Observer Island Rust Map Guide & Tips
The Observer Island Rust Map
As featured in the Facepunch community blog for Rust, Observer Island is a new custom map endorsed by Facepunch directly to bring the community an entirely unique experience while fitting the lore of Rust created by the talented artists, Collapsed Orange, and WheatleyMF. Loosely comparable to Hapis Island, and even Gravis Island, Observer Island aims to provide a native experience to Rust whilst offering incredibly unique elements that hold tightly to the ‘lore’ of Rust! Let’s get started.
Map Layout of Observer Island
As pictured below, Observer Island holds a unique shape that sets itself different from procedural maps, whilst not being overly custom to its shape and potentially confusing to new players. Observer Island is a 4k-sized map featuring all normal Rust monuments, however, many of them have even been added to and improved as well. Additionally, this map features several hand-crafted locations, the most notable including Signal Transmitters, Small and Southern Sewers, Sorting Station, a fully custom land-integrated train network system, and far more. Lastly moving linearly to the right will yield higher-tier monuments and overall progression, for the most part.
First Steps
The initial player spawn will take place on the left side of the map as indicated in the striped red lines below. In the initial spawn area of the map, the key monuments to take note of are the Lighthouse, Shoreline Village, and Large Fishing Village. You’ll likely soon find yourself using the ziplines quite often on this map due to their strategic placement to reduce travel time.
Mid-Tier Progression Stages
Likely living in the middle region of the map, mid-tier progression may include you looting Sorting Station, Southern or Small Sewers, or Sunken Cargo Ship. You’ve also likely already seen other players utilizing the train system as it’s highly recommended to quickly travel across this map.
End Game Stages
Reaching the point where you’re participating in raids and looting normal end-game monuments like Launch Site, Oil Rigs, Cargo, etc then you may consider visiting the P8 cave, this location alone won’t be vastly difficult but it holds the key to a bigger and a more secretive location that this map holds that has yet to be discovered. Out of respect to the map makers who made the map they want to see if players organically find the secret entrance after release on November 2nd, 2023 on official Facepunch servers.
Monuments
Whether you’re a noob to Rust or a pro, this map has a lot of custom monuments and puzzles that anyone could potentially struggle with. Below we’ll do our best to cover all of the monuments, what they include, and even a few puzzle tutorials!
Custom Monuments
Arch Rocks
Much like the beloved rock formations that some veteran players used to worship, the team for Observer Island handmade several new variations of custom rock formations spread all throughout the map!
Custom Swamps
Similar to the Abandoned Cabins location in Rust, this Custom Swamps location gives you a neat buildable location
Requirements
- None
Loot
- Barrels
- Basic Crate
Shoreline Village
This Tier 1 monument will be along the spawn beach, and it’s quite easy to spot. I’m sure it will be quite a hotspot, especially just after a wipe, however, you can find great starter loot at this location to get you started on this map that other beaches in Rust typically do not offer.
Requirements
- None
Loot
- Barrels
- Brown Boxes
- Tool Crates
- Basic Crates
- Food Crates
Signal Transmitter
Slightly inland, this Tier 1 mini-monument is a standing satellite like others you may see around the map. A slight vertical climb offers quick loot at both the top and bottom of this monument. You can also quickly travel to this monument if you happen to climb the nearby zipline tower.
Requirements
- None
Loot
- Barrels
- Oil Barrels
- Brown Crates
- Tool Crates
- Basic Crate
Southern Sewers
Southern Sewers, a mid-tier location is a great smaller monument to visit once you obtain a blue card and a fuse. This small but packed monument contains various loot throughout and has a very simple puzzle to enter! Be sure to wear warmer clothing as it’s located in the southern arctic region of the map.
Requirements
- Blue Keycard x1
- Fuse x1
- Warmer Clothing
Loot
- Normal barrels
- Oil Barrels
- Normal Crates
- Green Crates
- Red Keycard Desk Spawn
Small Sewers
A rather tiny monument, but an easy one to get through as long as you have a green key card and a fuse! Located in the arid biome next to the Sorting Station, this small monument nested just under the surface is quite packed with starter loot, but can easily be missed due to its discrete design!
Requirements
- Green Keycard x1
- Fuse x1
Loot
- Barrels
- Normal crates
- Food Boxes
Sunken Cargo Ship
Deep within the bed of the ocean located on the west side of the Observer Island map, this mid-tier monument is packed with loot, however, harder to obtain than most locations due to be submerged underwater. It includes a ton of loot if you know where to look, let’s dive into the details.
Requirements
- Diving Mask
- Diving Fins
- Diving Oxygen Tank
- Boat (To drive to the location)
- Flashlight/Light (Recommended)
Loot
- Barrels
- Diesel Barrels
- Untie Basic Crates
- Untie Normal Crates
- Green Crates
Sorting Station
One of the highest quality custom Rust monuments I’ve ever seen, the Sorting Station, a mid to upper-tier monument bringing its own challenges with this uniquely designed puzzle to obtain the loot it holds.
Requirements
- Blue Keycard x1
- Fuse x1
- Armor (Recommended)
Loot
- Barrels
- Oil Barrels
- Food boxes
- Tool Crates
- Diesel Barrels
- Brown Crates
- Green Crates
- Red Keycard Spawn Desk
P8 Location
Not much has been disclosed about this location, however, it plays an essential part in the final and secret location monument as the P8 contains a bunker that unfolds many rooms you can acquire loot from, but also the key to the final location which has still been entirely classified on its location even once you have the key!
Graphical Layout of the P8 Bunker
Other Various rooms and key points of this monument.
For the small parkour jump over the death pit here’s a short video on how to easily jump across!
Hidden Key Location
Located in the very back of the P8 monument on the first floor you’ll come across a small window which will have quite a few monitors within that room. If you position yourself over to the side of the window you’ll see that there’s a screen with an RF code that gets randomly generated (this will be purely random). Now that you have this RF code you now have the key to unlock the final-most classified monument if you can figure out what to do with that code.
Best of luck!
Classified Monument
Classified information. Will update this soon to include location, guide, loot, and more.
Customized Facepunch Monuments
Most customized elements are visual, or extensions of the monuments to better blend them with the map and area.
Water Treatment Plant
Visually updated, the water treatment plant has a few extensions to this monument to make it more naturally blend with Observer Island just a bit better.
Sewer Branch
Similar to the Water Treatment plant and others, the standard Rust Sewer Branch received a small visual enhancement regarding its integration with the surrounding environment to blend better with Observer Island.
Harbors
If you aren’t already familiar with either one of the Harbor variations, you may not notice these modifications, but like others, this monument also has slight extensions and upgrades added to it for improved visuals with its environment and to bring something new to these monuments.
Military Tunnels
Certainly one of the more obviously customized monuments, Military Tunnels received the same treatment as others in the fact the team for this map decided to spice up this monument visually by changing up the outside along with adding some added features to this monument such as the nearby keycard cave.
Satellite Dish
On the outside, this monument may not look vastly different, however, what is considerably different is what lies under this monument. Located nearby you’ll find a cave that contains numerous loot spawns as well as challenges you may not have expected.
Outpost
Many visual improvements for sheer quality were made at the Outpost, there are quite a few, but a few include custom bridges connecting to the monument, a docking station area, extensions to the monument, and more.
Military Base
One of the more minor adjustments made compared to other monuments, however, Military Base was customized to include a road network that spans the distance of the monument along it’s outside for a sense of realism to better connect its entrances with the real road network.
Standard Facepunch Monuments
- Sulfur, HQM, Stone Quarries
- Lighthouse
- Abandoned Supermarket
- Oxum’s Gas Station
- Mining Outpost
- Bandit Camp
- Excavator
- Fishing Villages
- Trainyard
- Ferry Terminal
- Underwater Labs
- Nuclear Missile Silo
- Small Oilrig
- Large Oilrig
Helpful Tips For Observer Island
- Be mindful of drop-downs in certain monuments. If it looks like a dark and endless pit, it likely is and will instantly kill you if you fall.
- In locations like the Sorting Station, you will come across a breakable barricade and hit it with a melee tool to break it down to expose more loot.
- If you’re unsure where a fuse box or card reader is, follow the electrical wiring as a guide.
- Utilize ziplines on this map as they’re strategically placed to vastly reduce the time it takes to travel.
- If you’re lucky you may find a hidden easter egg, similar to the shark in the toilet at the P8 bunker.
Server Owner Information
For anyone who runs their own server and wishes to host this map here are some helpful points and information that will help answer potential questions you may have.
Hosting Rights
You will be able to purchase this map on 11/9/2023. It will be for sale and will have a premium price tag so the developers of this map are compensated for their time and enables them to continue supporting the map in future updates. Initially, Facepunch official servers will host this, and as far as we are aware it’ll be named Observer Island within the Rust browser menu under the official tab.
Map Requirements
All required information for this map is included within the downloadable .zip that you will receive after purchase once it is published publicly. This zip will contain a few harmony mods at that can function on an entirely vanilla server without Umod/Oxide or Carbon. These mods exclusively are for the intended operations of the end-game monument that will only be fully accessible halfway through a server’s wipe. These mods also remove the need to have any other normal dependency such as, but not limited to: Rustedit Extention, Normal .cs plugins, etc. Everything you need to operate this map will be included in the .zip all together in just a few easy-to-apply files.
Quality Highlights
Many elements of this map would be quickly overlooked by the normal eyes more than likely, however, we wanted to truly showcase to the fullest potential of what these map makers have worked hard on and have accomplished with this map. Below we’ll feature a gallery of various quality-of-life improvements, realism elements, and overall impressive creations that did not make it in previous images.
Terrain Variation and Mountains
Any community Rust map maker knows that mountains can be both negatively impactful for a server and player experience, but also incredibly hard to reasonably accomplish. CollapsedOrange and Wheatley have done a fantastic job at making the mountains not only visually appealing but also easily traversable as well which is very important from a player experience point of view.
Train & Road Network System
Making a simple road or train system alone on a map is a huge task and not easy to create smoothly, however making multiple transportation systems seamlessly blend with the map while alongside each other is a whole new level, especially the designs that were used. The mountainside train track especially is very impressive to see!
Frequently Asked Questions
- Will this map be updated for future changes to Rust?
- Yes, this is why the two map makers who designed and built this have it behind a price point to help cover the time invested that they’ve put into this.
- Where is this map hosted?
- It’ll be hosted on an official Facepunch server under the official tab called Observer Island.
- Can I host Observer Island on my server?
- Yes, it will be available for purchase and host on your own on 11/9/23.
- What is the map size?
- The map size is 4k which is roughly the standard map size overall in Rust so plenty of room to house a ton of players!
- What are the monument locations on Observer Island?
- In addition to the in-game map displaying all locations, you can also find them in the first image of this article above.
- What are the best monuments to visit on Observer Island?
- Aside from the usual Launch site, Oilrig, etc, we recommend visiting the Sorting Station, The P8 Grid bunker which will give you the key to the secret monument that its location is still unknown.
- What are the custom rock formation locations?
- The locations are included in the graphic above in this article, however, the majority of them are found within the southern region’s mountain belt.
- What is Observer Island?
- Comparable to the previous Hapis Island, or Gravis Island, Observer Island aims to target the lore of Rust in every aspect while achieving a vastly custom map experience for a breath of fresh air for the average Rust player.
- Why is it called Observer Island?
- The reason for “Observer” in the name is because P8 (and secret bunker) is directly related to the cloning system and monitoring subject’s activity on islands, hence why it mentions a few Facepunch servers in there.
Conclusion
If you’ve read this far you likely know that Observer Island is not just another custom Rust map, it’s an entire experience. From its purpose of fitting to the lore of Rust regarding the meaning of its name to its many different immersible locations and its highly detailed customized standard monument, it truly stands out when compared to the standard procedural Rust maps by far. I want to personally commend CollapsedOrange and Wheatley for the months of hard work that they’ve poured into this map. You can stay up to date with changes, chat with the creators and more on their Observer Island Discord as well!
For the map-making community within Rust, this is a very big spotlight on the scene and may open the door for future features, events, prefabs, and more later down the road potentially!
