New Rust update brings back blueprint fragments to solve "stale" progression

Rust blueprint fragments are back, but not as you remember them. Developer Facepunch has just deployed its October Rust update, Meta Shift, and it's designed to overhaul everything from progression to loot drops and balance. It's continued to hold onto a spot as Steam's fifth most-popular title, beating out free-to-play favorites to reign supreme among the best survival games right now, but the Rust developer refuses to rest on its laurels. After last month's more backend-focused overhaul, it's time for some more immediately visible changes, and there's a lot here.

The Rust patch notes for Meta Shift kick off with the return of blueprint fragments. You'll remember these if you're a long-time player, but now they're back as a way to force players out of the comfort of their bases and into clashes over monuments once more. "The current progression meta has grown stale, moving too fast and becoming too easy over the years, with scrap inflation and scrap being everywhere," Facepunch writes. "We don't believe this has been overwhelmingly negative, but it has detracted from world PvP, and we want to experiment more with progression."

Reaching workbench level two now requires five basic blueprint fragments, while rank three takes five advanced blueprint fragments. These are found at key monuments, typically tied to puzzles and high-end loot. Basics always spawn in green puzzle rooms and blue-card puzzles, and can be found at all medium and large monuments as well as in airdrops. Advanced fragments are guaranteed from hackable crates, and have a one-in-ten chance to appear in elite crates. You can also craft them from 20 of the lower-tier variant.

With this renewed focus on key locations, Facepunch has added green keycard puzzles to Dome, Ferry Terminal, and Radtown, and there's also a new recycler at the Dome. The Nuclear Missile Silo is now a red-keycard area, marking it as high tier. Beyond that, the dev has moved "the majority of loot to new locations" across almost the game's entire monument complement. "Areas that previously had little to no loot have been refreshed, making these areas relevant again. Dead spots are gone, and new loot run paths have opened up. Our goal here is to break old habits and get players rediscovering movements."

I'm sure you've had some terrible crate loot in your time. While a bit of variance is to be expected, Facepunch says that "hackable crates should always feel rewarding." To solve this, it's reworked the rolls for hackable and elite crates, stripping out "some of the junk" to ensure that you "always get something of use, hopefully multiple items." There's also a new 'shore crate' that can be found along the spawn beach as a way to boost your early inventory, and Chinook drops will now be correctly random instead of repeating locations.

Drones have been given a storage upgrade - they can hold one single stack of any item, which you can drop at will while piloting it. Before you ask, yes, this can be used with active throwable explosives, allowing you to bombard unsuspecting victims from above. Note that player drones will now be treated as hostile by SAM sites and auto turrets, however, so watch where you're flying.

Another long-requested feature that's previously been handled by mod tools is crosshair customization. You'll now be able to adjust the built-in option to your liking, adjusting style, color, dot size, spacing, line length and width, outline, and outline color. You're able to set whether or not it hides when aiming, and can share your creations via an export code.

Elsewhere, there are several more small but significant upgrades. Mission rewards have been "significantly increased." Bicycles and tricycles can now bunny hop. Paintings, signs, and photo frames can be rotated. Beds have been enabled for custom workshop skins. The chainsaw can no longer fail to start up. There's a new spike trap, and several of the Rust Medieval weapons and tools are buffed. Conversely, Facepunch is doubling down on its wooden barricades nerf, reducing the stack size to three and lowering its health by 20% to further curb 'maze spam.'

To round things out, the team has some good news about performance. After some investigation, it determined that "VRAM usage was significantly higher than intended." This was because texture streaming was eating up all your potential power, impacting even the best graphics cards. This has now been rectified, which should mean reduced memory overheads, and hopefully better results depending on your setup.

The Rust October update 'Meta Shift' is out now. The Halloween event begins Thursday October 23 at 10am PT / 1pm ET / 6pm BST / 7pm CEST. Take a look through the full patch notes courtesy of Facepunch Studios.

Take a look through the latest Rust system requirements if you're coming back for the new update, and brush up on your Rust console commands as well.

Are you happy with these changes, or will it take more to get you back on board? Stop in at the PCGamesN Discord server to let us know what you make of the update.