All Of The New Features Added To Rust In The Newest Update

The folks at Facepunch Studios have released yet another big patch for Early Access survival game, Rust, that introduces a whole new way to gain experience while trying to last more than five minutes in the wilderness.

Still in Early Access, Rust is coming along quite nicely at this point, with the development team now focused on fine-tuning systems in order to get the game ready for full launch. The latest update introduces a new experience system that actually encourages players to share resources and look out for one another, which we think is a very welcome idea.

In short, anything you have a hand in while playing Rust now gets you a piece of the experience gains. In other words, if you craft something and then give it to a friend, you'll earn some experience when said friend uses that item. Did you happen to cook some extra food and feel like sharing it? When another player eats it, yep, you get some experience.

The Rust team has put together a handy video to help fill in all of the extra details.

According to the official announcement, the new XP system has been tested a lot, but they're still looking for issues, exploits and the like. In other words, once players start using it, they'd like you to offer up some comments and assessments through the usual channels.

At this point, players can gain solo experience by taking part in the following activities: Fishing, chopping trees, mining rocks, crafting items, finding crates, smashing barrels, hunting, feeding people, foraging, destroying helicopters and gutting fish. The update announcement explains that additional ways to gain experience are also being tested, so expect to reap even more rewards from standard activities as the Early Access period continues.

As we mentioned above, though, this latest update to Rust does a lot more than retool the experience system. For starters, a new branch for the game is still running on the old experience system, so players who prefer things the way they were can keep right on trucking as if this new system never existed.

You can now leave notes for other players to find in Rust, too, sharing helpful advice or threatening remarks for folks who murder you and loot your body. Early game buffs are now available, and work has also been done on things like the in-game music, player animations, XP sounds and the like.

We're excited to see Rust continue to evolve, especially since it seems to be one of the frontrunners in the ever-growing-in-popularity survival genre. And with games like 7 Days to Die and ARK: Survival Evolved making their way to consoles, maybe it's only a matter of time until Rust joins those ranks too, yeah? Well, a guy can dream.