Rust September 2026 Update — Breach & Clear

September Force Wipe is here, and Facepunch is kicking off the month with the Breach & Clear Update.

This update brings some pretty significant changes to Rust, including new ways to access high-tier monuments, increased upkeep for larger groups, dedicated HQM nodes, vehicle drifting, destructible vehicle armor, balance changes, performance improvements, and plenty of fixes.

Here’s a look at some of the biggest changes you'll notice this wipe.

💥 Breaching High-Tier Monuments

Some of Rust’s most popular monuments are getting a shake-up.

Launch Site, Military Tunnels, Missile Silo, Large Oil Rig, and Small Oil Rig now have destructible barriers blocking certain routes players may be used to taking.

Want the quicker route? You may need to blow your way through.

These barriers can take roughly 1 C4 or 5 Satchels to destroy, although other damage methods can also be used. They feature their own health bars, visible damage stages, and destruction effects.

This should make monument runs a little more interesting while adding another decision to your wipe: take the longer route, or spend resources to breach your way through.

🏠 Bigger Teams, Bigger Upkeep

Large groups may want to pay a little closer attention to their Tool Cupboard this wipe.

Base upkeep can now increase depending on the number of players authorized on the TC. The more players sharing and authorizing on a base, the higher the potential upkeep cost.

Deauthorizing right before filling the TC won't completely bypass the system either, as recently authorized players can remain counted for a period of time.

The change is primarily aimed at putting additional upkeep pressure on larger groups while having less impact on solos and smaller teams.

⛏️ Dedicated HQM Nodes

High Quality Metal finally has its own resource nodes.

Players can now find HQM ore nodes and smaller HQM collectables around the map instead of relying entirely on the usual methods of obtaining it.

Current values include:

• Full HQM Node: 20 HQM

• HQM Collectable: 5 HQM

They're considerably rarer than normal ore nodes, and players should have better luck finding them around the Jungle biome.

Of course, wandering around tiger territory looking for HQM comes with its own problems. 🐅

🍯 Honey Bandages

Honey has another useful purpose this wipe.

The new Honey Bandage is a Tier 1 medical item that can be crafted using:

4 Cloth + 2 Jars of Honey

It provides 8 immediate health, followed by another 6 health over time, while also removing 5 radiation.

It can also be found in medical crates and purchased from Water Wells.

Beekeeping is slowly becoming an actual career path in Rust. 🐝

🚗 Drifting Comes to Rust

Yes. You can drift now.

Modular cars have received a fairly substantial handling overhaul, including adjustments to steering, suspension, grip, body roll, and unexpected spinouts.

While driving, holding Control while braking locks the rear wheels, allowing you to throw the back end of the vehicle out and maintain a drift through corners.

We're sure absolutely nobody in the RFG community is going to immediately build a drift car and send it into a wall.

Definitely not. 👀

🚁 Vehicle Armor Can Break Off

Armor on the Attack Helicopter and Hot Air Balloon is no longer permanently attached until the vehicle is destroyed.

Individual armor sections can now break away after taking enough damage.

On the Attack Helicopter, the front, left, and right armor sections can each be destroyed independently. Once they're gone, so is the collision protection they provided, leaving the occupants exposed through those openings.

Hot Air Balloon armor follows a similar system, with sections breaking away as they take damage.

Balloon armor also now requires holding E for three seconds to equip, which should help prevent accidentally installing something expensive.

⚖️ Weapon & Item Balance Changes

A number of weapons, explosives, equipment pieces, and utility items have been adjusted.

Some of the more notable changes include:

• Semi-Automatic Pistol receives stronger damage falloff at range and costs more HQM to craft.

• Heavy Plate Helmet now reduces surrounding audio and has a higher crafting cost.

• F1 Grenades, Bee Grenades, Flashbangs, and Molotovs now stack to 3 instead of 5.

• Beancan Grenades now stack to 4.

• HMLMG crafting has been made cheaper.

• Hazmat Suit crafting has been made cheaper.

• Mortar crafting has been made cheaper.

• Large Medkits now remove radiation.

• Boat Planner tech-tree cost drops from 120 Scrap to 30 Scrap.

• Longswords attack faster and have an increased attack radius.

• Homing Missile Launchers lock onto targets 30% faster.

• SAM Sites are more effective against drones and can destroy explosives dropped from drones while they're still airborne.

Several food buffs have also received longer durations.

🎨 Updated Models & Animations

Several older Rust assets received some attention this month.

The Salvaged Hammer has been completely refreshed with updated models, textures, animations, and sounds.

The handheld Flashlight also received new animations and now uses right-click to toggle the light instead of the old interaction.

Military, basic, and elite loot crates have received visual improvements as well, along with updated destruction models and several refreshed world models for dropped items.

⚡ Power Plant Changes Continue

The electricity changes introduced recently continue to expand.

Marketplace drone terminals now require stored power generated by the Power Plant before orders can be placed.

Rentable shop vending machines are also refrigerated while the Power Plant is powered.

This gives control of the electrical grid another meaningful impact on what's happening around the map.

🛠️ Performance & Server Improvements

Facepunch has also put a significant amount of work into performance this month.

Hundreds of oversized textures across weapons, vehicles, deployables, props, and other assets have been optimized to reduce VRAM usage without significantly changing their appearance.

Server-side improvements have also been made to:

• Navmesh generation

• Occlusion processing

• NPC navigation

• Scientist pathfinding

• Animal navigation

• Monument navigation

• Memory usage

• Rendering and general performance

Some internal testing reportedly saw navmesh generation times reduced by roughly half.

These aren't necessarily the changes you'll immediately notice while playing, but they're some of the most important improvements for keeping servers running smoothly.

🔧 More Changes & Fixes

There's a pretty long list of smaller changes included with September's update as well.

A few worth mentioning:

• Swamp trees now provide 1,000 wood instead of 300.

• Dome fuel pumps can hold a maximum of 1,000 crude oil.

• Rust+ now allows players to leave teams and kick team members.

• Jukeboxes now snap into position when being deployed.

• A random skin option is available when crafting skinnable items.

• New Clan achievements have been added.

• Prisoner Hood is now a default blueprint.

• SMG Bodies are slightly more common.

• Rifle Bodies are slightly less common.

• Hunter's Pie now provides 90% bleed reduction.

• Radioactive sprinkler traps are more effective against highly protected players.

There are also important persistence fixes for Oil Rig, Cargo Ship, Bradley, Patrol Helicopter, and Satellite Crash events.

Hackable crate progress and certain event states should now survive server restarts properly, along with a large number of navigation, collision, animation, UI, memory, and general bug fixes.

👑 September Wipe at Royal Family Gaming

As always, Force Wipe means a fresh start across Rust, and we're excited to see how some of these changes affect this month's wipes across Royal Family Gaming.

The new monument routes, HQM nodes, upkeep changes, vehicle handling, and balance adjustments should make this one especially interesting.

Make sure your game is completely updated before attempting to connect.

If you run into anything that appears to be a server bug or unexpected issue, please submit a ticket through the appropriate RFG support channels. Force Wipe updates can sometimes introduce unexpected problems, and detailed reports make it much easier for our team to investigate them.

Good luck with the wipe, have fun, and we'll see you in-game. 👑

Royal Family Gaming
Play Your Way. Reign Your Way.