Rust Breach and Clear update patch notes: September 2026

Rust Breach and Clear update (3 September 2026)

Rust Breach and Clear is Facepunch’s September 2026 update for the game.

The patch is named Breach and Clear in Facepunch’s changelist, which is dated Thursday, 03 September 2026.

• Monument blockers were added.
• Upkeep on a TC now increases with group size.
• The Drone Marketplace now requires power plant power.

For more, see our Rust coverage.

See also: all Rust update and patch notes.

What changed in Breach and Clear

The changes below come from Facepunch’s changelist titled September Update Changelist and from the Breach and Clear dev post.

Monument blockers

Facepunch is adding monument blockers, a new obstacle, to monuments with red keycard puzzle rooms.

Facepunch says they are intended to slow down early access to the loot at those monuments.

Destroying one takes a significant amount of damage, and a destroyed blocker does not respawn.

Players may also find a handful of weaker blockers that melee can destroy.

Group size TC upkeep

These players count toward a base’s player number for upkeep tax.

• Anyone directly authed on the TC.
• Anyone deauthed from the TC in the last 24 hours.
• Anyone with code lock authorization in the base, guest code access included.
• Anyone deauthed from a code lock in the last 24 hours.

Upkeep tax then scales with that player number, as follows.

• First 4 players: no tax.
• Next 6 players: 2% tax per player.
• Subsequent players: 4% tax per player.

As examples, a TC with 6 players authed has +4% upkeep, while one with 12 players has +20% upkeep.

The maximum tax amount is 300%.

Server owners can find a set of ConVars in the Decay class to modify the group scaling behaviours, including disabling it entirely.

Drone Marketplace and power plant

The marketplace now has its own battery, which slowly charges when 4 or more fuses are active in the Power Plant.

Once that battery reaches 50%, the marketplace can start accepting purchases.

The battery won’t decrease as long as the Power Plant has at least one fuse inserted.

If the battery drops below 50%, the marketplace deactivates again.

The current charge level can be viewed from the marketplace map screen.

Separately, the rentable shop now refrigerates food if the powerplant is active.

Water Treatment Plant rework

The pressurized tank and gearboxes in the Water Treatment Plant received a mini rework for simplification, and the changelist lists the plant’s Maintainable features as reworked.

Each fully turned gearbox provides 3 hours of real-time water flow to the pipes.

With both gearboxes turned, the tank’s maximum pressure keeps the pipes operational for 6 hours.

The water produced by the pipes now scales linearly with the pressure in the tank.

Players can check the tank’s pressure at the maintenance hut, where the ground-floor gearbox is.

When the tank runs out of pressure and no water is produced, pipes around the map now start to lose water as well.

The IO output of the water pipes has been increased to compensate for some losses.

Facepunch says the numbers should balance so that one water pipe is roughly equivalent to 2 pumps, with better IO push rates.

There are also more water pipes on the map, and they should be placed more consistently.

Modular car handling

Modular car steering, turning and suspension have all been tweaked.

Facepunch says it has hopefully also improved how well modular cars drive for players with higher latency.

A handbrake has also been added to modular cars, and it is activated by pressing the CTRL key.

Attack helicopter and Hot Air Balloon armour

The attack helicopter now loses armor plates with damage.

Panel	Armour condition	HP
Left panel	80%	680hp
Right panel	70%	595hp
Front panel	60%	510hp

Hot Air Balloon armor now falls off with damage too.

Panel	Armour condition	HP
Left panel	90%	2250hp
Right panel	80%	2000hp
Back panel	70%	1750hp
Front panel	60%	1500hp

Putting HAB armor on now takes 3 seconds and plays an effect.

Radwater and SAM sites

Radwater has received a large buff when used in Sprinklers, specifically against targets with armour.

It now scales damage differently in sprinklers, which results in more damage.

It also seeps through more armour types, causing significant radiation to players in full kits or lower radiation protection gear.

Hazmats are still an effective counter.

On the other side, the SAM site now does a much better job of destroying hostile drones.

Its missiles fly faster against drones and have a larger detonation fuse area.

Weapons and equipment balance

• Heavy plate helmet: it now suppresses noise when worn and muffles game audio.
• Heavy plate helmet cost: its crafting costs have been increased.
• Heavy Plate Jacket and Pants: players wearing them now make noise when moving, and other players can hear it.
• Semi-Automatic Pistol: damage falloff has been increased, meaning less damage at range.
• Semi-Automatic Pistol cost: its crafting cost has been increased slightly.
• Grenades: stack sizes for all grenades were reduced and standardized.
• Grenade stacks: the F1, Bee Grenade, Molotov and Flashbangs now stack to 3.
• Homing launcher: the lock-on duration has been reduced, allowing for earlier firing.
• Longsword: it now has slightly more accurate swings and less time between swings.

Healing items and consumables

The Medical Honey Bandage is a brand-new healing item on Workbench Level 1.

It is meant to sit between the regular Bandage and the Medical Syringe.

The Large Medkit now removes radiation, matching the behavior of Medical Syringes.

Separately, medkits now give some radiation reduction.

Medkits also now play a sound when used.

Various pies have had their durations extended and recipes adjusted.

Some pies also have increased buff duration and stats.

The Hunters pie’s bleed reduction has increased.

Resources and loot

• An HQM node and collectable were added, so ore nodes and collectables of this type can now be found across the island.
• They are extremely scarce, but the HQM node is more likely to be found in the Jungle.
• Swamp trees now give significantly more wood, bringing them in line with other types of trees.
• SMG bodies are now minorly more common, and rifle bodies have seen a slight reduction.

World and monument tweaks

• Rock and cliff spawning on procedural maps was improved.
• A convar, deepsea.terrain_everywhere, was added to enable deep sea terrain on main land.
• Fuel pumps at Dome can now store 1,000 crude, down from 10,000.
• Collision around the launch site silos was improved.
• Cacti now have appropriate impact effects.
• The appearance of the satellite trail after impact was improved.
• A red siren light was added to the satellite control room, and it activates and spins during descent.
• The changelist also describes a red light / siren effect added to the satellite launch room.

Art, animation and model updates

• Flashlight: it has a high quality model, high resolution textures and new animations.
• The flashlight is now turned on or off with right click, like the torches.
• It also has a different admire animation depending on whether it is on or off.
• Salvaged Hammer: it received an art refresh, with high-resolution textures and a set of animations.
• Wooden arrows: they were updated to have more visual interest, including new fletching.
• Because every existing weapon had the arrow mesh built in, rigs and prefabs had to be updated.
• Over 70 new world models were added for various items to replace the burlap sack.
• A white boomer was added to the Large Fireworks Pack.
• All Fireworks icons were updated to new artwork.
• Muzzle brake positions on all weapons in 3rd person were improved.
• LOD transitions on weapon attachments were improved.

Quality of life and customization

• A “random” skin option now sits at the start of the skin list. Selecting it applies a random unlocked skin to each craft of that item.
• The random skin setting is saved per item, so some items can use it while others keep a specific skin.
• A painting UI option projects the current paintbrush onto the object being painted, following the addition of the Paint Brush Visualizer Tool.
• New clan achievements were added.
• The composter UI was improved to work similarly to furnaces.
• Unlocked garage doors can be picked up without building privilege, matching other doors.
• Chinese lanterns can now be picked up with fuel inside.
• An admin status indicator was added for when infinite ammo is enabled.
• The spray pie menu now sorts items by DLC pack.
• The dartboard leaderboard and scorecards now respect streamer mode.
• Rug and bear rug now give 100% comfort from further away.
• For comparison, the general comfort fix listed under the bug fixes says comfort now increases the closer you are.
• The Boat Planner research cost was reduced from 120 scrap.

Demo and camera tools

The demo UI received fixes and improvements based on feedback from Facepunch’s internal trailer team and the community.

At release, players could test the demo UI by entering demo.newui 1 in the console, with that option available until the next patch.

Undo not working with the dolly camera was fixed.

A preview was added in dolly edit mode, so there is less need to hop between the two views.

The sandbox panel was also redesigned to prepare for future improvements.

New NPC navmesh

A new navmesh was introduced in a previous patch. It is off by default and is enabled by starting a server with the -useNewNavmesh command line parameter.

Facepunch says it has since improved performance a lot, reduced save sizes and squashed a lot of bugs.

Facepunch says it is going to enable the navmesh on some of its own servers in this patch and monitor how it performs.

Facepunch also says players might see some animals enter their base or get into monuments.

There are trade-offs. The navmesh gets saved to disk and is loaded on server restart, potentially leading to faster boots.

NPC navigation also puts less continuous load on the main thread but uses more background threads.

Performance: network ranges and event saving

A system allowing custom network ranges for specific objects (close, standard, far) was rolled out a few months ago.

Following an audit of most entities, around 300 entities were set to the ‘close’ network range.

The change covers items such as signs, mushrooms and driftwood, and it greatly reduces overhead.

Facepunch says it won’t affect gameplay, and nothing rendered very far in the distance has been reduced.

The changelist describes this as reducing the network range of hundreds of entities that aren’t visible from far, to keep network load down.

Facepunch also improved saveloading of server events, affecting oil rigs, cargo ship, patrol helicopter, Bradley and satellite crash sites.

Performance: physics and multithreading

Facepunch customized the physics engine (PhysX) further in this update, tailoring it more to Rust.

It added an entirely new broadphase mode using a BVH structure, which is also applied to the underlying structures used for physics queries.

The old implementations scaled with the number of colliders in the world, which keeps growing during a wipe cycle.

The new ones scale more with the number of changes being made, which in turn scales more with the number of active players.

On the server shown in Facepunch’s data, performance doubled when comparing the weekend before and the weekend after the physics engine update.

Facepunch also says it found a way to trick Unity into treating any thread as a main thread.

It trialled the approach on Server Occlusion generation, parallelizing terrain mesh height sampling and filtering physics query results by component.

Generation took 44s for a 4.5k world before the change and 22s after it.

Facepunch says code still needs to be amended to benefit from the trick.

Performance: memory and VRAM

• Memory use of many world objects was trimmed by very small amounts each, adding up to about 15k fewer objects and 10mb of memory.
• Memory usage of many low detail models throughout the game was reduced.
• Many ambient occlusion textures were reduced in size, a reduction of about 630mb that affects VRAM usage.
• Distant objects now use smaller textures, saving more VRAM.
• Facepunch says early testing shows a memory saving of over 0.5GB, though this will vary between machines.
• Pooling support was added to vehicles as a memory optimization.
• Boat sails were optimized and now switch to a static mesh at range.

Gameplay and world fixes

• Comfort deployables no longer erroneously give more comfort from further away; comfort now increases the closer you are.
• Sprinklers no longer stop hitting planters after a server restart.
• Sprinklers no longer stop hitting planters on moving boats.
• Trees no longer spawn around the fuel pumps at Dome.
• Crude can no longer be deleted from Dome pumps with a water jug.
• A rentable shop can no longer be opened while items are still stored at the shop.
• Vending machine item searching no longer includes hidden items.
• The player boat decay timer now correctly saves across restarts.
• An incorrect cannot be deployed on boats error message no longer appears when placement is just not suitable.
• Various boat building issues on servers using a non-vanilla env.oceanlevel convar value were fixed.
• Facepunch possibly fixed players in boats getting killed when bumping into land.
• The boat fuel interaction is now limited to the driver, and the open prompt no longer appears for anyone outside the driver seat.
• Players can no longer use a siege tower to get a boost and bypass the red card puzzle at the launch site.
• Placing high external stone walls on ice sheets can no longer be used to get inside them.
• The shield button no longer lets players ADS and shoot instantly while blocking.
• Projectiles now deal damage when servers disable projectile protection.
• The targeting attachment is now compatible with the M15 pistol skin.
• Players on Pooltables can no longer rotate into walls, which mostly happened on boats.
• Pooltable balls no longer move without players hitting them.
• Pooltables can no longer clip into cliffs.
• Foundations underneath a spiral staircase now have a softside for melee damage.
• Rugs no longer block placement of Workbench Upgrades.
• Paint colours no longer transfer between painting different objects.
• Dartboard leaderboard issues were fixed.
• An issue causing random skins to appear on deployables was fixed.
• Gas station improved loot in the cave now respawns after a server restart.
• Advanced vehicle parts now respawn in the gas station cave after a server restart.
• The two chairs on the gas station roof can be mounted again.
• Some clipping crate and barrel spawns in the harbor and a junkpile were fixed.
• Oil rig scientist corpses no longer collide with player movement.
• Heavy scientists on small oil rig no longer often get stuck on the heli pad.
• Clipping bodies and bags can no longer be looted from within a submarine.
• A fireplace can be deployed under a ceiling again.
• The repair bench UI now updates when moving items from your backpack.

Visual, audio and UI fixes

Models and LODs

• The Krieg Chainsword now displays correctly on single weapon racks.
• Distant monuments no longer flicker.
• Flipped normals on modular vehicle tyres were fixed.
• Sunglasses no longer have the wrong materials applied to lenses.
• An emission leak on the mini-fridge, especially evident on the gibs, was fixed.
• Flashlight and laser light placement on the M4 shotgun was fixed.
• An early blueberry bush LOD transition on medium settings was fixed.
• Autoturret parts’ LODs no longer transition at different distances.
• The Outpost chainlink fence no longer disappears on lowest object quality.
• It is no longer possible to see through the Supermarket ceiling on low object quality settings.
• Rugs now cull at a unified distance rather than various distances.
• Supply drop LODs at awkward angles were fixed.
• Off-center and upside-down power grid indicators in the airfield were fixed.
• Minor clipping that appeared in the skin viewer when looking at bucket helmet skins was fixed.
• Duplicate lights in the military tunnels were removed.

Animations and sound

• The Mini-crossbow cycle animation in ADS now fires.
• SPAS 3rd person now uses the proper deploy SFX.
• Torches now play SFX in 3rd person.
• Flamethrower flame offset in 3rd person was fixed.
• Some weapons now play a pull-out sound to other players.

Menus and UI

• Long names no longer leak out of market terminal screens.
• A typo in the Smart Alarm description was fixed.
• Various old twitch drops are now marked as drops in the inventory.
• The admin creative mode indicator no longer appears in demos.
• Hex codes can be entered in the painting color picker again.
• The show use bind and show belt bar binds settings now work in the settings menu.
• Some convar values no longer get rounded in the F1 console after opening the settings menu.
• Long server descriptions no longer push the disconnect button out of reach in the session menu.

Server retirements and map size changes

Facepunch’s post announces the retirement of these Primitive servers:

• EU Primitive 2, retired to consolidate players.
• CAN Primitive 1.
• US West Primitive 1.

Facepunch says there will still be primitive gamemode servers in these regions.

Servers with reduced map size include EU Hardcore 1 and US East Hardcore 1.

Wood Armor workshop skinnable

For September 2026, the workshop skinnable is all four pieces of Wood Armor.

• Wood Chestplate.
• Wood Armor Pants.
• Wood Armor Helmet.
• Wood Armor Gloves.

Crystal Assault Rifle skin DLC

The Crystal Assault Rifle is an Assault Rifle skin DLC.

It is available in 5 unique colour variations.

While firing, the skin reveals the magazine’s ammunition and the rifle’s inner workings.

It can be bought in-game or from the Rust Steam item store.

Sources

• Facepunch: Breach and Clear
• Facepunch: BREACH AND CLEAR

Researched from official Facepunch announcements with AI assistance; reviewed by GadgetVibes.