Rust Livestock Changes: Shears, Animal Repellent and Young Animals

Facepunch is still building on the livestock system that came out in October. Commits from October 17 to 26 add a new shears tool that gets more wool from sheep, make the animal repellent buff stop bulls, rams, bee swarms and sharks from coming after you, and fix several problems with young animals, troughs and fences.

This is work in progress on development branches. None of it has a release date yet, and the numbers could change before it ships. Here is what the commits show.

New shears for sheep

Right now you shear sheep with a knife or another blade. A new shears item is being balanced for the job. The balance commit lists what it does compared to a knife:

• 25 percent more wool. That is 12 to 13 wool per sheep instead of 10, before the Yield gene is counted.
• Double the durability of the knife.
• Half the damage of the knife. The commit says this is so accidental hits, or using it on a lamb, hurt the animal less.

Other blades still shear exactly as they do today, so a knife keeps working. A follow-up commit added the missing files and spells out the numbers: durability 200 (twice the knife) and damage of 4 slash plus 4 stab. There is also an animation polish pass for the shears from earlier in the month.

If you keep a flock, shears look like the tool you will want for wool runs. The commits do not say yet how you get them, whether by crafting, a vendor or loot.

Animal repellent gets stronger

Rust has an animal repellent buff. The commits name the Croc pie as one source. On October 26 it got a set of changes:

• Bee swarms will no longer chase you while the buff is active. You can still get stung if you walk right through a swarm.
• Bulls and rams will not charge you while you have the buff. The same commit says they will also no longer flee from you.
• Sharks now flee from players who have the repellent buff.

Earlier work set up a shared "flee from repellent" state that different animals can use (commit), which is likely why so many animals are getting it at once. That last part is our guess from the commit wording.

For farmers, the bull and ram change is the big one. Walking into a pen with an angry bull is one of the riskier parts of livestock today.

Young animals and troughs

Baby animals stay near their mother on a kind of leash. That caused a problem: if the trough was outside that range, the young animal could not reach it and got stuck with low hunger. A new commit lets young animals leave their mother's range to eat from a trough, so they stop starving in pens.

There is also polish for adult animals. Cows now turn and walk away from a trough with a new animation after eating.

Fences on slopes

Animal fences and gates are now easier to place on sloped ground. If you tried to build a pen on a hill and kept getting blocked, this should help once it ships.

Leading animals and the livestock vendor

A few smaller fixes from the same weeks:

• You can now load a sheep onto a small vehicle module while also leading a cow. That used to fail.
• The boosts panel in your inventory no longer shows a movement speed modifier while you lead animals or pull siege weapons.
• The livestock vendor gets a new dialogue stage when you bring a young animal, and more explanation of the "potential" system. The commit does not say what potential means. Our guess is it ties to the animal genes, since those set how good an animal can become.
• Young animals now show last in the vendor list so they do not push out the animals you can actually sell.

For how the base system works today, see our Livestock update post and the Rust farming guide.

When will these changes ship?

There is no date. Rust's monthly updates come out on the first Thursday of the month (see how Rust updates work), so the November update is the earliest chance. Some of this is merged into the main branch already, but Facepunch can still change or hold any of it.

FAQ

Are shears coming to Rust? Commits show a shears item being balanced on the livestock branch. It gives 25 percent more wool than a knife, with double durability and half the damage. There is no release date.

How much wool do shears give? 12 to 13 wool per sheep instead of 10 from a knife, before the Yield gene.

What does animal repellent do in Rust? In the new commits it stops bee swarms chasing you, stops bulls and rams charging, and makes sharks flee. The Croc pie is named as a source of the buff.

Why were my young animals starving? Young animals could not leave their mother's range to reach a far trough. A new commit lets them walk out to eat.

Sanguine Rust

Sanguine Rust is a PVE server with zombies, bosses and skill levels, and farming is a big part of how players get ahead. We test every Rust build on a test island before moving our islands over. See what Sanguine Rust is about.

Source: Facepunch commits