You wake up in a crappy flat. Ugh. Time to see what's in the cupboards for breakfast. No cereal. Great. Then, a cacophonous banging at the door. "yOu hAvEn'T fEd mE!" Oh, bollocks. You check your pockets. There's not enough scrap in them to cover your daily rent. Gulp. Bye bye possessions. This, from the sounds of it, is about to become a common experience in Rust, with the survival game's latest update adding in rentable apartments and shops.

Rust - Common Ground | Launch Trailer Watch on YouTube

Dubbed the Common Ground update, it's seen devs Facepunch set up an apartment complex you can waltz into if you fancy taking a break from sailing around to rent some digs. There are three different tiers of room you can land the key to, ranging from starter squats to swanky penthouses. While every flat has some handy amenities like a stove, bed, and workbench, the furnishings naturally get more numerous and advanced the further you get up the property ladder.

Speaking of paying, keeping hold of your room demands feeding a deposit od scrap into the intercom by its front door every 24 hours. Miss a payment? "You'll be evicted and all of your possessions will be seized," Facepunch noted. Seems a perfectly legal and proportionate response. You belongings aren't exactly guaranteed to be secure even if you pay on time, either. Other players can hunt down a master key to the complex hidden somewhere on the island, then bully a security guard for info on which rooms are worth burgling. Occupants can at least defend themselves, so keep a gun or face-sized rock at under your sofa cushions.

Beyond the flats, enterprising types can also rent shop stalls in the complex's market, then hawk stuff they don't want to fellow players. You'll need plenty of scrap to hand, as each shop requires "a non-refundable upfront scrap fee as well as a per-hour (real-time) scrap cost", with the funds for at least 12 hours of rent payments needing to be in your hands before you can open up and start selling. Once behind the counter, you can set item listings and daub a unique name for the shop across its sign.

Oh, and watch out for shop rustlers. "After a shop has been open for 6 hours, you may take it over, but you will pay x2 on both the upfront scrap cost and per-hour rent," Facepunch explained. "This will continue to escalate (3x, 4x, etc) if someone else takes over the shop after 6 hours until eventually someone runs out of rent and the shop (and cost multiplier) resets." Apartment burglars with the master key can also nick stuff from shops with that if they wish, just in case being gazumped by another ware-hawker's not enough of a threat on its own.

Common Ground's rounded out by a new clan system, plus boosted resource gathering and the limiting of raids to a specific 6PM to 9PM window in Softcore mode. You can read the full notes from the sofa in your new flat. Just make sure you've paid up for the day before you settle down.