Rust Livestock Update (October 2026): Cows, Sheep, Helipad Repairs & Fuse Decay

Rust "Livestock" (October 2026): Cows and Sheep, a Helipad to Repair, and Fuses That Last on Quiet Servers

Last verified: October 2, 2026. Released Thursday, October 1, 2026 with the monthly forced wipe; Steam's Rust Dedicated Server build 25653776 went live at 17:29 UTC.

October's update adds farm animals, and for server owners a handful of changes that matter more than the headline: a helipad that every wipe now has to rebuild, two convars to control it, heavy fuses that decay more slowly when few players are online, and a firm date for the next mandatory update. This page covers what changed and what to check on your server. The full patch notes are in Facepunch's Livestock devblog.

Livestock: cows and sheep

Cows and sheep are new. Both produce dung, cows give milk and sheep give wool, and like other animals they can be harvested for meat, bones and leather. Wild livestock can be captured and kept, and like plants they have genetics and needs and can be bred towards better genes, though Facepunch notes that their genes do not behave exactly like plant genes.

• Stables vendor: grown cattle and sheep can be sold at the Stables for a randomized offer based on the animal's gene quality. You can turn an offer down twice more; after that the vendor refuses to buy for 15 minutes. Wool trades the same way, up to 400 per trade.
• Fencing: new animal gate and fence deployables.
• Biofuel Generator: turns raw or spoiled meat and other organic matter into low grade fuel. It has to be stirred by hand about every 30 minutes, and it can drive IO to signal when it needs stirring.
• Navmesh: on a server running the new navmesh (the -useNewNavmesh launch parameter covered in the September update), NPCs, livestock included, can enter player structures and respect doors.

Will livestock hurt server performance?

Facepunch's answer is that the load is budgeted. Each frame the server processes only a subset of NPCs, up to a fixed time limit, so a larger animal population makes NPCs slower to react rather than lowering server FPS. They also report at least doubling the new navigation system's performance since the previous patch. The new critters and swimmers are heavily budgeted too and, for now, mostly set dressing.

The Bandit Camp helipad now has to be repaired every wipe

At the start of each wipe the Air Wolf helipad at Bandit Camp is in disrepair, and the air vehicle vendor will not sell anything until it is repaired. Repairing works like building siege weapons: players hit the pad with a hammer to transfer resources into it, and once repaired it stays repaired for the rest of the wipe. The aim is to stop air vehicles appearing in the first hours of a wipe, and to make a group that pays for the repair open the vendor to everyone else.

Power grid loot rooms at more monuments

After the Power Plant loot room from the August Power Trip update, locked loot rooms now sit at many other monuments. They open once enough heavy fuses are inserted in the Power Plant, and harder monuments need more fuses. Facepunch lists Airfield, Ferry Terminal, Harbour 1, Harbour 2, Junkyard, Launch Site, Military Tunnels, Nuclear Missile Silo, Radtown, Sewer Branch, Trainyard and Water Treatment Plant.

Heavy fuses decay more slowly on low-population servers

On busy servers the Power Plant's power phases rise and fall with player activity as intended, but on quiet servers power was often offline for long stretches, and since the drone marketplace needs power that started to block basic trade. Facepunch made two changes. Heavy fuse decay now scales with population: on a server with 10 or fewer players online heavy fuses last four times longer, scaling back to normal at 100 players. And the small heavy fuse box at the Power Plant can now be reached from outside the building through a broken window.

Secure servers: TPM and Secure Boot

Since March, Rust servers can require players to have TPM and Secure Boot enabled. With this update Facepunch moved six more of its own official servers to that requirement, reports a lower cheater presence on secure servers, and says its goal is still to make it global for all servers once enough players have the features enabled. For a community server it is an option to watch rather than a change you have to make now.

Other changes worth knowing

• Sandbags have four stages, each one added by stacking another sandbag on top.
• Grenades, C4 and satchels are now client predicted, so throws feel smoother on high ping; the server still decides, and corrects the client when the two disagree.
• Game crashes are now uploaded to Facepunch automatically, following last month's fix that let crash dumps be written under EAC.

Server admin notes for the October cycle

• Update before players arrive. This is the monthly forced wipe, and the new dedicated server build on Steam is 25653776.
• Decide on the helipad. If your community would rather keep air vehicles available from the start, vehicle.padrepairsrequired false restores the old behaviour.
• Low-population servers get the slower heavy fuse decay automatically; there is nothing to configure.
• Check plugins. Livestock, the Stables vendor, the helipad and the new loot rooms are new systems, so confirm that economy, NPC and loot plugins have been updated for this build before relying on them.
• Next dates. Facepunch has scheduled a mandatory server and client update for Halloween on October 22 at 18:00 BST (13:00 EST). The next forced wipe follows the first-Thursday cadence on November 5, 2026.

Previous monthly updates: Breach and Clear (September) · Power Trip (August) · Common Ground (July). Wipe timing in general: Rust server wipe schedule.

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