Rust Roadmap 2026: Animals, Breeding, Anticheat & Server Plans
Facepunch's official roadmap separates shipped work from longer-term direction. As of October 11, 2026, the Naval, Common Ground, Power Trip, Breach and Clear and Livestock updates are live, and Livestock (October 1) shipped the animals and breeding this page used to list as planned. Last verified: October 11, 2026.
Source of truth: Facepunch says roadmap items can move, change shape, or be cancelled. Compare this page with the official roadmap and the 12-year roadmap context before announcing a feature to players.
Current Rust update status
- Naval (February 5): Modular boats and Deep Sea content are live on PC.
- Common Ground (July 2): Apartments, rentable shops, clans, and raid-window tools shipped with the monthly wipe.
- Power Trip (August 6): Monument and power-grid changes are live; see the official changelist.
- Breach and Clear (September 3): monument blockers at the red keycard monuments, a Tool Cupboard upkeep tax that grows with the number of players in a base, HQM nodes, and drone marketplace deliveries that need the Power Plant running.
- Livestock (October 1): cows and sheep you can capture, breed and farm, critters around the island, the Biofuel Generator, stackable sandbags, and a repairable Air Wolf helipad.
Animals, AI and breeding
This shipped with the Livestock update on October 1, 2026. Cows and sheep can be captured and farmed: both produce dung, cows give milk and sheep give wool, and like plants they have genetics and needs and can be bred, though Facepunch notes their genes do not behave exactly like plant genes. Grown animals sell at a Stable vendor for a randomized offer based on gene quality, and new animal gates and fences keep them in. With the new navmesh enabled, NPCs can enter player structures and respect doors. Frogs, rabbits, squirrels, sea turtles, crabs and jellyfish now appear around the island as heavily budgeted set dressing.
On server performance, Facepunch says each frame processes only a subset of NPCs up to a fixed time budget, so a larger population makes NPCs slower to react rather than costing server FPS, and the new navigation system was multithreaded and at least doubled in performance since the previous patch. The safe preparation is still operational: keep backups current, test plugins on a copy of the world, and measure real CPU and RAM after the wipe before changing production limits.
New server settings from the autumn updates
Two changes come with switches for server owners. Breach and Clear's upkeep tax charges Tool Cupboards by the number of players in a base (the first 4 free, then 2% per player for the next 6 and 4% per player after that, up to 300%), and Facepunch says the ConVars in the Decay class can modify it or disable it entirely. Livestock leaves the Air Wolf helipad at Bandit Camp broken at the start of a wipe until players repair it; vehicle.padrepairsrequired set to false reverts that, and vehicle.setrepairablepads forces the pads into a repaired (1) or disrepaired (0) state.
Anticheat and platform requirements
This one is no longer speculation. Since the March 2026 update, Rust servers can opt in to Secure mode, which requires connecting players to have TPM 2.0 and Secure Boot enabled so Easy Anti-Cheat can work at full strength. Secure servers carry a Secure tag in the server browser, and clicking one shows players exactly what is required and whether their system supports it. Facepunch's own April numbers: roughly 1 in 63 players on secure servers were cheaters versus 1 in 42 on regular servers, and over 80 percent of players already have TPM hardware while just under 60 percent have Secure Boot switched on. Sources: Facepunch's March and April update notes.
It stays opt-in per server: nothing forces a community server to require TPM. If you run one, weigh the cheater reduction against locking out players who have not enabled Secure Boot. Facepunch has also said a new third-party anticheat layer is planned for 2026. Players hitting connection errors on Secure servers should see our EAC error fixes guide.
RustRelay: server data streaming for owners
The April 2026 update also shipped the first piece of a browser-based live server view. RustRelay forwards all outbound packets from a Rust server to a websocket endpoint you control, enabled with three launch arguments: -relayenabled, -relayurl "https://example.com" and -relaytoken "" (the token is sent as a Bearer authorization header). Facepunch describes it as the base for a real-time and historical 3D server render in the browser, "think demos but outside of the game". Nothing is required of server owners yet; it is off unless you enable it.
What is not confirmed
A battle pass and a global Rust Mobile launch are not current PC dedicated-server features in the official roadmap source used here. Treat community posts and interview “maybes” as speculation, not a release plan or a reason to change your hosting configuration.
Monthly wipe planning
Keep your community calendar tied to the PC force-wipe cadence, then confirm the exact patch notes and server build on release day. The next PC force wipe is Thursday, November 5, 2026. The Rust wipe schedule guide has the next date, map-versus-blueprint explanation, and community-server options.
Safe server-admin checklist
- Back up the world before each monthly update.
- Update the server build first, then Oxide/uMod or Carbon and individual plugins.
- Publish your wipe date, blueprint policy, raid-window rules, and mod policy.
- Use the official changelog for live behavior; keep roadmap items labelled as planned until they ship.
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