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.

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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.

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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

 

Customized Facepunch Monuments

Most customized elements are visual, or extensions of the monuments to better blend them with the map and area.

 

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

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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.

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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.

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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!

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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.

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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!