Everything a Rust server owner needs to know about wipes: Facepunch’s force wipe schedule, what actually gets wiped, the exact commands to wipe your own server, the best wipe days for community servers, and how Facepunch picks servers for the official tab. The countdown below updates live.
What actually happens during a Rust wipe
A “wipe” is Rust shorthand for resetting a server to a fresh state. In practice, three distinct things can be wiped and they have very different consequences:
- Map wipe — The world is regenerated with a new seed (or the same seed, cleaned). All buildings, tool cupboards, stashes, turrets, vehicles, and dropped items vanish. Player inventories are cleared. Blueprints are kept. This is the most common wipe, and it is what Facepunch’s monthly force wipe does by default.
- Blueprint (BP) wipe — On top of the map wipe, every player’s learned blueprints are erased. Players start from scratch and must rediscover every item through scrap research, workbenches, and locked crates. Facepunch only calls a BP wipe once or twice a year at most, announced separately, because it is a brutal reset.
- Full reset — Map + BPs + server identity. Only done when migrating hosts, rebranding, or nuking a compromised save. Kills your Battlemetrics history and search rank, so most admins avoid it.
When a player on your server asks “is this a BP wipe?” they are asking whether their learned recipes carry over. Always state map only or map + BP in your Discord announcement — ambiguity loses players to servers with clearer communication.
The Facepunch force wipe schedule
Facepunch pushes a forced server wipe on the first Thursday of every month at 19:00 UTC. The game client and server are both updated with the monthly patch, and save files from the previous version are incompatible. Any server running the current Rust build must wipe its map at that moment whether the owner wants to or not.
For North America, 19:00 UTC translates to:
- 15:00 EDT / 12:00 PDT during daylight saving time (March–November)
- 14:00 EST / 11:00 PST during standard time (November–March)
For Europe, that is 21:00 CEST in summer, 20:00 CET in winter. For Australia, early Friday morning — 05:00 AEST Friday.
The calendar widget at the top of this page shows the next 12 force wipes. The green row is always the closest upcoming one.
How to wipe your own Rust server
If you run a community server, you will usually want to wipe weekly or biweekly in addition to Facepunch’s monthly force wipe. There are three paths, depending on your hosting setup.
Option 1: LinuxGSM or manual shell
LinuxGSM is the most common self-managed option on a Hostinger VPS or other bare Linux box. To wipe the map only, stop the server and delete the procedural map save files inside the server identity folder:
# Stop server
./rustserver stop
# Navigate to server identity
cd ~/serverfiles/server/my_server_identity/
# Delete map + save data (map-only wipe)
rm -v proceduralmap.*.sav proceduralmap.*.map
# Optional: randomize seed for a brand-new map
sed -i "s/seed "[0-9]*"/seed "$RANDOM"/" ~/lgsm/config-lgsm/rustserver/rustserver.cfg
# Start back up
./rustserver startFor a full BP wipe on top of the map wipe, also delete the blueprint database in the same identity folder:
# BP wipe — run AFTER the map-wipe step above, BEFORE starting
rm -v player.blueprints.5.db
# Verify it is gone
ls -la player.blueprints* 2>/dev/null || echo "BP database cleared"Option 2: Pterodactyl / Pelican panel
If you run the Rust egg on Pterodactyl or Pelican, the panel exposes wipe controls under the server’s Schedules tab. Stop the container, then use the File Manager to navigate to /server/<identity>/ and delete the same files listed above. Most Rust eggs also ship with a “Wipe on startup” toggle in the Startup variables — set WIPE_MAP=true (or the egg’s equivalent) and restart.
Option 3: Oxide/Carbon plugin automation
For hands-off recurring wipes, the WipeInfoAPI plus BetterChat plugins combined with a cron-triggered shell script are the gold standard. Set the cron to run every Thursday at 18:55 UTC, five minutes ahead of Facepunch’s 19:00 force push, and your server is ready before the update lands.
# crontab -e — weekly Thursday wipe 5 min before Facepunch
55 18 * * 4 /home/rust/scripts/weekly-wipe.sh >> /var/log/rust-wipe.log 2>&1The best wipe days for community servers
Your wipe day is one of the biggest levers you control for server population. The wrong slot buries you under the traffic of official servers; the right one puts you at the top of the “just wiped” filter when Rust’s wipe-hunter crowd is browsing.
Here is the practical breakdown sysadmins have observed from years of Battlemetrics data:
- Thursday 19:00 UTC — vanilla-friendly, force wipe day. Highest total traffic of the month, but you compete head-to-head with every Official server. Only recommended if you run a vanilla server with a brand recognized enough to pull players away from officials.
- Friday 20:00 UTC — the modded sweet spot. One day after force wipe, officials are already locked into their population. Modded players who bounced off vanilla officials are scouring the server browser for something fresh. Friday evening Europe / Friday afternoon North America is a strong dual-region window.
- Saturday 18:00 UTC — weekend warriors. Great for medium-pop community servers targeting casual players who only log in on weekends. Lower peak but better retention into Sunday.
- Sunday 18:00 UTC — PvE & low-toxicity communities. The older, chiller demographic logs in Sunday to build before work on Monday. Works well for 2x PvE and building-focused servers.
Wiping at 09:00 UTC on a Tuesday is the fastest way to kill a server. Your peak Europe audience is at work, North America is asleep, and by the time anyone logs in the wipe is already 8 hours stale and top clans have locked down monuments. If you must wipe mid-week, do it 18:00 UTC or later.
Hostinger KVM 4 — 4 vCPU, 16GB RAM, 200GB NVMe
Hostinger’s own documentation recommends 12GB+ RAM for Rust. KVM 4 handles 50 players on a 4500 map with a full Oxide/Carbon plugin stack comfortably. Every plugin you add eats memory — 16GB is the sweet spot for a weekly wipe server with 30–60 players. €12.99/month on a 12-month term.
Get Hostinger KVM 4 →Nitrado — One-Click Managed Rust Hosting
No Linux, no terminal, no plugin configuration file editing. Your server is ready in 2 minutes with a one-click Oxide toggle. Wipes, updates, and infrastructure are fully managed. Best for admins who want to focus on the community, not the ops work.
Get Nitrado →How Facepunch picks Official servers
Every Rust player has seen the green Official tag in the server browser. Those servers get consistent 200/200 player counts, queue systems, and a permanent top-of-browser position. The question every new server owner asks: how do I get on that list?
The honest answer: you don’t apply. Facepunch contacts you. There is no public application form, no submission process, and no published checklist. Facepunch occasionally promotes community servers to official status when their internal team identifies one that meets their bar, and they reach out to the owner directly via Discord or email.
From observed patterns across servers that have been promoted over the years, the informal bar appears to be:
- Established track record — at least 6–12 months of consistent uptime with no major drama or community mismanagement incidents.
- Healthy organic population — 100+ concurrent regularly, not sponsored through boost bots or paid queues.
- Vanilla or very light modding — Officials are always vanilla. A heavily modded 10x server will never be promoted, no matter how popular.
- Clean admin reputation — zero tolerance for admin abuse complaints on Reddit or the Rust Discord.
- Technical stability — no FPS drops, no DDoS-visible downtime, no rollback incidents. Official servers must feel as reliable as Facepunch’s own infrastructure.
If someone claims they can get your server officialed for a fee, they are lying. There is no such service. Focus on running a well-administered community and the right people notice eventually. Or don’t — plenty of top community servers have populations that rival officials without ever carrying the green tag.
Announcing a wipe properly
A wipe is a marketing moment. The servers that grow are the ones that treat every wipe like a launch event.
- Announce 48 hours in advance — pin in Discord, post to your subreddit, and push to Battlemetrics. Players plan their evenings around wipes.
- Commit to an exact minute — “Thursday 19:00 UTC sharp” is credible; “Thursday evening” is not. Players who mistrust your wipe time will not sprint to queue up.
- Post seed + map size — serious players study the map before wipe. Sharing the seed 1 hour before wipe signals confidence and draws planners.
- Announce what is NOT changing — if you are not doing a BP wipe, say so explicitly. If plugins are staying, say so. Ambiguity costs you the returning players you most want to keep.
Frequently asked questions
When is the next Rust force wipe?
The next force wipe is May 7, 2026 at 19:00 UTC (Thursday). The countdown widget at the top of this page is always accurate — Facepunch wipes on the first Thursday of every month at 19:00 UTC without exception.
What is the difference between a map wipe and a BP wipe?
A map wipe resets the world, buildings, and inventories but keeps learned blueprints. A BP wipe additionally erases every player’s blueprint library, forcing re-research from scrap. Facepunch force wipes are map-only by default; BP wipes are announced separately and are rare (last major ones were in 2021 and 2022).
What command wipes a Rust server?
There is no in-game “wipe” console command. You stop the server, delete the procedural map save files (proceduralmap.*.sav and proceduralmap.*.map) in the server identity folder, optionally change the seed in server.cfg, and start back up. For a BP wipe, also delete player.blueprints.5.db. See the how to wipe section above for the exact LinuxGSM and Pterodactyl commands.
What is the best wipe day for a community Rust server?
Thursday 19:00 UTC has the highest total traffic but maximum competition against officials. Friday 20:00 UTC is the strongest off-cycle slot for modded servers. Sunday evenings work well for PvE and building servers. Avoid weekday mornings at all costs.
How do I get my Rust server listed on the Facepunch official tab?
You cannot apply. Facepunch contacts server owners directly when they identify a candidate that meets their internal bar: long uptime, strong organic population, vanilla-only ruleset, clean admin reputation. There is no paid fast-track or public checklist.
Does a force wipe also reset blueprints?
No. Facepunch’s monthly force wipe is map-only by default. Blueprints carry over unless Facepunch specifically announces a BP wipe for that month, which happens at most once or twice a year and is posted in advance on the Rust Devblog.
Can I skip a force wipe?
Not if you want to stay on the current Rust version. The monthly patch makes old save files incompatible — your server literally cannot load the previous map once you apply the update. Some private/whitelisted servers stay on old versions to preserve a specific wipe, but they are cut off from the public server browser.
Next steps
- Setting up from scratch? — Full Rust dedicated server setup on Ubuntu 22.04
- Need a panel? — Pterodactyl panel install guide to manage multiple Rust servers
- Picking hardware? — VPS Sizer recommends the exact Hostinger KVM plan for your player count
- Need more Rust help? — Rust dedicated server setup guide covers install, configuration, plugins, and hosting choice