How to setup a Softcore server

What is the RUST Softcore Game Mode?

RUST’s recently introduced the new Softcore mode. In this guide, i'm explaining what Softcore is and how to apply the softcore mode to your servernode. 

The Softcore Game Mode sets out to balance the brutal nature of the game by addressing a few key areas, such as:

• On death, you can reclaim half of your inventory at your corpse or a reclaim terminal.
• Players can choose to respawn at Bandit Town or Outpost safe zones
• You can view only wounded players’ inventory contents
• The max team capacity defaults to 4 and includes the number of people who can auth on a tool cupboard

To enable RUST’s Softcore Game Mode, you must own your own server.

Firstly, you have to modify the start-up configuration to include the gamemode.set softcore variable. For Dedicated serverowners, it might also be that this can be just a simple switch on the Client side of your server. For example, on Fragnet, this is simple as just applying it with a simple check. 

Softcore Game Mode RUST servers have three variables that server admins can adjust. These include modifying the percentage of items that remain reclaimable on a player’s hot bar, inventory, and worn armor.

Variable	Default Value
gamemodesoftcore.reclaim_fraction_belt	0.5
gamemodesoftcore.reclaim_fraction_main	0.5
gamemodesoftcore.reclaim_fraction_wear	0

Each of these settings is a fraction value, so setting 0.1 is equivalent to setting 10%, whereas setting the value to 1 is 100%. These settings will impact players when they return to their corpses or access the Reclamation Terminals inside each safe zone. Players will now see the specified % of items that they can reclaim from their lost inventory. 

The Reclamation Terminals have 42 available slots which will hold the combined items that are transferred from the corpse’s belt (hot bar), main inventory, and worn armor, each time a player dies. There is also a small stash that will appear next to the player’s corpse with this loot, so you can use either option. But be sure to access either option within 2 hours.

This particular game mode, while relatively new, is still very much experimental. The Facepunch Development team has made it clear that everything might be changed in the future. If this does, we will update this topic as well.