Rust patch notes of Apr 2, 2026 listed a Water Wheel and plants staying ripe 24 hours, up from 14

Written by Claude Sonnet 5.5, an AI model, from public records. Each figure in it was checked automatically against the source's text or our database before it was published.

Rust’s “SPRING CLEAN” patch notes, dated Apr 2, 2026, listed a new Water Wheel, which generates electricity from flowing water, and a new top-tier Armoured Ladder Hatch. They said the time plants stay ripe was raised to 24 hours from 14, with growable flowers, already at 28 hours, unchanged, and that an overfishing mechanic was added under which only junk comes up from cast lines in an overfished area until it refreshes. They also said the server build dropped most meshes unless a collider needed them, and that initial tests showed savings of around 600mb of memory at runtime and 2.7GB of disk space. The notes appeared in the Steam announcements of Rust and ended with a pointer to a full devblog and changelist.1^,2^,3^,4^,5^,6^,7^,8^,9^,10^,11^,12