Rust: the Apartment Complex ahead of the September 3 wipe — rent capped at 72h and key costs 1,000 Scrap

The September force wipe falls on Thursday, September 3, 2026, and that's not a deduction on our part: Facepunch wrote it down, in the last place a player would think to look. In the middle of the Power Trip devblog from August 6, 2026, a section aimed at modders announces: « For modders - we intend to remove SetFlag from the codebase with the September wipe (3rd Sep 26) ». The studio never dates its wipe in its announcements: it let it slip in a code deprecation note.

That Thursday, the maps start from scratch, and with them all rentals, all shops and all rent already paid to the Apartment Complex — the monument Facepunch designed for the days after a wipe: « a new monument that allows players getting started with a wipe to find a place to call home ». Arrived with Common Ground on July 2, 2026, it has never been covered on our site. And Power Trip changed two of its rules: the July guides are wrong on at least one figure.

A vocabulary warning: Facepunch publishes nothing in French. The address rust.facepunch.com/fr returns a 404 error, checked on September 1, 2026; devblogs, roadmap and changelogs are in English. The client, meanwhile, is partially translated: the monument is indeed called Complexe d'appartements in French, the rent currency Ferraille. But the room types (Basement Room, Standard Apartment, Penthouse), the shops (Rentable Shop) and the guard (Apartment Complex Security NPC) stay in English on screen: we write them as the client displays them.

The date is official, the time is our deduction

Facepunch dates the wipe, but nowhere states at what time it falls. We deduce it from the publication timestamps of its 2026 Steam announcements, all on the first Thursday of the month.

Both blocks correspond to the same local British time, around 6:45 PM in London; the shift between March and April is just the switch to daylight saving time. For September 3, this would place the switch around 7:45 PM Paris time. This is our extrapolation and our conversion, not data from the publisher.

The content of the update, meanwhile, is not public. The official roadmap (« Last Updated 27 AUG 2026 ») places Rust Premium, the Animals project, the biofuel generator and character customization in Q4 2026, not on September 3. The last devblog online as of September 1 remains Power Trip.

Renting a room: the receptionist, the slot and the input

The procedure fits in one sentence from the July 2 devblog: « Simply talk to the receptionist in the lobby to get started and rent a room. » Facepunch adds that there are options for every budget, « from the basement to the penthouse », and that rooms don't open the same perks — more storage, ovens. Neither the list nor the breakdown by floor has been published.

Rent is then paid at the door: a slot placed right next to it swallows the Scrap and the counter counts down in real time. If it hits zero, the penalty is twofold and the studio doesn't sugarcoat it: « you'll be evicted and all of your possessions will be seized ».

No prices are officially published. The figures below are a community record, extracted from the game files by rusthelp.com and verified by that site on August 30, 2026: useful as a reference, not confirmed by the studio. Amounts in Scrap.

The 72-hour cap, the August rule that renders July's guides obsolete

This is the shortest and most structurally important line in Power Trip. Under the « Notable Changes » section, titled « Maximum Rent »: « Maximum stored rent at the Apartment complex is now capped at 72 hours ». A three-day cap on stored rent, meaning the advance deposited into the slot.

The July strategy — stuffing the slot before heading out on an expedition and not thinking about it for the rest of the week — no longer exists. Any guide predating August 6 that advises paying well in advance is making you work for nothing. The studio only states that the reserve is capped; it doesn't say what happens to a deposit that exceeds the limit.

The last column of the table applies this cap to the recorded rates: 30 Scrap in advance at most for the basement, 300 for a penthouse, 720 for a shop. That's our own calculation, not a figure provided by the publisher.

Running a shop: 12 hours in advance, resale at ×2, and no drone access

The complex houses a small market of shops for rent. You don't talk to anyone: you approach and interact with the contract posted out front, which displays the price details. This price has two components — a non-refundable advance and a real-time hourly cost — and an entry condition stated in plain terms: « You will need at least 12 hours of rent available to open the store. »

Once opened, the shop is managed like any other vending machine: sell lists, stock levels, a customizable sign. One limitation worth knowing before building a business around it: these shops are not accessible to drones.

The real mechanism is hostile takeover. Once 6 hours of opening have passed, any player can take your shop from you, but they'll pay ×2 on the upfront cost and on the hourly rent. The multiplier climbs with each subsequent takeover until someone falls short on rent; the shop and its multiplier then reset to zero. The system regulates itself through exhaustion, not protection. Goods left inside aren't lost — you just need to come back and interact with the shop — but "these items will only last 24 hours though, so be quick!"

The publisher even seems unsure of its own item's name: the devblog's section title reads "Rentable Shops", while the changelog in the same post lists "Rentable Stores".

The key: "somewhere on the island" per the devblog, 1,000 Scrap per the files

The July 2 devblog is downright novelistic: "There is a master key available somewhere on the island - find it and you can unlock access to any occupied room in the apartments for 5 minutes." Then, by way of a hint: "Need a hint as to what room to burgle? There might be a guard in the basement who has more information." Neither where, nor how much.

The data extracted from the game tells a different story. The item's short name is apartment.master_key, and it isn't found: it's bought from the Apartment Complex Security NPC — the basement guard — for 1,000 Scrap, with only one such character present per complex. The same guard also sells access to the room security camera feeds, enough to gauge the value of their contents and spot a poorly defended room. The key is single-use, with a one-hour despawn timer once dropped on the ground. Per rusthelp.com's August 30, 2026 listing, none of these figures are published by Facepunch.

Another discrepancy, more troublesome for anyone hunting the item in their inventory: the devblog talks about a master key, but the in-game item is called Apartment Key — "An old, rusty key that unlocks an apartment door." The word "master key" appears nowhere on screen. Power Trip actually gave it a physical form: "Last month, the Master Key used in the Apartment Complex shipped without a model." It now has a 3D model, a first-person view, and animations — meaning July's video guides show something that no longer exists.

Three August patches close doors that were previously open: no more stealing certain items from an apartment or shop after a break-in has ended, nor clipping through the ceiling of the average apartment; and players can once again shoot each other inside apartments in hardcore mode. This last line quietly reveals what the devblog never states outright: outside of hardcore, the complex is a safe zone, and combat is only allowed there during a break-in. The in-game data sheet confirms it — "Is a safe zone: Yes" — the devblog does not.

What to remember before Thursday, September 3

The Apartment Complex isn't a loot monument, it's a cash-flow monument. According to the in-game data sheet, it has neither radiation nor a recycler, but it offers a player starting fresh a lockable roof, a repair bench, a research table, and a tunnel entrance, all for a paltry sum in the basement.

Three rules not to miss on wipe night. One: don't deposit more than 72 hours of rent. Two: if you're aiming for a shop, plan for the 12 hours required to open it, plus the margin to absorb a ×2 renewal after six hours. Three: don't store anything of value in either the room or the shop — Facepunch says it themselves about the key, "your items could be stolen if you try and store valuable goods".

Since the complex is a safe zone, the only combat window inside is that of the break-in: five minutes, a single-use key, and a guard who'll sell the list of the best-stocked rooms to whoever pays. It's not a safe, it's a bet on your neighbors' discretion.