Rust has had a forced-wipe update on the first Thursday of every month in 2026, and the big ones were Naval (February), the Apartment Complex and clans (July), the Power Plant (August), group upkeep tax (September) and cows and sheep (October). Below is each month in order, with the changes that actually affect how you play. Everything comes from Facepunch's own devblogs; cosmetics and performance numbers are trimmed down.

The next update and forced wipe is Thursday, 5 November 2026. See the wipe countdown for the exact time.

January: Surviving 12 Years

January was a light month: servers wiped on 1 January with minimal gameplay changes. Facepunch's 1 January devblog was a recap of 2025 (a record Steam peak of 259,646 players) and a preview of the year: the Naval update dated for 5 February, cows and sheep with animal breeding, an apartment complex monument, new player models and a third-party anticheat layer. Facepunch also left some months deliberately light on its roadmap to make room for fixes.

February: Naval

The biggest update of the year so far, delayed from late 2025.

  • Player-built boats. You build hulls at a Boat Building Station with a Boat Building Plan, then add sails, a helm with a lock, engines, anchors, cannons, ramps and planks.
  • Deep Sea. A region past the map edge with tropical islands, four Floating City variants per server, Ghost Ships guarded by scientists and scientist-crewed boats. Building is disabled, nothing respawns, and it opens and closes on a cycle.
  • New scientist AI on oil rigs and Deep Sea content. It works from sound and last-seen positions, flanks, throws smoke and takes cover.
  • PT Boat. Deep Sea only. Slower and thirstier than the RHIB, but tougher, with two turrets fed 5.56.
  • The RHIB got a new model with a working compass and map screens.

Lunar New Year followed on 17 February, with horse masks and horse armour skins in the store.

March: Shipshape

Naval follow-up and balance.

  • Daytime is about 20 minutes longer. Night stays around 10 minutes.
  • Electricity, industrial and water items can go on boats. Turrets, SAMs and a few others are blocked.
  • Boat decay delay doubled from 12 to 24 hours, and decay duration went from 18 to 12 hours.
  • Cannon hits can slow a player boat to 30% of max speed.
  • Deep Sea starts with roughly 70% of its old loot but now respawns slowly. It is closed right after wipe and can no longer be reached by RHIB.
  • Naval scientists got tankier against hazmat (5% to 30%) and full metal (25% to 50%), but miss more and hit softer.

April: Spring Clean

  • Armoured Ladder Hatch, a tier 3 step above the metal hatch.
  • Water Wheel, a power source for rivers. It works in the ocean too, but output follows the tide.
  • Tech tree path buying. Click a node to preview its path and buy the whole path at once.
  • Overfishing. Fish out a spot and you only catch junk until it recovers. Fish traps are unaffected.
  • Plants now take 24 hours to ripen instead of 14.
  • Shields have a smaller hitbox unless raised, and watchtowers can't be placed side by side.

May: Upgrade hard, raid harder

  • Workbench upgrades. Nine rare, non-craftable upgrades that add bonuses to your bench.
  • Mortar. A deployable aimed through binoculars, with an anti-personnel shell and a structure-breaking shell.
  • Binoculars rework with three zoom levels and a cheaper recipe.
  • Tin Can Alarm traps. You can rig it with F1s, molotovs, flares and other throwables that fire when the wire is crossed.
  • Deep Sea loot cut again, the Computer Station now needs power, and an exploit that let explosives pass through walls was fixed.

June: Built Different

  • New player model and animation system. New rig and proportions. Your face changes, but race and gender seeds were kept.
  • Ballistic Armour and the Battle Dress Uniform, both loot-only.
  • M16A2, a loot-only three-round-burst rifle with lower per-shot damage than the LR-300.
  • Better hit registration on players in hot air balloons and boats.
  • The workbench range upgrade also extends comfort range.

July: Common Ground

  • Apartment Complex monument. Rent rooms with scrap (better rooms get more storage and furnaces). Stop paying and you get evicted.
  • Rentable shops in the apartment marketplace. A shop open for 6 hours can be taken over by someone else at double the cost.
  • Clans. More members than teams, roles, permissions, clan chat and nameplate tags, managed at a Clan Table. Disabled on hardcore.
  • Softcore changes. 2x gather, and raid windows from 6pm to 9pm server time by default. Outside that window, a TC at least an hour old protects building blocks and doors.

August: Power Trip

  • Power Plant and the island grid. Heavy Fuses bring the plant online, and powerline poles with transformers carry electricity across the map. The poles are climbable.
  • Satellite Crash event, steered from a computer at Launch Site.
  • Powered monuments: Water Treatment Plant pressure, a Supermarket freezer, a working car lift at Oxum's, and Airfield tower terminals that boost or call in drops.
  • Recyclers. Green recyclers run at 50% efficiency, 60% when powered, and speed up from 5s to 4.5s at max power. A new red recycler gives 75%, but only at max power.
  • High external walls now cost 20% static upkeep, up from 10%.
  • Blowpipe down to 10 cloth, wooden darts up from 40 to 50 damage, Bucket Helmet down to 20 frags.

September: Breach and Clear

  • Group upkeep tax. The first 4 players on a base pay nothing extra, the next 6 add 2% each, everyone after adds 4%, capped at 300%. Code lock access counts, guests included. More in our upkeep and decay guide.
  • Monument blockers in front of red card rooms. They take heavy damage to clear and start decaying if not destroyed within 24 hours.
  • Medical Honey Bandage, a tier 1 heal between the bandage and syringe.
  • Attack Helicopter and armoured HAB armour panels now break off in stages.
  • F1, Bee Grenade, Molotov and Flashbang stacks dropped to 3, Beancans to 4.
  • Faster homing launcher lock, more falloff on the Semi-Auto Pistol, quieter Heavy Plate Helmet (with a higher cost).
  • Rare HQM nodes and collectables, most likely in the Jungle.

October: Livestock

  • Cows and sheep. Dung from both, milk from cows, wool from sheep. Sell grown animals at a Stable vendor.
  • Milk products. Refrigerate milk for 4 hours to skim it into Skimmed Milk and Cream.
  • Biofuel Generator that turns meat and other organics into low grade fuel, with a stir needed about every 30 minutes.
  • Powergrid loot rooms at 12 monuments, opened with Heavy Fuses.
  • Sandbags now stack up in four stages, and crude pumping at Oil Rig takes 15 minutes to start.
  • Client prediction for thrown grenades, C4 and satchels.

The Halloween event went live on 22 October and runs until 5 November, with Candy Hunt, Rifts and build-a-monster pets.

If you are coming back after a break, the changes most likely to catch you out are the group upkeep tax, the August recycler rework and the new monument blockers. For raids, the May mortar and the September grenade stack cuts matter most; the raiding guide covers the rest.

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