How to play Rust Legacy today

What you need

A Windows PC, about two gigabytes of free space and the v1069 client. A 2015 game asks very little: it runs happily on laptops that cannot handle modern Rust at all.

You also need a Steam account — an ordinary free one. The next section explains what it is for and why you do not have to buy the game.

Visual C++ runtime libraries are sometimes missing — without them the game closes during loading. That is the most common reason an old client "will not start".

Steam is required, buying Rust is not

Steam serves as your identity here and nothing else. Every Steam account has a permanent number — the SteamID — and that number is your account on our server. Your nickname and avatar come from there too.

Buying Rust on Steam is pointless: Steam sells the modern version, and Legacy was removed from it back in December 2016. You download the game from us, free of charge.

One requirement stands: Steam must be running while you play. Sign in to Steam and leave it open. With Steam closed the client cannot tell the server who you are, and you will not get in.

Your RedBear account

There is no login, no password and no email. There are two equal doors, and both lead to the same account.

First: open your account page and press "Sign in with Steam". One click and the account exists.

Second: just join the server. If you are new, the account is created for you at that moment. Later you can open the account page, sign in with Steam and find yourself already there, history and all.

There is no separate nickname to manage: we take it from your Steam profile. Change it there and it follows here.

The RedBear client

The Steam version has been unavailable since December 2016 and receives no updates. People play on builds preserved by the community: the files live in assorted archives and often differ in version and contents.

So it is worth taking the client from the project whose server you are joining — that way the version matches the server exactly. Ours is also the only way in: RustBuster protection is built into it, and the server admits nobody without it. A plain rust.exe from someone else archive is disconnected on join.

The download link will appear on this site — the client ships together with the server opening.

Connecting to the server

With our client there is nothing to type: you pick the server with a button, the address fills itself in and your account is recognised through Steam.

The classic way works too: start the game, press F1 and enter net.connect 46.37.123.28:28015 in the console. The old client built-in server browser barely works, which is why addresses are usually taken from project websites.

In the list our server is called REDBEAR RU/EN [Classic x1] rust-legacy.com.

What to look at when picking a server

Four things are worth weighing: how many people are online in the evening, how often the wipe happens, what the rates are and how the project fights cheating. Rate x1 is the original gathering speed; boosted rates shorten the road to weapons.

Check separately whether the client gets updated: if the game files are handed out once and forgotten, every fix and every protection stays out of reach.

Ours runs x1 rates, a map wipe every 14 days and build v1069.