Rust's developer is overhauling the survival sim's mission system so it can create in-game quests faster and more easily: 'The process to create new missions internally is quite cumbersome and error prone'

Rust's latest patch may not be as dramatic as its recent jungle update, which added a huge rainforest biome to explore, but it nonetheless makes some important changes to Facepunch's survival sim. The headline update is a party system allowing players to join servers as a group. This makes playing with your friends slightly easier, not only from an organisational perspective, but also because it spawns you into a map together, meaning you don't have to track each other down and risk being killed in the process.

Perhaps the most important change, however, is one players won't be able to see at all. Facepunch is changing Rust's underlying mission system. Missions were added into Rust a few years' back, taking the form of simple, RPG-style quests such as killing specific animals or locating stashes of items. They're not hugely involved, but the rewards they offer are handy, especially during the early game.

Yet the mission roster hasn't expanded enormously since Facepunch introduced the system, and it sounds like the reason for this is they're a pain to make. "We all want to make more missions and flesh this system out but the process to create new missions internally is quite cumbersome and error prone," writes the studio in a Steam post. "Prior to these upgrades, creating a new mission involved a long process of manually setting up conversation nodes, filling in translation fields and lots of manual data entry."

The new system, which according to Facepunch has been "a longer term project over the last few months" automates much of this faff, which the developer reckons will speed up mission creation. "We’re not quite there yet but we’ve got more missions planned this year that will allow us to push these tools further."

These changes coincide with the addition of a new mission, letting players unlock a spawn point at the Outpost location by helping out the Hazmat-suit wearing NPC CZ-721. Facepunch doesn't specify whether this mission was created using the improved tools, but since the system updates aren't fully finished, the answer is probably "partly".

Elsewhere, the update introduces a snapping system for deployables, helping players align deployable objects to walls, corners, and other deployables by holding down left shift. And it adjusts the behaviour of the patrol helicopter that sweeps across Rust's map every few hours. These changes basically make the helicopter easier to chase down if it flees from a fight, in a manner that gives players who initiate the fight a better chance of getting some of the sweet, sweet loot it drops, while also still encouraging serverwide engagement of patrol helicopter encounters.

One last change I want to highlight is Rust's "improved erosion" simulation. This basically creates more realistic scree slopes on mountainsides, which Facepunch says is intended to "do a better job of blending the canyons and lakes with the rest of the environment". Apart from the fact that I simply love a good scree slope (yes, I was that kid who enjoyed Geography lessons at school) it's just a fun example of all the tiny details developers have to think about when making games like this. There's a few images of the system in action below:

Facepunch caps off its update post with a few hints of what else is coming to Rust in the near future. This includes the impending naval update, which has nothing to do with belly buttons and everything to do with letting players build their own boats and then bombard rival players with offshore cannon fire. Beyond that, there's a planned overhaul to AI and animals, a Warhammer collaboration and "more we're not quite ready to talk about yet."