The Short Answer
Rust's July 2026 monthly update, Common Ground, went live with the forced wipe on July 2. The headline addition is the Apartment Complex, a new monument where players can rent a room from a receptionist NPC instead of building a base from scratch. Alongside it, Facepunch shipped a proper Clan System with its own craftable table and management UI, and a major balance change: raid windows, which restrict normal raiding to a fixed daily time block by default. For the step-by-step on renting, raiding, and running a clan, see our Apartment Complex and Clan System guide.
Apartment Complex: Rust's First Rentable Housing
The Apartment Complex is a new monument aimed at players who want a foothold on the map without building and defending a full base from turn one. Walk into the lobby and talk to the receptionist to rent a room. Pricing scales with size and location in the building:
| Room tier | Down payment |
| Basement | 100 Scrap |
| Mid-tier | 200 Scrap |
| Penthouse | 400 Scrap |
Once rented, you need to keep feeding Scrap into a slot next to your door to maintain the lease. Let it run dry and you get evicted, with everything inside seized. The complex also includes a small marketplace of rentable shops that players can buy and run to sell goods to other residents, at a 100 Scrap opening cost plus 10 Scrap per real-world hour of upkeep afterward.
Clan System: Teams With Structure
Clans sit above the existing team system and are built for larger, longer-running groups. Craft a clan table, place it in your base, and it unlocks a full UI for member management, role permissions, announcements, and activity logs. A built-in score system tracks and explains why a clan is gaining or losing points, tied to activities like destroying Bradley or the Patrol Helicopter, looting crates, running the Excavator, and using keycards. It gives large groups a persistent identity and a shared scoreboard that goes beyond a simple team list.
Raid Windows: The Biggest Balance Change
The update's biggest systemic shift is raid windows, which limit when bases can be raided at all. By default, raiding is only open from 6 PM to 9 PM local server time, replacing the classic experience of logging in to find your base gone with no warning. This is paired with Softcore mode changes, including a 2x resource gather multiplier, making Softcore servers play closer to a lightly modded experience.
Why This Matters
Rust's wipe cycle lives and dies on what changes on day one, and Common Ground reshapes two fundamentals at once: how new players get a base, and when raiding can happen at all. If you are picking a server for this wipe, check whether it runs default raid windows or has disabled them, since that single setting changes the entire pace of the map.
For general survival fundamentals, start with our Rust beginner's survival guide, and for the previous wipe's engine and combat changes, see our breakdown of the Built Different update.
