In the middle of the popular areas of the Rust Legacy map was a grassy plain surrounded by rock formations and mountains, which had apparently housed French players – earning it the nickname French Valley. It was a busy spot, and I wrote some notes about the events there nine years ago. On 16th February 2014 there was a particular drama that stood out…

The battle started in the morning as a stand-off between 2 players wearing leather. I tried to find out who they were, as a 3rd person joined the battle, and things became chaotic. Amongst the fighting, someone ran up to me asking for a medkit – it turned out to be my neighbour, but he died as I dropped him the item. I drew fire from both sides of the gunfight, and got involved as more combatants arrived.

My bed was next to the battle, so I kept spawning in and taking the bags from bodies and putting them in my base. I got leather armour, and weapons like a pair of P250’s and a shotgun. I took everything so that the bags disappeared, which was the only sure way to know you got everything. I ended up with a large collection of rocks from this strategy. New spawns were running around checking fresh bags while the armed players engaged eachother.

Some shooters remained close on my right flank behind small wooden structures, with some also further away at the front and the left behind barricades and rocks. New spawns kept coming in and getting shot as they stood looting things now. I ran in naked to appear harmless later on, but had a gun which I’d pull out at the right moment.

I was looking out for my neighbours in the battle to know who to shoot and who not to. Someone that I shot then got upset, but he had been looting the bodies of people who were in the gunfight with my group, so I felt that it was fair game. My neighbours had no idea that I had considered raiding their base in it’s early stage after getting lucky with an airdrop where I got away with C4, but fortunately we got on well together, and were stronger together (I was usually a solo).

By the end of the battle I’d picked up 100 handheld rocks, and the amount of torch use from all the dropped torches was probably 9 hours end to end. There was also around 200 bandages dropped. I built a 2x2x2 mausoleum full of boxes which I filled with rocks, and laughed whenever I found it had been broken into. The raiders never took any of the rocks – they were worthless.

I was amazed at the scale the battle had taken from how small it had started – just two players shooting at eachother for the sake of it, which had eventually littered the valley with bags of those killed. Interestingly the conflict didn’t inflame any beef, but instead strengthened the ties with my neighbours (atleast briefly).

One neighbour became an admin, but he unintentionally went on a raid with godmode on, because he didn’t realise it had been left on after using noclip. The bitter argument between him and the defender (and then others) lasted for atleast an hour, and the new admin resorted to intentionally wanting to abuse his powers. The fallout was horribly anti-social, and I remember seeing an empty server full of decaying bases following the drama. Any potential friendships were broken. We were young and wild, and Rust was a stimulating playground.

Categories: PVP