October Force Wipe Update Patch Notes

The October Force Wipe update brings a full livestock system with taming, breeding and genetics, a food-burning Biofuel Generator, and Heavy Fuse loot rooms at most major monuments. Air Wolf now has to be rebuilt each wipe, sandbags become a stackable building system, and the Rust Render Pipeline lands in main. The patch drops at 7pm BST / 2pm EST with a forced map wipe. Blueprints are not being wiped, and there is no dev stream this month.

Livestock: Taming & Husbandry

• New Animals: Cows, bulls, calves, sheep and lambs, each with needs, genetics, breeding and resource output.
• Taming: Wild herds spawn mostly in open grassland. Taming progress decays until a full bond forms, sleeping players can't tame, and unmet needs won't kill wild animals.
• Leading & Transport: Lead several animals at once. Leads snap if you sprint or an animal snags on terrain, though pathing generally keeps pace. Cows fit on the double flatbed car module.
• Pens: The Animal Fence and Animal Gate snap together like external walls. The Hitch & Trough supplies food and water, and animals graze on nearby grass.
• Overcrowding: Living conditions matter. Crowding penalties begin at 5 animals in an area and become severe at 9.

Breeding, Genetics & Produce

• Breeding: Pairs produce calves and lambs that inherit genetics. Wild herds also breed on their own, and young animals mature quickly.
• Genetics: Viewable in the animal UI for cows and sheep. They affect production output and sale value. Inbreeding is tracked and penalized.
• Sale Value: Bred animals sell at full value. Wild-caught and Ranch-bought animals take a price penalty.
• Milk: Female cows are milked directly for 2 Milk per milking. Milk stacks to 10, and yield depends on genetics.
• Wool: Sheep are sheared by cutting the coat away with a knife. A full coat gave 10 Wool, with genetics affecting yield. Striking an already-sheared patch damages the sheep.
• Food: Adds beef, mutton, cream, skimmed milk and several new recipes. Some milk-processing details are still unconfirmed ahead of release.

Ranch Livestock Vendor

• Buying: Male or female calves cost 300 Scrap and lambs cost 150 Scrap. You choose the sex, and genetics are randomized.
• Selling Animals: Handled through vendor dialogue, with up to 3 offers per animal per in-game day. Higher-quality stock pulls far better offers, including Pythons and large HQM payouts.
• Reward Pool: Ammo, rifle and SMG bodies, Ladder Hatches, high-tier doors, Scrap, and a rare Red Keycard.
• Selling Wool: Minimum 100 and maximum 1,000 per trade. Larger bundles receive better offers.

Biofuel Generator

• Unlock: Tier 1 on the right side of the tech tree, 105 Scrap to reach. Consumes 5 power.
• Conversion: Turns fresh or spoiled food into Low Grade Fuel. Output amount and speed vary by food, and potatoes and fish have been deliberately reduced. Output holds up to 500 Low Grade.
• Stirring: Production only starts after stirring, and each stir runs it for 30 minutes. Adding material pauses it until you stir again. Stirring takes a few seconds and cancels if you move away.
• Automation: A "Needs Stirring" output sends 1 power when attention is needed, so you can wire it to lights or alarms. Production continues while you're away or offline.

Powered Monument Loot Rooms

• How It Works: New rooms with a switch that needs 1 to 10 Heavy Fuses depending on the monument. Higher-cost rooms hold better loot.
• 1 Fuse: Ferry Terminal has 3 basic crates. Harbor 1 has 4 basic crates. Harbor 2 has 3 basic crates and 1 Military Crate. Junkyard has 2 Military Crates.
• 4 Fuses: Airfield has 2 basic and 1 Military. Train Yard has 2 basic and 2 Military. Radtown has 3 basic. Water Treatment has 4 basic. Sewer Branch has 3 basic.
• 10 Fuses: Military Tunnels has 2 basic and 2 Military, and still requires the green card puzzle. Launch Site gets two new rooms with 2 basic and 2 Military each. The bottom of Missile Silo has 3 Military and 1 basic.
• Hazards: Radiation and existing monument threats still apply.

Air Wolf Helipad Repair

• Broken at Wipe: The helipad starts each map damaged, and helicopter purchases are locked until it's restored.
• Cost: 30,000 Wood, 10,000 Metal Fragments and 100 Rope, applied with a hammer like a building repair. Any number of players can contribute.
• Permanent Once Fixed: After repair Air Wolf runs as normal and the pad appears indestructible, making it a one-time community project each wipe.
• CCTV: A new camera covers the area under the identifier AIRWOLF.

Sandbag Barricade Rework

• Stackable Pieces: Each sandbag is roughly a third of the old barricade's height and can be stacked. A 4-high stack turns its top section into a firing window, forming a small pillbox.
• Cost: Tier 1 blueprint for 15 Scrap. Each sandbag costs 50 Stone and 5 Cloth and takes 10 seconds to craft.
• Health: 150 HP for one layer, 200 for two, 250 for three and 300 for four.
• Stacking: Stacks to 20 in inventory. Looted sandbags come in stacks of 4.
• Placement: Works on foundations, rocks, terrain, player-built boats and monument terrain, but not on monument prefabs. Sandbags cannot be picked back up once placed.

Critters & Swimmers

• New Creatures: Squirrels and rabbits across several land biomes, frogs in forests and jungle, and jellyfish and sea turtles throughout the ocean.
• Ambient Only: Rabbits, frogs, squirrels and sea turtles can be killed but yield nothing. Jellyfish can't be killed.
• Alarms: Land critters can set off Tin Can Alarms.

Animations, Cosmetics & Achievements

- Animation Overhaul: A new third-person animation subsystem covers many held items, mainly one-handed weapons and tools. The Machete gets a new model plus first- and third-person animations. Hatchets, knives, meds, grenades, hammer, pipe wrench, Eoka, syringe, spray can and more were also improved. - Movement: Improved turning in place and crouched turning. Fixed weapons sliding in players' hands while running. - Ladder Hatches: New models with Workshop skin support for square and triangle variants, including armored versions. Health, cost, collision, clearance and behavior are unchanged. - New Achievements: - Space Junk: start a Satellite Crash event. - King of the Jungle: swing 250m on vines in one life. - On Target: get a Mortar kill. - Pen Pal: leave a note in another player's mailbox inside their TC range. - No Refunds: buy from the Traveling Vendor. - Power Trip: insert a Heavy Fuse at Power Plant. - Rent Is Due: rent an apartment.

Render Pipeline & Performance

- Rust Render Pipeline: Merged into main. - Work covered lighting, shadows, water, foliage, post-processing, UI rendering, viewmodels, effects and many shaders, plus several rendering optimizations. - Late fixes covered overly dark contact images, missing Tin Can Alarm wires, player-preview post-processing, foliage shading, deep-sea color grading, store backgrounds, skin previews and disappearing viewmodels. - It's not yet confirmed how the pipeline will be presented to players in the release build. - Animal Optimization: Texture and behavior optimizations for livestock and critters. Audio occlusion stops distant cows and sheep from being heard through everything. - Map Generation: About 67 seconds (~18%) faster on a 4,000-size test map, through erosion, topology and cliff placement improvements. - General: Navmesh optimizations, background processing, memory reductions, server fixes, store UI improvements and reduced allocations.

Fixes

• Combat: Scientist hit detection fixed. Client-side prediction for C4 and grenades. Crossbow arrow visuals and rotation cleaned up. Honey Bandage fixes.
• Monuments: Apartment Complex interactions and item transfers fixed. Rare duplicate Oil Rig puzzle-room crates after an improper shutdown fixed. Underwater Labs objectives are more forgiving, with team credit for the boombox and support for labs that spawn with only one.
• Vehicles: Bike and motorbike dismounts now place you beside the vehicle instead of on top of it.
• Visuals: Cargo Ship lighting regression fixed. Elevator lighting and flare visuals fixed. Fluid Switch feedback fixed at low object detail.
• Misc: Server browser errors from overlapping refreshes fixed. Jungle animals spawn again after the newer NPC system had been blocking them. Plus various server stalls, crashes, NREs, save/load problems, monument issues and visual bugs.