It's that time of the month again! We've finally reached the next Rust wipe, and a brand new batch of content with the Spring Clean update. This means new items, buildables, patch notes, and more. So, keep reading to learn what to expect in the Rust April 2026 Server Wipe!

Rust April 2026 Wipe Date

The Rust April 2026 wipe release date lands on April 2nd, 2026, keeping in line with the game's force wipe on the first Thursday of every month. The patch notes went live on the same day, and you can check out their highlights as well as the full notes below!

What's New in the Rust April 2026 Wipe? (Spring Clean Update)

Note: Image courtesy of Protox. April 2nd will mark the release of the Spring Clean update, coinciding with the April wipe. This will go live at 6PM UTC. Here are some of the biggest new feature inclusions:

• New Skinnable Item: The Salvaged Axe
• Shield Hitbox Changes
• New Water Wheel
• New Armored Ladder Hatch
• Updated console UI
• Hot Air Balloon now has an altimeter
• New Easter Cosmetics
• Multi-Unlock for Tech Trees

Of course, two of the biggest confirmed attractions are the new Water Wheel and Armored Ladder Hatch, but the patch features plenty more as well, including a long-awaited shield hitbox nerf to help regulate the meta.

Water Wheel

It's always nice to have another way to generate power in Rust. With the Water Wheel, you'll have the option to create a base near a water source and get some free electricity for your trouble. To learn how to craft a Water Wheel, head to an Engineering Workbench and spend 60 scrap. To craft it, you need the following:

• 500x Wood
• 2x Gears
• 1x Sheet Metal

There are a few things to keep in mind, however. First, the Water Wheel must be placed parallel to the water's flow. If you have a perpendicular wheel, it won't move at all. Additionally, you need at least two spaces clear between the Water Wheel and the flow of the river. If the current is being blocked by a wall or a different building piece, it will only generate a single watt of power rather than its typical 30 watts. Now, you might think that a Water Wheel is only useful if you're near water. Not true! You can actually place one inside your base on land, and hop into the wheel yourself. Run around the interior like a hamster, and you can create up to 60 watts of power. Of course, the wheel will stop generating electricity once you leave the wheel, but it could be handy if you're in a pinch for more juice, or if you're looking for some exercise!

Armored Ladder Hatch

Ah, the perfect way to keep pesky intruders from climbing up your ladders. With an Armored Ladder Hatch, it will be more difficult than ever for unwanted guests to move through your base. These handy hatches will come in two shapes: triangle and square. Regardless of the shape you choose, each hatch will have 1000 HP. And while it's obviously breakable, that health means a hefty chunk of necessary raid materials, adding up to roughly five rockets or two bundles of C4 per hatch. Additionally, you can make your base nigh impregnable by stacking Armored Ladder Hatches if you know a big raid is coming. To craft an Armored Ladder Hatch, you'll need to access the Level 3 Workbench. Here are the materials needed to craft one:

• 35x High Quality Metal
• 6x Gears
• 1x Wooden Ladder

Shield Hitbox Changes

After having a very frustrating effect on the combat meta, the dreaded Rust shield is finally getting some hitbox nerfs in the April 2026 wipe update! No longer will the shield cover half of a character wielding it. Instead, the hitbox will be based on whether you are actively holding up the shield. When idle, the shield uses a much smaller square hitbox. There was also a bug fix related to recoil experienced when shooting at a shield, which was originally intended to apply only to melee weapons.

Rust April Wipe 2026 Patch Notes (Spring Clean Update)

New Features

• Armored Ladder Hatches
• New Water Wheel Deployable
• Shield Hitbox Nerfs
• Tech Tree Multi-Unlocking
• Overfishing
• Demo Dubbing System
• New F1 Menu
• Coloured Buttons
• Light Toggle Radial Menu
• Hot Air Balloon Altimeter
• New Easter Cosmetics

Improvements

• Removed mesh assets from server that aren’t used, saves memory and disk space
• Adjusted hitbox of shields while they are idle
• Improved performance of player animation updates over the network (bandwidth reduction)
• Can now mouse over empty slots on the engine UI to see the names of missing car parts
• Reduced physics overhead of checking for player distances to AI zones
• Salvaged Axe Remake including new textures, new model and new animations
• Medical syringe remake including new textures, new model and new animations
• Skin viewer resolution is now matching the resolution set in the graphics settings
• Can now set the reset value of the IO counter
• Chat channel tag colours can now be set in the accessibility settings
• Watchtowers can no longer be spam placed next to each other
• Added teleportboat2marker, teleportboatpos and teleportboat2grid commands
• Chainsaw now always hits the X when farming trees
• Added convars for server owners to configure RCON / Rust+ connection limits
• Improved network groups to support increased/decreased network ranges for certain entities
• Entities are now networked in a circle around players instead of a square
• Improved underground tunnels network culling
• Improved compression on .map files
• Trying to loot other players in safe zones now shows a popup
• Added a button to mute players in the admin server tab
• Added AI generated descriptions for missing console command descriptions
• Improved tech tree animations and sounds
• Console autocomplete now shows server commands, to admins
• Improved dropped item clipping behaviour on boats
• Increased plant ripeness from 14h to 24h
• Further server optimisations for WorldPositionGenerator, in turn speeding up some slow occurrences of the UpdateMissionValidStateWorkQueue
• Added 'ESPCanvas.ShowVoip' convar to display an icon on players who are using in-game voice chat whilst the ESPCanvas is active
• Added 'global.spectatebots' convar to be able to spectate bots spawned via the 'spawn player' command
• Upon spectating a player their SteamID will now be displayed alongside their display name in the chat window
• Added new game setting under UI→Misc to modify preferences for monument/world notification messages and sounds. Convar is 'ui.worldnotifications'
• Added a visual indicator to distinguish between sleeping bags in the deep sea / mainland when on the death screen
• [Optim] UsePlayerUpdateJobs ServerVar now recognized level 3 - use of UniTask and parallization of AntiHack + Network Streaming update
• [Optim] We no longer flush network queue per player when streaming out the network grid
• [Optim] InvokeHandler preserves scattering of invokes after a lag spike, which maintains it's load balancing state
• [Optim] Object Work Queues now dynamically increase their minimum capacity to reduce average allocation count (can use debug.printqueues to monitor capacity)
• [Optim] Building and shooting should have less allocations
• [Optim] Lazy Network.Group internals are lazy allocated, reducing memory consumption

Fixed

• Fixed Combat Knife and Sunken Combat Knife orientation on single weapon racks as well as their projectile rotation axis
• Fixed Storage Box DLC Food Box missing softcore mode corpse prefab
• Fixed Door Knocker deploy guides having incorrect rotations
• Fixed a case where opening doors with explosives attached would allow explosives to travel through walls
• Fixed easter eggs in demos not bouncing up and down
• Fixed slight extra recoil when shooting a shield (still applies for melee weapons)
• Square ladder hatches are now flush with the floor
• Fixed some visual props disappearing when on a moving Train Caboose (also Nexus ferry)
• Fixed a rare error when wiping the deep sea due to the planters on the Floating City
• Fixed a case where Industrial Conveyors with a minimum filter would still transfer items if other items were passing their filter
• Fixed MIDI compatibility with latest Windows update
• Possible fix for delayed voice chat during long play sessions or large player numbers
• Fixed igniter working with 1 power instead of the required 2
• Fixed wire tool invalidating connection when clearing a wire while having a pending wire (regression from last month)
• Fixed compression artifacts on item icons
• Fixed battering ram being deployable onto boat building station netting
• Fixed water junk piles spawning too close to water monuments
• Fixed junkpiles spawning on sleeping bags
• Clan map name tags now respect clannametagcolour
• Fixed boat deployable sound loops getting cleared
• Fixed freshly wiped servers always starting out raining
• Fixed a travelling vendor server error
• Fixed fog being too intense when viewing cctv cameras
• Fixed a cassette error when spectating
• Fixed shutter frames making sound when painting on them
• Fixed not being able to loot bags of destroyed containers in safe zones
• Fixed an exploit allowing players to teleport into boats
• Fixed deep pits in monuments causing a black screen effect on some maps
• Fixed bunny ears and bunny onesie not showing up in conveyor filters
• Fixed an exploit allowing researching of blueprints in the tutorial
• Fixed shotgun traps and flame turrets working underwater on sunk boats
• Fixed an issue with fog of war maps uncovering small strips at the map edges
• Fixed the flame on oil rigs having its smoke offset
• Fixed only a single row of items loading in the main menu inventory until scrolling
• Fixed rubberbanding after respawning in a camper van
• Fixed getting kicked for RPC flooding when looking at IO handles in certain situations
• Fixed the first sleeping bag placed by a player not having a cooldown
• Fixed a pooling issue causing windows to sometimes have random textures or icons painted on them
• Fixed being unable to purchase items from boat shopkeepers on floating cities via their vending machine style interface
• Fixed paintball pellets fired from turrets sometimes being the wrong colour
• Players inside the deep sea will no longer be notified of world events happening outside the deep sea
• Fixed not being able to open chat whilst spectating in 3rd person
• Fixed vitals UI not updating whilst spectating in 3rd person
• Spectating a player that disconnects now always keeps camera in their location
• Fixed ServerProfiler getting stuck in a loop on Linux servers (March hotfix)
• Fixed NRE in Server Occlusion logic when player enters a null network group (March hotfix)
• Fixed players not moving in demos on servers running UsePlayerUpdateJobs 2 or higher
• Fixed for 3p camera not working in demos

What to Expect for Rust in Future Updates (2026 Roadmap)

Aside from the changes and new features previously mentioned, developer Facepunch Studios also added a section called “Stretch Goals” to Rust’s Roadmap on the game’s official website. These are the objectives the devs want to add to the game in future patches. With that, Rust players may also see the following additions in the game sometime soon:

• Programmable robots
• Heat spreading through bases
• Global network bases
• Cobalt guard towers
• Dead whales
• Player basement blocks
• Base renovation
• Bridges
• Improved rivers
• Bounty system
• Updated mission systems
• BDU/Kevlar
• M79 Grenade Launcher
• Uzi 9mm
• G3A3
• Railway Handcar
• More unique world environments
• Farming 2.5 – plantable trees
• More endgame power generators
• Culling inside bases
• Advanced crafters
• DOT matrix screens
• Switchboards/Circuit boards
• Computers
• Cobalt hovercrafts
• Pet dogs
• Frogs