Rust's September 2026 force wipe went live on Thursday, September 3 at 2 PM US Eastern, which is 18:00 UTC and 7 PM in the UK. The update shipping with it is called Breach and Clear. The headline changes are destructible monument blockers in front of red keycard rooms, a new upkeep tax that scales with how many players are authed on your Tool Cupboard, high quality metal nodes spawning in the world for the first time, and attack helicopter armour that now falls off in stages.
Rust force wipes on the first Thursday of every month at 2 PM US Eastern. The September 2026 wipe landed on Thursday, September 3 alongside the Breach and Clear update. Monument blockers now sit in front of red keycard rooms at several high tier monuments and have to be destroyed to pass. Tool Cupboards apply an extra upkeep tax once more than four players are authed on the base, rising to a maximum of 300 percent. High quality metal now has its own ore node and ground pickup, and Facepunch says the jungle is the best place to look for it.
Monument blockers
Facepunch has added a new obstacle to monuments that carry red keycard puzzle rooms. Monument blockers take, in the devblog's own words, a significant amount of damage to destroy, and once they are destroyed they do not respawn. A handful of weaker versions can be broken with melee. Any blocker still standing after 24 hours starts to decay on its own.
Rustafied's writeup names the monuments involved: Launch Site, Military Tunnels, Missile Silo, Large Oil Rig and Small Oil Rig. Rustafied also puts the cost of clearing one at roughly one C4 or five satchel charges, with melee available if you have more patience than explosives. Both of those figures come from Rustafied rather than the official blog, so treat them as a very well informed read rather than a published number.
Facepunch's stated intent is modest. The blog says it does not expect an enormous impact on progression speed, only that early wipe should be a little more interesting for the first players in.
Upkeep now scales with group size
This is the change with the widest reach, and going by the thumbs on the devblog itself it is the most popular section of the whole update. Tool Cupboards now apply an additional upkeep tax based on how many players are attached to a base. Facepunch counts players authed on the TC, players deauthed from it in the last 24 hours, players authed on any code lock in the base including guest code access, and players deauthed from a code lock in the last 24 hours.
The tiers are:
- The first 4 players incur no tax at all.
- The next 6 players add 2 percent upkeep each.
- Every player after that adds 4 percent each.
- The tax is capped at 300 percent.
Facepunch gives two worked examples: a TC with 6 players authed pays 4 percent extra upkeep, and a TC with 12 players pays 20 percent extra. You can see the rate you are currently paying by hovering the upkeep cost with the TC open. Server owners get ConVars in the Decay class to change or disable the whole system.
The reasoning in the blog is worth reading directly if you play in a big group. Facepunch says large groups bypass most of the game's difficulty mechanics through numbers alone, and that it wants to give them an interesting problem to solve without making the playstyle unviable.
High quality metal nodes
HQM ore nodes and collectables now spawn across the island. The devblog calls them extremely scarce and says you will have more luck finding the node in the jungle. That is the whole entry, so anyone quoting a spawn rate today is guessing.
Attack helicopter and armoured HAB armour
Facepunch opens this section by saying it has heard the feedback that the attack helicopter is too difficult to counter. Cockpit armour now falls off in stages as it takes damage, exposing the pilot and gunner.
The attack heli's panels come off at these thresholds:
- Left panel at 80 percent, 680 hp
- Right panel at 70 percent, 595 hp
- Front panel at 60 percent, 510 hp
Armoured hot air balloons get the same treatment with tougher panels: left at 90 percent and 2250 hp, right at 80 percent and 2000 hp, back at 70 percent and 1750 hp, front at 60 percent and 1500 hp.
The drone marketplace now needs power
The drone marketplace is wired into last month's Power Plant system. The server has to keep the power plant running for deliveries to work. The marketplace has a built in power level that climbs slowly while 4 or more fuses are active in the Power Plant, and it will only start accepting purchases once the battery hits 50 percent. One fuse is enough to stop the battery draining, but if it falls back below 50 percent the marketplace deactivates. The charge level is visible from the marketplace map screen.
New item: the Medical Honey Bandage
A new Workbench Level 1 healing item sits between the regular bandage and the medical syringe. Facepunch pitched it as a use for the honey surplus that bee farmers end up sitting on.
Vehicles, and yes, a handbrake
Modular car steering, turning and suspension have all been retuned, and Facepunch says handling for higher latency players should be better too. The addition people will actually notice is a handbrake bound to CTRL, which the blog says enables hairpin turns, tighter corners, drifting and doughnuts.
Combat and item balance
- Radwater in sprinklers now seeps through more armour types and does serious radiation damage to players in full kit. Hazmat suits are still the counter.
- SAM site missiles fly faster at drones and have a larger detonation fuse area, so drones go down much more reliably.
- The Heavy Plate Helmet suppresses noise when worn. Its crafting cost went up to pay for that.
- The Heavy Plate Jacket and Pants now make movement noise that other players can hear.
- Semi-automatic pistol damage falloff is increased, so it does less at range, and it costs more to craft.
- F1, Bee Grenade, Molotov and Flashbang all stack to 3 now. Beancans stack to 4.
- The homing missile launcher locks on faster. The devblog just says the duration is reduced. Rustafied puts it at 30 percent.
- SMG bodies show up a little more often in loot, rifle bodies slightly less.
- The Large Medkit clears radiation, matching what the medical syringe already did.
- Pies last longer and their recipes changed. The Hunters pie bleed reduction went up.
- Swamp trees now give much more wood, in line with every other tree type.
- The composter UI shows you how long things will take to become fertiliser.
Visual work
The flashlight got a full remake: new model, new textures, new animations, and right click to toggle it the way torches work. Wooden arrows were revamped with new fletching, which Facepunch admits was left in last month's blog by accident. This month's workshop skinnable is all four pieces of Wood Armor, so chestplate, pants, helmet and gloves. There is a new Crystal Assault Rifle DLC skin in 5 colour variations that shows the ammunition in the magazine. Over 70 new world models replace the old burlap sack for dropped items, and a network range audit moved around 300 entity types to a closer network range to cut overhead.
What we can actually put on a desk after this update
One number from our own data, and it does not flatter us. Counted on September 3, 2026, the PropBuilds Rust catalog holds 420 approved printable files and 261 approved buyable props. This update adds or changes 26 distinct items. Only 8 of them have a printable file anywhere in that library, and only 3 have a buyable prop. That leaves 18 items with nothing at all on either side, including the monument blocker, the HQM node, the Medical Honey Bandage, the flashlight, the Wood Armor set and the Heavy Plate Helmet. Prop makers work from what has been in the game a while, so patch day always arrives before the models do.
What does exist lines up with the update in a few places:
- The blockers land on the oil rigs, and Epic Desk's "Oil Rig" II deskmat is 49.95 dollars and in stock, checked today.
- HQM spawns best in the jungle. Epic Desk has two jungle mats, "Jungle Ambush" and "Jungle Exploration", both 49.95 dollars and in stock today.
- Helis are easier to bring down now, which is as good a week as any for the "Minicopter Joyride" deskmat, also 49.95 dollars and in stock. On the print side we carry exactly one attack helicopter model, which is the entire supply for the vehicle this patch rebalanced.
- Clearing a blocker costs explosives. DirtMerch sells a life size C4 prop at 60 dollars without a wall mount or 65 dollars with one, both in stock today. Their satchel charge prop is sold out as of this morning's check, which is a shame given satchels are the other listed route through one.
- SMG bodies are more common in loot this wipe. LootRoom builds 1:1 replicas in Bavaria and bills in euros: the Custom SMG at 165 euros, the Thompson at 190 euros, both listed available today.
- The Heavy Plate Helmet went quiet. The facemask did not, and it is the only bit of Rust headgear we track a wearable replica of: LootRoom's Metal Facemask starts at 140 euros, or 150 euros with a face velcro strap.
- The honey bandage slots in below the syringe, and the syringe is the only healing item in our catalog that anyone makes a physical prop of: LootRoom's Medical Syringe at 42 euros.
Every price above was read from the seller's own live product data on September 3, 2026. Prices and stock move, so check the listing before you buy. Epic Desk and LootRoom links carry our referral code, which costs you nothing and in Epic Desk's case applies a discount at checkout. If you would rather print than buy, the Rust print library is the free route and the Rust props catalog holds everything buyable we track.
Common questions
When is force wipe in Rust?
Rust force wipes on the first Thursday of every month. The September 2026 force wipe was Thursday, September 3, and the next one is Thursday, October 1. Our live Rust wipe countdown converts it to your timezone automatically.
What time is Rust force wipe?
Force wipe goes live at 2 PM US Eastern, which is 7 PM in the UK and 18:00 UTC while the US is on daylight time. The exact minute can drift while the update deploys, so servers do not all come back at once.
When does Rust console wipe?
Rust Console runs a separate calendar from PC. It wipes weekly every Thursday, with the monthly map wipe on the last Thursday of the month rather than the first. Our Rust Console wipe tracker covers the console schedule and the blueprint question.
How often does Rust wipe?
Official Facepunch servers force wipe once a month, on the first Thursday. Community servers set their own schedules and most of them wipe faster, weekly or every two weeks, independently of the monthly force wipe.
What time is the Rust update today?
The monthly update ships at the same moment as the force wipe, 2 PM US Eastern on the first Thursday. On September 3, 2026 that was the Breach and Clear update. Facepunch publishes the devblog the same day, and the exact deploy time can slip by a few minutes.
PropBuilds is a fan run project and is not affiliated with or endorsed by Facepunch Studios. Update details are sourced from the official Rust devblog and Rustafied, both read on September 3, 2026.