Garry Newman and the rest of Facepunch Studios rolled out some notes on the developer’s update page for their open-world survival game, Rust. The latest update for the game was detailed in dev blog entry 100 over on the official website.
Newman and crew explain that there’s new bone armor on the way for players to collect and craft. They’ve finished the sculpts and are working on the bone rigging now. They also mention that the deer iteration of the bone armor looks “badass”. The human version of the bone armor looks freaking creepy.
But obviously, the most important update is the new XP system, which is actually a shared system. They link to YouTube user Phaedo82, who offers a seven minute video explaining how the new XP system works and what the benefits are for using it. Check it out below.
So the way it works is that players will get experience for killing, fishing, mining and even sharing materials. You can check out the list of items that grant you XP below.
- Fish
- Chop Trees/Mine Rocks
- Craft Items
- Find Crates
- Smash Barrels
- Hunt
- Feed People
- Forage
- Destroy Helicopters
- Gut Fish
The ownership thing is also pretty interesting. Designer Maurino Berry explains…
“What is ownership? Well, it’s a system that tracks your influence in the world. Completing various actions will leave your mark on items, and when those items are used to generate XP somehow, you’ll get a share. An example is a Fish Trap. If you make the trap but someone else uses it, you’ll get XP. If you cook food and hand it to another player and they eat it, you’ll it earn as well.”
That’s kind of a cool way to create a trickle up commerce for XP. Some people – according to the developer post – feel as if this could be abused by some people, but Facepunch is willing to roll with the punches to see how it all plays out. They’ll also continue to iterate and adapt the feature in future updates.
The updated beta branch for Rust is available right now on the Steam store page. The game has been at the center of controversy regarding its community over the forced racial and gender options, locking a player’s SteamID account to a randomly generated character and forcing them to stick with it. Some gamers hope this will be changed in a future update, but it’s still causing salt for some gamers who expected to be able to create their own character, male or female, Asian, Hispanic, white or black.
