Rust's Breach and Clear update brings group upkeep tax and weaker Attack Heli

Facepunch's Breach and Clear September Rust update adds Tool Cupboard upkeep tax scaling with group size, staged armour loss for the Attack Helicopter and armoured HABs, monument blockers, HQM spawns, plus vehicle, healing, and performance changes.

Tool Cupboards count anyone authed or deauthed in the last 24 hours on the TC, plus anyone authed or deauthed in the last 24 hours on a base code lock, including guest access.

• First 4 players: no tax
• Next 6 players: 2% tax each
• Additional players: 4% tax each

The tax is capped at 300%. Six authed players means +4% upkeep; 12 means +20%. Hovering the upkeep cost while the TC is open shows the current rate. Server owners can adjust or disable it via ConVars in the Decay class.

Attack Helicopter cockpit armour now falls off in stages as it takes damage, exposing the pilot and gunner:

• Left: 80% (680 HP); Right: 70% (595 HP); Front: 60% (510 HP)

Armoured HABs also get conditional armour:

• Left: 90% (2250 HP); Right: 80% (2000 HP); Back: 70% (1750 HP); Front: 60% (1500 HP)

Monuments with red keycard puzzle rooms now have monument blockers to slow early loot access. Most need heavy damage and don't respawn; weaker versions can be melee'd. Blockers start decaying after 24 hours if not destroyed.

High Quality Metal (HQM) ore nodes and collectables can now spawn rarely across the island, with better odds in the Jungle.

The Drone marketplace now depends on the Power Plant. Its battery charges while 4+ fuses are active, purchases unlock at 50%, and the charge holds while at least one fuse remains. Below 50%, the marketplace deactivates. Charge level is visible on the marketplace map screen.

The Medical Honey Bandage is a new Workbench Level 1 heal between Bandage and Medical Syringe, giving surplus honey a use.

Modular car steering, turning, and suspension are improved, including for high-latency players. CTRL is now a handbrake for hairpins, tighter cornering, and drifts.

Radwater Sprinklers now seep through more armour types, irradiating full kits and low-rad protection; Hazmat still counters it.

SAM sites are stronger against drones, with faster missiles and a larger detonation fuse area.

• Heavy Plate Helmet suppresses noise and costs more to craft; Heavy Plate Jacket/Pants make wearers audible.
• Swamp trees now yield significantly more wood.
• Semi-Pistol has stronger damage falloff at range and a higher crafting cost.
• Pie durations and recipes adjusted; Hunter's Pie bleed reduction increased.
• Grenade stack sizes reduced for F1, Bee Grenade, Molotov, Flashbang, and Beancan.
• Homing Launcher lock-on time reduced; SMG bodies slightly more common, rifle bodies slightly less.
• Large Medkit now removes radiation; Composter shows fertiliser timing; painting UI can project the brush onto the painted object.

The flashlight gets a new model, textures, animations, right-click toggle, and different admire animations depending on whether it's on. Wooden Arrow and Salvaged Hammer also got refreshes, and 70+ world models replace the burlap sack for dropped items.

This month's workshop skinnable is all four Wood Armor pieces. The Crystal Assault Rifle DLC is available in five color variations, with the magazine and internals visible while firing.

A new "random" skin option at the start of the skin list applies a random unlocked skin to each craft and is remembered per item.

Server event saving now covers oil rigs, cargo ship, patrol helicopter, Bradley, and satellite crash sites through restarts, preventing event loot from being lost.

Water Treatment Plant rework: each fully turned gearbox provides 3 hours of water flow; both provide 6 hours. Pipe output scales with tank pressure, and pipes lose water when pressure runs out. IO output is buffed so one pipe is roughly equal to two pumps.

Facepunch is enabling the new Navmesh on some servers. Animals may wander into bases, server boots can be faster, and NPC navigation uses more background threads.

Performance work includes a new PhysX broadphase mode using a BVH structure, vehicle pooling to cut 20–30ms stutters, roughly 0.5GB memory savings, ~300 entities moved to closer network range, and parallelised server occlusion generation.

The demo tool's new UI remains opt-in with demo.newui 1, adding parenting, a curve editor, dolly preview, and undo fixes.

Facepunch is retiring EU Primitive 2, CAN Primitive 1, and US West Primitive 1. EU Hardcore 1 and US East Hardcore 1 map sizes drop from 4250 to 3750.