Official Page: https://rust.facepunch.com/news/breach-and-clear
Facepunch wrote:This month's update brings you Monument Blockers, Breakable Attack Heli Armour, HQM Nodes, Upkeep Group Scaling, various item buffs, and QoL and balance changes, as well as many performance updates and much more!
Official Teaser: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/FgorQu3f5Ys
Game Start: Saturday, September 5 @ 2 PM UTC and continuing through the month
So starting from this month I will be titling the War Journal entries the same as Facepunch's updates, since we'll be playing monthly wipes. No need to reinvent the wheel here. And I would therefore like to launch a tradition that we at least make an effort to engage with each update's headline feature. Last month the Power Trip update turned on the power functionality in the Power Plant and several monuments linked to it, and I visited the Supermarket extensively and got several batches of the chilled food that the update introduced. So I feel that last month I did engage with the headline new feature, even though I only played for a week. For this month, on the other hand, the monuments affected by the monument blockers feature are the top-tier ones that there's no way in hell we can engage on the first day, if even the first week. Moreover, the big clans will clear those blockers within a day or two, so unlike last month's feature, this one can only be accessed in a very limited timeframe. In fact, since it's been a day since the wipe, I am sure the blockers are all cleared. So impossible to engage this month.
The second headline feature, "upkeep group scaling", kicks in pretty much automatically as long as you have more than 4 players authorized on a base. So if we get 5 tomorrow, we'll be paying 2% extra on upkeep. It won't make a noticeable difference to us, but we WILL be engaging with the new features, so I'll chalk that up as a success. But we may not get 5.
Next up in the list of new features are the new high quality metal ore nodes, and we will DEFINITELY be engaging with those over a full freakin' month. Moreover there are tons more smaller changes that we'll have to deal with anyway, read the official page, so I am feeling good about my update engagement requirement even if the headline feature is inaccessible to us. At least directly inaccessible, because indirectly it affects the entire server since it slows down the big clans. So for example, if you want to buy something from them, availability and price differences are already factored in for you.
Overall, it's a minor update, which is why it only gets a teaser animation instead of a full trailer. Not all updates get full trailers. Last month's update was huge, so it got a great trailer. We should get at least two more large updates before year's end, and I'll be posting about them in other threads in due course.
For this update, we just have to get used to the pace of the monthly wipe, which will open up to us a whole new level of depth of engaging with the game. It means we'll have the time to reach the industrial stage, which means we'll be forced to deal with the electrification stage in order to power the industrial stuff. We'll have to wire up the entire base! For lights, traps and turrets, electric furnaces and more. The most we've done with electricity before is connect a solar panel to a battery to power a phone. Now we'll play Factorio in Rust!
Regarding the start day, I decided to go for Saturday since we aren't playing anything else this weekend. If we're playing Battlegrounds or a Star Citizen event, this won't be possible, and in those months we'll be playing on wipe day (Thursday). But on free weekends, why not start on Saturday to get more people in? The 2-day loss isn't a big deal on a monthly server, and it occurred to me there may even be an advantage to it... You get to see where all the big bases are, so you can try to avoid building near them. And that's a huge advantage on a long-term server where the clans are much more committed and have much more time to mess with other people's bases. You WILL get raided on a monthly server, and one of the major ways you can ensure you're raided less is to build as far from large clans as possible. A Saturday start will give you the intel you need to make a wise choice. Of course note that with all my other requirements for a Cult Base (must be on coast, near snow, road and rail, and so on, not to mention the Apartment Complex), it will be a challenge choosing what to compromise on, since it's impossible to satisfy all these requirements (the big clans also love the coast and roads, etc.) But that's all part of the fun of the early-game.
P.S. Rustoria.co US Long Premium, which we'll be playing on, has the Premium tag which is a new game feature. It was introduced to help combat cheating, and it means you must have at least $15 worth of skins or DLC in your account to log in. It's a one-time payment, so it's well worth it, plus the skins and DLC are always useful. Post in the #rust channel on Discord if you need help picking the skins or DLC.
