The Rust November 2026 update is live. Facepunch shipped Printed and Polished on Thursday, November 5, 2026 with the monthly force wipe, and it is one of the biggest patches of the year: a full blueprint rework, the new Uzi 9mm, native gamepad support, a friendlier livestock system and the largest batch of performance work Facepunch has put in a single update. For anyone who runs a server, the headline is buried near the bottom of the patch notes: busy servers now restart in about 2 minutes instead of 10.
Here is what changed, and what you should check on your own server before your players log in for the new wipe.
The Blueprint Rework: Fragments, Pages and Books
The old system made you hunt basic and advanced blueprint fragments at monuments just to build a Workbench Level 2 or 3, and then spend scrap on the tech tree. Facepunch has pulled both of those out. Workbenches no longer need fragments to craft, and scrap is no longer spent on the tech trees. Instead there are three tiers of blueprint currency, one per tech tree level:
- Blueprint fragments for the Level 1 tree
- Blueprint pages for the Level 2 tree
- Blueprint books for the Level 3 tree
The lowest tier drops from common loot like barrels and crates, and it can be upgraded into the next tier, so a solo or casual player is no longer locked out of Workbench 2 because a clan sits on the only monument that spawns fragments. Puzzle rooms and harder content are still the fastest route up. The research table still takes scrap, so researching a specific item works the way it always did.
The workbench upgrades changed with it. The salvage upgrade now has a 20% chance not to consume a blueprint, and the prototype upgrade is a flat 25% success rate with the cost doubling removed. Facepunch openly says it does not expect to get the balance right first time and will adjust faster than last time, so expect follow-up tweaks during this wipe.
The Uzi 9mm and Gamepad Support
The new Uzi 9mm has two modes tied to its stock. Folded, it is fully automatic and can be used with a shield. Unfolded, it switches to semi-auto with better accuracy. Hold the fire mode button to swap.
Rust also gets gamepad support through Steam Input across core gameplay. Inventory and crafting use a stick cursor by default, with a D-pad mode in the new gamepad options screen. Facepunch calls it a first release, so not every menu has dedicated controller support yet.
Livestock, Wildlife and the Mainland Scientist Boats
Last month's livestock system got a big round of fixes. You now simply own a cow you bought or that ate from your trough, cows no longer die of old age, starving cows lie down at 1 HP instead of dying, and each cow stores up to 3 milk. A new Potential stat rewards animals that were happy while growing up. Shears, a Wool armour insert and a Crocodile Pie that scares off nearby animals round out the farming side.
Out on the water, mainland scientist boats now patrol in and around the main island. Up to two groups roam for up to an hour, only engage geared players and show no map marker. The deep sea also changes: its cycle now starts once the lighthouse is repaired, and maps without a lighthouse start with it already active.
Crow flocks now circle above corpses and seagulls swarm coastal monuments while players are inside, which gives away positions in both directions. Smaller quality of life changes include mirrored L and U stairs (SHIFT + R), random modular cars that spawn half-repaired, and berry seed extraction.
Why Server Owners Should Care: Restarts, Memory and Bandwidth
This is the part of the patch that matters most if you pay for a server. Facepunch lists these server-side numbers:
- Faster restarts. Building connections and the cargo ship path are now saved and reused, and save loading scales better with high entity counts. The highest-population servers go from 10 minutes to about 2 minutes per restart.
- Map generation almost twice as fast the first time a seed is generated, with identical results. That shortens the first boot after a wipe.
- About 1.44 GB less server memory on a populated server, because building blocks no longer carry dozens of unused game objects (they were around 43% of all objects on the server).
- Building privilege checks in a large base dropped from 5.7 ms to under 0.02 ms on both server and client.
- Less bandwidth. General reductions save around 270 KB/s on a 100-player server, and packet batching cuts traffic by up to 25%.
- UsePlayerUpdateJobs level 4 is now the default, after three weeks on Facepunch's own servers.
There are new convars as well:
| Convar | What it does | Default |
|---|---|---|
batchpackets |
Groups packets before sending to cut the 22-byte encryption overhead per packet | On |
net.position_lod |
Sends fewer position updates for distant entities (0 off, 1 NPCs and animals, 2 also cargo, chinook and planes) | Set by Facepunch |
net.position_lod_players |
Same idea for players (0 off, 1 medium or full rate, 2 same as entities) | Set by Facepunch |
Our advice is to leave these at their defaults for the first few days and only change them if you see rubber-banding at range.
Your Wipe Day Checklist
- Update the server build. Restart the server so SteamCMD pulls the new version. Clients on the old build cannot join.
- Update Oxide or Carbon before loading plugins. Wait for the framework build that targets this patch, then update. Plugins that hand out blueprint fragments, edit workbench costs or touch tech tree scrap are the most likely to break, since fragments now do a different job.
- Check loot table plugins. Blueprint pages and books are new items. If you run custom loot, add them or your players may never progress past Level 1.
- Decide on a blueprint wipe. The patch notes do not announce a forced blueprint wipe. On a community server it is your call, but a fresh start lets everyone try the new progression on equal terms.
- Plan for December. If a plugin forces a map change on clients through the old "Approved" message, it will be blocked in December. Modders should move to the new
CL_LoadMapRPC (Facepunch left an example inServerMgr.ChangeLevelFor). If you still launch with-useOldNavmesh, drop it: the old navmesh and Jobs level 3 are both removed next patch.
Softcore servers also changed: the deployable corpse system is gone and each player can place a maximum of 6 tool cupboards. Facepunch also confirmed over 3,000 cheat accounts banned at the start of this wipe, and Intel x86 Macs are no longer supported.
Worth the Wipe?
Yes. The blueprint rework will divide people, as every progression change in Rust does, but the server-side work is the best news community admins have had in a long time. A 2-minute restart means a daily restart schedule stops being a 10-minute outage, and the memory savings give modded servers real headroom. Check the next force wipe date on our Rust wipe schedule so you know how long this map has to live.
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