RUST December 2025 Update Preview

Surface RUST: The Naval Update Postponed: What’s Changing and What You Need to Know

Note: Follow-up to last month’s announcement that Official servers would be wiping Blueprints every wipe;  this has been confirmed by several Facepunch employees on their Discord. 

What Is the Naval Update?

The Naval Update is now slated to launch in February 2025, a content drop that drags a huge chunk of progression out to sea. At the center of it all is the new instanced Deep Sea event, an instanced zone with its own map that houses the Floating City monument and safe zone, procedurally generated tropical islands, roaming Ghost Ships, and relentless AI patrol fleets.

Wrapped around that core are upgrades to almost everything that floats: fully customizable modular boats, the new PT boat, mountable cannons, overhauled naval scientists, and a stack of new items, resources, and rewards tied to ocean gameplay. Think of it as a soft ocean rework. If it sails, sinks, or shoots from the water, the Naval Update probably touches it.

We’ll be publishing complete guides for each of these systems as they stabilize, so use this section as a high-level tour of what’s coming rather than a final list of patch notes.

The Deep Sea

Diving right in, we have the Deep Sea event. Similar to instancing used in other games, the Deep Sea is its own segmented map area. Segregated from the mainland island map by a portal-adjacent threshold shown below. The Deep Sea is the ‘world’ that encapsulates the Floating City monument, the area for all Deep Sea island spawns, and Ghost Ships.

At present, it is accessible only by approaching the threshold in a boat-type vehicle, as described in the map tooltip as any “sturdy boat.” Early testing indicates that any existing boat types can make the voyage, including:

• RHIBs 
• Tugboats
• Rowboats
• Submarines

This, of course, also includes the new customizable modular boats and the souped-up Patrol boat.

By default, the Deep Sea comes with Fog of War enabled, but it can be disabled locally by server administrators. When first approaching, players will see an island in the distance, as well as a line of buoys to mark the start of the transport threshold.

It isn’t until traveling roughly a half square south of this line that the teleport will happen. There are assorted weather changes as the process grows closer, such as rain starting. The initial entry point can be laggy, so give it a moment to properly load.  

To exit, simply head north instead of south. Approaching inside of unauthorized vehicle types, such as Minicopters (or cars, we checked), will result in being affected by ‘repel forces’. The transition occurs roughly in the same time window as entering a Christmas or Halloween portal. 

At the time of writing, the Deep Sea event lasts for 7200 seconds, or 2 hours. When the time is up, the zone ends, and everything inside it, including players, is destroyed/killed. A final pass is still needed to solidify the rules for its spawning/despawning. 

There is currently an in-game toast pop-up that says “a Storm is approaching, the Deep Sea will close in 20 minutes”, etc. You’d be wise to listen to it and not be in the Deep Sea when it happens. It will start physically storming in-game alongside the warning.

After closing, a 3600-second (1-hour) timer sets until it opens again. At the moment, there are no notifications that state when the next Deep Sea instance will open to players.

Ghost Ships

 In total, we believe there to be three versions of the Ghost Ship. Much like Abandoned Military Base, these ships spawn when the Deep Sea loads, placed randomly throughout it, noted on the map (though through fog of war) with a small ship’s helm (steering wheel).

Architecturally, each resembles a Soviet-era cruiser or surveillance vehicle. The three types of Ghost Ships are as follows:

The clean deck, which we call this because it’s the neatest of the three versions, definitely offends less than the other entrants in this ship type. As shown in the image, the deck is relatively clean and free of obstructions, offering less cover for the boat’s tenants. 

On average, there are six total scientists per Ghost Ship. Two scientists chiefly patrol and are limited to the clean deck, with two patrolling between the inner and outer decks, and two more mostly staying inside.

The dirty, chum-covered deck is basically just a clean deck, with the same patrol patterns and loot.  Scientists also patrol in the same way and in the exact numbers. There are flies around the chum for that extra disgust factor.

The cargo crate deck has the most cover, but the same loot spawns and scientist patrols are present. Two large and one small cargo containers provide said cover, but these are strictly cosmetic and don’t offer additional loot. You can enter the largest, which has open doors, and is identical to the top deck Cargo Ship crates that can spawn on that event.

Modes of Boarding

Stern Access

At the back of the ship, players will find a ladder on both rear sides, as well as a vertical ramp that allows cargo to be acquired when at port. Since the Ghost Ship doesn’t move, you may dock your RHIB, Patrol Boat, or Rowboat directly onto this ramp.

Port and Starboard Access

On either side of the Ghost Ship, players will have access to stationary sets of ladders. Additionally, the greenish fish netting covering the outer hull area along the sides is also climbable by players. At the moment, there doesn’t seem to be a way up towards the front of these boats, but this is highly subject to change.

Ghost Ship Sections

Main Deck

 The main deck area is pretty wide open and manned by new AI scientists intent on keeping players off their ship. Expect to encounter 2-6, depending on how many are triggered when you board. Aside from a few breakable barrels, there is no real loot on the main deck. It is easiest when clearing to bait any scientists from other areas back to this deck and use doorways at bottlenecks or chokepoints to get better angles.  

Storage Hull

The bottom storage hull, located directly through either set of doors off the main deck, has the most loot consolidated into one area in the entire ship. There is the potential for a few scientists to patrol in and out, but they will most likely be pulled when you board.

Shelving provides a few spawn points for brown crates or red tool boxes, and as of Staging Branch, there was the possibility for a single Locked Crate spawn to appear on 1 of the 7-10 Ghost Ships that spawn. The mechanism or trigger that could cause this remains unknown. 

Second Deck

Just up the stairs from the main deck, there is a patrol area for more scientists, as well as the entrance to the staff quarters hall. While there isn’t much in the way of loot on this deck, it can be a key chokepoint if other players were to show up and try to board. 

There is also a ladder that leads up onto a walkway with lights and interesting peeks. Passages lead around to the front of the ship, with a secretive netting entrance to the main bridge area for those keen on a quick climb.

Staff Hall Quarters

Basically, in the dead center of the Ghost Ship is a narrow hallway with an end gathering area, flanked on either side by two small bedrooms each. This is a part of the third deck scientist patrol path, and can have 1-2 loot receptacles scattered through the hall and rooms. Not much in the way of interest here, except for one particularly haunting picture hanging in one of the bedrooms.

Main Bridge & Meeting Room

 Rounding out the boat tour, the tiny third deck leads around to a double-entrance meeting room, void of loot, and to the more direct route into the main bridge area. There is no loot spawning in either of these locations just prior to this article coming out, but there are more than enough potential places for this to change in the future. You may exit through a broken window onto the front of the ship if needed.

Deep Sea Islands

The islands being added to the Deep Sea are an interesting twist on old procedurally generated methods;  they’re using static island assets, we think somewhere in the neighborhood of 3-5 shapes, and then incorporating overlay assets at random. Since the Deep Sea itself is an event of sorts, no building, bagging, or anything else is allowed on the islands, but they may come preloaded with their own goodie bags.  

These things can come across as empty islands, save an abundance of trees, or potentially other resources like a large clump of metal ore or sulfur nodes. Other islands might have scientist AI protecting them, often alongside standard electrical station mini-monuments with upgraded loot crate spawns. There are also small cannon bunker outposts, manned by a single scientist, with functioning, mountable cannons that players can use to attack enemy vessels. These can have two green crates each.

More rare still, there have been instances of jungle jump puzzle monuments spawning with elevated crate levels and guards. This is all still very subject to change. These islands are also supposedly going to be a great place to metal detect, though that doesn’t seem to be live yet. Finally, they have a new type of tree that can spawn Coconuts at its base, which are a new food item. 

The Floating City Monument

The Floating City is essentially Outpost and Bandit Camp stitched together, hoisted onto barges, and shoved out into the Deep Sea with a pirate flair.

It’s a static safe zone monument that appears with each Deep Sea instance, complete with turrets, vendors, and more seating than any one group reasonably needs. You can fish in peace from multiple spots, wander a maze of walkways and platforms, and bump into a variety of NPC vendors whose exact appearance may change from run to run.

Several of the barges are built around specific needs. The Farm Barge is a pay-to-enter community farm that starts growing as soon as the Deep Sea opens and is ready to harvest shortly before it shuts down, offering a huge haul of food and clean genetics for players who pay the 150 Scrap entry fee. Below it, you’ll find a safe-zone Recycler and a public Work Bench Level 1.

Nearby, the Food Barge sells seeds and canned goods and includes yet another Recycler and fully functional picnic seating. The Medical Barge rounds things out with a Water Well–style vendor that stocks high-value tools and gear, as well as a second vendor selling diving and fishing equipment.

The more utility-focused platforms handle the rest of your ocean-life needs. The Supplies, Firearms, and Boats barge lets you buy Rowboats and RHIBs, sell fish, hit another Work Bench Level 1, browse a Bandit-style firearms vendor, and access the only Research Table in the entire event.

The Utilities and Homegoods section includes a public Oil Refinery, a Repair Bench, and an Outpost-style vendor selling Auto Turrets and SAM Sites. Finally, the Deep Deck acts as the monument’s gambling hub, with Poker, arcade machines, and slots, and it also hosts the event’s only mission giver, who sends you out to deal with patrol scientists roaming the Deep Sea.

For a full breakdown of every nook and cranny, check out our Floating City Monument Guide.

AI Patrol Boats

Regarding the Deep Dock portion, we mentioned a new Mission giver. Long story short, players who accept have 1 hour to kill 8 RHIB “scentists.” They wrote it wrong first, don’t hate. Anyway, this brings us to the automated patrolling groups of scientists, which are absolutely overtuned as of the writing of this article. 

You will find them just about everywhere throughout the Deep Sea, and they are very persistent. Follow up to the mission: though there are scientists on both islands and Ghost Ships, neither counts towards the mission. PT boats, however, do, which is great because each PT Boat spawns with two flanking RHIBs, averaging a total combined scientist count between 12 and 18, so bring your A-Game.  

The RHIB variants are simple cargo-equivalent shooters with similar weapons. The PT boat, however, has M249 adjacent shooters on both the front and the back, and for whatever reason, they will shoot you from over a square away once tracking you, and will not stop following you until they’re dead, or you are.  

Go for the drivers first; these boats are much easier to deal with once they stop moving. Sinking the boats also works wonderfully, except that the mounted gunners will begin to float above the water.  #hacks

Special note: At the moment, the storage containers that appear on the old RHIBs controlled by scientists, as well as the new PT Boat, come with placeholder loot in them. We expect this might be an incentive to attack and loot these on release, but they haven’t had loot set yet.

Same Models, Angrier AI

You’ll quickly notice, at some point in the past month, all of the scientists of the world (with the notable exception of those dwelling in tunnels, they get left out of everything) got together and learned how to shoot and throw smoke grenades. This is still very much a work in progress and will probably be so until wipe hits, but it might be best to ‘relearn’ how to fight AI for a while.

Customizable Modular Boats

Purpose

Tugboats were arguably the biggest shift towards living on the ocean that we’ve seen since the incorporation of the Rowboat way back when. They were available to anyone, quick modes of water travel, and could be easily secured with a few doors and locks. But for all their perks, they had just as many weaknesses.

Limited door slots meant that no matter how stealth or under the radar you were, or how isolated, once you were discovered, you were at most two doors from eviction. Couple that with buffs to crafting Torpedos, and a perfect storm of poverty could strike at any moment. On top of that, players are greatly limited in both what and where they can place entities.

Electrical, which was originally teased on Staging Branch before release, turned out to be a no-go. When the current base meta is Electric Furnaces and automation, the idea of an efficient, customizable Tugboat is a pipe dream. Spoiler Alert: Modular boats don’t provide this either. We will provide a complete list of deployables, along with the full Modular Boat Guide, at a later date.

Floating Houses?

Admittedly, at the moment, modular boats are every bit as sinkable as their predecessors. The relatively large hurdle of not being able to upgrade beyond wood will absolutely turn some folks off to the idea of putting anything valuable on a boat of any kind. Still, the customization factor and onboard deployable defenses might just be enough to give modular boating a look.

We’re not advocating for people to main-base a floating fortress, but in the spirit of playing the game, it’s definitely worth a shot.

How it Works

 If you’ve built a base on land before, there will be a bit of intuitive understanding that comes with this system, as they use a lot of the same mechanics and even a reskinned building plan. They use the same Hammer for creative functions like rotation and demolition during the building phase, and even share some of the same resources, frames, and structure types.

It all starts with a rather unorthodox approach to construction up to this point: a non-radio station and a Building Plan you have to learn. Coming as new additions to the Work Bench Level 1, we do indeed have a Boat Building Station and a Boat Building Plan. There will be complete workups for these items, along with descriptions and methods for obtaining them, in our Modular Boat Building Guide.

 Once you’ve learned and crafted your Boat Building Station, this is going to act as your ‘shipyard’. This item equips into your toolbar like any other and presents the player with what looks to be a square building platform with a built-in box and umbrella that will only appear when above the ocean floor.  For this to work, we have to head to the sea; no other type of water will do.

From what we can ascertain, only the ocean floor texture will be detected, allowing a Boat Building Station platform to be placed above it; even then, it is contingent on the distance between that texture and the water surface. 

These boats require quite a bit of underwater room to maneuver, and figuring out a way to cheat the system and build in a shallow will make your finalized boat pretty useless after the fact. For this reason, we recommend picking a nice, wide-open area (no nearby bases with active Tool Cupboards) and a deep part of the ocean to begin assembly.

Size and Specifications

 Like land building, putting down the foundations and walls of your dream boat takes resources, chiefly Wood and Low Grade Fuel. Find the specifics per piece in the table below. All values are subject to change.

Parts and pieces may be placed inside the outlined netted area, with a volume roughly that of a 5×10 rectangle. Stability exists as it would on land, and those same building limitations bind players, though these boats can get pretty big. While this is just an overview, we won’t go into durability details or best raiding methods at this time, but we should mention the minimum required items to finish building a boat.

Each modular boat must have a steering wheel and some type of propulsion. This can come in the form of a simple sail, a small boat engine, or any combination of either, scaled up as much as you’d like, given space.  This is all reflected on a small boat-building window that appears in the top right of your screen while construction is still underway.

When you have it all set just the way you want it, head to either your original building platform or the steering wheel you put down. Hold the E key, take the time to Lock your Authorizations, and finally Finish Building or Clear Building Area if you’re unhappy. You do not get your resource investment back if you start over.

For the specifics of health, mass, power, and power-to-mass ratio, in our Modular Boat Building Guide.

Set Sail!

Movement is contingent on the type of propulsion you selected and whether or not it is deployed or turned on. 

• For Sails, click on them to Lower (go) or Raise (stop). 
• Small boat engines require Low Grade Fuel that may be inserted like any other boat. Then it’s just a matter of turning them on or off.
• If you went with an Anchor, it would greatly reduce your ability to move if it were lowered, regardless of your propulsion setup.

New Patrol Boats

We’ve talked about it throughout this article, but we thought we’d throw in some additional images to give a better look. Patrol/PT Boats are sort of like beefier RHIBs, though the storage is located in a different spot, and they have two built-in guns at the front and back. Acquired by taking them over from the hostile groups of patrolling scientists in the Deep Sea, they can be driven to and from the mainland and kept as you would any other vessel.

Space Station HQM Skin

You may recall that when the Brutalist Building Skin was first announced, it was slated for the HQM building material. However, after debate and redaction, it was converted to one of the most used stone building skins in the game.

While this turned out not to be a big deal, we still haven’t had an HQM skin until now. The Space Station skin is expected to be released in December, and the first images of it are pretty stunning. We have included a few of our favorite bits.

RUST’s 12th Birthday

It’s that time of year again! RUST is officially turning 12, marking over a decade of one of the most influential survival sandboxes ever made. What began as a small experimental project on December 11, 2013, has grown into a global phenomenon, selling over 20 million copies, hosting peak player counts above 260,000 concurrent players, and inspiring an entire generation of survival games.

The early days were a chaotic blend of zombies, rad towns, resource grinding, jump checks, crouch checks, “help me plz I’m friendly” encounters, and a whole lot of rock vs. rock battles. Since then, the game has undergone several major evolutions. Its exponential growth was sparked by offlineTV’s Twitch boom in 2021, a moment that practically redefined RUST as a mainstream PvP/creator event title.

Each year, Facepunch Studios marks RUST’s birthday with a bit of silliness and a lot of celebration, and 2025 is no different. Logging in during the event will reward players with new balloons, cake, and a cake-hat crossover. RUST’s developers have always used the birthday update to slip in fun cosmetics and light-hearted items as a break from the usual survival brutality, and this year continues that tradition.

You can find the complete list of birthday items below in the New Gear section. Still, the spirit remains the same: a nod to the game’s strange, beloved origins, a celebration of how far it has come, and a thank-you to the community that keeps breaking records, breaking bases, and breaking each other’s will to live every single wipe. Here’s to 12 years of RUST and the many updates, monuments, crazy AI NPC encounters, and player-bound chaos yet to come. 

Season’s Beatings

As with every holiday season, the annual Christmas Event should be popping off at some point.  The developers have been working to possibly bring back the Ice Sculpture that was planned years ago, and we’re sure they have a few other small changes in the works. No definitive date set yet, but definitely happening in December. There are plans for a Christmas DLC, and hints of links between the Sculpture and new wallpapers are in commits.

Twitch Rivals

Several commits have surfaced about the next Twitch Rivals event, RUST Team Battle VI, which is scheduled for December 8th-12th, starting at 11:00 AM PST. Who doesn’t like free skins?

Rust’s competitive scene is gearing up once again as commits confirm the next Twitch Rivals: RUST Team Battle VI, scheduled for December 8th–12th, kicking off daily at 11:00 AM PST. For those who haven’t followed the series, RUST’s Twitch Rivals events are some of the most-watched creator tournaments on the platform.

Previous installments have featured massive creator rosters, multi-day base-building phases, frantic PvP skirmishes, coordinated raids, and multi-million-view broadcasts. These events played a significant role in boosting RUST into the mainstream spotlight.

Team Battle VI is expected to follow the same successful formula: creators grouped into themed teams, custom event servers, unique rule sets, and an end-of-event showdown that typically leaves half the server in flames. Facepunch often ties these tournaments to exclusive item drops, and this one appears no different. Expect free Twitch Drops, event-specific cosmetics, and possibly a few surprises baked into the December update cycle.

If you enjoy high-stakes PvP, chaotic alliances, streamer drama, and picking up limited-time skins for simply watching the action, this December’s Rust Twitch Rivals is one you won’t want to miss.

Applying Genes Admin Command

A new applygenes F1 admin command has been released to the Staging Branch. We’re not sure if it’s making its way to live, but basically, admins can rewrite the genetic sequences of any clone in their hotbar by typing applygenes GGGYYY or whatever in F1. Pretty neat.

New Gear, Weapons & Loadout Updates

So this go round, everything is coming up boats. There are a few extra items relating to the anniversary event, but most things are Navy-related.

What’s Next?

Looking ahead beyond December, Facepunch usually takes January off for the holidays. We here at Corrosion Hour will be playing catch-up on all the content coming out and getting out the needed guides for everything covered here, as well as our RUST: Year in Review 2025.

As with all articles we cover, these subjects are highly subject to change at the game developer’s whim, and we will endeavor to keep the information as current as possible. Please join us in our community Discord to get the latest updates, chances to enter weekly giveaways, and share what you’ve got going on!