BEAMS.GG Vanilla Trio Rust Server, US Central

03 / Events

The server knows when cargo is coming. It will not tell you.

The moment the last cargo ship leaves, the game rolls the delay for the next one and starts counting it down. That number exists, on this machine, right now. Facepunch just does not hand it out — no convar returns it, no console command prints it, no plugin hook fires on it. What follows is the honest state of it: the timers you can look up, the ones you cannot, and what the servers showing you a live countdown had to give up to get one.

Timers Facepunch publishes

Real convars behind every one of these. Identical on any unmodified server, this one included.

Event	Timerstock values, not modified here	What it means
Cargo Ship	50 min + 10 min	Fifty minutes of looting, then ten more sailing out. Three loot rounds, ten minutes apart, and it docks for eight minutes on the way.
Deep Sea	3 hr window	Reopens no sooner than 90 minutes after it closes. Radiation floods it in the final 5 minutes.
Patrol Helicopter	30 min	How long it patrols before leaving on its own.
Bradley APC	60 min	Respawn after it dies. Launch Site only, and this one is not randomised.
Hackable crate	15 min	One global timer, so it is identical on Oil Rig, Cargo and Chinook. Decays after 2 hours if nobody touches it.
Oil Rig crate	No timer	Re-arms once the rig is cleared and everyone has left. Scientists come back roughly every 24 minutes.

Timers Facepunch does not expose

The arrival time is decided and stored, but it lives on a private field of the event scheduler. The supported admin command reports minimum delay, maximum delay and last trigger — deliberately not the next one. That gives a window hours wide, not a countdown.

Event	Readable?	What is actually out there
Cargo Ship	Not exposed	Community estimates run 2 to 4 hours and contradict each other. The most-repeated figure looks like it was copied off the helicopter’s by a guide that mixed the two up.
Patrol Helicopter	Not exposed	Usually quoted as 2 to 4 hours. Unsourced.
Chinook · CH47	Not exposed	Occasionally quoted as 2 hours. The careful guides decline to give a figure at all.
Airdrop	Not exposed	Quoted anywhere from 1 to 2 hours. The old player-count trigger, airdrop.min_players, no longer exists in the game.

Vanilla does not announce cargo in chat. No server message, no horn. It appears as an icon on your map and that is your only warning — same for the helicopter. Watch the map, not the chat. Guides get this wrong constantly because modded servers bolt on an announcer plugin and everyone assumes it is stock.

How the servers with a countdown do it

If you have seen a server show you next cargo in 43:12 and be right about it, that server is running a plugin that switched Facepunch’s scheduler off and replaced it with its own. The countdown is exact because the plugin picked the number. Vanilla event randomness is gone, and the admin now sets how often everything spawns.

That is a real trade and it is a defensible one — it is just not one we are making for the sake of a clock. Events here arrive when the game decides, which is the whole point of running stock.

The other thing you have probably seen is a HUD panel that lights up while cargo is on the map. That is a live indicator, not a countdown, and it is a different feature wearing similar clothes.

The one event that does have a clock

Deep Sea is the exception, and it is native. Facepunch built the timer for this one: a countdown drawn on your map over the Deep Sea marker, toast warnings as the storm rolls in, and a radiation ramp in the last five minutes. No plugin, nothing added by us. It is running here already.

Opens: 3 hr window
Storm warning: Toast pop‑up, weather turns
Radiation: Final 5 min
Closes: Everything inside is destroyed
Reopens: 90+ min later

Nothing you leave down there survives the close. Get out on the first warning, not the last one.

05 / Performance

Built for the PC you actually have.

The server side is done and documented above. This is the client side. Everything here was checked against the live Rust build in August 2026, because most of what is written about Rust FPS online is describing a settings menu that no longer exists.

Read this one first. Turn your mouse polling rate down to 500Hz. The June 2026 Unity 6 update changed how Rust processes mouse input. Facepunch’s own words: “High polling rate mice (1000Hz+) are now causing significant CPU overhead issues and frame drops.” Change it in Logitech G HUB, SteelSeries GG, Razer Synapse, whatever you use. Facepunch has not announced a fix as of the August 2026 update. For a lot of people this is worth more frames than every graphics setting combined, and almost nobody knows about it.

Most Rust FPS guides you will find are out of date

Facepunch has been rebuilding the graphics options since early 2025. These settings no longer exist. If a guide tells you to change one of them, it was written for an older game and you should not trust the rest of it either.

Setting people still recommend	Status	Replaced by
graphics.quality	Removed Mar 2025	Nothing. There is no master quality preset any more.
graphics.shaderlod	Removed Aug 2026	Nothing. “Shader Level 350” advice is dead.
graphics.shadowquality	Removed Feb 2026	graphicssettings.shadowqualitypreset
graphics.shadowdistance	Removed Mar 2025	graphicssettings.shadowdistance
graphics.shadowcascades	Removed Mar 2025	graphicssettings.numshadowcascades
grass.on	Never existed	You cannot turn grass off. Facepunch blocks it on purpose.
gfx.ssaa / gfx.bloom / gfx.shafts	Never existed	effects.*
-high / -malloc=system / -maxMem	Not real	Source engine flags. Rust is Unity. They do nothing.

Measure before you change anything

Find out what is actually limiting you

perf 2

Shows FPS and frametime. Rust is CPU limited for most people at 1080p, which means dropping your resolution or render scale buys you a blurry game and nothing else. If your GPU is sitting at 50 percent while one CPU core is pinned, that is your answer.

client.benchmark

Built in benchmark. Run it from the main menu, not while connected. Almost nobody knows this exists.

Change one setting at a time and re-run it. Two settings at once and you learn nothing.

The stutter key

Rust accumulates memory over a session. This clears it without a restart. Paste it in the F1 console once, then press P whenever it starts hitching mid wipe.

input.bind p gc.collect;gc.unload;\
     effects.clearallgibs;decal.clear

gc.unload is the one most guides miss. It frees VRAM as well as RAM, which is what you actually want after three hours on a full server.

Save your settings so they survive a restart:

global.writecfg

Settings, by tier

Set these in the console, then run global.writecfg. If you change a preset in the menu afterwards it will overwrite individual values, so do the menu first and the console second.

Setting	Potato 1050 Ti, 4 core, 8–12GB	Mid 3060 / 6600, 16GB	High, wants frames 4070+, 32GB
Shadows — the biggest single lever
graphicssettings.shadowqualitypreset	0	1	1–2
graphicssettings.numshadowcascades	1	2	2
graphicssettings.shadowdistance	50	80–120	150
graphicssettings.shadowmapresolution	0	1	2
graphics.shadowmode	1	2	2
graphics.contactshadows	false	false	false
graphics.impostorshadows	false	false	false
World
graphics.volumetric_clouds on by default	0	0	0–1
graphics.drawdistance	1200	1500–1800	2000
graphics.lodbias	0.7	1.0	1.0
mesh.quality	50	100	150
tree.quality	50	100	150
tree.meshes	30	70	100
terrain.quality	50	100	100
grass.quality	25	50	100
grass.distance	50	75	100
grass.displacement keep on	true	true	true
decor.quality	0	50	100
particle.quality	0	25	50
water.quality	0	0–1	1
water.reflections	0	0	0–1
graphics.waves	false	true	true
graphics.parallax	0	0	0
Effects — turn nearly all of it off
effects.maxgibs raid killer	0	0	0
effects.ao	false	false	false
effects.bloom / lensdirt / motionblur / shafts	false	false	false
graphics.dof	false	false	false
effects.creationeffects	false	false	false
effects.otherplayerslightflares	false	false	false
effects.sharpen keep on	true	true	true
effects.antialiasing	1 FXAA	2 SMAA	3 TSSAA
graphics.af basically free	4	8	8–16
Latency and upscaling
graphics.reflexmode	2	2	2
graphics.dlss RTX only	-1	3	3
graphics.vsync	0	0	0
fps.limit	60	144	165–240
culling.toggle keep on	true	true	true
graphicssettings.particleraycastbudget	64	256	1024
graphicssettings.pixellightcount	2	4	8
shadowcaching.enabled new, test it	try	try	try

The traps

Settings that look harmless and cost the most frames.

Volumetric clouds. On by default since September 2025. It is a full screen effect that runs whether or not you are looking at the sky. Almost no guide mentions it because it did not exist when they were written.
Max gibs at 1000. Fine until a raid starts, then you are simulating a thousand pieces of debris in the exact moment that decides the fight.
Draw distance at 2500. Players and entities are networked by the server, not by this setting. Cranking it does not let you see people further away.
Particle raycast budget at 1024. That is a CPU cost, and Rust is CPU bound.
Water quality and reflections. They cost frames even when the water is off in the distance.

The false economies

Settings people crush for no reason, at real cost to what they can see.

Anisotropic filtering. Effectively free on any GPU from the last ten years. At 1 your ground textures smear at exactly the angle you are trying to spot a prone player. Set 4 to 8.
Sharpen. One post pass. Leave it on. It is free distant target clarity.
Occlusion culling. The advice to disable it is from 2018. Leave it on.
Grass displacement. Cheap, and it shows you trails where players have walked. Keep it.
Render scale, if you are CPU bound. Check perf 2 before you blur your game for nothing.
Anti aliasing off. Distant players shimmer and dissolve into the terrain. SMAA is the competitive sweet spot.

Steam launch options

Two of them work. Everything else you have been told to paste in here is a Source engine flag that Rust silently ignores.

-window-mode exclusive -nolog

That is the whole list. -high, -maxMem, -malloc=system and -cpuCount are Source engine conventions. Rust is Unity and does not read them. -force-vulkan is a real Unity flag, but Rust ships DirectX shaders, so at best it does nothing and at worst it breaks your rendering.

Outside the game

Windows and drivers

Mouse polling rate: 500Hz
XMP / EXPO in BIOS: Enabled
Resizable BAR: On
Windows Game Mode: On
Power plan: High performance
NVIDIA power management: Prefer max performance
NVIDIA low latency mode: Off, use in game Reflex
NVIDIA shader cache: 10GB+
Overlays and Game Bar: Off

Rust has DLSS, DLAA and Reflex. It does not have FSR, XeSS, or frame generation. If you are on AMD or Intel your only in game lever is render scale.

If you are going to upgrade one thing

Rust is CPU and memory bound long before it is GPU bound. In order:

RAM to 16GB, in two sticks. Steam lists 12GB minimum and 16GB recommended. Under 16 you page to disk, and that is what those two second freezes actually are. Single channel costs you badly.
Any SSD. Steam now says SSD required. Rust streams assets during play, so a mechanical drive stutters mid fight, not just on load.
Turn on XMP. Free. Most people never do it.
CPU, if you are older than Zen 2 or 8th gen Intel. Single thread speed and cache size matter far more than core count. Rust leans on one main thread and never stops leaning on it.
GPU last. Buying a faster card to fix Rust stutter is the classic wasted upgrade.

Video guides worth your time

We do not embed these, so nothing here loads a tracker. They open on YouTube.

Best RUST Settings 2026 — Boost FPS, Reduce Lag Kysen · July 2026 · most current NEW BEST Rust Settings for PVP in 2026 STELIC · June 2026 · focused on Unity 6 stutter Complete Rust Optimization Guide 2026 STELIC · April 2026 · full menu walkthrough

Worth saying plainly: none of these are properly benchmarked. They are creator walkthroughs with eyeballed numbers, which is the best that currently exists for Rust. That is exactly why client.benchmark matters. Measure your own machine.

Do not install ReShade. Facepunch blocked it in January 2025 — EAC will not let the game start with it installed, and guides still recommending it for sharpening or a visibility filter are years out of date. The same goes for external frame generation injectors. Keep trying to force your way past the block and you will end up banned rather than just unable to launch.

06 / Store

You cannot buy an advantage here.

No kits. No items. No resources. No gather bonuses. No skins. That is not a policy we are grudgingly following, it is the entire reason this server exists. If you could pay to win here it would be a different server and you would not want to play on it.

What there is to buy

Priority QueueSkip the queue when the server is full. Nothing else changes.

$6/30 days

Name ColorYour name in gold in chat. Nothing else changes.

$4/30 days

That is the whole list and it is not going to grow. Neither one is a subscription. They run out after 30 days and nothing rebills.

Open the store Full store details

Join the server once before you buy. Delivery matches you by Steam account, so we need to have seen you. Both perks run 30 days, neither is a subscription, and neither rebills.

Why the list is so short

Facepunch’s rules are wider than this list. Community servers are allowed to sell cosmetics, run their own currency, even charge for access outright. What is not allowed is selling anything that changes how the game plays, and servers do get delisted for it.

Plenty of servers sell that stuff anyway and move to the Modded tab, or gamble that nobody reports them. We are not doing either.

So the list is short by choice, not because the rulebook forced it down to two. Queue skip and a coloured name are the only things we could think of that we would still be comfortable selling if you could read the whole config, which you can, above.

Where the money goes

Hosting, the domain, and eventually a second admin so there is someone awake when you are. That is the cost base. It is not a business, it is a server that needs to not lose money.

If it ever makes more than it costs, that goes into better hardware, which you will notice, because that is the only thing on this server that money can actually improve.

Refunds and delivery

Delivery is automatic. The command runs on the server within about a minute of payment clearing. Join the server once before you buy so we can find your account.

If you buy something and the server has a bad wipe, ask for a refund. You will get one. Chargebacks cost us a lot more than refunds do, so there is no reason for either of us to go that route.

07 / Rules

Fifteen rules. We enforce all of them.

Short enough that you will actually read them, and every one is something we can act on. Rules 3 to 6 and 9 to 11 are permanent on the first offence. Everything else gets a warning first. The same fifteen are posted in Discord and summarised in game with /rules.

The whole thing in six lines, if that is all you want:

Trio max. No teaming past three.
No cheating. Permanent, first offence.
No exploits. Report them instead.
No slurs, harassment or scamming.
Don't block monuments, roads, or rivers.
Everything else is Rust. Play it.

Trio max. Three players per team, base and TC. The team UI is hard capped at three, and cupboards, doors and turrets cap at three authorised. First time you get broken up and warned. After that everyone involved is banned, not just the extra body.
No teaming past trio. Cross-team alliances, gearing another team, sharing a base or loot or comms, rotating a fourth person in and out. It does not mean meeting someone and not shooting them. Same rule, same ban as above.
No cheating. Aimbot, ESP, scripts, macros, wallhacks, any third party overlay reading game memory. Includes buying or borrowing an account that is cheating. If it is your Steam account it is your ban. Permanent, first offence, and no appeal for 90 days.
Report exploits, do not use them. Terrain glitching, floating bases, clipping loot out of a base, duping. Report it and it stays quiet. Use it and you lose the account and everything you built with it. If you are not sure whether something is an exploit, it is. Ask first.
No cheat advertising. Selling them, linking them, or telling someone where to get them. Permanent, first offence.
No ban evasion. A new account to dodge a ban means both accounts are banned and the clock on the original starts over.
One account per person. No alts for extra base slots, extra team slots, or scouting while your main is offline. Family share is fine. Two people on one PC is fine. Two accounts run by one person is not.
Do not block the map. No walling off monument entrances, roads, rivers or rail tunnels. Building near a monument is fine. Building on top of one so nobody can run it is not. First time it comes down, second time so do you.
No slurs or hate speech. Chat, voice, signs and names. Trash talk is fine, slurs are not. Permanent, first offence.
No harassment, doxxing or threats. Real life threats, posting someone's personal information, or following a player around to drive them off the server. Sexual content involving minors is an instant permanent ban and a report to Steam.
No scamming. Deals made in chat are binding. Bring a clip or a screenshot. Permanent, first offence.
No advertising other servers, Discords or stores. In chat, in Discord, or in DMs to our players.
No impersonating staff. Staff have a role. If they do not have the role, they are not staff. Staff never DM you first, never ask for your Steam credentials, and never sell anything.
English in global chat. Anything you want in team chat and in voice.
Chargebacks are a permanent ban. If a purchase goes wrong, open a ticket and ask for a refund. You will get one. There is no reason for either of us to go the chargeback route.

What is allowed

This list matters as much as the one above. These are the things we have decided not to police, so you do not have to wonder.

Raiding anyone, any time. Offline, online, first day, last day.
Door camping and spawn camping. Not fun. Not against the rules.
Betraying your own team and taking their loot.
Trash talk. Stay off the slur list and say what you want.
Griefing a base. Honeycombing someone in, twig spam, blocking their door.
Roof camping monuments. Oil, Launch, heli.
Taking someone’s loot even if you did not kill them.
Playing solo against trios. Nobody gets a handicap.

What happens when you break one

Rule	First	Second
1 · Trio max	Broken up, warned	Ban, all of them
2 · Teaming past trio	Broken up, warned	Ban, all of them
3 · Cheating	Permanent	n/a
4 · Exploiting	Permanent, base removed	n/a
5 · Cheat advertising	Permanent	n/a
6 · Ban evasion	Permanent, both accounts	n/a
7 · Alt accounts	Warned, alt banned	Both banned
8 · Blocking the map	Removed, warned	Removed, ban
9 · Slurs or hate speech	Permanent	n/a
10 · Harassment or threats	Permanent	n/a
11 · Scamming	Permanent	n/a
12 · Advertising	Kick	Ban
13 · Impersonating staff	Kick	Permanent
14 · English in global	Warning	Kick
15 · Chargebacks	Permanent	n/a

We do not issue timed bans on the game server, because we would have to remember to lift them and we would eventually forget. Discord timeouts are a separate thing and they do get used. A ban here is either a warning that did not work or it is permanent.

Rule 1 is the whole product. People pick a trio server because they are tired of being rolled by fifteen man zergs, and the only thing that keeps them is believing it is actually enforced. So there are no exceptions. Not for friends, not for anyone who bought something, not for a streamer who brings thirty people. One exception and the rule is gone.

What happened	Where it goes	Response
Cheater	Press F7 in game, then file a report. F7 notifies us and EAC.	Same day
Teaming past trio	Report form, with clips. Names alone are not enough.	Same day
Scam or trade dispute	Report form, with screenshots of the agreement	2 days
Store or purchase issue	Store ticket in Discord	3 days
Ban appeal	Appeal form, one per ban. Permanent bans: 30 days before you can appeal. Cheating: 90 days.	7 days
Staff misconduct	Admin conduct form. Staff cannot see it.	3 days
Anything else	General ticket in Discord	Same day

One server. Run properly.