More than a decade since it first launched in early access, the Rust crafting update has reaffirmed its status as one of the PC’s most beloved survival games. Already outstripping long-time rivals such as Valheim and Ark, the new Rust update has pushed it into the top five most-played Steam games. Facepunch Studios has packed a whole slew of features, tools, and quality-of-life upgrades into the major March patch, from fresh crafting and cooking options to bees, automation improvements, and graphical tweaks. If you haven’t been back in a while, or are considering starting, now is the time to play Rust.
The Rust crafting update has a quite literal feast of additions to choose from. With an 87% positive Steam review ratio from nearly a million user ratings, it’s already earned its place among the best survival games ever, but this new overhaul is a reminder that Facepunch isn’t willing to settle.
To kick things off, we have a new cooking workbench offering a range of food options, including teas that can protect you against the heat or cold, and “a whole batch of new pie recipes.” You can grow and harvest wheat, and use it to bake bread. Meat-based items will now spoil over time unless you store them in a powered fridge. There’s also an engineering workbench that acts as a dedicated tech tree for water, electricity, and industrial systems, offering more methods to upgrade your automation tools.
You’ll encounter beehives out in the wild, typically on oak trees. Brave the dangerous insect swarms and you can gather honey and, if you’re lucky, a beehive nucleus that can be used to build your own bee farm. Craft a bee grenade and use it to send angry swarms after rival players. Then, a new chicken coop allows you to hatch your own flock from eggs laid in the wild – take care of them and they’ll give you a regular supply of eggs.
Base management gets an upgrade courtesy of the hopper attachment. Put it on a large wood box or storage barrel and power it, and it’ll suck any nearby items into the box. You can even plop an animal or player corpse next to it and it’ll harvest all the parts for you (best not to ask how it does this). For a more vegetarian-friendly option, there’s a new triangular planter that fits neatly into corners with the ability to hold up to four seeds at once.
Various player-crafted armor pieces can now hold more inserts that provide additional bonuses or resistances. The crafting cost of wooden armor has also been lowered. You’re now able to see the name of the player that crafted each item, so that you know exactly who you got it from – whether or not they intended you to have it.
There are plenty more smaller additions to watch out for, too. New cosmetic flowers can be used to spruce up your home, drones have had their range and health doubled, the crafting time on more than 40 items has been dropped, neon signs use half their previous power, and all meat models have been given a graphical bump. There are also new graphics settings to be found in the menu.
The Rust crafting update is out now. Facepunch adds that it will be rolling out new ‘premium servers’ starting next week. These are designed as “an experimental way to filter out cheat users and create a better experience for legit players.” To access them, you’ll need a Rust Steam inventory with a value of $15 or more, which the studio says it determined as an “effective starting point based on a comparison of banned accounts versus regular players.”
If that’s not enough to satisfy your exploration needs, try even more of the best open-world games, or bring your friends along to enjoy the best co-op games in 2025.
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