The Airborne Patch! | Rust Update 8th September 2023
This RUST update video is brought to you by Shadowfrax!
Happy Wipe Day! The Airborne update is now live, and what a whirlwind of an update it is! Many new features launched with this update and some behind-the-scenes improvements and bug fixes. Let’s jump into this update summary.
Parachutes are live
Speaking of jumping, parachutes are now officially in the game. Players can craft them at a tier 2 workbench and toss them into the new backpack slot on the inventory screen. Then, should they need to, deploy them when falling from a great enough height by pressing the spacebar. For more information on operation and durability, see our item page description for the RUST Parachute.
RUST Attack Helicopter
The Attack Helicopter also went live in the Airborne Update. Up to two players can ride in this vehicle at a time: one gunner and one pilot. While both players have different roles within the Attack Helicopter, both have the ability to fire artillery when the heli’s engine is active. HV Rockets and Flares can be loaded into the Attack Helicopter’s inventory, while a front-mounted turret can be loaded with any weapon that an auto turret can accept.
If you want to learn more about it, please see our extensive guide to the RUST Attack Helicopter. And if there’s more information you’d like to see added, please let us know!
Suddenly, Hot Air Ballons are in fashion
The Hot Air Balloon (HAB) was revisited in this update with a handful of changes to bring them up to code:
- The HAB will get a slight physics push at times when they get stuck to help dislodge them.
- If it does get stuck, a HAB will eventually start to decay.
- HABs are now slightly more fuel-efficient.
- HABs are cheaper to repair.
- The Hot Air Balloon Armor has been introduced to provide more durability and safety to a HAB.
The Hot Air Balloon Armor can be purchased at a modest price from Airwolf. Coincidentally, balloons are also now available from Airwolf in addition to being found in the wild. However, you may feel safer purchasing your balloon along with some armor to make sure you actually get the balloon home in one piece!
Homing Missiles and launcher
While most of this month’s features are sky-bound, there is one new toy for those who prefer to keep their feet on the ground. The Homing Missile Launcher is the latest weapon added to RUST that allows players to launch a counter-attack to the threat posed by the new Attack Helicopter. The new launcher is fueled by the Homing Missile, which, if operated properly, will seek out a locked target and do some big damage.
For more information about crafting and operating, see our item page descriptions for the RUST Homing Missile Launcher and the RUST Homing Missile.
Weapon Racks Pack available on Steam
The weapon racks we’ve been hearing so much about are now available for purchase on the permanent item store. This pack contains 4 skins with 3 wall-mounted weapon racks and one floor-mounted rack. If you are on the fence (or the wall) about investing in them, give our item pages a read to see if they sound like a worthwhile addition to your RUST collection.
RUST Weapon Racks
- Wide Wall-Mounted Weapon Rack
- Tall Wall-mounted Weapon Rack
- Weapon Rack Stand
- Horizontal Wall-mounted Weapon Rack
In other news…
Remember that Round 24 of Twitch Drops is currently live through the 14th of September. All you need to do to start earning drops is to connect your accounts. If you need help getting started, see Facepunch’s setup instructions on their Twitch drops page.
Greetings, survivors and friends! Shadowfrax here with everything new in the world of Rust. As September’s ‘Airborne’ patch is now officially airborne, it’s time to have a lightning crash course in everything that was included and a quick look at what’s next. So, buckle up and hold on to something solid.
First, there’s a new player attack chopper for two – pilot and gunner. Available for 2250 scrap at Airwolf, it has 850hp, holds 500 low grade in the rather larger-looking tanks, and is bigger overall than a mini, making storage slightly more challenging.
It has lights, a turret that can be loaded with a weapon of your choice, and pods on the side that can hold HV and incendiary rockets and flares! More on those shortly.
The gunner can access the screen in the front with E to fire the turret with LMB and rockets with RMB, with the diamond reticle showing exactly where they’ll hit.
The pilot can also fire rockets with LMB, although without the luxury of a diamond reticle, and if flares have been inserted in the pods, he can fire those with RMB, which are to deter this.
The countermeasure also in this month’s patch is a homing missile launcher, values shown here for both the launcher and its dedicated ammo. Both workbench level 2 items and found here on the tech tree.
It has quite a range but requires a line of sight and a lock needs to be maintained to hit a target; it only works on helis, too, not parachutes or balloons.The countermeasure to the countermeasure is, as mentioned, flares, which will throw a rocket off course. Helis will get a warning sound in the cockpit when being targeted, and handheld flares can also be thrown over the side of minis and scrap transports for the same effect.
Also, even though it is technically possible to destroy an NPC patrol heli with 4 homing missiles, they now have infinite flares themselves, which they’ve learned how to use if targeted. So it’s not a sure-fire way of destroying them in case you were getting excited.
Parachutes are another new item, tier 2 workbench to craft, final much more sensible costs shown here, although everything is always SUBJECT TO CHANGE, of course.
They go in a new backpack slot that can be worn on top of hazmats, and lockers now have extra room for them, too.
Simply press space while falling with one equipped, and as long as you have enough space around and under you, it’ll open up and can be steered as desired. You can hold a weapon with one open, which removes the ability to steer, however, and they will be targeted by SAM sites and turrets, just so you know.
They can be shot down with enough direct hits, and as they lose health, they fall faster and become harder to steer. You’ll also dismount them if you hit something like a pylon, etc., but however your descent ends, the parachute will fall off in front of you and takes 8 seconds to ‘repack’ and pick up.
Hot air balloons had some changes. They use less fuel, will decay a lot faster if they get stuck on something – which shouldn’t happen as frequently now – still spawn in the wild but can also be bought at Airwolf for 150 scrap, and there’s a new HAB armor set which can be bought and equipped to increase their health and provide a lot more cover. And no, sorry, you can’t put a lock on the door. Shame, I was looking forward to some new ‘I lived in a hot air balloon for a week’ videos.
To go with all this, global networked bases are here. The view distance on bases has been increased to 1500 meters. The new rendering system for this is so much more efficient than Unity’s own that it can do all this without a drop in performance, apparently, and this opens the way up to jamming even more stuff in the game. I mean improving performance even more in the future.
But if you’d like to, you can adjust the render distance on bases with a slider in the options menu.
On the ground, weapon racks are here, and yes, they are a store item. 8 quid gets you four varieties with some fun functionality, such as lighting and the ability to change ammo on the racks. Shame. I was hoping they’d be free, but that’s the cost of living in style for you, I guess. Wall-mounted ones are a level 1 workbench item, and floor ones don’t need a workbench to craft.
Other improvements this month include a refresh to the pumpjack and quarry models, a fix and improvement to furnace skin glows, which were a bit broken, the ability to stack fluid switches and pumps, a change to the UI to better communicate when a blueprint can’t be learned, and a fix to the colliders under tier 2 workbenches to allow space for wood boxes again.
If you got to the edge of the world, up to now, you’d just be killed along with any vehicle you were in, and there was no way to know when you were close to the edge until it was too late. You could say it was your own stupid fault, and you’d be right. However, now the edge of the world will simply repel you and stop you from going any further, and to boot if a boat is left unattended for over 2 hours, it will slowly drift back to shore.
For server owners who wish to disable the drift, though, there’s this convar (do_shore_drift). You’re welcome.Windows 8.1 support is being discontinued from October 28th. This is a Microsoft thing. So, if you are still running it, then it might be time to upgrade to a higher version like Windows 95 or something. Full write-up is on the blog, or just pause here.
There are some more Twitch drops on the go up until the 14th, round 24 apparently now, and here they all are. Plus, on the devblog this month, there’s a handy insight into the stats behind your playstyles, because the TEAM are always watching you. This should be a regular thing that they’ll be sharing with us, and even though it only includes official servers, in the last 30 days, you chaps collected 2.3 billion vood. Give yourself a shiny.
To works in progress as we must look ahead now, and things being worked on currently include linking up the above and below-ground networks, a redesign to the compound, a tutorial island to break players in gently, the nexus system, and lots of other stuff such as new building skins, etc., which I will try to bring you more on when I get it!
You’re up to date, I guess. Let me know your thoughts on this month’s patch, and leave a like and sub below. You can watch me play stuff on Twitch, follow me on a few socials to get updates on my content, and support me if you wish through YouTube memberships, Superthanks, and Patreon. Links are all below. I shall catch you all soon, but in the meantime, keep calm and stay Rusty. Cheerio.
