RUST Polar Bear Population Command and Variable

The RUST Polar Bear Population Command and Variable

The RUST polar bear population command and variable allows server admins the ability to specify how many polar bears will spawn across the server’s arctic biome. Setting the variable to a higher value will increase the number of polar bears that automatically spawn, while a lower value will decrease them. The variable’s setting defaults to 1 per square kilometer (km) across the map.

Polar bears were introduced in RUST’s Artic Update and are meant to replace the standard brown bear in arctic biomes. They are currently the most powerful creature in-game and provide more harvestable resources than their counterparts.

A few practical reasons for using the RUST polar bear population command and variable:

  • Increasing the number of polar bears that spawn across the map’s arctic biome
  • Decreasing the number of polar bears that spawn in total
  • Stopping polar bears from spawning at all
  • Greatly increasing the difficulty of surviving on the island of RUST
  • Reducing the chances of starvation for players across the island of RUST
  • Reduce the server strain and improve the server’s performance
  • Controlling the server’s overall entity counts
  • Use the population command to set up polar bear hunting season
  • Create a special server event for “polar bear mating season”, run on timed scripts

Who can enter the RUST polar bear population command and variable

The RUST polar bear population command and variables can be issued and configured on vanilla RUST servers by RUST admins and moderators only.  Non-admin players on vanilla RUST servers cannot use this command and variable.

RUST polar bear population command and variable

  • Use this command to get or set the current number of polar bears that spawn automatically in the arctic biome.
  • This variable defaults to 1 on vanilla-based servers.
  • After issuing this command, it will immediately change the server’s setting without restarting.
  • Be sure to use sane values, otherwise, it can have a drastic performance impact on the server.

Note that this command does work from RCON platforms and doesn’t require being logged into the game server.

Getting the current polar bear population value

polarbear.population

On success the console will display:

polarbear.population: "1"

Setting the polar bear population value

polarbear.population 2

On success the console will display:

polarbear.population: "2"

Stop the polar bear population from spawning

polarbear.population 0

On success the console will display:

polarbear.population: "0"
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About Digital Ghost

Dg is the founder and co-owner of Corrosion Hour, a niche gaming community established in 2016 focusing on the survival game RUST. He is an active and contributing member of numerous other RUST communities. As a community leader and server owner for over 15 years, he spends much of his time researching and writing guides about survival games, covering topics such as server administration, game mechanics, and community growth.

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