Rust is finally adding backpacks to kick off its second decade

rockpapershotgun.com:

Having marked its 10 year anniversary last year, survival shooter Rust is seeing in its second decade by adding the long-awaited ability to boost your inventory with a backpack. The update will continue what developers Facepunch Studios say will be even more updates and improvements throughout 2024, even as other long-requested additions slide back to 2025 or later.

First, backpacks! After years of player-made mods, they’ll finally be made official on February 1st, with players able to craft backpacks as a new attire, allowing for increased storage space. Next month’s update will also see the number of shelters that players can place limited. Backpacks will be available a few weeks earlier in Rust’s Staging branch, if you’re playing on the test server.

Beyond that, Facepunch say they will keep up their monthly update frequency in 2024, with new features landing on the first Thursday of each month. Among the content confirmed to be in development are motorcycles, new weapons, reworked monuments and a new tutorial for newcomers - with Facepunch saying that Rust’s player base continues to grow even a decade after its release.

Other patches will aim to polish up the survival game’s world, allowing for new buildable canyons and lakes, and better rivers. There are also plans for procedurally-generated caves, along with improved rocks and cliffs. Facepunk also said they will be taking another look at how Rust’s nighttimes work in terms of brightness, with players frustrated in the past by nights being too bright or dark - leading to some players upping their display’s brightness to gain an advantage in PVP.

A key focus for the studio is improving performance, particularly dropping Rust’s hunger for memory to boost frames. Those