Rust's 'pivot Or Die' Update Was Meant To Shake Up The Meta, But...

Facepunch demanded that Rust players 'Pivot or Die' with its latest update to progression changes this month, and it's not lookin' too hot for solo survivors or small groups trying to pivot. Opting out of big clans on official servers has never been the easiest way to play Rust, but recent monument, scrap, and blueprint reworks have turned the island into a real bloodbath—moreso than usual.

Historically, scrap has been pretty easy to get, and its abundance throughout the map made crafting upgraded workbenches easy. Playing it safe and farming scrap around your base meant fewer people out in the world for PvP, but the strategy worked. As a solo player, I could visit monuments to find a little treat, but I didn't need to venture into the wild as soon as possible.

The update largely reduces scrap cost, but tacks on a new material requirement with two types of Blueprint Fragments. You can get lucky and find some of them, but monuments have guaranteed drops in special puzzle rooms. The changes would make more sense if clan domination was the goal, but the October blog on the meta shift specifically notes it's for "creating a soft progression gate that pushes players into early fights and slows down clan snowballing." Nailed the former, not so sure about the latter.

I understand the team's desire to incentivize players to leave their bases. I'm guilty of cowering in my overly fortified home with wall-to-wall shotgun traps, but I didn't see how the blueprint shake up would get us there. The October update offered us a first draft, adding five Basic Blueprint Fragments to the Tier 2 Workbench recipe, and five advanced fragments to the Tier 3 Workbench.

You can get lucky and find basic fragments, and I almost made it to the Tier 2 upgrade just by killing and looting junkpile scientists. Amassing 20 basic frags can get you one advanced fragment closer to the Tier 3 bench, but that's a helluva grind to get the five you need. Advanced fragment drops are way harder to come by, but monument puzzle rooms are a guaranteed way to source both fragments. So there's your incentive to get out into the world and fistfight 50 other naked guys in front of a nuclear missile silo.

That's all pain enough if you don't want to commit to a lot of PvP, but monument loot refresh times further complicated the matter. In October, the puzzle rooms reset every 30 minutes, but the timer paused if a player was within its radius. As you can imagine, everyone was totally chill about this an

Source: PC Gamer