Rust goes medieval with the Primitive update: siege weapons, swords and shields, and maybe a few jewel-encrusted assault rifles

Rust - Primitive Update - YouTube

It's a great week for going medieval. Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 crashed through Steam's gates on Tuesday, and now here comes survival sandbox Rust with its Primitive update. It's got swords, shields, bows and arrows, siege weapons, and a few mild anachronisms like jewel-encrusted assault rifles and electricity-powered autocrossbows.

Two people with swords, shields, and armor fighting — (Image credit: Facepunch Studios)

"The early game of Rust can be the most exciting, unfortunately players rush to fully automatic rifles as fast as possible to get an edge over their enemies. What if the early game could last forever....?" says Facepunch Studios. "The primitive mode brings us to a distant future where the knowledge of high tech items have been lost, leaving the inhabitants of the island only able to make basic items."

You'll be able to build items like catapults, siege towers, battering rams, ballistas, and other medieval-style machines perfect for storming the castle in a world where helicopters and C4 aren't available. Instead of a pistol there's a four-shot mini-crossbow, just like they (probably) had back in the dark ages. Horses have been overhauled as well since your motorcycles won't be craftable, perfect for getting you around or dragging your siege engines to the castle gates.

In keeping with the theme, there's a Medieval Pack DLC you can use in Rust Prime, including the jewel-encrusted rifle skin I mentioned earlier, several armor sets, a treasure chest, and more, which will cost you about $13 in the Rust store. You can find out more about the Primitive update on the Rust blog.

Chris started playing PC games in the 1980s, started writing about them in the early 2000s, and (finally) started getting paid to write about them in the late 2000s. Following a few years as a regular freelancer, PC Gamer hired him in 2014, probably so he'd stop emailing them asking for more work. Chris has a love-hate relationship with survival games and an unhealthy fascination with the inner lives of NPCs. He's also a fan of offbeat simulation games, mods, and ignoring storylines in RPGs so he can make up his own.