Hey Bumfuzzlers! Lots of gameplay tweaks to all sorts of topics like skipping a night, Jason Voorhees, the SuperHeli, in-game store commands, power tools, clans & groups, how the bot’s name voting is going, and more! Get feasting on the words below! 🙂
Skip Darkness
I made a couple of tweaks to the way the Skip Night works to hopefully improve the usability.
Here’s what I changed:
- The vote now stays open 90 seconds instead of 240.
- Why have it on the screen for 4 minutes?
- It raises the chance of a night
- On a successful vote, it changes the time to 9:00 instead of 8:00.
- I found the jolt of going from 18:00 to 8:00 to be jarring. 18:00 is mostly light, but 8:00 is slightly dark.
- Now you should only be asked once to vote instead of 3 times throughout the night.
Hopefully, this makes the feature a bit more seamless.
Jason Voorhees
I’ve been meaning to make a few changes to Jason. Honestly, he’s not killing enough people!
Here’s what I changed:
- Health slightly increased
- Spawning radius increased
- Now it’s harder to know where he might be
- Accuracy was slightly increased
- Damage was slightly increased
- Respawn time was doubled
- De-aggression range was increased
- He’ll now follow you further
- Metal Chest Plate removed in favor of road sign armor
Thanks to Doc for the feedback.
Clans & Groups
The server is a solo/duo/trio server. This means that groups of 1, 2 and 3 are acceptable while any group above 3 is not. It’s in the server title and description and it’s common terminology for Rust that most people understand.
This limitation is put in place because groups larger than 3 would easily dominate a group of two and surely a solo player. Smaller groups make up the majority of most Rust servers and they need to feel ‘reasonably’ comfortable about their chances of survival. From the server’s perspective, a group of 6 joins the server, they raid the smaller groups at will, those smaller groups leave, the large group has no one to raid, they themselves move on and leave the server without players. Thus, they ruin the experience for everyone.
Given that I recently saw behavior that violated this limitation, I posted about it in Discord and now am writing this to make sure everyone is on the same page because, afterward, it appeared some of you expressed confusion. So let me clarify further and explain some changes I made:
- Groups of more than 3, working together, are not allowed.
- Working together is defined as, on multiple occasions – raiding, sharing resources, sharing bases, being friends to give access to cupboards and doors, friendly-fire, etc.
- Trading is encouraged for anyone, clan to clan, solo to a clan, etc. Obviously trading C4 for 1 wood to share resources isn’t.
- Sharing items and resources with new players to get them on their feet is a noble practice and is allowed.
- I’ve disabled the clan alliance feature in clans (/clan) to discourage groups working together.
- I’ve limited friends to 3 (/fmenu).
So here’s a little FAQ for those who are still confused:
Q: If two people raid who aren’t part of the same clan is that ok?
A: Sure. It’s only two people. However, if either of those people, at some other time, work together with larger groups of 3, that’s a no-no because it will equal 4 or 5 players technically. The two people may want to form a clan if they work together often (/clan) and work as a duo.
Q: I raided with one player last week, then a different player today, and tomorrow I’m raiding with someone else. Is that ok?
A: It’s not a direct violation, but I would suggest not giving off the impression that you’re part of a larger group. It would seem as though you’re in a group with 4 people.
Q: I’m in a clan with two members. Can I raid or take down the SuperHeli with a solo player?
A: Sure. That’s only 3 players. I would however strongly suggest you make them part of your clan and don’t change out that 3rd person every other day. It’s like the previous situation.
Q: What if I was part of a clan, then I left and now I’m still friends with one of them? They have 3 members and I’m playing solo now.
A: You need to unfriend them (/fmenu). Otherwise, you’re still sharing resources because you’ll have access to each other’s locations, doors, cupboards, friendly-fire, etc.
Q: Is giving a player items a violation of this rule?
A: No, it’s not, but there’s a difference between giving a new player or a recently raided solo player an item or two out of kindness and giving another group items in an effort to work together somehow. The intention here is important.
You get the idea I think. You is all smarwt poeple. The idea is to ensure you don’t leverage the strength of a group larger than 3 people because it would be considered ‘ganging up’. If players believe they’ll be steamrolled, it’s doubtful they’ll want to play.
I’ll do my best to be fair about this, investigate and ask questions, but if you screw with me and you’re dishonest, I’ll know. Please be reasonable and fair with me and you’ll get that same fairness in return. For this wipe and for first-time offenders, I’ll be giving warnings. After warnings, I’ll be giving out temporary bans of longer and longer duration.
Super Heli
There were a couple of things that needed changing so I did a little review of the SuperHeli settings.
Here’s what I changed:
- I modified the way the SuperHeli is purchased from the store (/s) so now it’s more reliable than /callheli
- Napalm is disabled for now. It causes too much lag. This, unfortunately, disables fires at the crash site. It’s a temporary fix.
- I’ve raised the SuperHeli’s health slightly.
- I’ve given the SuperHeli more rockets so it doesn’t run out.
- The SuperHeli will now stick around for 10 minutes instead of 7. /callheli however may not abide by this.
- The /callheli cooldowns have been adjusted:
- Level 17 (/loyalty): 6-hour cooldown
- Level 23 (/loyalty): 3-hour cooldown
- Level 27 (/loyalty): 1.5-hour cooldown
Keep in mind buying the SuperHeli from the store is far more reliable than using the /callheli command, but that doesn’t mean it’s perfect. In testing, I’ve never had it fail to come, but some players suggested that does happen. This happens far more with the /callheli command, but that of course is free.
Be careful not to call the helicopter when another one is present. There’s a limit of 1 SuperHeli in the world and exceeding that will ensure your called /callheli will go bye-bye automatically.
Thanks to Doc and Fakiee for the feedback.
In-Game Store
For a while, there’s been some less than desirable behavior from the store when purchasing commands. For one, calling the SuperHeli was spotty at best. Secondly, some commands like buying night and day left players completely confused since day just switched to night without warning.
Here’s what I’ve changed:
- As mentioned, the SuperHeli on call is more reliable.
- Every command you buy, with the exception of Turbo Boost, will send a message to the server letting them know you purchased it.
- The SuperHeli purchase was raised from $250 to $300
- The Meteor Shower was lowered from $500 to $450
Thanks to Doc for the feedback.
Power Tools
The Jackhammer and Chainsaw may have been a little too easy to find so I’ve done a little tweaking to it.
Here’s what I changed:
- The chainsaw is slightly rarer
- You can only find the Chainsaw and Jackhammer in the following places
- Code Locked Crate
- Military Crate
- Advanced Underwater Crate
- I’ve removed the blueprints for chainsaw and jackhammer from the store (/s)
Now that these work with Z-levels, they should be more important and accordingly no one should get 8 of them at the start of a wipe.
Thanks for the feedback TheFireChef and DFGSlimJim.
Various Issues & Fixes
After this recent patch, we had a few issues and there are still some outstanding, but I’m working on them. Here’s a quick listing.
Fixed
- Recycler (/rec) wouldn’t craft – Thanks for feedback Naraskgrim
- /up command doesn’t work – Thanks for feedback Doc
Outstanding
- Duel (/duel) kit isn’t available when being in top 3 spots – Thanks for feedback Naraskgrim
- /fireworks command doesn’t work – Thanks for feedback Howdy
- Leaderboard (/pc) tags aren’t working – Thanks for feedback Doc & TheFireChef
I’m sure there’s more issues waiting to be found, but this is what I know or remember right now. Let me know if you find anything else and I’ll work on them.
Server Promotion
I’ve had a couple of you ask how you can help promote the server and I’m extremely humbled and grateful you would do that.
Here are a couple of ways to promote:
- Vote daily
- Click Vote in the website menu at the top
- This ranks the server at www.rust-servers.net
- This gives you daily signals and a few economy bucks in the game.
- Did you know the more you vote the more you get? There are tiers of 50, 100 and 250 for voting counts. If you vote 250 times you get 5 signals each time.
- Upvote Steam Group Posts
- When I post on the website, I post in the Steam Group
- Give the posts a thumbs up so it shows in your Steam feed
- Leave a comment and/or subscribe to the thread
- Use www.bumfuzzler.net elsewhere on the net
- If you make posts or drop links, it helps boost the ranking among search engines for the website
- Reddit posts
- I make posts on Reddit to promote the server
- Upvoting these posts creates tremendous visibility, most posts get 1 upvote at most so even two help a lot
- Stream playing on the server
- Stream yourself playing on the server
- If you have a Twitch account and you regularly steam, send it by. I’ll promote you too.
- Tell your friends
- Word of mouth is probably the best way to promote
- Gift Rust, it’s just $8 until July 9th with the Summer Sale
Be creative! I just ask that you don’t romote Bumfuzzlertopia on other servers or in any way disparage other server admins or servers in order to promote. That’s not cool and I wouldn’t like it if someone else did that the other way around.
Ore Population
A couple of people complained that ores were hard to come by. Most likely that was due to them being in the snow or desert because, after a review, it appears they were low in those biomes. The grassy areas had a good amount already.
I’ve gone ahead and raised the density of ores:
- Raised ores in snow biome 166%
- Raised ores in desert biome 201%
This should make ore a lot easier to find.
Naming the Bot
We’ve had the poll up for a few days now and we have some clear front-runners! I’m going to let it run until the next wipe I think.
Here’s what we have for the top 3:
- Earl
- Trump Jr.
- Donald, Donald Jr., Otis (tied for 3rd)
If you haven’t voted, don’t miss out! I’ve put a new poll up that only includes these 5 values for the final run!
The feedback has been flowing mightily and for that, I am truly appreciative. I can’t stress how important it is that I receive your thoughts. I can’t stress enough how important it is that you know I am always open to hearing what you think and I’ll strongly consider all suggestions. I try my best to carefully listen. Keep it flowing and we’ll constantly adjust the server for the better.
All you Bumfuzzlers have fun out there!
