Once a month, on the first Thursday at roughly 19:00 UTC, every Rust server on earth wipes its map. Facepunch ships their monthly update, the update forces the reset, and several hundred thousand players scramble for fresh beaches. If you run a server, force wipe is not an interruption to the calendar — it is the calendar.
What actually gets wiped
- The map, always. Terrain reseeds, every base and deployable vanishes. This is non-negotiable; the update requires it.
- Blueprints, sometimes. Learned crafting knowledge survives the monthly wipe unless you choose to clear it (or Facepunch forces it, a few times a year). Whether to blueprint-wipe monthly is the single biggest identity decision your server makes.
- Never your configuration. Plugins, permissions, descriptions and schedules persist. Only the world resets.
Choosing your wipe identity
Players pick servers by wipe schedule the way commuters pick trains. The main archetypes:
| Schedule | Who it attracts |
|---|---|
| Monthly, force wipe only | Builders, casuals, people with jobs |
| Biweekly | The most common compromise |
| Weekly | Sweats, clans, maximum aggression |
| Weekly + blueprint wipe | Fresh-start purists |
Pick one, print it in your server title (e.g. [Biweekly|2x|Solo/Duo]), and never miss it. A server that wipes late looks abandoned by lunchtime.
The server owner’s checklist
- Automate the schedule. On Astronomical, set map (and optional blueprint) wipes from the panel and force wipe Thursday handles itself.
- Pre-pick your seed. Browse seed galleries the week before; a good rivers-and-monuments map noticeably improves week-one retention.
- Update plugins before the hour. Oxide and Carbon ship updates within hours of the Facepunch patch. Test them; a plugin crash during the launch rush wastes your best traffic of the month.
- Be online at wipe. The first three hours after force wipe are when the in-game browser sends you more strangers than the rest of the month combined. It is the worst possible time to be asleep.
The part nobody tells you
Population begets population. A server that holds 20 players through wipe night ranks higher in the browser, which attracts 40 the next night. Everything above — the punctual schedule, the good seed, the working plugins — is really in service of surviving those first three hours. Hardware that keeps its tick rate under launch load is the quiet advantage; it is the reason we put Rust on high-clock cores and tell people honestly that big maps want 16 GB.