaded its assets.
• Six more Facepunch servers now require TPM and Secure Boot.
• Fixes include campfires cooking certain foods twice as fast and battering rams hitting Tool Cupboards through walls.

Next: a Halloween update on 22 October

Facepunch will release a mandatory server and client update on 22 October at 18:00 BST “to enable some spooky features”. The next force wipe is Thursday 5 November - countdown in your time zone.