Oh no, Rust just added my least favorite item from DayZ: handcuffs

GamesSurvival & CraftingRustOh no, Rust just added my least favorite item from DayZ: handcuffsWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.

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Rust - Road Renegades - YouTubeWatch On

Rust - Road Renegades - YouTube

Multiplayer survival gameRustcontinues to get bigger and deadlier with each passing patch. This month’s update, called Road Renegades, adds new vehicles like motorbikes and bicycles, a traveling vendor in an armored truck, and…

Oh, no. Oh, no no no. The update also adds handcuffs.

(Image credit: Facepunch)

A pair of handcuffs

Rust players can take each other prisoner now. Excuse me, sorry, I’m just going to have a vivid and traumatic flashback to playing DayZ in 2014.

There I was, having just spawned on the beach with barely enough time to even look around, when three heavily geared players suddenly showed up and surrounded me. Spawn camping was nothing new in DayZ, and I didn’t particularly care if they just shot me because I could respawn without losing anything, but they had more than that in mind. They told me to put my hands up, then had me kneel down. They handcuffed me—neither the first or last time that would happen to me in DayZ—and then one of them used a blood collection kit on me. The moment my blood was drawn, they executed me with a single shot to the back of the head. It was cold, all the more so because it was so efficiently done.

Not that Rust isn’t absolutely brutal, too, and I’m not saying handcuffs aren’t a logical addition to the multiplayer murderbox. It’s just that being handcuffed and at the whims of other players can pretty quickly progress to a level of ugly that goes beyond just getting beaten or shot to death.

If that wasn’t enough, there’s also a prisoner hood you can put on a handcuffed player to not only restrict their actions but their vision, as it’ll block everything but a small sliver at the bottom of their screen. What can you do with someone who’s handcuffed and hooded? Abduct them, of course! Load them onto one of the new bicycles or motorcycles that come in the update—there’s a three-wheeled bicycle variant that has a seat you can force a prisoner into, and the motorcycle has a sidecar. Being hooded stops players from looking at their map so they won’t know even where you’re taking them. Scary!

Prisoners won’t be entirely helpless, though, because there’s a “minigame” that allows them to eventually break free. It’s not much of a game, really: it looks like you just hold down the attack button while a meter fills, and when it does, the handcuffs break. But if someone pushes or injures the handcuffed player, it will reset their escape progress. So if you’re handcuffed, be prepared to be shoved around a lot, too.

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(Image credit: Facepunch)

A person with a hood and handcuffs with other people pointing a gun

At least the update adds someone new to Rust who won’t try to cuff and abduct you: a traveling vendor. In a truck that broadcasts music like the ice cream man (but has armor plating and laser-guided turrets mounted on the roof) this vendor will appear on roads selling resources and weapons, driving around for 30 minutes at a time, and stopping if you run over to his truck to buy something.

As always, ShadowFrax has agreat breakdown of Rust’s July updateand there’s even more information on theRust devblog.

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