Rust wipe schedule explained

When is the next Rust force wipe?[1]

The Rust force wipe lands on the first Thursday of each month at 19:00 UTC, alongside the monthly update. Facepunch has held that slot consistently for years, so you can plan a wipe night around it. Every official server wipes its map at that moment.

Servers receive the update before clients do. That gap is why the server browser fills with servers you cannot join for a short window after the wipe: they are already on the new build while your client is still downloading it. Restart Steam if the update does not appear on its own.

Because it is the one moment everybody restarts together, force wipe evening is by far the busiest few hours of the Rust month. Servers that sit at a third full mid-month will queue on force wipe night.

What is the difference between a map wipe and a BP wipe?[2]

A map wipe regenerates the world and deletes every structure and container, but you keep the blueprints you learned. A blueprint wipe additionally erases that research, so everyone restarts from stone tools and has to re-learn the tech tree from scratch.

The practical difference is how long the early game lasts. After a map wipe a geared player can be back in decent kit within an hour or two. After a blueprint wipe the same player is farming scrap for the tech tree like everyone else, which is why BP wipes feel like the fairest starting point.

Map wipe

The world regenerates. Bases, boxes and loot are gone. Learned blueprints survive, so you can craft your way back to where you were quickly.

Blueprint wipe

Everything a map wipe clears, plus your researched blueprints. The early game genuinely restarts, and scrap becomes the bottleneck again.

Force wipe

The monthly Facepunch wipe on the first Thursday. On default settings this is a map wipe and a blueprint wipe together.

Why do modded servers wipe more often than official ones?

Boosted gather rates compress progression. On a 5x server the work that fills a month of vanilla play is done in a few days, so the wipe would otherwise stagnate. Extra map wipes between force wipes reset the board while keeping blueprints, which is what keeps a modded server busy.

This is why most modded servers run two map wipes a week and let blueprints ride until the monthly force wipe. You get a fresh map and a fresh fight regularly without being sent back to stone tools every time.

The trade-off is worth understanding before you pick a server. Frequent wipes suit players with a few hours at a time who want to build, fight and finish. Infrequent wipes suit players who want a long project and a base that lasts.

How should I plan around wipe day?

Spend the last day before a wipe using what you have rather than hoarding it, because none of it carries over. On wipe day itself, log in near the wipe time: the first hour decides map position, and good spots are gone quickly on a busy server.

A common mistake is farming right up to the wipe. Sulfur in a box at wipe time is wasted sulfur. If you are sitting on explosives the day before, spend them.

The other half is placement. Arriving two hours late on a full server usually means building somewhere worse, next to people who are already ahead of you.