Misadventures in Rust Angels: The Base Defense Contest

 

 By Bixyl Shuftan

Anyone remotely famillar with Rust knows there are two kinds of servers. There are the PvE servers in which all is peaceful between players. And then there are the PvP servers, in which there's the potential of combat and raiding between players. Of the later, a few are somewhat relaxed, somewhat, with a majority of the players not fighting or raiding unless provoked. But some can be so vicious, players can expect to be attacked within minutes of entering, let alone after they've gathered enough materials for and having set up a base. While some of my friends have given PvP servers a try, hoping for the more relaxed variety, others have had more then enough of the "PVP kiddies" and are sticking to PvE ones. So when the Angels Rust server was back up, it was soon populated with Nydia and her friends, including myself.

But the trouble with PvE is, what to do to liven things up? Yes, there are the "ninja bears" who appear out of nowhere to eat you, the scientists who shoot at you, and the ever threatening chopper that fires death from above. But without human opponents, things can seem a bit predictable. To spark some excitement, there's been a couple "Wacky Races" in the server. But setting up the track was a lot of work to server moderator Umbra. So for September's challenge, he had a different idea: have the contestants get ready for a raid.


Most folks have built their base so for those who are interested in doing so I have a little competition for those interested.

The contest:

Build a base to house 4 to 8 players.
No items from mods
Base should be built to be defendable.
Base size around 12-20 foundations across, no height restrictions.
Contestants must build their own base, no team builds. (But definitely talk among your team mates and bounce ideas off them).
Required items that must be in base:
Workbench 1,2,3
Research bench
Repair bench
Storage
Smelter
Refinery
Furnace
Campfire/BBQ
Anything else is optional. Be creative with your designs.
How long?
Now till the end of the 24th.  Judging on the 25th by myself and Nydia.

How do I enter?
Pick a spot on the map, screen capture the map location and dm it to me.

Are you in this channel?  Good, you can enter.
Im not whitelisted on your server…
Dm myself or Nydia with your steam ID and we will get you whitelisted

Do I have to gather resources?
Wood stone and metal are provided in three kits that are now live on the server.  Items that require scrap or tech trash you will have to source out.

Judging criteria?
Functionality - Does your base have all the necessary items to be sustainable?
Defendable - Can you fend off a determined raid of well equipped players?
Architectural design - Is there an idea of theme in how you built your base?

 

Foxy, who had experience in PvP servers and defending against raiders, one would think this contest would be a welcome challenge. But be bowed out as there'd been a few complaints about large bases causing lag, "I'd build the Citadel again but I'd get yapped at. So I'll be on the sidelines." But there were two entries. There was Snowy and there was me. Both our initial bases were too small to fit what the contest rules required. So she started a new one nearby. I ended up packing and moving to not too far from where she was, to a spot close to the stone quarry and within fair distance (by vehicle) of the sulfur and high quality metal quarries, as well as some abandoned marts & gas stations and a mining station.

Snowy had no real experience with defending against an attack, so she studied several Youtubes of bases made to be hard to crack. The result was what she called a "Frustrator." It was a two story base with a top wall that sloped outward - which rendered scaling to the top with ladders impossible without wrecking them. The top of the base was a "battledeck" with special slit windows that defenders could fire out of, but were reasonable protected. And the walls were made of high quality metal, making it a tough nut to crack. And if they did, they place was "honeycombed" with garage doors that were more difficult to take down than normal metal doors. And the tool cabinet was cleverly hidden. This would not be an easy base to take down.

My personal experience with defending against being raided has had, mixed results. A lot of redundant doors made a few turn around and leave before getting to anywhere important. One I caught in the act trying to chop down a door with hatchets, and blasted him. However I've found well-planned and equipped raids impossible to stop. Only once was I online and at the base when this happened, and I was poorly prepared, the two invaders armed with explosives blasting their way through and me with just a shotgun and grenades. I tried waiting in ambush, then tried tossing a grenade just as the wall in front of me came down. But somehow instead of being thrown, the grenade fell to my feet. Respawning in my bed, I tried getting them from behind with a pistol. But they saw me coming, and stopped me with a machine gun. There was nothing I could do after that, and they pretty much wrecked the place. Later on after traps were developed, I once logged on to find a hole in the wall and a number of doors knocked down, the last one having a shotgun trap behind it.

Concluding a determined raid couldn't be stopped at the outer wall, instead of going all out to try to, I concentrated on making the place hard to get through once inside. The place was also larger than Snowy's base, with individual bedrooms, the refinery and large furnace inside the building, and numerous stairwells. Only the bottom of the outer wall was metal and high quality metal. the rest was wood, with interior walls made of metal and stone. There were numerous HQM doors, most of which could be where the tool cabinet was hidden. But it was well hidden that would made finding it hard, at least that's what I thought. The main "vault room" where most of the guns and more valuable items were stored was out of the way, and I thought about making my stand there if they did get in for an ambush. And then there were the traps. I placed shotgun traps all over, notably in the stairwells and behind doors in closets. Thankfully Snowy had encouraged me to learn about making an electrical system, so I set up windmills and batteries, and rigged a number of turrets. Maybe Umbra would make a mess going in, but I was determined to make it a slow hard slog.

Snowy and I also ended up cooperating some, trading some resources. I guess we saw it as more than just a competition, but also cooperating against someone who thought he could beat us, "All your base are belong to us." I also started helping her in fights against the Bradley Armored Personnel Carrier, patrolling the launch site. The thing is tough to beat, with a machine gun and a cannon. While it's possible to blow it up with explosive charges, you'll need a rocket launcher and rockets if you want much of a chance. Snowy found the best place to fire at it was from the top of one of the buildings. Beating the thing, you have a chance of finding an M249 light machine gun in the loot crates, one of the best guns in the game and one that can be found only by beating that or the attack helicopter, or things like heavy metal doors, which helped me in honeycombing my base. Snowy found taking it on and blowing it up therapeutic, as well as a team-building exercise. While she occasionally went after it alone, she usually had the help of her friend Nikki. For me, it helped that the launch site was not far from the sulfur quarry. Since the thing ran without my help anyway as long as it had fuel, several times I would go and help her while it churned out the mineral. I also gave her some shotgun traps.

With all of the traps on my base, I was confident at times Umbra would be in for it. Recalling the scene in "Home Alone" when the burglars called the kid's home a "funhouse," I started calling it just that. Snowy thought it more resembled a hotel with it's bedrooms and stairs. One small complication, I found out Nydia would be helping Umbra on the raid. Since Nydia and I are close, I was a little worried a hard fight might upset her. But she assured this wouldn't happen. So we got ready, during which time Snowy had a little accident with her camper that she had to take a picture with her camera to be believed.

Finally the day of the contest approached.


After judging Nydia and I will attempt to raid the base for 30 minutes, while we do that you can see how comically bad we are at this kind of thing and/or get shot.  A lot. (Said base if destroyed will be rebuilt)

The day of the raid was going to be on Sunday night, but it got postponed a few days due to technical issues. I used the time to set up another few turrets after getting a few more TV cameras from military crates and Bradley kills. I also set up some "dragons teeth" around the Funhouse walls to discourage ladders. Finally on Wednesday night after the Cutlass party, Snowy and her friend Nikki got ready at her base while I got ready at mine. Umbra and Nydia decided to go after the "Frustrator" first. Umbra was streaming their actions, which made it a little easier for us. A little as we still couldn't always see what Nydia was up to. 

Flying over in their helicopter, they encountered trouble right away as the base had a Surface to Air Missile launcher, as well as their own personal rocket launchers. Nydia dropped Umbra off, and tried to safely land the copter nearby. But it caught fire, and became unusable after she landed. Umbra tried sneaking over, and throwing grenades into the upper windows. It worked sometimes, but while one was respawning and running back, the other was still firing away. Umbra also got hurt by a shotgun trap and blown up by a mine. At one point, Umbra hopped into Snowy's camper and took off, "The keys were right in there." That might have been a successful troll, but unless there were any weapons or ammo in there, no contribution to the fight.

Finally Umbra and Nydia gave the place a rocket barrage from a distance. The walls took a beating, but being made of High Quality Metal, they held. Snowy's team did have some trouble. Stormy came on late, and a glitch knocked her off the team, causing the shotgun traps to go off on her. Then for some reason the shotgun traps started going off on all of them. It seems after two or three respawns, they no longer saw you as friendly. They ended up having to hole up in the sleeping area. But Umbra and Nydia still couldn't get in.

Finally after a little over an hour, Umbra called a ceasefire. Snowy's base had successfully held off the assault. It was then my turn. Seeing their chopper, I tried firing at it with my rocket launcher a couple times. But the only result was to get their attention. They landed and managed to get to the building, and I tried dropping grenades on them. They missed, but I'm sure it shook them up some. I then tried making quick peeks, and fired with my M249 when I had a target, darting back after a few seconds. Once I wasn't quick enough and got nailed with one of Nydia's rockets. I quickly got back up and resumed, and managed to get her back with the gun. They tried grenades, but only ended up knocking themselves out a couple times.

Eventually night fell, then Umbra and Nydia went back and gave the base a rocket barrage from a distance. I tried looking out with night vision goggles, but I couldn't see them. While trying to see them, another rocket ended those efforts, and trying to get back up, I got hit by my own shotgun trap. And with so many of them around, I could only hole up next to the vault and wait for them if they ever made it there. Their rockets ended up blowing a big hole in the side of the building, taking down not just the outer wooden walls, but sections of stone floor and metal and stone walls. Then then started moving inside. But while they took out a few traps, there were still enough turrets to slow them down, Umbra getting knocked out by them a few times and Nydia once.

Finally after a little more than an hour, Umbra called a ceasefire. While they had gotten in, they had neither found the tool cabinet or main stash of supplies. And progress was slow due to the traps. So he felt this counted as a win for me. It was then he noticed, "Um, is your tool cabinet still up?" In all of the excitement, neither one of us noticed it was gone, presumably from the rocket barrage, the stone walls it was behind not quite enough. But since Umbra had already declared for me, it was too late for him to place one of his own. While I'd gotten some unlucky breaks in the fight, in the end luck was on my side.

So both Snowy and I had won against the raids. Nydia ended up leaving her weapons behind at my base after the raid, and Umbra didn't bother picking up those from when he'd gotten clobbered earlier. But they'd left a big hole behind while Snowy's base was intact. It turned out one wall was close to breaking, but it didn't. So she was the bigger winner in the competition. Nydia and Umbra offered for us to return the favor on their base, but Snowy answered she'd rather take out Bradley another time.

Umbra would later do a post-mortem on the raids. The fight at the Frustrator had more people getting clobbered more often, Umbra getting 5 kills while clobbered three times. Nydia got two kills in while being knocked out three times. Snowy was even, four to four, while Nikki got a kill in while getting knocked out three times. Stormy having gotten in late ended up getting clobbered once by opposing action without getting a kill of her own. Umbra didn't count the deaths by the shotguns. With the Funhouse, there were fewer kills overall, but more friendly fire accidents and several kills by the turrets. Umbra missed one of the two rocket kills by Nydia on me and considered us even. He never got a kill on me, joking that time he was a "deployable dummy," just on the traps which he considered hollow victories. "Those turrets Bix ..." he would later groan, saying they really hurt, musing if the machines ever take over, I'd have a place among the robotic overlords.

So could the lessons here be applied to a base in a PvP base? Maybe. We both knew when the attack was coming and had time to prepare. In PvP servers, this would seldom happen, attacks coming anytime from anywhere and most likely when we were asleep and logged off. There's also that decay was extremely low in the Angel's server. In a normal one, both bases would require materials to maintain every day, mine more overall and Snowy's more of the hard to get high quality metal. Still, some version of the Frustrator would be useful, and would certainly deter a number of raiders who would look for easier targets.

With the competition over, Snow and I would take on Bradley a few more times. Once I would clobber it solo while waiting for her, real-life having interrupted her trip over. But most of our time was getting ready for the wipe by deciding what to store in our backpacks to make setting up again easier. Snowy had gotten more M249 light machine guns than we could take. Umbra told us we couldn't take metal, wood, or stone. Among the things I would take with me were several weapons and stacks of ammo, pipes and tech parts, a stack of cloth, a tier three workbench, and lots of scrap. Snowy and I would say goodbye to our vehicles and bases that served us well.

And if we hold another base-defense competition? Foxy would say he might take part if we have another, time permitting. I've also thought about what worked and what didn't and what I might do differently. But there won't be another for some time at least. As for what Umbra's challenge will be in October, he hasn't told us much. His only clue was that it would involve "precision." That could mean a number of things. In the meantime, there's time to prepare for whatever it is, and time to set ourselves up again after the wipe.

"Good gaming to you,"

Bixyl Shuftan

 

Latest Misadventures in Ark Survival Evolved

By Bixyl Shuftan

It's been over a year since I've written about Ark: Survival Evolved, the noted survival game in which players start off with their undies and their wits on a mysterious island populated with dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures, and try to avoid dying from hunger, heat and cold, and the numerous predators whom see players as a snack. I first wrote about the game in July 2015, and did so again in August and September of that year. For those brand new to the game, you can read those articles, or watch this video review by "Nooblets" (link).

One of the game's most important news items over the past year was not an update, but a lawsuit. A former member of the development team had been accused of violating a clause of his contract, and filed suit for $600 million USD. The defendant threatened to have a legal notice to take down the game, which caused concerns the game might not be available for sale, or updated for those who had it, for a while. Eventually, the case was settled out of court for $40 million.

Recently, my friends of the "Furry Gamers" group decided to take another look at it, Nydia starting up her server again. She and her friends had previously made a number of bases across the south and east of the island, some along the coast, some a bit inland. Her main base was in the southwest, in the middle of what the map calls the "Southern Jungle." A year ago, it had been a relatively safe location, the only real problems when the occasional carnotaurus, or "Carno," one of the island's medium sized predators showed up. But the island has changed since then, some of which meant complications for us.

To begin with, the island has a couple new biomes. Swampland now covers some territory in the inland south, and a small part of the midwest coast. As you can probably guess, these are not places for beginners, and midranked ones should proceed with caution. The giant dragonflies and ants will swarm after you, the snakes will try to paralyze and eat you, and in the water are the megaphirana and the bloodsucking leeches. One curious but useful crtter are the giant frogs or beelzebufo. They eat the giant insects which can pester players, and can serve as high-jumping mounts. In the northwest and north central areas are icy areas covered with snow. Fur clothing is needed to survive the cold here for long, which will likely mean lingering on the outskirts to hunt for creatures that drop pelts, such as mammoths and woolly rhinos. This is also the home of dire wolves, canis maxdirus. As they hunt in packs, they can be dangerous predators. But they can also be valuable mounts.

There are new creatures outside these areas too. One is the Therizinosaurus, which my friends have dubbed the "killer turkeys." These medium sized dinos are plant eaters, but highly aggressive ones that will attack anyone getting too close. To make matters worse, these creatures sport long claws that would make Freddy Krueger proud, capable of piercing armor and inflicting serious wounds that can quickly take down a player. A group of two to three can be dangerous or fatal even for a player on a tamed carno mount.

Another problem dinosaur is the Troodon. Somewhat smaller than raptors, they are in some ways more dangerous. They have a venomous bite, and combined with their speed will quickly take down a beginning player, and fighting them while I was around Level 20-25, I would end up lasting just long enough to clobber one before passing out, vulnerable to anything else in the area. And as they sometimes go about in packs, this often means other Troodon, who made quick work of any one unconscious. They are nocturnal, making any night run more dangerous, as you may not notice their glowing eyes, until it's too late. That you can occasionally find eyeglasses on a corpse is a little unnerving.

Between the "killer turkeys" and the "sleepers," life at what had been our main base became more hazardous. A new fish, the sabertooth salmon, was easily avoided by us, but did clobber a critter or two of ours that ventured into the water next to the base. Finally when a few of the former managed to break down a wooden wall and kill several of our dinos before finally being taken down, the decision was made to move. So we began moving our critters to the nearby "Footpaw," settling in the plateau in the middle overlooking the rest known as the "Weathertop." We began building a wall to help keep out unwanted critters, though began noticing a few were spawning inside. The decision was made to persist, taming more critters to replace what was lost and to help patrol the place, a lot of dilos designated as "meat shields" as they were more easily replaced. This "Liberty Ship" strategy, so named as it reminded me of the United States having to replace it's cargo ships blown up by German U-Boats in the early days of WW2 with quickly made Liberty Ships until it could come up with better ways of fighting the enemy, was more than a little frustrating as our plans and building was slowed down. But eventually we had our base and fence.

But not everything new was out to get us. Jasmine found some dung beetles in a cave and tamed a group. This meant a source of fertilizer and oil as long as we kept feeding them droppings from our dinos, the oil saving us trips to the sea and its dangers. There was also a new kind of building available: the greenhouse. Building one provides a place for crops to grow faster.

However the greenhouse parts need crystal. In earlier times, this would have meant a flight over to bypass the dangerous critters on the ground. But there's a new threat in the air now. There's a large bird called Argentavis that while usually a carrion eater is aggressive and will attack nearby players. On the plus side, when tamed it has more stamina than pteranodons, and can be used to grip other players (useful for getting someone unconscious out of danger), or critters that aren't too heavy. A leveled-up Argentavis can be very useful for transportation, or getting smaller creatures you want to tame as they can be dropped into an enclosure until you're ready to tranq and feed them.

Exploring around, our journeys took us to "Herbivore Island" in the southeast. Accessible by raft or air, it's a place where players need not worry about carnivores, though the creatures there will still defend themselves if attacked. To our surprise and delight, we found some metal nodes there. This saved us risky trips to the mountaintops, though we still had to go there for obsidian and crystal, and we set up a refining base where we could make and haul back metal. We discovered that besides placing storage boxes on our wooden rafts, we could also place ramps, foundations, and walls. We turned two in to mobile bases, one which had storage space, a furnace, smithy, and a few mortal and pestles, the other which had large holding areas for luring larger creatures on which we were interested in taming. This included one T-Rex which we started taming on it's journey back, and once finished it was just a short walk from the shore to the case.

We've also tried our hand at raising baby dinos a little. Hatching one took a while and was something of a balancing act as the temperature had to be just right, requiring a heat source nearby to be turned on and off. But eventually, the critter hatched (check about 4:10 into the video). Nydia had to imprint on it, and then feed it a few berries. Later on, a special egg hatching area would be build with both campfires and air conditioners.

One recent change to the game was that hair is no longer static, but will grow over time. And after the update, the men in the server found themselves looking like mountain men with bushy beards, and once the hats were off with mops of hair. The women had long hair, but thankfully their legs were spared. Getting rid of the beards required learning the engram for scissors, and with those equipped, press and hold the right button, and a hairsyling screen comes up, in which men and lower the length of their head hair and beards, or cut everything altogether. Women only have the option to cut head hair. As the hair will still grow over time, don't throw away your scissors as you're likely to need them every day or two. They're also useful for cutting the fleece of a new animal on the island: sheep. So once "ewe" get past the "ba-a-a-a-a-a-ad" jokes, the wool can be used as a substitute for pelts, which can make the making of cold weather clothing a lot easier.

One new thing I've heard of but haven't tried yet is fishing. From what I saw in this "nooblets" video (link), one needs either tree sap or leech blood as bait, the latter which more fish will go after. Besides fish meat, one can apparently get a few other items, but high level players whom aren't risk adverse should be able to get most of them faster by other means except black pearls.

And there are other new critters that I haven't mentioned yet, such as giant beavers which do well at gathering wood, as well as being the only creatures besides players that build something: beaver dams, compys, little dinos that are slightly dangerous in packs, but can be tamed to be a kind of shoulder pet, Procoptodon, a kind of giant kangaroo, Paracers, which look like a giant cross between a horse and rhino, dire bears, woolly rhinos, and moose. There's also new items that I have yet see, such as lances for jousting, and high tech armor, which needs players to beat one of the "boss" creatures just to get one of the needed components. The boots would be very useful as they allow players to avoid taking damage when accidentally falling. The helmets provide unlimited oxygen when underwater and night vision, a GPS, and a targeting system that locates other players nearby. The chestpeice has a jetpack, and so on.

I should also note there's a new map available, "The Center," which would be an interesting change for players whom feel they've been on The Island to the point most every place is familiar. Instead of the dinosaurs being easiest on the beaches and getting more difficult as you go to the interior, it's more east to west on this map. The map started out as a mod, but has become an official part of the game. Another noteable mod that's gotten some attention is the Pokemon-inspired mod called "Pokemon Evolved." But as Pokemon is the property of Nintendo, which has demanded some fanworks be taken down before, it's unknown if the mod will be up indefinitely.

There is also a new version of Ark, "Scorched Earth" which takes place in an arid area where water is difficult to come by, sandstorms can damage outdoor equipment and some structures, electrical storms can shut down electrical equipment and disable firearms. This hostile place has many of the same creatures, such as the raptors and T-Rexes. But there are some new ones such as rock elementals, deathworms, thorny dragons, and others. But not everything is big and out to kill you. The place is also home to jerboas, which are really cute companions and useful as weather detectors. Then there are the whips, flamethrowers, boomerangs, and chainsaws. Sadly the game isn't free for those who already have Ark, but an expansion pack that has to be bought in addition to the game. There are also plans for an "Ark Park" virtual reality similator; an obvious take on "Jurassic Park." Hopefully their lawyers got the okay from Michael Crichton.

Earlier I've commented Nydia and a number of the Furry Gamers will have nothing to do with PvP-enabled servers. While there may be some where most of the players are friendly, going there as it's easier to find a place to build, there are some goons whose primary pleasure in life is making others miserable. "Nooblets" made a video commentary about a recent update that made it easier for high level PvP tribes to jump server to server, so they could potentially settle on a new world, wiping out all the smaller tribes and making themselves the only ones on the place, then once it's clear everyone else has fled going to another PvP server and starting over again, repeating the cycle of wiping everyone else out. This in his opinion would eventually be "The Death of Ark," at least for PvP servers.


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Well, that's it for now with the latest misadventures of me and the Furry Gamers in Ark. We'll leave you with this video Nydia did of her ark server. As she would say, "good gaming to you."


Sources: eTeknix, Gamerant,

Bixyl Shuftan

Gaming Goings-On: Rust, Star Trek Online, And Tree of Life

By Bixyl Shuftan

With all that's been going on in Second Life, there have been a few developments in computer gaming. Pokemon Go has been in the news a lot, but that's not so much a computer game as a mobile ap game. But yours truly has been made aware of a couple developments in games we've wrote about in the past, Rust and Star Trek Online. There's also a new one my friends and I have been playing: Tree of Life.

Star Trek Online recently got a new expansion: "Agents of Yesterday." Fans of the Original Series, which was first aired 50 years ago. will cheer as they can now play characters and missions of the story universe that started the franchise. Three new character slots have been opened, as well as a 23rd Century Federation faction, and missions and areas set in the time period of USS Enterprise's first five year mission, taking place in 2270 the year after the TV series. 23rdCF characters can be one of four races: human, Vulcan, Tellarite, and Andorian. The uniforms are from the style of the Original Series, including the infamous mini skirts for female characters and the red shirt for those specializing in Security.

The first mission for a 23rd Century Federation character starts with them at rank Lt. jg., with the ship in orbit around Taurus II (the planet in which Spock, Scott, and five other crewmen had to make an emergency landing in "The Galileo Seven"). The player is assigned as part of an away team to look for survivors of a shipwreck and investigate while dealing with the planet's hostile natives. As it turns out, the crash was no simple accident. At the end, the ship's captain is promoted to admiral and the player character promoted to Lieutenant and given command of the ship.

After a couple missions, one of the more recent crewmen comes forward saying he's a "Temporal Agent" from the Federation in the distant future, which has been involved in a "Temporal Cold War" by powers trying to manipulate the timeline for their own benefit while it seeks to preserve it. Trekkers whom have watched the "Enterprise" prequel series will recognize the conflict from the TV show.

Fans of the Original Series will enjoy the chance to interact with some of the characters there, such as Chekov whom is voiced by the actor who played him, Walter Koenig (whom at 79 is much older than the young man he was in the TV show) and Chief Engineer Scott, whom is voiced by his son Christopher Doohan (James Doohan died in 2015). Not every Trekker however is a fan of time travel, a number feeling it's been overused for plot material. Still, "Agents of Yesterday" is an expansion which fans of the classic sci-fi TV show, old and young, will enjoy.

Sources: Memory Alpha, Star Trek Online, Trek Today, Trek Core, Cosmic Book News  


The survival MMO "Rust" is back in the news. After over a year of development, it's Experience System has finally been unloaded into the game. Gone are the blueprints that players had to collect in order to learn how to make objects. Instead, players accumulate experience points, or XP, which can be used to gain the skills to make new objects. Which objects are available depends on the players level, which is raised by gaining a number of experience points. It takes just a few XP to rise to Level 2, but the number to rise increases as the levels do.Unlike games such as Ark, leveling up does not mean an increase in hitpoints or strength.

Players gain XP though various actions such as gathering wood from trees and stone and ore from mineable rocks, picking up resources from the ground, smashing drums and looting crates and boxes, making items, and more. I have read that if someone else makes items from resources you gathered, you get some of the XP, though I have yet to see this in person.

Level One characters are limited to several basic skills.They can make paper and the map and blueprint, sleeping bag, campfire, map, blueprint,tool cabinet, wooden door, wood lock, wood window bars, bandage. The only weapon they can make is a bone club. The only clothes they can make are the leather gloves, burlap shoes, baseball cap, and boonie hat. So beginning players will have to remain nearly naked unless they make a lucky find in a drum or crate. Beginning players can make structures and could reinforce them up to armored if they somehow had the materials. But they would not be able to make doors stronger than wood or a lock better than wooden. One noticeable change is players can now make the basic rock if they happen to loose theirs, made from ten stone which can be gathered up around the island.

As one levels up, skills become available to purchase, Level Two allowing the wooden spear, burlap trousers, skirt, and fish trap. The latter is a relatively new item to catch fish to help stave off hunger, which has become more challenging in more recent updates of the game. The stone hatchet and pickaxe are available at Level Three. At Level Four, you can get the ability to make basic storage boxes. At Level Five, the burlap shirt is available (and female characters need no longer be topless), as well as the furnace. At level six, one can learn how to make the much desired code lock. Level Seven allows for the repair bench, wood shutters, and bow and wood arrows. At Level Eight, the sheet metal door and metal window bars are available. T-shirts and gunpowder, once available at the start, don't appear until Level 12.

Going up to Level Eight took me about an hour, and dying twice from the patrol helicopter. So some of the old problems are still there. And this time, the small but real possibility of a beginning player to find a rocket launcher and rocket blueprints are gone. Some places such as the Airport have been overhauled, such as some parts of the place now destructable, such as boards covering some doors. And radiation, which was a factor in places in the early Rust, is back, at least at the power plant area, so the radiation pills one occasionally finds now come in handy.

Currently the XP system is still under development, so it may experience some changes soon. One unknown is how will the XP system change the Player vs Player aspect of the game. If you still get some XP if a raider swipes and uses your stuff, it's not a *complete* loss (though still damn irritating). If you gain XP if someone else eats your food, being generous to the newbies has at least that guaranteed reward. My fellow Rust player Brandi Streusel thought the update would somewhat ease the ruthless nature the game can sometimes take in more active servers ... somewhat. Old habits are hard to break, and some players just love to grief for the sole purpose of making others miserable. In the meantime, core Rust fans and those who keep going back to the land of naked men (and women) with a single rock can see for themselves how this major update affects their own play. 

Sources: Rust Devblog 

One game that me and my Second Life friends have been into lately is "Tree of Life." Designed by OddOneGames, a Korean Indie game company, Tree of Life was first released about a year ago in late May 2015. It is sold as "early access," so it may change a little over time. Like Rust, it's considered a survival game. But the graphics are a little more "cartoony" than it's more edgy counterpart. Starting off with only a simple shirt and pants, players need to gather resources in order to build tools, and then build buildings, plant and harvest crops, make clothes, build weapons, etc.

Players have a number of skills, or masteries, which can be leveled up though experience points. They also have four stats, Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, and Intelligence. Constitution determines the number of hitpoints a player has. Strength determines how hard a player can hitwith melee weapons and what armor they can wear. Leveling a mastery increases a certain stat bya level. For example, raising your mining mastery raises your strength stat by one. Players start out with 100 Strength and 100 Constitution, but they will soon increase as the player goes about in the game.

At the very beginning, survival can be an issue as they player has to deal with hungry wolves, and at night zombies and skeletons, which will attack players on sight. Begining players are advised to stay clear of them, and run when attacked. Hunger can be an issue as when a character's stomach is completely empty, speed will slow to a crawl. Hitpoints are lost only due to hostile attacks, but are restored only when the stomach is at least two-thirds, or 400 of 600 points, full. Players can hit trees to get branches and apples, the latter of which can be eaten for food, and hit rocks on the ground for stones. Stones and rocks can be used to make logging axes to chop down trees into firewood and mining pickaxes to break down rocks into stone and coal and copper nodes into coal, copper, and rocks. When one's Carpentry level is two, one can make a bonfire and cook food. At Carpentry Level 2, one can make a workbench, which is necessary to make a number of items. At Carpentry level five, one can make survival tents and store them.

Unlike some survival games such as Rust, the character does not sleep when the player logs off, but temporarily vanishes. And should a character be killed by NPCs, all that might be lost is whatever item was active in the players hand at the time, so the personal inventory is safe. So the only things that are at risk from other players are one's builds and whatever are stored in them. So players will eventually want to build rusty locks, available at Tinkering Level Four, to secure buildings, and crude watchtowers, available at Carpentry Level Seven, armed with stone arrows, available at Carpentry Level Six, to protect anyone who tries vandalizing your builds.

Safety isn't quite guaranteed as it's possible to pick locks with lockpicks, so eventually as a player levels up in masteries, they will want to eventually build better towers, better arrows, and walls and gates to protect what's theirs. Players can also form and join guilds to both protection and help in common goals. Players have to log in every day at their base, or the builds will soon start to decay. Eventually, an abandoned build will fall apart and the land returning to it's natural state. There's also the ghostly "Mr. Bobo" who wanders around. You can trade goblin coins, which you find on monsters, with him for a few items.

My personal experience with the game is that the Player vs Player aspect is less vicious than Rust, but it does happen. My friend Jasmine/Jazmare joined a guild, but soon saw it was one that pushed around other players, and soon got the attention of other guilds whom eventually harassed it into abandoning their base and moving. But they left her alone when hearing she wanted no further part of them, and later formed another with me and Kryxia. But the base has had a few people try to vandalize and pick it's locks, and once going in and swiping things when somehow a section of wall either decayed or was completely vandalized. On the other hand, there have been a number of helpful players whom are either motivated by finding allies, especially ones with one or more skills higher than they or guildmates, or just want to be helpful to neighbors.

So if Rust is a bit too graphic and ruthless for you, or you just want a break from it and still have a survival game itch, Tree of Life might be the game for you.

More information on the game is available at Tree of Life Wiki .

That's all for now from PC games. As my friend Nydia would say, "good gaming to you."

Bixyl Shuftan

Rust Misdventures in Angel Island and Free Wood

By Bixyl Shuftan

Since writing about the game last time, me and a few of my Second Life friends have continued to play Rust for a while. We've gone through our share of misadventures, in both public and our private server, struggling with decay, bears, wolves, the helicopter, other players, and game reboots from updates.

As expected, my friend Nydia Tungsten did get a private server. She, and others were a bit wary of the "PvP kiddies" from last time, as well as hearing from me and Brandi we were having a little trouble with people breaking in to steal our stuff. One slight problem, making the server "whitelisted" so only we could get in. This would take several minutes, and somehow others found out particular server right away and jumped in before the process was completed. Fortunately, we could look up the map on our computer browser, which was a good thing as that became our first line of defense, or rather of hiding, against the helicopter, which we were learning to fear as a few bursts from it's machine guns or a single volley of it's rockets would send us back to respawning. Someone shouting "CHOPPER!" meant us staying in our bases, heading to an area with buildings or tunnels if nearby, or making a stick shelter to hide if out in the middle of nowhere. Ducking into a small shelter while it was in hot pursuit didn't always help as if you were next to a wall when rockets hit, you were gone. But the long bridges we made across water seemed to do the trick.

Despite Nydia's efforts, she could never fully turn off the decay rate. While it only affected foundations, it didn't take long for a basic stick foundation to crumble into dust, taking anything above with it, unless the floor unit was upgraded into wood, stone or metal. A friend who came with us, Hesh, found out the hard way when he made a basic stick structure a few stories high, and when it decayed away, his sleeping body was found floating in the air high over the ground. We sent him a message in G-chat not to pop in yet, and rebuilt a structure underneath him so he wouldn't be hurt from falling.

Hesh however was slow to learn the lesson. After a server reboot, we had to start over, and he build a barn-like structure around a large furnace. When I came to the server, I visited him, and used the wood I had collected on the way to reinforce the floor in the front part of the barn before I had to leave, parking my body upstairs. When I logged on next time, I found most of the barn gone, only the front up the place, which was over the floor I reinforced, and the large furnace, was left. Hesh had to leave for deployment, as he was in the military, so he left his building to me. So I began rebuilding "Hesh's Barn" as I called it, and maintained it for the next few weeks.

Jasmine also had some bad luck with foundation decay. Not simply rebuilding, she decided to experiment with builds that were a mix of triangular and square bases. She would show us pictures of her design, and I looked at them. Later on, I would put some of them to use.

During this time, we were finding bears were a persistent problem as when we would go into the wilderness to get wood, stone, and ores, they would find us. And once they spotted you, they'd catch up to you and tear you apart. And they seemed to come out from nowhere most of the time, getting them the label "ninja bears" on a public server I would later come across. If you turned to fight them, even a submachine gun was insufficient as the bear would stay up even after a dozen bullets and eat you. Running away, the more natural reaction, almost never worked either. Once or twice after jumping over obstacles, the bear gave up the chase. But other than that, the result was the same, the screen going red, and the speakers filled with the screams of your character dying as the bear tore into him, eating him alive.

If a death happened close enough to one's base, your stuff could usually be recovered. But it didn't take long for a dead body to fade away, and the stuff it carried with it. This had a way of happening after making a great find on a supply plane drop or returning back to our bases with our inventories full after forging into the wilderness. Brandi was trying out places with bear traps around with a clear path through them, so she could pass through while any bears chasing would get caught. I don't know how successful it went. It may be once she was prepared, luck arranged for them to stop coming. The best way to fight the bears I found was when spotting one running around was to set up a foundation and ladder not to far away, and shoot at it with a gun. It would always run up to me, but couldn't reach me if I was on the top of the ladder. It took about twenty pistol or rifle rounds, give or take, to bring down a bear. While the result was lots of leather, animal fat for fuel, and meat, the big reward was a sense of payback for the times one had been "ninja beared" in the woods.

Then there was the helicopter. Our friend Pagan Sunburn soon joined us, and came across a rumor that if one was still naked, the helicopter would ignore them as this was a protection for players just entering the server or recently respawning. We joked he just wanted an excuse to run around naked, myself commenting when those female skins that were being talked about by the developers came out, (s)he'd never put on a scrap of clothing.

The game itself was also updating. We were soon finding occasional 50-unit bits of wood, stone, iron ore and sulfur ore on the ground, which was a help, especially in one's start in a game, or if one got raided and lost everything, in which they could built basic tools faster then making a trek to a nearby permanent structure to search for crates for them. Later on, the wood chunks were reshaped into stumps, and the stone and ore peices given more natural rocklike looks.

We found out the place wasn't truly whitelisted as someone broke in and raided Hesh's barn, and added insult to injury by setting up on the wall a huge sign of a penis with "LOL" underneath. Nydia found the joker, clobbered him, and with him gone blocked him from the server for good. We took down the offensive sign with incendiary bullets. Nydia then set off a mess of flare pistols at Hesh's barn, making it a pile of drops. the most in one location I'd ever seen. I finished rebuilding the barn soon after. I had the idea of making a tower, which went up a bit higher than the barn. But eventually the server would be rebooted by a game update, Nydia called a "world killer," taking down all the builds, including Hesh's barn.

Nydia's server wasn't always up, so I continued to make a few rounds into the "Bunga Bunga" server where Brandi Streussel and I cut our proverbial teeth into the game. Then the server stopped coming up. I then began checking the list of other servers in the game. It's been my experience that public servers that you have to share with a not too large number of others (I've never been on those that have about fifty people at once), you're a little more likely to make it back to base with what you've gathered as settlements seem to cut down on the bear and wolf population. But one can still get unlucky and run into one, as well as hostile players. But keeping hold of your stuff can be a problem as not only would some players steal from others than gather on their own, some seem to make it their mission in life to hit your place again and again.

Among the other Rust servers, I found one called "Free Wood," which gave it's players a full stack of wood, 1000 units every twenty minutes. It also boasted it's helicopter was 80% less accurate. There weren't too many people when I first came across it, and looking around I saw lots of structures, but no people and very little chatter. I also found resources were more plentiful, more wood and stone chunks on the ground that could be picked up, more barrels and boxes one could get stuff from, notably blueprints for which I learned new things to build rapidly. This seemed to be the place for me.

Then I heard a possible reason from what chatter there was why "Free Wood" was relatively quiet. People were talking about a server wipe in a few days. And one day, I returned to see many more people on, and I found myself having to respawn. It turned out I hadn't been clobbered, but the server had restarted after all. Fortunately I still had my skills. But unfortunately with the reboot came some aggressive players, or as I put it, "the freaks came out." Going about collecting wood and stone, I was fired at, "I'm gonna kill ya!" And when I finally had enough animal fat to make the fuel needed for a furnace and began setting up a small base, before I could so much as finish the walls the place was attacked and a burst of submachinegun fire ended, or "wrekt" as was the gamers lingo, my first attempt to make a base in Free Wood rebooted.

Coming back, I had a little more luck as I appeared near the airport. After refining some fuel, I made a large furnace and began building a base. But every day, the place would end up raided. So after getting more fuel, I had to move further away, making a place not to far away from the satellite dish area. People were still trying to break in, but it wasn't as bad, and I began to build the place upward.

In the meantime, Brandi found another public server to try things out, "Garden of Eden." While it was supposed to be Player versus Environment, someone broke into her place activated permissions for himself on the "tool cabinet" that prevents those not on it's list from building around a certain area, and after looting Brandi of everything set up walls around her, trapping her in. She couldn't respawn elsewhere, so could only sit there. I had to log onto the server and find the place. Along the way, I found a revolver in a barrel, and found enough animal fat to make a small furnace to smelt metal for bullets. Getting to her place, I shot up the walls and once again she was free.

Back in Free Wood, the attempts to raid my place were mostly a nuisance. Someone did get to my bedroom area, and tried on me what they tried on Brandi. But with the "free wood" coming in every twenty minutes, I kept making spears and soon punched through the stick walls. Fortunately most of my stuff was in a hardened "vault" room with metal walls and an armored door, so they got little. I eventually built the place up to where it was passing the wires on the power line tower it was built next to. Then the "squirrels" as I called the raiders began to get serious, finding the weak spot in the building permissions area, setting up a makeshift scaffold of basic stick ladder units, and blowing their way through. I logged on to catch one in the act, and seeing him through a hole he had made as he was whacking away with a hatchet, he didn't hear me as I got closer, aimed a weapon, and put his raid to an end, helping to make up for the damage I had to repair.

I noticed others were setting up one square structures around their bases, which obviously had tool cabinets inside. I decided to try that, and made two "nodes" as I called them, planning on making two more the next day. But I was a day too late. When I logged on, I found the "building blocked" tag on my display as I went around. Going to the lower levels, I found to my sorrow that the "squirrels" had gone in through the stone floor by blowing up a section and used the metal still in the furnace to reinforce their hatchets as they chopped their way to where the tool cabinet was, wrecking that then making their own. They managed to break through my designated vault room's metal wall, and used the items there to cause further damage, building all kinds of walls and making the place not truly my own.

Dispirited, I sneaked over to the airport to get more fuel, and headed away to make a new base. Jasmine Dawn had showed me a design for making a base around a large furnace using a mix of square and triangular bases. Finding a spot on a hill overlooking the water treatment plant area, I laid the foundation, a first floor, and part of a second. No raids that night. I continued building, having enough stone from the rocks around me, and if the helicopter showed up while I was out, the plant's tunnels were close by to duck into. It would be a few days until I noticed a stick tower outside: almost certainly someone's idea of trying to raid me by dropping in my place from above. I chopped it down, then quickly built four tool cabinet "nodes" around the place. There were no further raiding attempts after that. Eventually, I began returning to my old tower and eventually chopped down the walls, and took down the raider's tool cabinet and set up my own. It was mine once more.

But victory was short-lived as it was about time for the server to update again. There was also talk about the game itself updating. After the update turned out to be a "world killer," Nydia, Brandi, Jasmine, and I started up the Angel's server once more. We had heard among the changes were the female skins that had been talked about by developers and players in the forums alike for months. But we found instead of being given a choice of whether to be male or female, the game randomized it like it did one's skin color.

Taking a look at my avatar, I found that the familiar "sausage" was gone, and the shape was more slender. Nydia grumbled she was still male, and Jasmine and Brandi were now dark-skinned females. Jasmine had a laugh at me and Nydia, joking we could hold a "genderbender party." But the laughs were short lived as we were soon dealing with the bears again, who loved chasing down and eating female humans just as much as the males. And once the avatars were dressed, one couldn't tell as easily. Nydia took a look at the forums for some comments. Some male players were furious. One took it in stride, cracking a somewhat sexist joke, "I've bled plenty in this game already. It might as well also be from down there." Pagan would come on a time or two, but we never did find out whether our prediction of him/her running around in a nude female avatar all the time came true.

Back in Free Wood, I found not only were the player built buildings gone, but also all our skills except those we entered the server with when we first logged in. Nevertheless, I went ahead, getting fuel from the airport and oil dome, which were in the north, making a temporary base just south of them, then heading south across some rough terrain to near the water treatment plant. After this reboot, activity wasn't as much as it had been the month before. Were players turned off by the skill reboot and rough terrain? I went ahead and began building a base around a large furnace. But I hadn't quite made the foundations high enough around the furnace, and so I couldn't get them all away around. I had to make another furnace at the other end so I could built all away around that. There was nothing else to do with the first furnace but keep it empty when not in use. During the few days I was building the base, there was a raid. I had to place nodes around the "figure 8" as I was calling it, and after that felt secure.

It was about this time events in Nydia's real life were keeping her occupied, so her server stayed down. Brandi took a peek at Free Wood, then Jasmine came in. They also made places near the water treatment plant. Then Jasmine had something she wanted to try, a "roundhouse" design built around a large furnace using square and triangular foundation units. She picked a spot close to my "figure eight" and we both went to work. It didn't take long for the two of us to finish it, then our friend Kryxia came in. All seemed well. There was soon an update in which water buckets and barrels were introduced, which led to a few trips to a nearby stream. One had to keep a bucket in the action bar for the water to stay. We kept a barrel of water in case some joker came by with one of those flamethrowers we'd been hearing about.

Then one day I checked in to find my persona naked and the room full of holes. looking around, the place was a mess. Even the armored vault room had been busted into. Once again, the "squirrels" had probed around until they found a weakness, then hit it with demo charges and jumped in, wrecking the place. The good news, they hadn't touched the tool cabinet. Checking the roundhouse, the damage was worse. They had somehow gotten to the tool cabinet there, smashed down  the door to the way up, and replaced that. The building was no longer truly ours.

With that, the enthusiasm of my friends for Rust had taken a hit, those not occupied by matters in real life no longer coming on. But I had one idea. With talk of a "skill tree," I had logged into an almost empty server to see if anything was different. I didn't notice anything different with skills, but the only sign of other players was when returning, I found a hatchet on me I didn't recall finding the day before. Maybe I could build the roundhouse here, and persuade my friends to come here. I was further encouraged that I finally found the highly coveted rocket launcher blueprint, and so early on too.

Unfortunately, just because there weren't other players, there were still hostiles. I got chopped up by the chopper, and was getting mauled by bears. But somehow, I found a spot, laid down the foundations of a roundhouse, basic walls, and just enough of a second floor to stay hidden from the chopper. The next day, I had enough time to reinforce a quarter of the roundhouse to the point anyone coming across it would have a hard time getting in. It seemed all was well. Then the next day, I found the server had rebooted. The roundhouse was gone. The skills I had learned, including the rocket launcher, gone. And before five minutes had passed, I ran into a bear, and once again died screaming.

I'm not sure how much longer I'll be playing Rust as even my patience has it's limits. But it seems as far as most of my Second Life friends are concerned, they've moved on to other pastures, at least for now. One stated she was tired of the raiders, tired of the "world killer" updates erasing all her work, and would be taking a break for a while, at least until Nydia could get her server running again. And there's no telling when that will be as right now, the game is the least of her worries.

So perhaps it's about time to move on to another game. As soon as there's one me and my circle of Second Life friends like, we'll let you know.

On a final note, I've heard stories about players and teams accomplishing great builds with Rust, such as "Paradise Island" in which a place resembling an inviting looking resort was crafted. Then there was "The Great Wall of Rust" in which a team braved glitches, bears, and saboteurs in order to build a wall across the width of their server's island, and came close to succeeding (WARNING: video contains male nudity). Then someone made a game in the game, a maze in which players had to navigate, braving traps, in order to get the prize at the end. Then there was the "City Council Arena" of which it was stated took teams seven days to farm materials and build. There are also fanworks in which players have made Rust items in real life.

So yes, the game does attract people who would rather build than wreck other peoples' stuff. It's just that they never seem to be around your particular public server. In the meantime, avoid windows on the first floor, use metal bars on windows on the first few floors, and don't be afraid to use some of the metal you're saving up on the first and second floor's walls and the foundation under them: raiders can't steal what's been used.

Bixyl Shuftan

Return to Rust

By Bixyl Shuftan

It was about two years ago when my gaming friend Nydia Tungsten and I found out about "Rust." For those whom haven't read our previous articles on the game, it is a survival game developed by Facepunch Studios in early 2014 that at the time was loosely compared to "Minecraft," and "Day Z." The game had no "score," rather the player woke up naked with nothing but a rock and a torch in the middle of a wilderness marked by a road with occasional abandoned buildings along the way. Standing in the player's immediate goal of survival were bears, wolves, zombies, and other players. The players could use the rock they started out with to gather wood, stone, metal, and sulphur to make tools, harvest meat and skins from animals to build up health, get food, weapons, and blueprints to make things from containers in buildings. On occasion, there would be an airdrop that potentially had valuable goods, such as metal building parts and automatic weapons. To help them stay alive and preserve their stuff, players built bases, either their own or a few getting together to make one. People had to log in at least every couple days or their buildings would slowly decay, or "rust," away.

The biggest obstacle of the game were hostile gamers. While many, perhaps most, were content to just go about their way, there were some whom seemed inclined to shoot anyone on sight and raid any place they could rather than work and harvest stuff on their own, whom Nydia named the "PvP kiddies."

Still in open alpha development, Nydia and I and our friends gave it a try. We had fun for a while, building up our combined base. There were a few changes over time. Early on, the zombies were dropped, replaced with mutant red bears and wolves. Some players complained, but the developers stated they didn't want their game to be just another "zombie MMO." Over time, we saw some creative builds by other players. But unfortunately, we were having to spend more and more time rebuilding from our bases being broken into and finding resources to replace what was stolen. Eventually, Nydia and her friends got tired of dealing with the "PvP kiddies" and left Rust behind for other games.

A few months later, I heard the game was updating. So I gave it another look. On the plus side, there was less of a danger of starving if you couldn't find food on the first day. There were also rivers and streams introduced. But the roads were gone, and there weren't much structures around (so I noticed), so finding one's way about was pretty hard. I couldn't find any crates or other containers, so I couldn't find any cloth to make even a pair of pants for my naked character. One also couldn't make building parts at the start. So it was time to abandon the game and go with the games my friends had taken up. Rust did make gaming news some months later when they introduced black skins to some of the players. But there was some controversy as the choice was taken away from the players, "just like in real life, you are who you are - you can't change your skin color or your face." While there was "a definite uptick in overly racist language," the big issue seemed to be that some people "have a strange need to play someone similar to themselves in games." While female skins were eventually made, so far they are limited to members of the development team.

It was in the tail end of December 2015 when Nydia's friend Brandi Streussel decided to take a peek at the game. So I decided to check things out. The first thing I noticed was it was taking much longer to load than last time. Once in, I began looking around for resources, and it wasn't long before I found there had been further changes to the game. The roads were back, and not only were the containers back, there were a greater variety of them, sometimes appearing as metal drums, trash cans, and half-torn boxes, but they could appear away from buildings. There were "hemp plants," which could be harvested for cloth. It was a welcome addition as there had been times in the old Rust it took a while before I found a container or critter to clobber.

Going about, there was more marking the terrain than just roads. There were power lines and towers dotting the landscape, which were a help in finding my way around. The smaller ones by the road had an occasional "Lost dog" ad, and the roads had signs by them, ones that were a bit weathered and sometimes spray painted. Like in the early Rust, there were groups of abandoned structures. They were not always buildings, one group being a pair of no longer active huge radio reception receivers. They are a little more detailed than before. Some with electric lights that provide illumination at night. There are also sewers residents can go down into and look around for supplies. Radioactive areas are less of a problem as I have yet to come across any, though as I have come across anti-radiation pills that presumably suggests there's one or more around somewhere. With rivers and rain now a feature, one  can now get wet, showing up as a percentage on the HUD. It doesn't usually affect you, aside from making it more likely to get cold.

Building your own structures has changed. You use some wood to make piece of paper, then use the paper to make a floorplan. Once you have the floorplan, just put it in your inventory bar at the bottom, activate it, and move it to the spot where you want to build. If it's red, move to another spot. if it's blue, just click and you have a foundation, which you can add to by moving it to adjacent sides and as long as the marker's still blue and you have the wood, you can build. To get walls, doorways, stairs, ceilings, and other sections, just press the Shift button while the marker is up, and you get a menu of which kind of section you want next. Doors, window bars, and shutters are not part of this system, but are created like other items and placed by putting them in your action bar, activating it, and placing it where you want the part to go.

When first set up though, building parts are rather flimsy and won't take much punishment from other players before they collapse. To strengthen them, build a wooden hammer. And when it's active in your action bar, the building part it's near will be highlighted green and can be upgraded. There are five levels for building structures: wood, stone, metal, and armored. At the beginning, stone is the strongest you can make the walls of a sizable structure, but it should keep out raiders whom have yet to get explosives. Judging from the abandoned buildings I saw while exploring, players need to keep logging in, or their structures will decay, or "Rust" back into the wilderness.

There's a greater variety of tools, clothes, and other items one can make. As before, you'll need blueprints to learn to make some, such as machetes, helmets, and metal hatchets. Also as before, to make use of the metal and sulfur you get from harvestable boulders, in addition to the high quality metal that's been added to the game, you'll need a furnace. Getting the low grade fuel to make one, you'll either need animal fat from clobbered critters, or refine crude oil found at certain containers at certain buildings and refined in furnaces. So now one can get fuel without "killing Bambi." As before, items wear out over time from use. To fix them, one needs a workbench and certain materials, such as wood and metal fragments in the case of repairing wooden hatchets. Once one gets the blueprints, one can build larger furnaces to smelt more metal at once. Once you get the blueprints, one can also build mining quarries to harvest ores and rock directly from a piece of land instead of looking around for harvestable boulders. But the ratio of what can be harvested varies from place to place. So it's best to use a survey charge first and examine the chunks of rock that result.

As in the old Rust, there are things out there that want to eat you, the bears and wolves. Gone are the red critters, so no special goodies beyond meat and leather if you clobber one. Instead, it's one less thing that's out to get you. One difference in the game is in the old Rust, you could outrun a bear, and keep away from a wolf if you kept running. This time, they run faster than you do. if you run into one going through a bush and are armed with only a bow and arrow, it's goodbye as they catch up to you and chow down on your screaming body. There's also a NPC helicopter that flies from place to place. If it sees you, it will fire it's machine guns, and possibly rockets, at you. So far with the chopper, I have yet to find a weapon that offers an alternative to running and hiding. Like the old Rust, there is still the plane occasionally flying overhead and doing a drop. And there are still the pigs you can hunt down on foot with just an axe. After all this time, it's still satisfying to chase and take down a piggy (at least for me). Besides the deer, there are now horses trotting about. If one can harvest things different things from them from deer, I don't know as I didn't have the heart to take one down, preferring to wait longer for a stag or pig.

It should also be noted as a "Survival MMO," some servers are listed as PvP active or "Player versus Player." So far, my experience with the game has been with one server marked PvE or "Player versus Environment." Unlike Ark, in which players can't directly hurt anyone in a server where PvP combat is disallowed, a server's PvE status is supposed to be enforced by administrators. In the old Rust, we had trouble when some players ignored that and kept going after us. In this one, we've had a little trouble with people breaking in and stealing things. It hasn't quite reached the level we had in the old Rust yet. But it does leave me, and others, to wonder a little if there's truly such a thing as a true public PvE server in Rust.

It should be noted the game is still in development and still changing, officially described as in "early access." When Brandi and I first started, besides the harvestable boulders, there were smaller rocks and chunks of iron and sulfur on the ground one could simply pick up. But after the update in early January, they were gone. At Christmastime, there was a treat for the players in the form of presents that would occasional appear, "Ho ho ho!"

In developer Gary Newman's 2015 review, he's described himself as learning some lessons over time. Among them, "Don’t be afraid of the reaction of people on the Internet. The first reaction is always outrage, and is usually from people who haven’t played the game for months." He also has a few plans for further developments, such as Experience, Blueprint, and Skills systems, things to add variety to experiences, such as the occasional apple or birds nest with eggs when chopping trees, and being able to throw meat to distract bears and wolves.

So two years later, Rust is still around and has life in it.

As I was finishing up this article, Nydia told me she was getting a private server for her friends. So there may be some more "Return to Rust" tales in the future.

Sources: playrust.com, kotaku, wiki.facepunch.com

Bixyl Shuftan